So if you send me an email by accident, I can have you killed? Jailed even?
No, because I wasn't mass-mailing the message to hundreds of people. The scale of the transmission must be taken into consideration along with the content. In the phone world, it would be the difference between dialing the wrong number and methodically making tens of calls per hour for telemarketing purposes.
What if I mistype an address telling a friend about a good deal I found on computer equipment? What if you did the same thing?
If you don't mistype the address (and you just send something to a friend), that's not unsolicited. If you do mistype the address, again, you haven't mass-mailed something to hundreds of people. Only the combination of content and scale should bring punishment into effect, but that punishment when enacted should be as harsh as possible.
E-mail & postal mail spammers and telephone solicitors should all be PUT TO DEATH. There is nothing more obnoxious, nothing more wasteful of everyone else's time and resources, than having to receive and dispose of unsolicited advertisements.
Telemarketing should be a federal crime punishable by death. Some of you claim it's merely annoying, not harmful, but you're wrong. Telemarketing increases the load on the already over-burdened phone networks, raising local and long distance service rates for everyone else, so in effect we are all paying for it. Telemarketing saps the performance and availability out of the phone networks, and it can also often times be life-threateningly dangerous, such as those telemarketed automated messages that refuse to disconnect even when you hang the phone up for a good 30 seconds and pick it up again, totally blocking your ability to make outgoing calls at that moment.
E-mail spamming should be a federal crime punishable by death. This is regardless of whether the spammer hijacked a server or used their own--they are still burdening down the public infrastructure of the net with all their crap either way, and causing the rest of us to suffer for it. And in most countries outside the US, consumers already pay per-minute for internet usage, so modem users are actually paying good money to suffer through ridiculously large downloads of spam mail.
Postal mail spamming should be a federal crime punishable by death. It is a waste of trees, one of our most valuable natural resources. It also burdens down the entire postal system, causing postage rates and reliability of the postal system as a whole to worsen for everyone else.
It's time we all stand up to advertisers and spell things out clearly:
"Even if I wanted information about your fucking weekend jewelry sale, or your fake college diploma & bestiality pics web site, or your excellent informational offer about auto insurance, I wouldn't want your fucking spam e-mails, flyers crammed in my apartment mail slot, or mindless zombies calling me at dinner time. If I were interested, I'd go look up the information myself when I needed it. Obviously I'm NOT INTERESTED because I don't respond, I just throw all your crap away and forward your scams to the Federal Trade Commission day after day after day. So take your flyers and shove them up your ass, and then go send some pornographic e-mails to yourself while we have everyone line up and call you to offer you special deals which we swear are not attempts to sell you something, you lying pricks!"
Adhere 100% to standards. This means you need to implement proper accessibility, too.
Use only text. No graphics. The site's purpose is to be functional, not pretty.
Provide a FULL and FAST keyword search engine of the entire site.
Provide e-mail addresses and phone numbers of REAL PEOPLE I can contact for TIMELY answers to questions or problems I may have, and KEEP THIS INFO UP-TO-DATE. Ensure 24/7/holidays access to these contacts so that if I get an urgent question at 10pm Friday night on Christmas weekend that I don't have to wait until Wednesday morning to get a reply to my e-mail.
Get a convenient domain name for the site. http://www.doe.us.gov/~loans/terms/cgi-bin/script. asp?128973987123-1293871-1293819283&page=welcome_t o_our_cool_site.html is NOT the kind of thing people want to have to remember.
Get listed in all the major search engines such as Yahoo, Google, WebCrawler, and AtlaVista.
Host the site on hefty enough hardware that it won't give me a pathetic 0.8kb/sec on my DSL or T1 connection.
...that purchasers of filtering software don't even know what it is they are getting.
And this is true of hundreds of other kinds of products that don't have anything to do with censorship.
Foods and over-the-counter drugs (at least in the US) are required to have the list of ingredients and their nutrition information printed on their packaging. This is a good thing because it permits consumers to be aware of what they're getting in exchange for their money.
If everything else (electronics, computers, cars, filterware, crayons) were held to the same standard of openness, we wouldn't have a problem here. There would actually be accountability, if you can imagine that!
