I feel that it is because we (as in, both Europe and the U.S.) have become completely and hopelessly terrified of danger.
Could it also be because we've realized that there's actually not a hell of a lot out there to explore? In the 1960's everyone was so excited about space because we'd never made it that far off the planet, but now that it's been done... there's not a lot to do out there except keep some interesting zero-g science experiments running. (It is a vaccuum after all... by definition, somewhat empty of interesting stimuli.)
The next important milestone in space exploration will be getting a man to Mars (and back). However, the technical problems in doing so are vastly more difficult than getting to the Moon, and that was hard enough as it is. And the fact is, once we get there, there's nothing financially benificial in it, so there's hardly a commercial reason to pursue this goal, except tourism, perhaps, but I doubt that tourism dollars can possibly fund a trip to Mars.
I'm as disapointed as you are. I really hope to see a man on Mars within my lifetime, I think this would be absolutely fantastic. However I think it's a bit of an oversimplification to say that we haven't done anything merely because we're "scared of space".
it would make sure that the packets that are passing on the open ports are related to the purpose of the said ports.
Wow, I didn't know that this was done, actually. Although now that I think about it I guess this is what is refered to as "traffic shaping", which has had a lot of focus related to bittorrent lately..
And I suppose this is impossible to do in the presence of encryption.
I don't know if I'm posting this in time to get an answer, but I just thought I'd ask a related question... with these kinds of stories, I always see people write comments such as, "if I saw that someone was poking at my ports to see if any of them were open..."
Well, I'm not a sysadmin so I don't know much about this kind of thing, but what sofware do you use to "watch" your computer to see if people are poking at it? I'm wondering about how to do this with primarily Linux, but also Windows, and OSX...
As far as I understand, on my Linux machine as long as I don't have any servers running on a particular port, I'm not open on that port. And even if I have, for example, rsync running, which I use between machines in my home, if it's not passed through my router's NAT, it's not available to the internet, right? How can I check if someone's poking at me? (I use a D-Link route and Gentoo linux)
I think it would make more sense the other way around:
You program your GUI in SWT. For any platform where a native library exists, use that. Otherwise, use a swing implementation of SWT. Bingo, perfect cross-platform!
Most people's arguments against SWT is that it requires native libraries, but this would remove that requirement while still leaving the native widgets option open.
Who said that linux is virus proof? It is not, no-one is writing linux viruses. Who said that firefox or thunderbird have no buffer overflows or other bugs. In fact, there were enough security updates to show that on-one is bug proof. I'm not trying to say that IE and firefox are same quality, in fact, I think that firefox is much better. I'm just saying that just because you use linux it does not meen that you are virus proof.
I absolute wouldn't dispute that. Did I say that? I think you misread my post.
Who said that firefox or thunderbird have no buffer overflows or other bugs.
Not me. In fact I think I didn't even mention Firefox or Thunderbird, so where did you get the idea that that was what I was talking about?
I said I don't have any virus problems since I started using better browsers and became more careful about what I do. I didn't make any generalizing statements. Don't assume I think that Firefox solves all problems, or that Linux is fireproof. I never said that. I do know that there are viruses for Linux, all I said is that they are not causing me any problems.
In fact, you know, NEVER assume. It makes an ASS out of U and ME.
You basically took this opportunity to try and feel superior to my linux/firefox fanboyism, without stopping to consider whether I actually displayed any real sympoms as such. All I reported were my experiences, I didn't make any ridiculous broad claims in my post. You, sir, can kiss my ass.
Part of the reason I don't use anti-virus software, other than because they slow down and hamper your computer, is because they are the ONLY corporate entity that literally have it in their self-interest for a virus to show itself once in a while on your computer. I'm not saying they write the damn viruses (I'm not saying they don't either) but I do think they try to make sure something will slip by once in a while, just to keep it in the public's mind that they need this software, so that they'll keep it installed and pay for upgrades.
Of course on my linux side I have no virus problems, but it's also been ages since I've dealt with a windows virus, because I keep things updated and use better web browsers and email clients, and I also strongly suggest the same practises to people I know, people who I know will come to me for help when they get one. Viruses just aren't a problem if you use your computer intelligently and remain somewhat suspicious of odd behaviour.
All I'm saying is that it's sort of counter-productive, if you think about it, to have an entire industry who's very existance depends on malware, and who, if they are doing their jobs, would eliminate their very reason for being there in the first place. (Sure, the police are the same thing, but that is exactly why the police are a public entity, and not corporately owned.)
