The only problem here is exemplified by an OS X pkg installer I ran a few days ago. I can't recall which one it was (I think it might have been one to tweak system settings, etc.) but it asked for my Administrator password -- which, of course, it needed to, as it was modifying files owned by System.
All it takes is for someone to take such an app, add a trojan, and suddenly when you enter the password you're *expecting* to enter, you get a lot more than you bargained for. Stick it in an email titled "Hey! This program really sped up my computer when I used it!" and you have the same situation that's prevalent on Windows computers right now.
The reason you don't see this more on OS X is due to the smaller software pool. If someone tried to do this, the specific software would be identified, flagged at apple.com, versiontracker.com and macupdate.com, and that'd be the end of it. Plus, nobody would trust anything else released by the same author. This isn't conjecture; a few people have already tried similar shady stunts, and every time they try to release something (even after changing their company name), someone notices and the game's over. On Windows, there is SO MUCH choice in screensavers, searchbars, gambling widgets, stock tickers, etc. that nobody can easily keep track of it all for themselves -- so they install antispyware/virus software to do it for them.
Interesting point... I think you've just summarized the viewpoint of the majority of the people in the known world. Forward thinking is ALWAYS good... ignorantly acting on propoganda fed to you by someone with a hidden motive isn't.
In fact, for any of you who weren't alive in the 70's, this whole thing is what the Folk Music revolution was about -- people wrote songs and purposefully put them in the public domain so that MULTIPLE artists could perform them. Not only that, but the songs were DESIGNED so that anyone could sing the song around a campfire, in the shower, etc. and the song would be recognizable. Not only that, the songs generally contained lyrics that reflected the cultural values and issues of the times.
By this argument, if our society and culture is defined by what people are trading on p2p servers today, I think that shows that everyone who is musically or poetically inclined had best get to work producing something better. Otherwise, let me out of this society....
Add to that that when election time comes around, people can't vote for the EFF. I can see a lot of people who are fed up with the two party system going "hmm... Marxist, Libertarian, Green... Hey... this looks neat! a Pirate party!" I bet they'll steal a lot of the Marijuana and Rhino party votes.
Also... I hope the people who do take part realize that by doing so, SCO could claim ownership of every piece of code they ever have written, or ever will write. Give them $100,000 with one hand, sue them for $1.5Mil with the other if anything they ever do makes a profit. That appears to me to be SCO's current MO, and I can't see why they'd change it for this one little competition.
This is forgetting that this was a scientific advancement made by a Canadian research group from a Canadian university. The global scientific community uses metric, and so does Canada. The only reason miles and gallons are even mentioned, I'd guess, is that the competition was in the US. I read a Canadian paper this morning, and it's all reported in metric.
Have you ever considered getting only one eye done? That way, you still have an eye to work with while it's healing, and if things go wrong, you don't totally lose your eyesight. Plus, it costs half as much.
Don't pay less than $1,000 for Lasik or PRK surgery though... in North America, anyone asking less than that is probably cutting corners... something you DON'T want done to your eyeballs (yes, I know... they're round).
It's simpler than all that... store all the records in XML format, and compress EVERYTHING to a 7-zip archive, and stick THAT on an 8GB thumbdrive. I think even with all the extra information, you'd probably find that there's enough redundancy (after all, there are only 365 days in a year, lots of people with the same first/last name, etc.) to fit it all on a 4GB thumbdrive.
Then again, it'd definitely all fit on a 60GB iPod.
The algorithm that credit rating companies use to calulate your rating includes a devaluing index linked directly to how often your credit rating is looked up. There is a certain frequency window that indicates you are a good risk; if the number of checks goes above that, your rating starts to go down.
This means that if you are weekly checking your rating, it WILL GO DOWN if for no other reason than the fact that you are checking it. A better solution would be some sort of a service whereby the credit rating company contacts you if your credit rating changes by a noticeable amount during the term agreed upon. This way, only one notification goes on your file.
Funny... the attitudes you espouse remind me of those held by SCO.
It seems to me, you want to make other people pay for what you get, and you think that makes you great. Meanwhile, all you're doing is concentrating wealth.
If you had argued that the transfer of information does not transfer wealth, you might have had something going... but as it is, you look like either a) an anymous troll trying to stir up the mud, or b) someone who has truely lost touch with society, and is out to "make it" with no regard to the welfare of others.
Just remember: if everyone shared your attitude, there would be no intellectual property to hoard for free... those who had it would hold onto it for dear life, and those who didn't would become impoverished very quickly.
When the bottom feeders run out of bottom to feed on, what happens next?
It seems to me that everyone who has responded to your trolling has come from a different viewpoint, but arrived at the same conclusion. This ought to tell you something, even if it's that we're all ripe for the plucking by great entrepreneurs such as yourself.