486-33: Fast in an absolute sense, but mind-numbingly slow in a relative sense. You may be able to convince me that a 486 is faster than using an abacus or drawing circles in the sand with a twig, but you'll never get me to believe it can outperform my Athlon 650MHz even if you overclock it to death:-)
Some people are always bitching about graphics, X, desktop environments, etc, etc when it comes to Linux. But as you stated, you don't have to use any of it! If you are only using Linux for server purposes, then quit bitching and let the rest of us pursue an open-source, usable desktop OS in peace:-)
Of course it's worth it to most people! But for the few freaks running 486/33's who are still worried about performance dragging because of some fonts, there should still be a configuration option for X to turn the anti-aliasing off.
I'm not a walking batch of survey statistics, you ass hole; I just use common sense. And yes, I did indeed list examples, which you so carelessly took it upon yourself to completely dismiss, but which I will now cite once again just to address your complete lack of a brain:
How about the cost of moving all their software over to Linux? Oh wait--what about the cost of buying a shitload of new machines that actually have hardware devices supported by Linux? And the cost of hiring more highly trained people to maintain and perform IT services for those new Linux machines? Hrmm... what about the cost of developing their own software when they can't find equivalent Linux applications to take the place of their Windows counterparts?
I shouldn't have to give specific examples of which hardware devices aren't supported by Linux--go into any CompUSA and I dare you to buy something off the shelf that you know will work with Linux. I don't have to give specific numbers about how much more it costs to hire trained UNIX/Linux admins than MSCE admins--in general, it's obvious that the UNIX/Linux admins need to be more skilled, and thus are in higher demand and tend to make higher wages. I shouldn't have to give examples of which software avaible for Windows doesn't have an analagous Linux application available--it's obvious that you can't find software on Linux that meets the needs that Windows applications fill, otherwise a lot more businesses and home users would be using Linux. But if you want an example, I dare you to find a fully-featured sample editing and multi-track program like ProTools or Sound Forge for Linux. I also dare you to find a MIDI program as capable and easy to use as CakeWalk or CuBase. I dare you to show me a web browser for Linux that works anywhere close to as well as IE 5.5 in terms of performance, reliability, or the broadest accuracy when it comes to rendering real-world pages.
But don't mind me, I'm obviously living in a fantasy world where most people use Windows and wouldn't touch Linux with a 10-foot pole... oh, wait a minute, I'm NOT just dreaming that up!
It seems to me that the high level of security in OpenBSD is due to a careful effort toward correctness more than anything else. This not only improves security, but performance and reliability as well. Is this how you view it as well?
What do you think it would take to get companies to apply that same level of up-front care and correctness to ALL of their own products? For instance, I bet you would never get Microsoft to invest that kind of development cost in any home consumer flavor of Windows, because all their usability and marketing results tell them that most home consumers value an abundance over features of anything else. Why would/should Microsoft spend development costs on up-front correctness/security audits of a home consumer OS if it won't dramatically increase sales?
I'm a software developer (programmer). I work hard. But I can easily say that 60% or more of my time isn't spend programming or even bugfixing. Most of my time is spent investigating technical issues, hammering out new feature refinements and specifications with program manager and designers, teaching myself new skills, writing documentation, attending meetings to coordinate ongoing work and scheduling with team members, and other such things. These are all essential parts of a programmer's job, even though they aren't the actual act of coding.
As for the statement that was made about users being "afraid" to use the wealth of features in a program because they think some bug will surface, that's total nonsense. Usability studies show that most users don't use the features because they aren't aware that the features exist or simply have no need for the features at all. In the first case, the lack of feature visibility is entirely the fault of the designers of the feature; and in the second case, there's really no problem if your software is architected correctly (just because a new feature exists in a product, that doesn't mean it should take up memory and slow the execution of other, independent features in the product if it's not being used).
Of course, the ultimate solution (as I saw someone point out here earlier) is to design software to be as componentized as possible. Don't need a certain feature? Don't install that component. Saves disk space.
There are only two things to say about this article:
(1) Virginia Beach brought it upon themselves. If they had bothered to keep track of their important paperwork as they damn well knew they were supposed to, then there wouldn't be any problem.
