Like my grandma needs her car and licence to get around even if she can't drive anymore and poses a significant risk to other road users?
Being old doesn't excuse social responsibility, and it doesn't make people stupid or unable to learn. Teach your grandma how to click the "update" button, or just set it up to happen automatically. Give her some credit for being a sentient human being.
[...] metadata is overhyped. It's not that useful to the majority of computer users [...]
Erm... filenames are metadata. How are you going to open documents if they don't have names? Filename extensions are also (badly misplaced) metadata indicating the type of data stored in the file. How do you even know it's a word processing document without that metadata? File size is also metadata, often useful for determining how long a file will take to download, or how much of a particular media you need to store it.
So, "not that useful", huh? I think you're very wrong, and haven't actually thought before typing. What this article describes is a way of storing metadata in a more useful form than things such as filename extensions (what numbnut decided to merge mutable and immutable metadata?). If you'd read the article, you'd already know how useful metadata can be, especially when organised correctly.
would this work in situations using coax cable, where there is no other pair
Yes. Just apply a DC bias voltage to the signal going over coax, and make sure the receiver circuit is isolated so the DC bias doesn't destroy it.
This technique has been used forever (in.au at least) for on-pole TV signal boosters. Booster lives on the antenna pole with just the normal coax cable connected to it. On the end at the TV, there's an adaptor to plug the DC transformer into. The power supplied by the DC transformer is used to apply a DC bias on the coax cable. The adapter has probably got the necessary isolation gear so the TV tuning circuit doesn't need to have it.
can you put 120VAC along wires that thin without causing lots of power loss
If you're going to put 50Hz AC on the cable, power loss is less of a problem than noise. Better idea would be to use DC, less than 50 volts, and only use it for low-power applications on short cable runs. Low power = low current = low power loss. Too easy.
if you were someone who really didn't want their DNA (or half of it) out there running around loose, then you would elect to not have kids
You can't reasonably restrict the amount of DNA you leave lying around the place. Every bit of skin or hair that falls off you carries your DNA. So unless you're going to live your life in a plastic bubble and incinerate everything you clean out of it, you're leaving your DNA lying around everywhere. Having children or not becomes irrelevant.
Please go to the nearest police station and submit your DNA.
Don't forget to leave fingerprints and mugshots too. And to volunteer for a police wiretap on your phone and 'net connection, give permission for the police to perform a search of your house and car or seizure of any of your property at any time for any reason and give up your right to silence or a lawyer.
No it's not. It's a statement of policy. If you were naive, you could consider it a promise to act in a particular way, but no way is it a contract requiring such actions. For it to be a contract there must be an offer of goods or services, consideration and acceptance. All of these things are missing.
Actually, the effects of overheating of the testicles have been known for some time. Why do you think they hang down out of your body, relatively unprotected? So your body can control their temperature. That's why your scrotum (if you have one) shrinks in the cold and goes loose when you're warm.
From my POV, peoples' biggest problem with C++ is that it doesn't prevent you from hurting yourself. That's okay. I hate all the consumer protection bullshit, and Nader and his "don't run with scissors" party, so I have no problem with my language having some teeth.
As someone who has fairly recently joined a team that's maintaining a 400KLOC system (Java, incidentally), I'm more interested in protecting myself from previous programmers on the team than protecting myself from myself. I'd like to think that those who follow don't need protection from me, but their opinions may be different. In any case, using a language that doesn't allow any of the previous programmers to shoot me in the foot with a bad pointer is a Good Thing (tm). I dont' want to have to waste time chasing down obscure nasal demons.
With that attitude, how exactly is open-source software supposed to carve out a majority chunk of the desktop (or any) market?
When a developer comes along with the "I want open source software to carve out a majority chunk of the desktop market" itch, and then scratches that itch. Some people care enough to make it happen, some people don't.
Since when is it treasonous to save your country from your government?
Since your government asserted the authority to define the meaning of the word "treason" to be anyone who would remove them from power, by peaceful means or any means other than voting.
According to http://www.nydailynews.com/news/story/56873p-53217 c.html, there are no handholds under the shuttle, so astronauts can't spacewalk there. There's also the risk of doing more damage to the tiles, and the inability to repair them.