??? I thought the whole idea behind "black hat" vs. "white hat" was the relationship between the "hacker" and the victim. White hat hackers do their stuff with permission and with people's best interests at heart. Black hat hackers do things for their own interests, at the expense of the victims.
Following this line of reasining, if MS really employed "black hat hackers," wouldn't such hackers immediately say, "Gollee, this OS is super secure! I couldn't find a single way to compromise it!" Meanwhile, they're digging around inside (being careful to erase traces of their visit), getting extremely familiar with an OS that hasn't even been released yet. 0-day exploits indeed....
Boston (NAP) MS SVP Bob Muglia was last seen standing at the entrance to Vista, shouting, "We have successfully secured the OS against the infidel! This OS is more secure than any other OS out there!" Meanwhile, the OS is disintegrating around him from the barrage of attacks from the coalition forces.
Actually, what most people forget is that a contract is two way. If you don't have the time to read over a contract every time, get a lawyer to make up your own boilerplate clause to tag on the end of every contract you sign. It should say something along the lines of, "I agree to all points in the contract above, whereby it does not contradict the points below:...." Then sign after adding that to the contract. This way, you always have the last word, and it is MUCH harder for the other side to sneak things in you don't agree with.
I don't think I've ever signed a paper contract where I haven't made some modification before signing. Generally, the lawyers approved my changes, although the other party often thought I was a bit strange for modifying their nicely worded contract.
If a contract needs verbal explanation of a clause by the other party before it makes sense to you, make sure to add that verbal explanation to the contract; otherwise it is non-binding, and could be interpreted against you in the future.
Sort of, but not a very good analogy -- Climate Change deals with a lot more than just global warming theories... for one thing, there's global cooling. Climate Change Experts are people who spend their time recording empirical climate data (like rainfall, temperature, pressure, etc.) and watching how it changes over time. They seem to agree that the entire earth IS warming; this says nothing about whether we're causing it, or if it is part of an X year cycle. The sensationalist propoganda is the stuff claiming that the observed warming trends are due to SUVs. Check out Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change
This points out the real issue in this debate: what is happening is that the peering agreements are starting to get lopsided: say that peer A's subscribers own a lot of consumer access lines, and peer B's subscribers own a lot of VoIP and video serving lines. According to the agreement, A and B happily carry each other's data at no charge. However, A is getting swamped with data coming from B, and is having to install more routers and switches to handle the incoming data, increasing their costs while their income from their actual subscribers stays the same. Meanwhile, B is happily charging their subscribers for all that extra bandwidth, and so can pay for the upgrades.
What's happening now is that all the peers in A's group are starting to make noise to try and get B's subscribers to pay them for the extra bandwidth they're using, instead of renegotiating the peering agreement with B. This is due to the fact that the most profitable subscribers are the ones who pay for bandwidth they never use -- which is the clients, not the servers. Renegotiating the peering agreements at a base level would impact them negatively (although not as negatively as the current situation).
So what A wants to do is have multiple tiers, where all the low bandwidth connections don't get dinged for the cost increases accrued by the increasing amount of off-network high bandwidth connections. They know that those low bandwidth people will still eventually foot the bill, but it won't be THAM charging for it, which keeps them in a better competetive position in the market, and makes the service upgrades more profitable.
You do realize that the surface of the earth sits on moveable plates, don't you? All it would really take to "destroy" the earth (that is, make it unlivable for humans), is a few well-placed teraton warheads. The original explosions trigger shockwaves that run both through the Earth's core, and also from plate to plate, creating massive areas of subduction, etc. This, in turn, releases MORE debris into the atmosphere, really mucks about with global temperatures, thereby killing off pretty much all life in the oceans, as well as pretty much all land-based lifeforms other than dandelions and cockroaches. Just because the Earth won't shatter into a trillion pieces when a few little megaton bombs explode doesn't mean that it can't be destroyed by such weapons. After all, all it REALLY needs is just the right butterfly....
Was that an attempt to redicule computer users at large?
Let's parse the new word, and find out what they actually mean:
re-di-cul-ous:
ous = "worthy of," therefore the object is worthy of re-di-cul.
re = "to do again," therefore the object is worthy of di-cul again.
di = "twice" or "two," therefore the object is worthy of cul twice again.
What is this "cul?"
http://dict.die.net/cul/ says there are two meanings:
1) a noun, meaning "a passage with access only at one end."
2) a verb-acronym, meaning "see you later."
While the first definition could be forced into working, considering this is the internet, the second definition is more likely.
Therefore, rediculous means:
The object of the sentence is worthy of seeing you later twice again.
Is it just me, or does this sound like the definition of a dupe on Slashdot?
Therefore, many/. stories are indeed rediculous, as are 90% of the comments in response to any given story.