(2) I just have to respond to this ludicrous pro-Linux propaganda:
Of course, that much money (just the money they're paying to take care of uncertain licenses) could probably also buy CD burners and enough blanks to create no-license-hassles copies of Linux or Free / Open / NetBSD for every computer the city owns.
Gee, and would that also cover the higher support cost for Linux? How about the cost of moving all their software over to Linux? Oh wait--what about the cost of buying a shitload of new machines that actually have hardware devices supported by Linux? And the cost of hiring more highly trained people to maintain and perform IT services for those new Linux machines? Hrmm... what about the cost of developing their own software when they can't find equivalent Linux applications to take the place of their Windows counterparts? Oh, don't worry about any of that... after all, it's only tons of money, and what's money got to do with things like operating a government agency or a business?
Yes, that really doesn't sound like some loser running a scam out of his apartment, does it?
C'mon people, use your brains! SEGA obviously didn't license out the usage of the Sonic the Hedgehog logo OR all those old SMS games, and the picture of this "player" looks very clearly like an old VCR, not a new device.
Also, did anyone think to check the WHOIS entry for this dude? Take a look:
Administrative Contact:
roberts, scott carolbowman25@hotmail.com
5773 Woodway #304
houston, tx 77057
US
713-785-1636
Technical Contact:
roberts, scott carolbowman25@hotmail.com
5773 Woodway #304
houston, tx 77057
US
713-785-1636
Billing Contact:
roberts, scott carolbowman25@hotmail.com
5773 Woodway #304
houston, tx 77057
US
713-785-1636
Record last updated on 30-Nov-2000.
Record expires on 08-Nov-2001.
Record Created on 08-Nov-2000.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.SOG.NET 208.195.144.4
If this thing isn't a totally fabricated lie intended as a way to rip people off via PayPal, then it can't be much more than some single dude with some electronics knowledge who cannibalizes an old VCR, an SMS, and a DVD player and then jams all the parts together in an old Betamax player case.
I encourage everyone to call this loser and tell him to stop ripping people off!
Anyone who thinks Linux isn't already suffering badly from fragmentation needs to look at the facts:
- Most distributions use different filesystem hierarchies.
- Most distributions require you to either build from source (so as to build in a distribution-specific way) or install binaries that were precompiled specifically for that distribution.
- In the Linux world, you've got to have these ridiculous tools that actually tweak makefiles and such *before* compiling to make everything is buildable on whatever specific distribution you're running.
- It's nearly impossible (and extremely difficult) to write simple GUI tools for basic system configuration (such as hardware installation/removal, configuring a network, etc) that will work an any distribution, because so much of the low-level system guts needed by such tools are different from one distribution to the next.
- Every distribution includes different programs, different libraries, etc, with no defined set of common tools, programs, and libraries that are guaranteed to exist on all distributions.
The fact that Linux is already so fragmented is the number one reason why Linux can't come close to competing with the ease-of-use of Windows or Macintosh platforms.
Why people get pains with keyboards.
on
Keyless Keyboard
·
· Score: 1
There are basically three reasons that people get pains in their hands, wrists, and forearms from using computer keyboards:
1) They are using a non-split keyboard and have large hands, so their wrists must always be bent at a somewhat outward-cocked angle (with the wrists nearly touching) in order to type on a straight keyboard.
2) They are actually resting their wrists on the front edge of their desk or keyboard and all the motion that takes place during their keypresses is limited to the fingers. This places strain on the muscles and tendons in the wrist and forearm. The proper way to type (both more quickly/accurately and without inducing pain) is to keep your wrists floating/elevated above the keyboard, and to just let your fingertips sort of hang down and dance around on the keys as you type. The upward/downward motion of a keypress is supposed to come just as much from elbow movements and moving the entire forearm up-and-down as it is from moving your fingers.
3) People have the keyboard positioned incorrectly in relation to their body. The keyboard should be placed at a vertical height equal to or just below your elbows when your arms hang at your side, and the keyboard should be inclined forward or backward (or even level) to whatever position you need such that your wrists, when floating about an inch above the keyboard, are level (not cocked upward or downward at a weird angle).
So basically I'm advocating the use of split keyboards, and I'm advocating proper ergonomic technique while typing.