I wish I could leave the DWI/DUI crowd and 16YO's from my insurance carrier
With most insurance companies in Australia, drivers under 25 years old pay a higher insurance premium and must pay a larger excess when making a claim. If you're also unfortunate enough to have been born with a penis, you get to pay about double the excess on a claim. Drivers over the legal limit for alcohol or other substances just aren't covered at all. Are insurance companies in other parts of the world not allowed to make these kinds of distinctions when assessing risk?
Of course, even in Australia insurance companies aren't allowed to assess risk based on race, colour, religion, etc, but gender and age discrimination are still okay. Don't ask me, I just live here.
copyright in its truest sense is a fundamental right in the protection of "free speech"
This is false. Copyright is a government granted privilege, not a right, fundamental or otherwise. The government grants a creator a limited time monopoly on created works in exchange for creating the works in the first place. In theory, the works eventually become public domain and benefit everyone (hence "limited time"). Most importantly, copyright has absolutely zero to do with the right to free speech.
they should also have some right to control how that expression is used
This is also false. The privilege granted by copyright extends to the copying and distribution of copyrighted works. It makes no restrictions on any other use of those works.
the DMCA extends much to far into the realm or IP protection
The DMCA extends copyright into the realm of control of the use of a work, not just the copying and distributing of a work. That (and the loss of fair use rights) is why the DMCA is evil, not because it more effectively controls copying than previous copyright law.
We're great gonzo in a space race, I think we've proved that already
Proved what? The Soviets beat you into space with unmanned vehicles, beat you with animals, beat you with manned missions, beat you into orbit. You got to the moon first, so what? Did you achieve anything once you got there? You made sure it's not made of cheese. Congratulations.
I do think that going to mars before putting a permanent base on the moon [...] is dumb
Then you haven't thought about it very long, and you've forgotten the only thing the US knows for sure about the moon: It's a lump of rock. No resources. It's useless as anything other than a jumping-off point, and an orbiting space station does a better job of that anyway.
By contrast, Mars actually has an atmosphere that can be processed into rocket fuel (for a return trip) or breathable air. It has water on the surface that just needs to be melted. These things would all need to be imported to the moon.
Upon clicking the button, O/OE would parse the message header, lookup the source IP in WHOIS and contact all necessary parties to report the spam.
Sounds like a poor man's SpamCop. It doesn't work. The reports go to the wrong people, and they just end up setting up filters to bin anything from SpamCop rather than deal with so many false reports.
A knowledgable reporter might be able to minimise these false reports, but you're talking about my grandmother. No way can she work out where the reports should go, she'll just hit "Go!".
You can't look at GPL code and suddenly be inspired to write the same thing under a different license without running afoul of copyright law.
This is not true. Copyright law covers copying and distributing code, not writing new code to do the same thing as other code. If you write another implementation of the same idea/algorithm/whatever, you hold copyright over the code you wrote.
If the holder of copyright over the GPL licensed code you saw decides they want to sue, you just have to show that your code is not a copy of theirs, but is an independant implementation. More accurately, they have to prove that your code *is* a copy.
However, Microsoft's Shared Source license covers far more than just copying and distributing code. If you get to see code under the Shared Source license, you've already sold your soul. You don't necessarily get to own the new code you write.
You must think of Microsoft's Shared Source license as a combination copyright license and NDA before you can compare it with other pure copyright licenses like the GPL.
.NET is the most exciting thing in distributed component programming since Objective-C and NeXT
Oh, please!.NET is nothing that hasn't been done before, and it's missing a lot of stuff that other distributed systems have had forever.
SUN RPC has been around forever. CORBA has been around for a long time. Both SUN RPC and CORBA use a binary on-the-wire format for efficiency..NET uses high-overhead XML for everything. Both SUN RPC and CORBA allow for operations on objects, where SOAP only allows static functions (Why's the 'O' in SOAP anyway?!).
.NET is an exercise in marketing and leveraging a monopoly. There's no new technology here.
I feel that you should mention the security vulnerabilities in Trillian. An advisory hits Bugtraq every week about a new remotely exploitable vulnerability in Trillian.
I wouldn't touch it.
Google for "Trillian vulnerability" for lots of details.
Slashdot Mirror
I never really feared a PVC rupture while launching potatoes
No need. Wrap the cannon in electrical tape or duct tape. If the PVC ruptures, the tape has enough flexibility to hold the shrapnel in place.
which outputs, logically, "1".
On your compiler, maybe. The spec only says it'll be non-zero. Another compiler might output "42" and be just as correct.