Instead of giving away your story idea on slashdot, you should write it.;-) (I'm serious.) I know we all need a little push once in a while, but once you get started it'll roll..
eg. offering paid downloads of OSS with no additional support or anything is wrong
you know, i completely agree with your statements, but this one had me thinking... i'd be willing to bet that there are people out there that would be more comfortable with buying something than downloading it for free, even if its exactly the same thing. Some people just don't grasp the concept of free software and prefer to pay for it.
Dude, next time a muslim or anyone is aiming a gun at your head, feel free to pull the trigger first. I certainly won't stop you. But somehow I doubt you've actually been in that situation. If I'm wrong, well good for you. I don't see what your comment has to do with these cartoons at all.
I think we're all having a little trouble here fully understanding the differences between western and middle-eastern cultures. And yes, I do think they are over-reacting. However, the fundamental cultural differences are so profound that we just can't understand their reactions, and we see them as being backward and stupid.
Middle-eastern culture is very old. They have been stuck with self-appointed leaders for far longer than we have. One might argue that this has caused them to stagnate while the rest of the world has moved forward. Their entire culture is still very much religion-oriented, while we have managed to create a secular society where choice and individuality are the most important things. Not only that, but attitude, and atmosphere in these countries is much more reminiscent of how it was two hundred years ago or more, while for us, our own society is NOTHING like it was two hundred years ago.
Iraq has just started voting. Not that I agree with the reasons that Bush felt he had for forcing it upon them, but it has happened. One way or another, even if it is a slower process than it was for western culture, they will move on, into the future, and the radicalists of the past will be left behind. Sooner or later these kinds of events will serve to prove to them how irrational it is to live in the past. Sooner or later they will learn to secularize their own societies, and they will learn to appreciate the virtues of individuality and freedom of speech. I predict that this movement will be inevitable, eventually, even if it comes slowly. In the meantime, however, there is a massive cultural GAP that we are all having a lot of difficulty understanding and dealing with.
The only way to do so rationally is to be understanding and accepting, helping them along as they learn to live in the modern global culture.
Creating mean cartoons made specifically to needle them is not very constructive. But on the other hand, these kinds of self-criticizing charicatures are just another part of living in our post-modern world. They will need to learn to role with the punches as well as the rest of us have learned to do.
I don't know why, exactly, but the Canvas tag strikes me as one of the worst web-related ideas that's lately come up. Using JavaScript for rendering?.... ugh... I can feel the headaches coming on already. Why does this strike me as such as pre-1995 idea? "Hey how about a tag where arbitrary code can draw to a rectangle??" "Hey how about a tag that makes the TEXT BLINK???"
Okay, call me dense, but I really fail to understand why he thinks the GPLv3 is forcing people to give out their private keys??
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something, but I was under the impression that GPLv3 says that "source code must be made available, including any encryption keys required to get it". Doesn't this just mean that any encrypted information needed to get the system running need be provided? How does this imply that people need to give away the keys they used to SIGN the code? Authenticating the code has nothing to do with its availability.
I don't understand why Linus seems to be confusing digital signing with DRM.. (yes, DRM uses digital signing techniques for implementation, but that doesn't imply that digital signing IS a form of DRM... only that DRM is a form of digital signing..)
I *still* haven't finished this old PC game, Dune. I'm a fan of the book, and I'd just like to finally once and for all destroy the damn Harkonnens. I've been playing it using the "dosbox" program available in Gentoo, which works like a charm. Not to mention all the old NES titles I've been playing that I never quite managed to finish when I was a kid.
Also, I suspect that if Google use mod_gzip (or whatever it's called) then the benefit of svgz wouldn't exist. The 10k was the size of the file stored on my comp: gzipped it's 1544k (so I assume that is the transmitted size).
You mean 1544 bytes of course..:) But we all knew that.
I really can't wait for SVG to take over. So glad it's starting to get some respect...
I know what you mean, but you miss my point. If applications and documents were on different partitions, and the restore disks only overwrote a PARTITION instead of the whole damn disk, you could tell them the exact same thing, minus the part about having to save their 40GB of documents, movies, and mp3s to DVD first.
As it is, the only thing they can do (with harddrives getting so big), is copy their stuff to a second harddrive. They should at LEAST autodetect it and say "hey i see you have data on your other disk, do you want me to leave it there?" This is especially because whenever someone calls tech support with a question, the only answer they ever seem to get is "use the restore disks", no matter what the problem is. (Not that I blame tech support for resorting to this behaviour.. I probably would too.)