Personally, I used to hate split keyboards because I wasn't used to typing on them and always screwed up which keys I wanted to hit... but then I bought a split keyboard for use at home and got used to typing on it over a period of about 1 week, only to find that in the end it is far more comfortable because it keeps your wrists at a more natural angle.
Even so, I've been typing away on computers since I was 10 years old and I've never had any kind of serious wrist/hand/arm trouble. If I find that something I'm doing is uncomfortable or strenuous, then I stop immediately and change the way I'm doing things. The worst thing you can do is just keep repeating a strenuous activity over and over again.
As for this "KeyBowl" product, it sounds really lame. I don't care how much research they claim to have done with it--the mathematical combinations prove that it simply can't do everything a normal keyboard can accomplish, and there's obviously going to be a weird learning curve associated with it. Not only that, but the idea of an input device is that it should be standardized and/or intuitive enough that you can use any device that requires input. If you were to only learn to use one of these keybowl things, where would that leave you when you had to walk down to your co-worker's office and assist with a computer problem? How effective are DVORAK keyboard users when they have to assist with a computer that uses a QWERTY keyboard? The keybowl is a gimmicky product that plays off the fears of people who have pains but haven't thought to try proper ergonimic technique.
Oh, and one more thing: if you're ever in the market to buy your first split keyboard, be careful to buy one that has the split in the right place! Many generic-brand split keyboards place the split between the keys in a non-standard way, so if you get used to typing on that keyboard you'll be lost when you have to type on a standard split keyboard. Microsoft's keyboards put the split in the standard place (between the pairs F5/F6; 6/7; T/Y; G/H; B/N) so that's a good baseline to use for comparison even if you don't like their keyboards.
The problem with copyright is that the copyright holder can continue to hold the copyright even after they have stopped producing the copyrighted material.
I think the copyright law should change to basically say (without any loopholes of any kind) that if a copyright holder has previously actively produced goods or services based on that copyright, but then halts production of goods or services based on that copyright for a period of over 400 days, that the copyright is lost and the idea that was copyrighted is then public domain from that point forward. The same should be true of patents.
This would permit initial R&D time to get a product off the ground, and would permit for roughly annual releases of new versions or incarnations of products based on the same idea, but when that one company stops supplying products based on the copyrighted idea then anyone else can pick up the idea and run with it. This fosters innovation without stifling it in any way.
At Rice University, there is enough geekiness and enough backlash against conformity that we were able to select totally meaningless (and humorous) figures as our homecoming king and queen, making a statement in the process.
My junior year the student body voted the Transco Tower (a corporate skyscraper in downtown Houston) homecoming king and Richard Smalley (that egotistical, Nobel-prize-in-chemistry-winning, buckyball-molesting piece of shit excuse for a Chem102 professor) as homecoming queen.
I think the best part was the response from the receptionist in the main lobby of the Transco tower when our student body representative called and informed her that their building would have to make an appearance in our parade.
The slashdot community appears fixated with the idea of shallow patents. Nearly every patent article posted on the main page makes some sweeping, vague comment about how stupid or "obvious" or evil the cited patent is... but I very rarely see any links to the exact patent text, or concrete arguments about why the patent shouldn't have been granted.
It's easy in hindsight to look at an idea someone else came up with and to say it was just common sense. What's difficult is to come up with an important new idea and then protect your ability to profit from it. I think that the Slashdot community needs to either (1) stop bitching about how stupid or "obvious" certain patents are or how they never should have been granted, or (2) start citing exact patent text, exposing prior published art, and getting people with real legal skills to decipher the meaning and give examples of the scope the patent could cover.
Gore: As an animatronic robot created, operated, and solely owned by Disney corporation, I strongly believe it is our nation's responsibility to protect our precious children from the likes of governer George W. Bush. The governer claims that he is in support of better education and lower pollution for our children, but in reality we all know that he wants to force children to suck on automobile tail pipes at least 4 hours a day and joyously release tens of cans of flourocarbons into the atmosphere as punishment for being elderly. After all, who's smirk are you going to trust--my pretentious one, or Bush's sheepish one?
