The next time I enter into a music-related contract, I'm going to insist that I retain copyright to right channel disk master data, allowing the studio to use it under 30-year lease -- I'll sell copyright to the left channel data:)
It is well known that the candidate who drops the most money on his/her campaign is the one who 'wins'. There is a lot of money out there for politicians who are willing to support the desires of these parasites, especially now that money has been ruled 'free speech'.
Or, it's an admission that people receiving BBN broadcasts are reporting the broadcasts to the police/are the police. I find this significantly more likely -- especially as this would explain the screwups due to actual content being lost in translation.
The one use I've got out of LinkedIn is the professional association groups. Asking questions in those forums generally gets informed answers pertinent to the field. In fact, beyond the friend-of-friend networking and hiring/getting a job aspect, it's the only thing I find useful on the site. The only people I see on the site who are actively updating their profiles are those who are trying to sell me something, or are looking for work.
Personally, I see the Apple model going the same way the Atari went -- we've already got Grumpy Bats and other knockoffs, and the lightweight gaming platform on iOS is getting saturated. The thing that's keeping it afloat IMO is advertising, which is something Nintendo doesn't support.
As for "you can't develop epic 4GB games" -- why not? I've played a few epic 3GB games on iOS, and not only do they play well, they would easily fit on an 8GB iPhone, and often aren't sold -- they're supported by advertising and in-game purchases.
If you're thinking of OTA installs of epic games, yes, you don't want to be pulling a 4GB game down over EDGE -- but that's what iTunes is all about; you pull the game down over your home network connection and sync it to your device.
Oh yes, and PC is an acronym too, standing for Personal Computer. I consider my Mac just as much a PC as my other hardware. Since Mac is a brand name, using it in CAPS would be closer to talking about WINDOWS (which, of course, some people do, as it is a descendant of MS DOS, the MicroSoft Disk Operating System).
I've had more Macintosh computers than most people and I don't regard calling it a MAC offensive. The evolution of the brand is kinda funny. There was a time when the word "Macintosh" was printed on the bezel, then they Apple re-branded the entire line as Mac.
What is a Mac? I don't even know anymore - the only difference between them these days is the software and proprietary code to lock people out from running that software on identical Dell/HP/Lenovo etc hardware.
I don't regard calling it a MAC offensive, just incorrect. MAC is an acronym, and has a very specific meaning in computing circles: "M(andatory|edia|edium) Access Control." When people ask you for your MAC, they're not usually asking for your laptop, they're asking for your access credentials -- usually in the form of your Ethernet MAC ID -- each network card has a unique one.
So, while only some people use a Mac, everyone on the internet uses a MAC.
Also, Byuu has been working on an accurate emulator... the ZSNES guys wrote something that was more of an emulator/simulator hybrid -- there are patches all over the place to make certain *games* play perfectly, even though they'd fail miserably if left to the emulation core. Thus, for most popular games, ZSNES works just fine because it's simulating the console result, not emulating the hardware accurately.
Games like Star Ocean and Tales of Phantasia are interesting due to the on-board processors in the cartridges and the fact that the games were released in Japan only -- you actually have to emulate the cartridge as well as the console, and most people who'd be checking for "realism" are playing a patched ROM with the English homebrew translation.
People like to riot if they can get away with it. Sports riots have happened for decades. Don't blame the economy for thugs.
The way to stop that sort of "recreational riot" is overwhelming force ruthlessly applied. Destroy the enemy. They deserve the sort of beatdown they'll remember in the future.
Unfortunately, the enemy is us. In the Vancouver riots, for example, most of the rioters weren't alive 20 years before when the last riots occurred -- and it sounds like this is the same case in London. The rioters in both situations appear to be, for the most part, fairly well-off upper middle class kids. The reason for the riots appears to be a combination of "I wanna riot like my parent's generation did" and frustration that they can't have everything they want in life. I'd prefer to term these sort of riots "group tantrums" to "recreational riots" -- which also works for the football riots, although in that case, they want to take someone else's ball and go home.
Anyway, a beatdown won't do a thing, as the rioters will remember this in the future no matter what happens... but their kids won't. Expect another round of riots in around 20 years, just like there was 20 and 40 years ago.
