Of course, gcc -Wall warns on this unless you wrap it in another set of (), but I still see why that's valuable, especially in other languages and on different compilers.
Uh, no. The rich are expected to pay more because, in theory at least, they are the ones that have gained so much because of the services. Sure, the rich don't use Medicare, but they sure appreciate police and national defense; after all, they have the most to lose. Furthermore, many believe that the rich should pay more because they have more excess income; most would agree with this to some extent, since the rich spend a lot on luxuries while the poor spend most of their income on necessities.
Unfortunately, you misspeak when you talk about how the "rich" can hide their income from taxes, and thus we should overtax them to make up for it. This not only punishes the honest rich (and the upper-middle class that cannot afford to hide income), but rewards the thieves. Furthermore, it hurts small business owners because the cannot afford accountants to manage their finances in order to minimize tax payments. The real solution, I think, is to lower taxes on the rich while closing various loopholes in the tax code. Then, the upper-middle class and small business owners will not be hurt as badly.
My, aren't we cocky? Sorry, but I doubt more than half a dozen people here know some of the highly-specialized low-level languages that were used in the 60s. I know I sure don't. Just because you can program PHP (poorly) doesn't mean you know a damn thing about something like this. (Yada yada, I don't mean to imply that you only code in PHP. But lots of quasi-geeks think they can code just because they know a web scripting language or two.)
More off-topic, what's the deal with people putting the constant first in a binary operator? (733043 == UID)? When did this become good style? It's not just you; I even see it in "expert" tutorials for programming in this or that GUI toolkit. I've always written (UID == 733043). It's much more readable, since you know by just looking at the beginning of the line which variable you're comparing. Even worse, I've seen (FALSE == foo). Why not (foo == FALSE), or much better, (!foo)?
Ha! You don't care about Google being able to read your mail now, but what about when you get into a position of power that someone doesn't like. All they have to do is pay off someone at Google to go through your old email and find something a bit questionable in your past. Had an illicit affair over email? Had physical or emotional problems and discussed it with someone? Used drugs and let people know? Bought enhancing prescription drugs or other "adult" products online and had the bill sent via email? Heck, have you ever expressed an opinion over email that might not make you look good in the public eye? With the kind of storage we're talking about, it'll be in Google's computers as long as they want. And with enough money, people can pay to have it dug up.
Remember, privacy is NOT just for people breaking the law. Privacy is for anyone and everyone that lives in our society. In fact, by posting messages like the one you've posted here, you are doing everyone a disservice. We always must fight for our right to have private lives. Encryption for everyone.
You can't have per-user settings if you store ini files in the application directory. OTOH, it would be possible to store per-user settings in the user's Application Data folder. However, the gradual change from single-user to multi-user Windows has made that impossible.
85% goes to songwriters and performers? Even better.
I still respectively disagree that the levy does not give a moral right to pirate in Canada. You compare the levy to taxes paying for the police, but this levy is in effect to compensate for the inevitable copyright infringement, not to prevent it. The citizens are already paying for the music.
You see, the music can arguably be a public good since the marginal cost for each unit is zero. It's also becoming harder and harder to prevent non-payers from listening to the music, which adds to this argument. So the government is basically forcing all citizens to pay for it, just like it does with national defense and other public good. I don't see how you can justify stricter copyright protection in these circumstances.
That being said, I think the levy is complete bullshit. I don't buy music, and I stopped downloading music. In fact, I don't really listen to music much at all anymore thanks to the high prices -- it's no longer worth the money to me. I do, however, buy digital media for backups, boot CDs, etc. If I were Canadian, I would be enraged at paying a levy to counteract music sharers, especially if I gained no right to share music in the process. It's ridiculous.
That would all be true if Canadians didn't pay a tax on writable digital media that gets handed to the CRIA. Canadians are already paying the music industry because file sharing supposedly hurts revenues. If this is happening, why do they deserve additional protection? They already have an incentive to create music, and that's represented by the tax.
Appleworks, sure. But it's a word processor. Office is an entire suite. You can even buy Word separately. (Though, admittedly, it's $230.) In any case, there are plenty of free word processors if you don't need the power of Word, so your argument still doesn't hold water.
TCO has very little to do with the purchase price.
Indeed, UNIX email programs could have these problems too. But in Windows, the associated action for.exe files is to run them. The associated action for.jpeg files is to use the default viewer. In Linux, the default action for.pl files is most certainly not to RUN them. (Yes, Linux doesn't have any kind of "associated action," but common software is smart about this. See the MIME tools for information.)