Bush:As governer of Texas, I have worked to bring smart Democrats and Republicans together on key issues so that I wouldn't have to think about such difficult things as gradeschool education and individual rights. While driving our gas-guzzling SUV by the local oil refinery last week, my wife and I were reminded of the importance of taking money from special interest groups and then accusing the vice-president of doing the same. My opponent's heart has been darkened by his own invention, twisting him into a Satanic freak like those third party candidates. (Although, those third party candidates aren't as bad as Gore, so vote for them if you don't vote for me).
I work for Microsoft, and this supposed letter is an obvious hoax. Not only is the content of the letter composed very poorly (BillG and any other upper management types use spelling and grammar checkers before sending their mails and never make such grotesque and obvious mistakes), but it is addressed to "all@microsoft.com", which is a non-existant e-mail alias. Additionally, no internal Microsoft employee would address an e-mail to "alias@microsoft.com" because that would cause the mail to travel unnecessarily outside of the corporate exchange servers, across internet pathways, and back into the intended recipients. All corporate e-mail is sent to other users on our corporate network, so you never see mail addressed like this from one employee to another.
But the difference between the non-drug examples of risk that you cited and the usage of "recreational" drugs is NECESSITY. It's necessary to drive cars and use fuel and produce energy in order to support our society and to survive within it. However, it is in no way NECESSARY to use recreational drugs.
And he doesn't want to stop at censoring it; he actually wants to outlaw it.
Even after reading the article to which you linked, I'm unable to understand where you got that idea. Nader discusses the problem (I don't think anyone can deny that violent material falling into children's hands without proper parental guidance is a good thing), but he doesn't propose a concrete solution, quite possibly because he didn't have one worked out in his own mind at the time (May 1999).
I've been unable to find a current, specific discussion of this issue on the Nader campaign site, but I would suspect based on the rest of his (and the Green Party's) positions that he would be entirely in support of stronger laws that outlaw the sale of such products to minors. If adults want to purchase such materials for themselves or their children, that's their right, but the government has an obligation to keep that material out of the hands of children when parents fail to do the job themselves.
It's very easy to say that the government should stay out of the issue entirely because that's the path of least resistance for both government and for consumers of the material, but you've got to realize that when a parent fails to provide a healthy atmosphere in which their child can develop, it becomes the government's responsbility to care for the well-being of that child. It doesn't matter whether the parent is strung out on drugs or is failing to review and restrict/guide the child's access to graphic material--in both cases the child suffers consequences due to the parent's negligence. The child becomes a victim, and the government has a responsibility to step in and protect.
For all you people who still think that using mind-altering drugs should be legal because it is a victimless crime, you should listen to this argument:
These crimes are never victimless. If an individual uses drugs, they make victims out of their friends, spouses, children already born, children in-utero, and the complete strangers they kill accidentally or intentionally while under the influence or while dealing in the illegal drugs underground market.
The people who live in the neighborhood of a drug addict become victims, because the drug addict brings along a lower standard of living and brings other people around the neighborhood that you don't want there... people who don't respect the law or human life very much at all.
This is why drug usage is never a victimless crime. Some people argue that "as long as an individual is responsible about how they do it, it's fine and doesn't hurt anyone". In reality, it's simply not possible to be responsible enough to bring the risk of making someone else a victim down to zero.
This is why mind-altering drugs not used for medical purposes need to continue to be illegal, and it's why we need to continue to fight against it. While I'm all for individual freedoms, I draw the line at actions individuals take which bring negative consequences upon innocent bystanders.
Slashdot Mirror
So if you send me an email by accident, I can have you killed? Jailed even?
No, because I wasn't mass-mailing the message to hundreds of people. The scale of the transmission must be taken into consideration along with the content. In the phone world, it would be the difference between dialing the wrong number and methodically making tens of calls per hour for telemarketing purposes.
What if I mistype an address telling a friend about a good deal I found on computer equipment? What if you did the same thing?
If you don't mistype the address (and you just send something to a friend), that's not unsolicited. If you do mistype the address, again, you haven't mass-mailed something to hundreds of people. Only the combination of content and scale should bring punishment into effect, but that punishment when enacted should be as harsh as possible.
E-mail & postal mail spammers and telephone solicitors should all be PUT TO DEATH. There is nothing more obnoxious, nothing more wasteful of everyone else's time and resources, than having to receive and dispose of unsolicited advertisements.