No matter whether the "Destroy the Enemy" or "Disperse the Radical" method is used to control riots, they keep happening. You don't remember them? Here's a list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_riots
Exactly! Raising the standards *at manufacturer only* is what is causing the (temporary) issues, as all those SUVs they put on the roads last decade are *still out there* and being driven just as recklessly. Take those off the roads, increase patrolling of commercial safety inspectors, and you'd see significant injury/fatalities from accidents *decrease* -- after all, you have less gas in the tanks, lighter vehicles, and for the 'underpowered' ones, lower speeds. The damage done by a less massive object traveling at lower speeds is going to be less by definition.
Another way this could be spun is that the older, less efficient, heavier vehicles are more of a hazard on public roadways, and the new legislation will eventually decrease traffic fatalities..
...but to play the "no evidence" card is a little thin - after McAfee put themselves on the line saying it was. If that was a total lie don't you think McAfee would be pulverized for it?
Except for the fact that the McAfee report doesn't say it was -- everyone REPORTING on the report says it was. McAfee just says there are some possible Chinese connections (there are likely some possible Russian connections and Romanian connections too; this is points of operation, not places where we've outed ringleaders).
There's a reason McAfee didn't say it was the Chinese government -- that's because they don't have proof it was the Chinese government -- just as they don't have proof it was the US government, NATO, the UN, Iran, and North Korea. McAfee *would* likely be pulverized for blatantly blaming the Chinese government -- although with the publicity they'd get, they'd probably weather the pounding rather well.
jo_ham replied to most of this, but I'll just add a bit more:
But, because this has to do with Apple, there's no objectivity. And, like so much going on in the world today, that lack of objectivity is really quite disturbing.
I think if you look through history, you'll find that there has never been objectivity. Anyone who says there has been is trying to sell you something.
:^\ -- you read everything but the first part of my post, where I said I was summarizing the voluminous amount of data you posted into something succinct (possibly missed due to bad word choice on my part -- precise instead of succinct) (so that people could actually internalize it). I did, of course skip the more esoteric parts, as anyone who was interested in those would likely have read all your posts. I also attempted to abstract the statements so that they would apply to any modern OS, not just Windows.
Apple knew about the issue before shipping lion, hasn't responded to the issue, and is censoring posts in their support forum that mention words like 'boycott' and 'petition.'
Censoring technical discussions? Removing posts?
Seriously?
This is the kind of crap that really opens up Apple for criticism. Sure, it's a problem. But you deal with it by coming out and saying "we know we have a problem, we're going to fix it".
They are indeed censoring technical discussions, removing content that has nothing to do with the technical discussion. There are other places to post rants and complaints that are non-technical. Personally, I'd think this was a good thing, except for the fact that Apple's support forums have a dearth of technical discussion at the best of times. The result? MacFixit for the technical discussion, various other places for the rants, and Apple doesn't get the lively discussion and technical feedback on their own forums that they really need to improve things. Not sure how they can fix this though.
As for "you deal with it by coming out and saying 'we know we have a problem, we're going to fix it,'" that's exactly what the article says they've done. They're asking for any data customers can provide -- they're just not getting any; only rants and petitions.
The other factor at play is likely the operator causing the crash... my bet's on OpenCL, which has been modified in Lion. Most people won't experience the glitch due to not using the OpenCL operator, but any time it gets called, bam! System goes down hard, with no kernel panic, crash logs, etc.
But we don't go after poachers by mandating lower speed limits for pickup trucks, or outlawing them completely. We go after poachers by catching people in the act of hunting without a permit. Similarly we shouldn't go after copyright infringement by throttling or blocking bittorrent traffic.
I knew this was a good analogy... that's exactly the point. Socially, torrenting copyrighted works is similar to poaching. Following the analogy, blocking/throttling torrent traffic is similar to putting up a fence. It doesn't stop the problem, but it increases the barrier to entry... both for those breaking the law and for legit users of the space.
Here's a more concise way of writing all that (and remember, ANY DNS service you use gets complete access to your domain lookup history):
First line of defense: fairly generic HOSTS list, pointed to 0.0.0.0
Second: use Privoxy (you can actually forego the HOSTS list and just filter at the Privoxy level if you want, but I keep a generic HOSTS list of stuff I know I'll ALWAYS want to block).