Not to mention that Outlook Express is provided WITH THE OS. You won't see the default GNOME or KDE email client running scripts. In fact, I think you'd be hard pressed to find any email clients that behave as you mention, much less the ones that come by default with most distributions.
Finally, you know as well as I do that Javascript does not provide the kinds of power that, say, ActiveX scripting does. The interface provided by Mozilla just doesn't export objects that allow that kind of power over the user's system. So don't try to play that card.
The bottom line is that you're right, though: it's not just the OS, it's also the applications. However, the default programs provided in Windows make mistakes that the comparable UNIX programs do not. And that's what most users will be using.
Uhhhhh... You still have to pay for MS Office for your Mac, too. If you factor the cost for that into the PC, you must also do so for the Mac.
Oh, and try $99 for XP Home or $199 for XP Professional (your average user only needs Home). That includes service packs that even add new features from time to time. Compare that to $120 every time Apple graces the world with another minor update to OS X.
I like OS X, but don't try to tell me that the TCO of Macs is about the same as that of a PC with Windows XP. It's much greater for a similar system.
Most UNIXes do not have this type of memory protection. Otherwise you wouldn't get BugTraq security alerts for buffer overflows every single day. This type of memory protection refers to the ability to mark certain areas of memory unexecutable so that the processor won't touch it, thus eliminating the possibility of the buffer overflow attack.
UNIX mail programs don't run programs automatically when you open an email, nor would they even allow you to run a program by double-clicking on the attachment.
UNIX requires that you chmod 755 the file before it can be run. Stuff sent through email will not be executable by default.
UNIX web browsers/email clients do not support scripting languages that can be used to run arbitrary code.
That being said, it is feasable that a buffer overflow in a popular Linux email program or web browser could lead to said worm. I think UNIX security, though historically better than Windows security, could use some finer grained control over permissions. And not just with the use of ACLs, but with the ability to restrict certain operations on an individual program basis. I haven't lookined to NSA's security enhanced Linux yet, but it looks promising.
What in God's name is wrong with x86? I hear this all the time. It's just like Slashdot's bizarre fascination with bashing X because it's old. But interestingly enough, X continues to thrive for the same reason x86 continues to thrive: it works, works today, and works with your old applications. The fastest desktop and workstation processors on the planet are x86.
Ok, sure, CISC is dead, x86 is a convoluted mess, yada yada yada, but engineers have gotten around many of these problems with the instruction set, and compiler writers have gotten around the rest. There is absolutely no reason to drop x86 for something new at this point.
And don't get me started about the political crap at the end. I find it pathetic that you have to inject your political propaganda into a post on a technical site about a new file transfer protocol. I don't care what candidate you support, that's just ridiculous. You're just an attention starved karma whore. It makes me sick.
Are you really blaming Apple for the muggings? Why don't we just blame Mercedes-Benz for car theft? Or Rolex for muggings involving stolen watches? It's not Apple's fault that people are flashing expensive looking equipment in bad parts of town. Buy some cheap looking headphones if you want to go to bad neighborhoods.
Re:Presentation is Content!
on
CSS for the LDP?
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Only someone from marketing would think they're not.
However, remember that it's merely Catholics that believe that Mary was also without sin. This is not something that came out of the Bible, but was something decided by a pope somewhere along the line. Probably between the pope that had sons and the pope that fought wars. Or maybe around the time when there were 3 popes. Or the other time that happened. Or perhaps where one pope had a dead pope dug up and thrown in the river.
As you can see, I don't believe in the ultimate authority of the pope.
Re:Problem that doesn't exist big time...
on
Passport to Nowhere
·
· Score: 1
You're not reading correctly. We're not talking about cost to you. We're talking about cost to break. Cost to you never == cost to break, even in non-free software.
The point of this exercise is to realize that you'd need a damn good centralized system or some lots of halfway decent decentralized systems. And apparently Microsoft has failed to provide the damn good centralized system, as there are security problems with Passport. And it's not just their fault; it's legitimately difficult to create something that impervious to breakins, especially when the stakes are this high.
"If we bothered to have security at the borders, we wouldn't need to be over-securing our airport to the point that some law-abiding Americans get locked out."
Although I do not like this new program, I disagree with this statement. Do you have any idea how big the United States border is? It's freakin' huge! It's much easier to sneak in to the United States than it is to sneak into, say, through the security gate at the airport.
Er, might consider doing so again? I can understand red flagging violent criminals that are on the loose, but ex-cons? That goes against the very idea of limited sentencing and the justice system -- if you flag them for the rest of their lives, why even let them out of prison to begin with?