From the way things play out, I presume it really means the ten worst reported in the US in the last two centuries. It doesn't even mention the disaster in Japan a few years ago where an entire mega-mall collapsed because they forgot to increase the gague of the beams for the parking level after tweaking the design for the upper levels. I'm pretty sure there were probably some major engineering disasters in building early pyramids and ziggarauts too, not to mention the Roman buildings that didn't survive through the ages.
Ridiculously complicated? Step 1: set up routing matrix. Step 2: create table of netblocks that get priority, and set routers to increase packet priority on packets going to/from netblocks in the priority table. Because of the way IP addressing works, this would be no more of a resource drain than the current DNS system.
The infrastructure is actually already in place; The largest hurdle would be account management, but considering how many accounts these big carriers already have, I doubt that would be an issue.
The other (and more scary) method of doing the above is to decrease packet priority on packets not in your LUT. This would mean that as your packets hop through the various networks, priority could either be reset at each carrier jump, or decremented to the point at which, if you haven't paid enough people, your packets will time out before they actually arrive at their destination. Effictively, you'll be DoS'd trying to serve content to anyone more than a few carriers away from you, unless you've got big pockets.
Slashdot Mirror
All it takes is for someone to take such an app, add a trojan, and suddenly when you enter the password you're *expecting* to enter, you get a lot more than you bargained for. Stick it in an email titled "Hey! This program really sped up my computer when I used it!" and you have the same situation that's prevalent on Windows computers right now.
The reason you don't see this more on OS X is due to the smaller software pool. If someone tried to do this, the specific software would be identified, flagged at apple.com, versiontracker.com and macupdate.com, and that'd be the end of it. Plus, nobody would trust anything else released by the same author. This isn't conjecture; a few people have already tried similar shady stunts, and every time they try to release something (even after changing their company name), someone notices and the game's over. On Windows, there is SO MUCH choice in screensavers, searchbars, gambling widgets, stock tickers, etc. that nobody can easily keep track of it all for themselves -- so they install antispyware/virus software to do it for them.
Interesting point... I think you've just summarized the viewpoint of the majority of the people in the known world. Forward thinking is ALWAYS good... ignorantly acting on propoganda fed to you by someone with a hidden motive isn't.
Isn't that the programmer's version of "tastes like chicken?"
Hey... that's pretty efficient government! They listen in on your phone conversations, and you get billed for it!
By this argument, if our society and culture is defined by what people are trading on p2p servers today, I think that shows that everyone who is musically or poetically inclined had best get to work producing something better. Otherwise, let me out of this society....
Add to that that when election time comes around, people can't vote for the EFF. I can see a lot of people who are fed up with the two party system going "hmm... Marxist, Libertarian, Green... Hey... this looks neat! a Pirate party!" I bet they'll steal a lot of the Marijuana and Rhino party votes.
Also... I hope the people who do take part realize that by doing so, SCO could claim ownership of every piece of code they ever have written, or ever will write. Give them $100,000 with one hand, sue them for $1.5Mil with the other if anything they ever do makes a profit. That appears to me to be SCO's current MO, and I can't see why they'd change it for this one little competition.
This is forgetting that this was a scientific advancement made by a Canadian research group from a Canadian university. The global scientific community uses metric, and so does Canada. The only reason miles and gallons are even mentioned, I'd guess, is that the competition was in the US. I read a Canadian paper this morning, and it's all reported in metric.
Don't pay less than $1,000 for Lasik or PRK surgery though... in North America, anyone asking less than that is probably cutting corners... something you DON'T want done to your eyeballs (yes, I know... they're round).
Then again, it'd definitely all fit on a 60GB iPod.
I for one hope you don't EVER have kids (yours or others) that are allowed into your garage.
The algorithm that credit rating companies use to calulate your rating includes a devaluing index linked directly to how often your credit rating is looked up. There is a certain frequency window that indicates you are a good risk; if the number of checks goes above that, your rating starts to go down.
This means that if you are weekly checking your rating, it WILL GO DOWN if for no other reason than the fact that you are checking it. A better solution would be some sort of a service whereby the credit rating company contacts you if your credit rating changes by a noticeable amount during the term agreed upon. This way, only one notification goes on your file.
Definitely can't top it if you ask for a sandwich with "The Works"
It seems to me, you want to make other people pay for what you get, and you think that makes you great. Meanwhile, all you're doing is concentrating wealth.
If you had argued that the transfer of information does not transfer wealth, you might have had something going... but as it is, you look like either a) an anymous troll trying to stir up the mud, or b) someone who has truely lost touch with society, and is out to "make it" with no regard to the welfare of others.
Just remember: if everyone shared your attitude, there would be no intellectual property to hoard for free... those who had it would hold onto it for dear life, and those who didn't would become impoverished very quickly.
When the bottom feeders run out of bottom to feed on, what happens next?