Third: Run Firefox with NoScript, TACO and AdBlock Plus.
Fourth: use a TRUSTED DNS. I used to use OpenDNS, but stopped, as it's really a bit *too* open. What I really should be using is an onion routed DNS, but since that's a bit slow and I'm lazy, I just use Google, as they already track most of my online activities anyway (might as well put all eggs in one basket). Fifth: use an outbound application-level firewall, and only allow specific ports/domains. Make sure the firewall you use is secure, and allows you to audit/log as well as do fine grained rules.
Fifth: We've been talking about HOSTS blacklists, but also create a HOSTS whitelist for sensitive sites. If you hard-code a domain to an IP in your HOSTS file, your DNS will never even see it. This takes some maintenance, as every once in a while the IPs get updated by the owner, but all you have to do is update once, after one lookup, and you're fixed until the next change. This is useful for Banking sites, search sites (Wolfram Alpha, Yahoo, Google, Bing), and any site where you perform payments (app stores, Paypal, Craigslist, etc.).
Sixth: checksum your HOSTS file, and write a script to periodically check to ensure that the checksum hasn't changed. As you're only looking for change, you don't need to worry about collisions and can use a light checksum such as a CRC32 instead of a more intensive one like SHA1 or MD5.
Remember that when looking up the IP address of a domain, this is the order of precedence:
Application layer (depending on implementation -- this covers filters, app-specific translations, MAFIAAFire plugin, etc.) In-Memory cache HOSTS file Local DNS cache Local DNS proxy Gateway DNS cache Named DNS server Domain's DNS server
Each one of these layers can be compromised, so the more you need to trust the domain to be legit, the closer to the top of the list you should ensure it is legit. It seems to me that the best solution would be a Firefox plugin where you could add static domain -> IIP mappings, so it would all be done within memory, even if your HOSTS file got compromised.
One other layer of security: use separate browser processes for each "private" session -- separate windows should be enough for Lion Safari and Google Chrome, as they run in sandboxed sub-processes. Just opening a new tab is not safe in any browser.
Um, you're walking a fine border there... I can't tell whether you're using extremely honed counter-sarcasm, or didn't fully get the references in the sarcasm you quoted. That said, your first sentence is spot-on... unfortunately, there's not really way to get humanity to play by those rules.
It's very common for Muslims to talk about how the middle ages were the golden age of their religion/culture/country. I guess when you blindly attempt to emulate/copy a middle ages culture you tend to copy everything including the lack of technology/education/progress.
You do realize that the European middle ages happens to align with the era in which the middle east had a cultural and educational renaissance, don't you? While Europe was burning books and going on witch hunts, the Arab nations were refining their theories of mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and many other arts and sciences.
The reason many Arabs (not Muslims, the two tend to overlap like Europeans and Christians, but best not to conflate) look fondly on that era is that their culture was actually doing really well. In many places, it did well right up until they halted progress by attempting to "keep things as they were" and started sliding into cultural stagnation. Some countries/areas such as Turkey, Egypt and Iran partially avoided this by having very strong cultural roots that were deeper than the Arabian cultural overlay they inherited. Those countries mostly declined due to influence from the West.
I don't think the USA currently has all that good a reputation in Pakistan -- currently on-par with India, I think.
However, I'm sure they'd be more than welcome in the UAE, where they'd have a much higher standard of living without having to fully abandon their culture, religion and language.
Slashdot Mirror
In other words, the use of money is free speech except when it's not.
Just like actual speech ;)
The next time I enter into a music-related contract, I'm going to insist that I retain copyright to right channel disk master data, allowing the studio to use it under 30-year lease -- I'll sell copyright to the left channel data :)
Somehow I don't think the studio will go for it.
It is well known that the candidate who drops the most money on his/her campaign is the one who 'wins'. There is a lot of money out there for politicians who are willing to support the desires of these parasites, especially now that money has been ruled 'free speech'.
Does this mean I have a right to money?