In any case, what's wrong with airline security now? It seems to be quite effective.
Slashdot Mirror
That's a good point.
Of course, gcc -Wall warns on this unless you wrap it in another set of (), but I still see why that's valuable, especially in other languages and on different compilers.
Uh, no. The rich are expected to pay more because, in theory at least, they are the ones that have gained so much because of the services. Sure, the rich don't use Medicare, but they sure appreciate police and national defense; after all, they have the most to lose. Furthermore, many believe that the rich should pay more because they have more excess income; most would agree with this to some extent, since the rich spend a lot on luxuries while the poor spend most of their income on necessities.
Unfortunately, you misspeak when you talk about how the "rich" can hide their income from taxes, and thus we should overtax them to make up for it. This not only punishes the honest rich (and the upper-middle class that cannot afford to hide income), but rewards the thieves. Furthermore, it hurts small business owners because the cannot afford accountants to manage their finances in order to minimize tax payments. The real solution, I think, is to lower taxes on the rich while closing various loopholes in the tax code. Then, the upper-middle class and small business owners will not be hurt as badly.
My, aren't we cocky? Sorry, but I doubt more than half a dozen people here know some of the highly-specialized low-level languages that were used in the 60s. I know I sure don't. Just because you can program PHP (poorly) doesn't mean you know a damn thing about something like this. (Yada yada, I don't mean to imply that you only code in PHP. But lots of quasi-geeks think they can code just because they know a web scripting language or two.)
More off-topic, what's the deal with people putting the constant first in a binary operator? (733043 == UID)? When did this become good style? It's not just you; I even see it in "expert" tutorials for programming in this or that GUI toolkit. I've always written (UID == 733043). It's much more readable, since you know by just looking at the beginning of the line which variable you're comparing. Even worse, I've seen (FALSE == foo). Why not (foo == FALSE), or much better, (!foo)?
Ha! You don't care about Google being able to read your mail now, but what about when you get into a position of power that someone doesn't like. All they have to do is pay off someone at Google to go through your old email and find something a bit questionable in your past. Had an illicit affair over email? Had physical or emotional problems and discussed it with someone? Used drugs and let people know? Bought enhancing prescription drugs or other "adult" products online and had the bill sent via email? Heck, have you ever expressed an opinion over email that might not make you look good in the public eye? With the kind of storage we're talking about, it'll be in Google's computers as long as they want. And with enough money, people can pay to have it dug up.
Remember, privacy is NOT just for people breaking the law. Privacy is for anyone and everyone that lives in our society. In fact, by posting messages like the one you've posted here, you are doing everyone a disservice. We always must fight for our right to have private lives. Encryption for everyone.
You can't have per-user settings if you store ini files in the application directory. OTOH, it would be possible to store per-user settings in the user's Application Data folder. However, the gradual change from single-user to multi-user Windows has made that impossible.
85% goes to songwriters and performers? Even better.
I still respectively disagree that the levy does not give a moral right to pirate in Canada. You compare the levy to taxes paying for the police, but this levy is in effect to compensate for the inevitable copyright infringement, not to prevent it. The citizens are already paying for the music.
You see, the music can arguably be a public good since the marginal cost for each unit is zero. It's also becoming harder and harder to prevent non-payers from listening to the music, which adds to this argument. So the government is basically forcing all citizens to pay for it, just like it does with national defense and other public good. I don't see how you can justify stricter copyright protection in these circumstances.
That being said, I think the levy is complete bullshit. I don't buy music, and I stopped downloading music. In fact, I don't really listen to music much at all anymore thanks to the high prices -- it's no longer worth the money to me. I do, however, buy digital media for backups, boot CDs, etc. If I were Canadian, I would be enraged at paying a levy to counteract music sharers, especially if I gained no right to share music in the process. It's ridiculous.
That would all be true if Canadians didn't pay a tax on writable digital media that gets handed to the CRIA. Canadians are already paying the music industry because file sharing supposedly hurts revenues. If this is happening, why do they deserve additional protection? They already have an incentive to create music, and that's represented by the tax.
Indeed, UNIX email programs could have these problems too. But in Windows, the associated action for .exe files is to run them. The associated action for .jpeg files is to use the default viewer. In Linux, the default action for .pl files is most certainly not to RUN them. (Yes, Linux doesn't have any kind of "associated action," but common software is smart about this. See the MIME tools for information.)