It seems to me that everyone who has responded to your trolling has come from a different viewpoint, but arrived at the same conclusion. This ought to tell you something, even if it's that we're all ripe for the plucking by great entrepreneurs such as yourself.
Following this line of reasining, if MS really employed "black hat hackers," wouldn't such hackers immediately say, "Gollee, this OS is super secure! I couldn't find a single way to compromise it!" Meanwhile, they're digging around inside (being careful to erase traces of their visit), getting extremely familiar with an OS that hasn't even been released yet. 0-day exploits indeed....
Boston (NAP) MS SVP Bob Muglia was last seen standing at the entrance to Vista, shouting, "We have successfully secured the OS against the infidel! This OS is more secure than any other OS out there!" Meanwhile, the OS is disintegrating around him from the barrage of attacks from the coalition forces.
I don't think I've ever signed a paper contract where I haven't made some modification before signing. Generally, the lawyers approved my changes, although the other party often thought I was a bit strange for modifying their nicely worded contract.
If a contract needs verbal explanation of a clause by the other party before it makes sense to you, make sure to add that verbal explanation to the contract; otherwise it is non-binding, and could be interpreted against you in the future.
Sort of, but not a very good analogy -- Climate Change deals with a lot more than just global warming theories... for one thing, there's global cooling. Climate Change Experts are people who spend their time recording empirical climate data (like rainfall, temperature, pressure, etc.) and watching how it changes over time. They seem to agree that the entire earth IS warming; this says nothing about whether we're causing it, or if it is part of an X year cycle. The sensationalist propoganda is the stuff claiming that the observed warming trends are due to SUVs. Check out Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change
What's happening now is that all the peers in A's group are starting to make noise to try and get B's subscribers to pay them for the extra bandwidth they're using, instead of renegotiating the peering agreement with B. This is due to the fact that the most profitable subscribers are the ones who pay for bandwidth they never use -- which is the clients, not the servers. Renegotiating the peering agreements at a base level would impact them negatively (although not as negatively as the current situation).
So what A wants to do is have multiple tiers, where all the low bandwidth connections don't get dinged for the cost increases accrued by the increasing amount of off-network high bandwidth connections. They know that those low bandwidth people will still eventually foot the bill, but it won't be THAM charging for it, which keeps them in a better competetive position in the market, and makes the service upgrades more profitable.
You do realize that the surface of the earth sits on moveable plates, don't you? All it would really take to "destroy" the earth (that is, make it unlivable for humans), is a few well-placed teraton warheads. The original explosions trigger shockwaves that run both through the Earth's core, and also from plate to plate, creating massive areas of subduction, etc. This, in turn, releases MORE debris into the atmosphere, really mucks about with global temperatures, thereby killing off pretty much all life in the oceans, as well as pretty much all land-based lifeforms other than dandelions and cockroaches. Just because the Earth won't shatter into a trillion pieces when a few little megaton bombs explode doesn't mean that it can't be destroyed by such weapons. After all, all it REALLY needs is just the right butterfly....
That would be due to Sony's rootkit, wouldn't it?
Let's parse the new word, and find out what they actually mean:
re-di-cul-ous:
ous = "worthy of," therefore the object is worthy of re-di-cul.
re = "to do again," therefore the object is worthy of di-cul again.
di = "twice" or "two," therefore the object is worthy of cul twice again.
What is this "cul?"
http://dict.die.net/cul/ says there are two meanings:
1) a noun, meaning "a passage with access only at one end."
2) a verb-acronym, meaning "see you later."
While the first definition could be forced into working, considering this is the internet, the second definition is more likely.
Therefore, rediculous means:
The object of the sentence is worthy of seeing you later twice again.
Is it just me, or does this sound like the definition of a dupe on Slashdot? /. stories are indeed rediculous, as are 90% of the comments in response to any given story.
Therefore, many
Along with a war on cars, I support the war on pedestrian-hostile roads. Give us sidewalks and crosswalks, or give us death. Oh, wait....
From the way things play out, I presume it really means the ten worst reported in the US in the last two centuries. It doesn't even mention the disaster in Japan a few years ago where an entire mega-mall collapsed because they forgot to increase the gague of the beams for the parking level after tweaking the design for the upper levels. I'm pretty sure there were probably some major engineering disasters in building early pyramids and ziggarauts too, not to mention the Roman buildings that didn't survive through the ages.
The infrastructure is actually already in place; The largest hurdle would be account management, but considering how many accounts these big carriers already have, I doubt that would be an issue.
The other (and more scary) method of doing the above is to decrease packet priority on packets not in your LUT. This would mean that as your packets hop through the various networks, priority could either be reset at each carrier jump, or decremented to the point at which, if you haven't paid enough people, your packets will time out before they actually arrive at their destination. Effictively, you'll be DoS'd trying to serve content to anyone more than a few carriers away from you, unless you've got big pockets.