Or, it's an admission that people receiving BBN broadcasts are reporting the broadcasts to the police/are the police. I find this significantly more likely -- especially as this would explain the screwups due to actual content being lost in translation.
Anything you can walk into bestbuy and get is not obscure.
Now try walking into a BestBuy in the EU and get one....
The one use I've got out of LinkedIn is the professional association groups. Asking questions in those forums generally gets informed answers pertinent to the field. In fact, beyond the friend-of-friend networking and hiring/getting a job aspect, it's the only thing I find useful on the site. The only people I see on the site who are actively updating their profiles are those who are trying to sell me something, or are looking for work.
and http://www.galoobethgames.com/ for some of the best of RPGs on iOS.
In the 10MB+ range:
Galaxy On Fire
Galaxy On Fire 2
City of Secrets
Reno Air Races
If you like Tap Tap games, there's also Rhythmatic that'll automatically use any music from your iPod music collection.
Also on tap:
WoW clone: Order & Chaos© Online (yes, it's a MMORPG)
Highborn
Drawn: The Painted Tower
Broken Sword (another port), and Broken Sword 2: The Smoking Mirror
Infinity Blade
Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions (ported/improved version of PSP game)
Ragnarok Violet
Emissary of War
Oh, and if you've never played it and want a FPS with a plotline, Marathon 1 is available for free!
Personally, I see the Apple model going the same way the Atari went -- we've already got Grumpy Bats and other knockoffs, and the lightweight gaming platform on iOS is getting saturated. The thing that's keeping it afloat IMO is advertising, which is something Nintendo doesn't support.
As for "you can't develop epic 4GB games" -- why not? I've played a few epic 3GB games on iOS, and not only do they play well, they would easily fit on an 8GB iPhone, and often aren't sold -- they're supported by advertising and in-game purchases.
If you're thinking of OTA installs of epic games, yes, you don't want to be pulling a 4GB game down over EDGE -- but that's what iTunes is all about; you pull the game down over your home network connection and sync it to your device.
Oh yes, and PC is an acronym too, standing for Personal Computer. I consider my Mac just as much a PC as my other hardware.
Since Mac is a brand name, using it in CAPS would be closer to talking about WINDOWS (which, of course, some people do, as it is a descendant of MS DOS, the MicroSoft Disk Operating System).
I've had more Macintosh computers than most people and I don't regard calling it a MAC offensive. The evolution of the brand is kinda funny. There was a time when the word "Macintosh" was printed on the bezel, then they Apple re-branded the entire line as Mac.
What is a Mac? I don't even know anymore - the only difference between them these days is the software and proprietary code to lock people out from running that software on identical Dell/HP/Lenovo etc hardware.
I don't regard calling it a MAC offensive, just incorrect. MAC is an acronym, and has a very specific meaning in computing circles: "M(andatory|edia|edium) Access Control." When people ask you for your MAC, they're not usually asking for your laptop, they're asking for your access credentials -- usually in the form of your Ethernet MAC ID -- each network card has a unique one.
So, while only some people use a Mac, everyone on the internet uses a MAC.
Also, Byuu has been working on an accurate emulator... the ZSNES guys wrote something that was more of an emulator/simulator hybrid -- there are patches all over the place to make certain *games* play perfectly, even though they'd fail miserably if left to the emulation core. Thus, for most popular games, ZSNES works just fine because it's simulating the console result, not emulating the hardware accurately.
Games like Star Ocean and Tales of Phantasia are interesting due to the on-board processors in the cartridges and the fact that the games were released in Japan only -- you actually have to emulate the cartridge as well as the console, and most people who'd be checking for "realism" are playing a patched ROM with the English homebrew translation.
People like to riot if they can get away with it. Sports riots have happened for decades. Don't blame the economy for thugs.
The way to stop that sort of "recreational riot" is overwhelming force ruthlessly applied. Destroy the enemy. They deserve the sort of beatdown they'll remember in the future.
Unfortunately, the enemy is us. In the Vancouver riots, for example, most of the rioters weren't alive 20 years before when the last riots occurred -- and it sounds like this is the same case in London. The rioters in both situations appear to be, for the most part, fairly well-off upper middle class kids. The reason for the riots appears to be a combination of "I wanna riot like my parent's generation did" and frustration that they can't have everything they want in life. I'd prefer to term these sort of riots "group tantrums" to "recreational riots" -- which also works for the football riots, although in that case, they want to take someone else's ball and go home.