Yup, I was going to suggest this as his problem. Bad ram can cause random patches. I have some bad bits on my ram, and Windows occasionally just DIED for no apparent reason. Linux was FAR more stable, but still occassionally strange things would happen, like segfaults out of no where. Almost always in user space, but once or two my filesystem driver crashed, which was a bit scary, though no harm was done. Anyways, I since installed the BadRAM kernel patch, and it's been completely stable so far... no more segfaults. I wish such a thing existed for Windows. Why through out $60 RAM when a couple of bits are bad?
Hmm so, where do I backup my data before formatting when this data is in the same partition as the system and the apps...
for what it's worth, most computers come with "restore" disks that wipe the whole fucking drive no matter how the partitions are set up. I always thought THAT was idiotic, too.
Ah, I see what you mean... have the torrent downloading on the firewall but saving the data to another computer.
I currently have my "downloading" computer setup with a large harddrive. I suppose you could do this with a NFS or something, but for now I haven't needed to deal with it. I was using screen for this purpose for a long time but finally decided to do something that could handle multiple downloads without having to guess which screen PID is which, among other things. However, I'm not sure I follow what you mean by the proxy protocol... I am simply talking about a way of handling torrent downloading remotely.
Cool, I work in a very similar way with how I download torrents. I've been working on a system to make this nicer... so far I've written a python script that "wraps" the bittorrent-console program and allows me to manage multiple torrents downloading on a remote computer. (Ie I can start and stop them and then disconnect my "client" and the downloads continue..) It's not really ready to be published anywhere yet, but I didn't know there were other people who would even be interested in such a thing..
I totally agree with you here. I was writing a small configuration program in C and GTK when I had little experience with GTK programming. Been writing in C++ and C for years. After a few days of hacking at it, I switched to PyGTK and finished the thing in one day. Since then I've been trying out Python in all sorts of other situtations, and I'm really impressed. I'm really loving its clarity and dynamic binding, and it's incredibly useful for prototyping ideas even if I end up implementing them in another language, because I can do it so fast.
However, I fail to see how you don't consider it Object Oriented?
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If the laptop was classified as evidence in the case, chances are it wouldn't be in his possession. If it wasn't, then he didn't commit a crime.
On the other hand, if a document was issued classifying the harddrive as evidence before he deleted the contents of the drive, he did commit a crime.
Ideally, it should be as simple as that.
You should try using Octave as a front-end to GNUPlot! It works like matlab, you can actually manipulate the data to boot.
You might be right!
I feel that it is because we (as in, both Europe and the U.S.) have become completely and hopelessly terrified of danger.
Could it also be because we've realized that there's actually not a hell of a lot out there to explore? In the 1960's everyone was so excited about space because we'd never made it that far off the planet, but now that it's been done... there's not a lot to do out there except keep some interesting zero-g science experiments running. (It is a vaccuum after all... by definition, somewhat empty of interesting stimuli.)
The next important milestone in space exploration will be getting a man to Mars (and back). However, the technical problems in doing so are vastly more difficult than getting to the Moon, and that was hard enough as it is. And the fact is, once we get there, there's nothing financially benificial in it, so there's hardly a commercial reason to pursue this goal, except tourism, perhaps, but I doubt that tourism dollars can possibly fund a trip to Mars.
I'm as disapointed as you are. I really hope to see a man on Mars within my lifetime, I think this would be absolutely fantastic. However I think it's a bit of an oversimplification to say that we haven't done anything merely because we're "scared of space".
it would make sure that the packets that are passing on the open ports are related to the purpose of the said ports.
Wow, I didn't know that this was done, actually. Although now that I think about it I guess this is what is refered to as "traffic shaping", which has had a lot of focus related to bittorrent lately..
And I suppose this is impossible to do in the presence of encryption.
Thanks for taking the time to answer me!
I don't know if I'm posting this in time to get an answer, but I just thought I'd ask a related question... with these kinds of stories, I always see people write comments such as, "if I saw that someone was poking at my ports to see if any of them were open..."
Well, I'm not a sysadmin so I don't know much about this kind of thing, but what sofware do you use to "watch" your computer to see if people are poking at it? I'm wondering about how to do this with primarily Linux, but also Windows, and OSX...
As far as I understand, on my Linux machine as long as I don't have any servers running on a particular port, I'm not open on that port. And even if I have, for example, rsync running, which I use between machines in my home, if it's not passed through my router's NAT, it's not available to the internet, right? How can I check if someone's poking at me? (I use a D-Link route and Gentoo linux)
I think it would make more sense the other way around:
You program your GUI in SWT. For any platform where a native library exists, use that. Otherwise, use a swing implementation of SWT. Bingo, perfect cross-platform!