Not to mention that Outlook Express is provided WITH THE OS. You won't see the default GNOME or KDE email client running scripts. In fact, I think you'd be hard pressed to find any email clients that behave as you mention, much less the ones that come by default with most distributions.
Finally, you know as well as I do that Javascript does not provide the kinds of power that, say, ActiveX scripting does. The interface provided by Mozilla just doesn't export objects that allow that kind of power over the user's system. So don't try to play that card.
The bottom line is that you're right, though: it's not just the OS, it's also the applications. However, the default programs provided in Windows make mistakes that the comparable UNIX programs do not. And that's what most users will be using.
Uhhhhh... You still have to pay for MS Office for your Mac, too. If you factor the cost for that into the PC, you must also do so for the Mac.
Oh, and try $99 for XP Home or $199 for XP Professional (your average user only needs Home). That includes service packs that even add new features from time to time. Compare that to $120 every time Apple graces the world with another minor update to OS X.
I like OS X, but don't try to tell me that the TCO of Macs is about the same as that of a PC with Windows XP. It's much greater for a similar system.
Most UNIXes do not have this type of memory protection. Otherwise you wouldn't get BugTraq security alerts for buffer overflows every single day. This type of memory protection refers to the ability to mark certain areas of memory unexecutable so that the processor won't touch it, thus eliminating the possibility of the buffer overflow attack.
That being said, it is feasable that a buffer overflow in a popular Linux email program or web browser could lead to said worm. I think UNIX security, though historically better than Windows security, could use some finer grained control over permissions. And not just with the use of ACLs, but with the ability to restrict certain operations on an individual program basis. I haven't lookined to NSA's security enhanced Linux yet, but it looks promising.
What in God's name is wrong with x86? I hear this all the time. It's just like Slashdot's bizarre fascination with bashing X because it's old. But interestingly enough, X continues to thrive for the same reason x86 continues to thrive: it works, works today, and works with your old applications. The fastest desktop and workstation processors on the planet are x86.
Ok, sure, CISC is dead, x86 is a convoluted mess, yada yada yada, but engineers have gotten around many of these problems with the instruction set, and compiler writers have gotten around the rest. There is absolutely no reason to drop x86 for something new at this point.
And don't get me started about the political crap at the end. I find it pathetic that you have to inject your political propaganda into a post on a technical site about a new file transfer protocol. I don't care what candidate you support, that's just ridiculous. You're just an attention starved karma whore. It makes me sick.
You don't have to "trust" the client. Just use HMAC to cryptographically verify the cookie. Unless that's patented...
Are you really blaming Apple for the muggings? Why don't we just blame Mercedes-Benz for car theft? Or Rolex for muggings involving stolen watches? It's not Apple's fault that people are flashing expensive looking equipment in bad parts of town. Buy some cheap looking headphones if you want to go to bad neighborhoods.
Only someone from marketing would think they're not.
Hahaha... That's pretty good stuff.
However, remember that it's merely Catholics that believe that Mary was also without sin. This is not something that came out of the Bible, but was something decided by a pope somewhere along the line. Probably between the pope that had sons and the pope that fought wars. Or maybe around the time when there were 3 popes. Or the other time that happened. Or perhaps where one pope had a dead pope dug up and thrown in the river.
As you can see, I don't believe in the ultimate authority of the pope.
You're not reading correctly. We're not talking about cost to you. We're talking about cost to break. Cost to you never == cost to break, even in non-free software.
The point of this exercise is to realize that you'd need a damn good centralized system or some lots of halfway decent decentralized systems. And apparently Microsoft has failed to provide the damn good centralized system, as there are security problems with Passport. And it's not just their fault; it's legitimately difficult to create something that impervious to breakins, especially when the stakes are this high.
"If we bothered to have security at the borders, we wouldn't need to be over-securing our airport to the point that some law-abiding Americans get locked out."
Although I do not like this new program, I disagree with this statement. Do you have any idea how big the United States border is? It's freakin' huge! It's much easier to sneak in to the United States than it is to sneak into, say, through the security gate at the airport.
Er, might consider doing so again? I can understand red flagging violent criminals that are on the loose, but ex-cons? That goes against the very idea of limited sentencing and the justice system -- if you flag them for the rest of their lives, why even let them out of prison to begin with?
In any case, what's wrong with airline security now? It seems to be quite effective.
Yeah right. "I call for a boycott on flying." It'll never happen, and you know it. Besides, it's Congress that's doing this, not the airlines.
I suspect that what will REALLY happen is that they'll screw up the implementation and some VIP will get red flagged. Poof! Project disappears.