Anyway, a beatdown won't do a thing, as the rioters will remember this in the future no matter what happens... but their kids won't. Expect another round of riots in around 20 years, just like there was 20 and 40 years ago.
No matter whether the "Destroy the Enemy" or "Disperse the Radical" method is used to control riots, they keep happening. You don't remember them? Here's a list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_riots
There is nothing new under the sun.
Exactly! Raising the standards *at manufacturer only* is what is causing the (temporary) issues, as all those SUVs they put on the roads last decade are *still out there* and being driven just as recklessly. Take those off the roads, increase patrolling of commercial safety inspectors, and you'd see significant injury/fatalities from accidents *decrease* -- after all, you have less gas in the tanks, lighter vehicles, and for the 'underpowered' ones, lower speeds. The damage done by a less massive object traveling at lower speeds is going to be less by definition.
Another way this could be spun is that the older, less efficient, heavier vehicles are more of a hazard on public roadways, and the new legislation will eventually decrease traffic fatalities..
...but to play the "no evidence" card is a little thin - after McAfee put themselves on the line saying it was. If that was a total lie don't you think McAfee would be pulverized for it?
Except for the fact that the McAfee report doesn't say it was -- everyone REPORTING on the report says it was. McAfee just says there are some possible Chinese connections (there are likely some possible Russian connections and Romanian connections too; this is points of operation, not places where we've outed ringleaders).
There's a reason McAfee didn't say it was the Chinese government -- that's because they don't have proof it was the Chinese government -- just as they don't have proof it was the US government, NATO, the UN, Iran, and North Korea. McAfee *would* likely be pulverized for blatantly blaming the Chinese government -- although with the publicity they'd get, they'd probably weather the pounding rather well.
jo_ham replied to most of this, but I'll just add a bit more:
But, because this has to do with Apple, there's no objectivity. And, like so much going on in the world today, that lack of objectivity is really quite disturbing.
I think if you look through history, you'll find that there has never been objectivity. Anyone who says there has been is trying to sell you something.
:^\ -- you read everything but the first part of my post, where I said I was summarizing the voluminous amount of data you posted into something succinct (possibly missed due to bad word choice on my part -- precise instead of succinct) (so that people could actually internalize it). I did, of course skip the more esoteric parts, as anyone who was interested in those would likely have read all your posts. I also attempted to abstract the statements so that they would apply to any modern OS, not just Windows.
The real problem is right here:
Apple knew about the issue before shipping lion, hasn't responded to the issue, and is censoring posts in their support forum that mention words like 'boycott' and 'petition.'
Censoring technical discussions? Removing posts?
Seriously?
This is the kind of crap that really opens up Apple for criticism. Sure, it's a problem. But you deal with it by coming out and saying "we know we have a problem, we're going to fix it".
They are indeed censoring technical discussions, removing content that has nothing to do with the technical discussion. There are other places to post rants and complaints that are non-technical. Personally, I'd think this was a good thing, except for the fact that Apple's support forums have a dearth of technical discussion at the best of times. The result? MacFixit for the technical discussion, various other places for the rants, and Apple doesn't get the lively discussion and technical feedback on their own forums that they really need to improve things. Not sure how they can fix this though.
As for "you deal with it by coming out and saying 'we know we have a problem, we're going to fix it,'" that's exactly what the article says they've done. They're asking for any data customers can provide -- they're just not getting any; only rants and petitions.
The other factor at play is likely the operator causing the crash... my bet's on OpenCL, which has been modified in Lion. Most people won't experience the glitch due to not using the OpenCL operator, but any time it gets called, bam! System goes down hard, with no kernel panic, crash logs, etc.
But we don't go after poachers by mandating lower speed limits for pickup trucks, or outlawing them completely. We go after poachers by catching people in the act of hunting without a permit.
Similarly we shouldn't go after copyright infringement by throttling or blocking bittorrent traffic.