Most people's arguments against SWT is that it requires native libraries, but this would remove that requirement while still leaving the native widgets option open.
Who said that linux is virus proof? It is not, no-one is writing linux viruses. Who said that firefox or thunderbird have no buffer overflows or other bugs. In fact, there were enough security updates to show that on-one is bug proof. I'm not trying to say that IE and firefox are same quality, in fact, I think that firefox is much better. I'm just saying that just because you use linux it does not meen that you are virus proof.
I absolute wouldn't dispute that. Did I say that? I think you misread my post.
Who said that firefox or thunderbird have no buffer overflows or other bugs.
Not me. In fact I think I didn't even mention Firefox or Thunderbird, so where did you get the idea that that was what I was talking about?
I said I don't have any virus problems since I started using better browsers and became more careful about what I do. I didn't make any generalizing statements. Don't assume I think that Firefox solves all problems, or that Linux is fireproof. I never said that. I do know that there are viruses for Linux, all I said is that they are not causing me any problems.
In fact, you know, NEVER assume. It makes an ASS out of U and ME.
You basically took this opportunity to try and feel superior to my linux/firefox fanboyism, without stopping to consider whether I actually displayed any real sympoms as such. All I reported were my experiences, I didn't make any ridiculous broad claims in my post. You, sir, can kiss my ass.
Part of the reason I don't use anti-virus software, other than because they slow down and hamper your computer, is because they are the ONLY corporate entity that literally have it in their self-interest for a virus to show itself once in a while on your computer. I'm not saying they write the damn viruses (I'm not saying they don't either) but I do think they try to make sure something will slip by once in a while, just to keep it in the public's mind that they need this software, so that they'll keep it installed and pay for upgrades.
Of course on my linux side I have no virus problems, but it's also been ages since I've dealt with a windows virus, because I keep things updated and use better web browsers and email clients, and I also strongly suggest the same practises to people I know, people who I know will come to me for help when they get one. Viruses just aren't a problem if you use your computer intelligently and remain somewhat suspicious of odd behaviour.
All I'm saying is that it's sort of counter-productive, if you think about it, to have an entire industry who's very existance depends on malware, and who, if they are doing their jobs, would eliminate their very reason for being there in the first place. (Sure, the police are the same thing, but that is exactly why the police are a public entity, and not corporately owned.)
Instead of giving away your story idea on slashdot, you should write it. ;-)
(I'm serious.) I know we all need a little push once in a while, but once you get started it'll roll..
eg. offering paid downloads of OSS with no additional support or anything is wrong
you know, i completely agree with your statements, but this one had me thinking... i'd be willing to bet that there are people out there that would be more comfortable with buying something than downloading it for free, even if its exactly the same thing. Some people just don't grasp the concept of free software and prefer to pay for it.
Crazy, but somehow I think its true..
Dude, next time a muslim or anyone is aiming a gun at your head, feel free to pull the trigger first. I certainly won't stop you. But somehow I doubt you've actually been in that situation. If I'm wrong, well good for you. I don't see what your comment has to do with these cartoons at all.
Best post in this story, thanks.
I think we're all having a little trouble here fully understanding the differences between western and middle-eastern cultures. And yes, I do think they are over-reacting. However, the fundamental cultural differences are so profound that we just can't understand their reactions, and we see them as being backward and stupid.
Middle-eastern culture is very old. They have been stuck with self-appointed leaders for far longer than we have. One might argue that this has caused them to stagnate while the rest of the world has moved forward. Their entire culture is still very much religion-oriented, while we have managed to create a secular society where choice and individuality are the most important things. Not only that, but attitude, and atmosphere in these countries is much more reminiscent of how it was two hundred years ago or more, while for us, our own society is NOTHING like it was two hundred years ago.
Iraq has just started voting. Not that I agree with the reasons that Bush felt he had for forcing it upon them, but it has happened. One way or another, even if it is a slower process than it was for western culture, they will move on, into the future, and the radicalists of the past will be left behind. Sooner or later these kinds of events will serve to prove to them how irrational it is to live in the past. Sooner or later they will learn to secularize their own societies, and they will learn to appreciate the virtues of individuality and freedom of speech. I predict that this movement will be inevitable, eventually, even if it comes slowly. In the meantime, however, there is a massive cultural GAP that we are all having a lot of difficulty understanding and dealing with.
The only way to do so rationally is to be understanding and accepting, helping them along as they learn to live in the modern global culture.