Like my grandma needs her car and licence to get around even if she can't drive anymore and poses a significant risk to other road users?
Being old doesn't excuse social responsibility, and it doesn't make people stupid or unable to learn. Teach your grandma how to click the "update" button, or just set it up to happen automatically. Give her some credit for being a sentient human being.
Er... Because of course the outgoing traffic to port 25 isn't trivially easy to analyse at any other point in the ISP's network.
Get GnuPG. It's the only way to be sure.
[...] metadata is overhyped. It's not that useful to the majority of computer users [...]
Erm... filenames are metadata. How are you going to open documents if they don't have names? Filename extensions are also (badly misplaced) metadata indicating the type of data stored in the file. How do you even know it's a word processing document without that metadata? File size is also metadata, often useful for determining how long a file will take to download, or how much of a particular media you need to store it.
So, "not that useful", huh? I think you're very wrong, and haven't actually thought before typing. What this article describes is a way of storing metadata in a more useful form than things such as filename extensions (what numbnut decided to merge mutable and immutable metadata?). If you'd read the article, you'd already know how useful metadata can be, especially when organised correctly.
would this work in situations using coax cable, where there is no other pair
Yes. Just apply a DC bias voltage to the signal going over coax, and make sure the receiver circuit is isolated so the DC bias doesn't destroy it.
This technique has been used forever (in .au at least) for on-pole TV signal boosters. Booster lives on the antenna pole with just the normal coax cable connected to it. On the end at the TV, there's an adaptor to plug the DC transformer into. The power supplied by the DC transformer is used to apply a DC bias on the coax cable. The adapter has probably got the necessary isolation gear so the TV tuning circuit doesn't need to have it.
can you put 120VAC along wires that thin without causing lots of power loss
If you're going to put 50Hz AC on the cable, power loss is less of a problem than noise. Better idea would be to use DC, less than 50 volts, and only use it for low-power applications on short cable runs. Low power = low current = low power loss. Too easy.
if you were someone who really didn't want their DNA (or half of it) out there running around loose, then you would elect to not have kids
You can't reasonably restrict the amount of DNA you leave lying around the place. Every bit of skin or hair that falls off you carries your DNA. So unless you're going to live your life in a plastic bubble and incinerate everything you clean out of it, you're leaving your DNA lying around everywhere. Having children or not becomes irrelevant.
Please go to the nearest police station and submit your DNA.
Don't forget to leave fingerprints and mugshots too. And to volunteer for a police wiretap on your phone and 'net connection, give permission for the police to perform a search of your house and car or seizure of any of your property at any time for any reason and give up your right to silence or a lawyer.
This is a contract
No it's not. It's a statement of policy. If you were naive, you could consider it a promise to act in a particular way, but no way is it a contract requiring such actions. For it to be a contract there must be an offer of goods or services, consideration and acceptance. All of these things are missing.
I am also not a lawyer or even a yadda.
Microwaves won't make you sterile!
Actually, the effects of overheating of the testicles have been known for some time. Why do you think they hang down out of your body, relatively unprotected? So your body can control their temperature. That's why your scrotum (if you have one) shrinks in the cold and goes loose when you're warm.
I can't find any better references than http://www.tpub.com/fcv2/24.htm right now. :(
HARRR!!!
From my POV, peoples' biggest problem with C++ is that it doesn't prevent you from hurting yourself. That's okay. I hate all the consumer protection bullshit, and Nader and his "don't run with scissors" party, so I have no problem with my language having some teeth.
As someone who has fairly recently joined a team that's maintaining a 400KLOC system (Java, incidentally), I'm more interested in protecting myself from previous programmers on the team than protecting myself from myself. I'd like to think that those who follow don't need protection from me, but their opinions may be different. In any case, using a language that doesn't allow any of the previous programmers to shoot me in the foot with a bad pointer is a Good Thing (tm). I dont' want to have to waste time chasing down obscure nasal demons.
HARRR!!
With that attitude, how exactly is open-source software supposed to carve out a majority chunk of the desktop (or any) market?
When a developer comes along with the "I want open source software to carve out a majority chunk of the desktop market" itch, and then scratches that itch. Some people care enough to make it happen, some people don't.
Since when is it treasonous to save your country from your government?
Since your government asserted the authority to define the meaning of the word "treason" to be anyone who would remove them from power, by peaceful means or any means other than voting.