I knew this was a good analogy... that's exactly the point. Socially, torrenting copyrighted works is similar to poaching. Following the analogy, blocking/throttling torrent traffic is similar to putting up a fence. It doesn't stop the problem, but it increases the barrier to entry... both for those breaking the law and for legit users of the space.
Here's a more concise way of writing all that (and remember, ANY DNS service you use gets complete access to your domain lookup history):
First line of defense: fairly generic HOSTS list, pointed to 0.0.0.0
Second: use Privoxy (you can actually forego the HOSTS list and just filter at the Privoxy level if you want, but I keep a generic HOSTS list of stuff I know I'll ALWAYS want to block).
Third: Run Firefox with NoScript, TACO and AdBlock Plus.
Fourth: use a TRUSTED DNS. I used to use OpenDNS, but stopped, as it's really a bit *too* open. What I really should be using is an onion routed DNS, but since that's a bit slow and I'm lazy, I just use Google, as they already track most of my online activities anyway (might as well put all eggs in one basket).
Fifth: use an outbound application-level firewall, and only allow specific ports/domains. Make sure the firewall you use is secure, and allows you to audit/log as well as do fine grained rules.
Fifth: We've been talking about HOSTS blacklists, but also create a HOSTS whitelist for sensitive sites. If you hard-code a domain to an IP in your HOSTS file, your DNS will never even see it. This takes some maintenance, as every once in a while the IPs get updated by the owner, but all you have to do is update once, after one lookup, and you're fixed until the next change. This is useful for Banking sites, search sites (Wolfram Alpha, Yahoo, Google, Bing), and any site where you perform payments (app stores, Paypal, Craigslist, etc.).
Sixth: checksum your HOSTS file, and write a script to periodically check to ensure that the checksum hasn't changed. As you're only looking for change, you don't need to worry about collisions and can use a light checksum such as a CRC32 instead of a more intensive one like SHA1 or MD5.
Remember that when looking up the IP address of a domain, this is the order of precedence:
Application layer (depending on implementation -- this covers filters, app-specific translations, MAFIAAFire plugin, etc.)
In-Memory cache
HOSTS file
Local DNS cache
Local DNS proxy
Gateway DNS cache
Named DNS server
Domain's DNS server
Each one of these layers can be compromised, so the more you need to trust the domain to be legit, the closer to the top of the list you should ensure it is legit. It seems to me that the best solution would be a Firefox plugin where you could add static domain -> IIP mappings, so it would all be done within memory, even if your HOSTS file got compromised.
One other layer of security: use separate browser processes for each "private" session -- separate windows should be enough for Lion Safari and Google Chrome, as they run in sandboxed sub-processes. Just opening a new tab is not safe in any browser.
Um, you're walking a fine border there... I can't tell whether you're using extremely honed counter-sarcasm, or didn't fully get the references in the sarcasm you quoted. That said, your first sentence is spot-on... unfortunately, there's not really way to get humanity to play by those rules.
It's very common for Muslims to talk about how the middle ages were the golden age of their religion/culture/country. I guess when you blindly attempt to emulate/copy a middle ages culture you tend to copy everything including the lack of technology/education/progress.
You do realize that the European middle ages happens to align with the era in which the middle east had a cultural and educational renaissance, don't you? While Europe was burning books and going on witch hunts, the Arab nations were refining their theories of mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and many other arts and sciences.
The reason many Arabs (not Muslims, the two tend to overlap like Europeans and Christians, but best not to conflate) look fondly on that era is that their culture was actually doing really well. In many places, it did well right up until they halted progress by attempting to "keep things as they were" and started sliding into cultural stagnation. Some countries/areas such as Turkey, Egypt and Iran partially avoided this by having very strong cultural roots that were deeper than the Arabian cultural overlay they inherited. Those countries mostly declined due to influence from the West.
I don't think the USA currently has all that good a reputation in Pakistan -- currently on-par with India, I think.
However, I'm sure they'd be more than welcome in the UAE, where they'd have a much higher standard of living without having to fully abandon their culture, religion and language.
Has anyone drafted an RFC on steganography via Slashdot comments yet?
I do wonder what the government is going to do about esoteric compression methods and DRM, however.