Creating mean cartoons made specifically to needle them is not very constructive. But on the other hand, these kinds of self-criticizing charicatures are just another part of living in our post-modern world. They will need to learn to role with the punches as well as the rest of us have learned to do.
I don't know why, exactly, but the Canvas tag strikes me as one of the worst web-related ideas that's lately come up. Using JavaScript for rendering? .... ugh...
I can feel the headaches coming on already.
Why does this strike me as such as pre-1995 idea?
"Hey how about a tag where arbitrary code can draw to a rectangle??"
"Hey how about a tag that makes the TEXT BLINK???"
Thanks, good explanation. Some points to ponder, for sure.
Okay, call me dense, but I really fail to understand why he thinks the GPLv3 is forcing people to give out their private keys??
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something, but I was under the impression that GPLv3 says that "source code must be made available, including any encryption keys required to get it". Doesn't this just mean that any encrypted information needed to get the system running need be provided? How does this imply that people need to give away the keys they used to SIGN the code? Authenticating the code has nothing to do with its availability.
I don't understand why Linus seems to be confusing digital signing with DRM.. (yes, DRM uses digital signing techniques for implementation, but that doesn't imply that digital signing IS a form of DRM... only that DRM is a form of digital signing..)
- confused.
I *still* haven't finished this old PC game, Dune. I'm a fan of the book, and I'd just like to finally once and for all destroy the damn Harkonnens. I've been playing it using the "dosbox" program available in Gentoo, which works like a charm. Not to mention all the old NES titles I've been playing that I never quite managed to finish when I was a kid.
You mean 1544 bytes of course.. :) But we all knew that.
I really can't wait for SVG to take over. So glad it's starting to get some respect...
I know what you mean, but you miss my point. If applications and documents were on different partitions, and the restore disks only overwrote a PARTITION instead of the whole damn disk, you could tell them the exact same thing, minus the part about having to save their 40GB of documents, movies, and mp3s to DVD first.
As it is, the only thing they can do (with harddrives getting so big), is copy their stuff to a second harddrive.
They should at LEAST autodetect it and say "hey i see you have data on your other disk, do you want me to leave it there?"
This is especially because whenever someone calls tech support with a question, the only answer they ever seem to get is "use the restore disks", no matter what the problem is.
(Not that I blame tech support for resorting to this behaviour.. I probably would too.)
Wow. You know that problem never even occurred to me. Just thinking about it makes me hold my forehead in pain...
Yup, I was going to suggest this as his problem. Bad ram can cause random patches. I have some bad bits on my ram, and Windows occasionally just DIED for no apparent reason. Linux was FAR more stable, but still occassionally strange things would happen, like segfaults out of no where. Almost always in user space, but once or two my filesystem driver crashed, which was a bit scary, though no harm was done. Anyways, I since installed the BadRAM kernel patch, and it's been completely stable so far... no more segfaults. I wish such a thing existed for Windows. Why through out $60 RAM when a couple of bits are bad?
Hmm so, where do I backup my data before formatting when this data is in the same partition as the system and the apps...
for what it's worth, most computers come with "restore" disks that wipe the whole fucking drive no matter how the partitions are set up. I always thought THAT was idiotic, too.
Ah, I see what you mean... have the torrent downloading on the firewall but saving the data to another computer. I currently have my "downloading" computer setup with a large harddrive. I suppose you could do this with a NFS or something, but for now I haven't needed to deal with it. I was using screen for this purpose for a long time but finally decided to do something that could handle multiple downloads without having to guess which screen PID is which, among other things. However, I'm not sure I follow what you mean by the proxy protocol... I am simply talking about a way of handling torrent downloading remotely.
Cool, I work in a very similar way with how I download torrents. I've been working on a system to make this nicer... so far I've written a python script that "wraps" the bittorrent-console program and allows me to manage multiple torrents downloading on a remote computer. (Ie I can start and stop them and then disconnect my "client" and the downloads continue..) It's not really ready to be published anywhere yet, but I didn't know there were other people who would even be interested in such a thing..
I totally agree with you here. I was writing a small configuration program in C and GTK when I had little experience with GTK programming. Been writing in C++ and C for years. After a few days of hacking at it, I switched to PyGTK and finished the thing in one day. Since then I've been trying out Python in all sorts of other situtations, and I'm really impressed. I'm really loving its clarity and dynamic binding, and it's incredibly useful for prototyping ideas even if I end up implementing them in another language, because I can do it so fast.
However, I fail to see how you don't consider it Object Oriented?