According to http://www.nydailynews.com/news/story/56873p-53217 c.html, there are no handholds under the shuttle, so astronauts can't spacewalk there. There's also the risk of doing more damage to the tiles, and the inability to repair them.
I wish I could leave the DWI/DUI crowd and 16YO's from my insurance carrier
With most insurance companies in Australia, drivers under 25 years old pay a higher insurance premium and must pay a larger excess when making a claim. If you're also unfortunate enough to have been born with a penis, you get to pay about double the excess on a claim. Drivers over the legal limit for alcohol or other substances just aren't covered at all. Are insurance companies in other parts of the world not allowed to make these kinds of distinctions when assessing risk?
Of course, even in Australia insurance companies aren't allowed to assess risk based on race, colour, religion, etc, but gender and age discrimination are still okay. Don't ask me, I just live here.
copyright in its truest sense is a fundamental right in the protection of "free speech"
This is false. Copyright is a government granted privilege, not a right, fundamental or otherwise. The government grants a creator a limited time monopoly on created works in exchange for creating the works in the first place. In theory, the works eventually become public domain and benefit everyone (hence "limited time"). Most importantly, copyright has absolutely zero to do with the right to free speech.
they should also have some right to control how that expression is used
This is also false. The privilege granted by copyright extends to the copying and distribution of copyrighted works. It makes no restrictions on any other use of those works.
the DMCA extends much to far into the realm or IP protection
The DMCA extends copyright into the realm of control of the use of a work, not just the copying and distributing of a work. That (and the loss of fair use rights) is why the DMCA is evil, not because it more effectively controls copying than previous copyright law.
We're great gonzo in a space race, I think we've proved that already
Proved what? The Soviets beat you into space with unmanned vehicles, beat you with animals, beat you with manned missions, beat you into orbit. You got to the moon first, so what? Did you achieve anything once you got there? You made sure it's not made of cheese. Congratulations.
I do think that going to mars before putting a permanent base on the moon [...] is dumb
Then you haven't thought about it very long, and you've forgotten the only thing the US knows for sure about the moon: It's a lump of rock. No resources. It's useless as anything other than a jumping-off point, and an orbiting space station does a better job of that anyway.
By contrast, Mars actually has an atmosphere that can be processed into rocket fuel (for a return trip) or breathable air. It has water on the surface that just needs to be melted. These things would all need to be imported to the moon.
I quote from a comment from a Slashdotter of above-average intelligence, ie, one that did actually read the article:
I think that ALL programs should be running in the equivalent of a sandbox at all times.
This is SELinux.
Upon clicking the button, O/OE would parse the message header, lookup the source IP in WHOIS and contact all necessary parties to report the spam.
Sounds like a poor man's SpamCop. It doesn't work. The reports go to the wrong people, and they just end up setting up filters to bin anything from SpamCop rather than deal with so many false reports.
A knowledgable reporter might be able to minimise these false reports, but you're talking about my grandmother. No way can she work out where the reports should go, she'll just hit "Go!".
You're just adding to the problem.
This is not true. Copyright law covers copying and distributing code, not writing new code to do the same thing as other code. If you write another implementation of the same idea/algorithm/whatever, you hold copyright over the code you wrote.
If the holder of copyright over the GPL licensed code you saw decides they want to sue, you just have to show that your code is not a copy of theirs, but is an independant implementation. More accurately, they have to prove that your code *is* a copy.
However, Microsoft's Shared Source license covers far more than just copying and distributing code. If you get to see code under the Shared Source license, you've already sold your soul. You don't necessarily get to own the new code you write.
You must think of Microsoft's Shared Source license as a combination copyright license and NDA before you can compare it with other pure copyright licenses like the GPL.
Oh, please! .NET is nothing that hasn't been done before, and it's missing a lot of stuff that other distributed systems have had forever.
SUN RPC has been around forever. CORBA has been around for a long time. Both SUN RPC and CORBA use a binary on-the-wire format for efficiency. .NET uses high-overhead XML for everything. Both SUN RPC and CORBA allow for operations on objects, where SOAP only allows static functions (Why's the 'O' in SOAP anyway?!).
.NET is an exercise in marketing and leveraging a monopoly. There's no new technology here.
I feel that you should mention the security vulnerabilities in Trillian. An advisory hits Bugtraq every week about a new remotely exploitable vulnerability in Trillian.
I wouldn't touch it.
Google for "Trillian vulnerability" for lots of details.