Telemarketing should be a federal crime punishable by death. Some of you claim it's merely annoying, not harmful, but you're wrong. Telemarketing increases the load on the already over-burdened phone networks, raising local and long distance service rates for everyone else, so in effect we are all paying for it. Telemarketing saps the performance and availability out of the phone networks, and it can also often times be life-threateningly dangerous, such as those telemarketed automated messages that refuse to disconnect even when you hang the phone up for a good 30 seconds and pick it up again, totally blocking your ability to make outgoing calls at that moment.
E-mail spamming should be a federal crime punishable by death. This is regardless of whether the spammer hijacked a server or used their own--they are still burdening down the public infrastructure of the net with all their crap either way, and causing the rest of us to suffer for it. And in most countries outside the US, consumers already pay per-minute for internet usage, so modem users are actually paying good money to suffer through ridiculously large downloads of spam mail.
Postal mail spamming should be a federal crime punishable by death. It is a waste of trees, one of our most valuable natural resources. It also burdens down the entire postal system, causing postage rates and reliability of the postal system as a whole to worsen for everyone else.
It's time we all stand up to advertisers and spell things out clearly:
"Even if I wanted information about your fucking weekend jewelry sale, or your fake college diploma & bestiality pics web site, or your excellent informational offer about auto insurance, I wouldn't want your fucking spam e-mails, flyers crammed in my apartment mail slot, or mindless zombies calling me at dinner time. If I were interested, I'd go look up the information myself when I needed it. Obviously I'm NOT INTERESTED because I don't respond, I just throw all your crap away and forward your scams to the Federal Trade Commission day after day after day. So take your flyers and shove them up your ass, and then go send some pornographic e-mails to yourself while we have everyone line up and call you to offer you special deals which we swear are not attempts to sell you something, you lying pricks!"
(Can you tell I'm upset?)
...that purchasers of filtering software don't even know what it is they are getting.
And this is true of hundreds of other kinds of products that don't have anything to do with censorship.
Foods and over-the-counter drugs (at least in the US) are required to have the list of ingredients and their nutrition information printed on their packaging. This is a good thing because it permits consumers to be aware of what they're getting in exchange for their money.
If everything else (electronics, computers, cars, filterware, crayons) were held to the same standard of openness, we wouldn't have a problem here. There would actually be accountability, if you can imagine that!
Who in the hell wants that?!?
486-33: Fast in an absolute sense, but mind-numbingly slow in a relative sense. You may be able to convince me that a 486 is faster than using an abacus or drawing circles in the sand with a twig, but you'll never get me to believe it can outperform my Athlon 650MHz even if you overclock it to death :-)
:-)
Some people are always bitching about graphics, X, desktop environments, etc, etc when it comes to Linux. But as you stated, you don't have to use any of it! If you are only using Linux for server purposes, then quit bitching and let the rest of us pursue an open-source, usable desktop OS in peace
Of course it's worth it to most people! But for the few freaks running 486/33's who are still worried about performance dragging because of some fonts, there should still be a configuration option for X to turn the anti-aliasing off.
Would someone please bother to explain what GSM service is?
I'm not a walking batch of survey statistics, you ass hole; I just use common sense. And yes, I did indeed list examples, which you so carelessly took it upon yourself to completely dismiss, but which I will now cite once again just to address your complete lack of a brain:
How about the cost of moving all their software over to Linux? Oh wait--what about the cost of buying a shitload of new machines that actually have hardware devices supported by Linux? And the cost of hiring more highly trained people to maintain and perform IT services for those new Linux machines? Hrmm... what about the cost of developing their own software when they can't find equivalent Linux applications to take the place of their Windows counterparts?
I shouldn't have to give specific examples of which hardware devices aren't supported by Linux--go into any CompUSA and I dare you to buy something off the shelf that you know will work with Linux. I don't have to give specific numbers about how much more it costs to hire trained UNIX/Linux admins than MSCE admins--in general, it's obvious that the UNIX/Linux admins need to be more skilled, and thus are in higher demand and tend to make higher wages. I shouldn't have to give examples of which software avaible for Windows doesn't have an analagous Linux application available--it's obvious that you can't find software on Linux that meets the needs that Windows applications fill, otherwise a lot more businesses and home users would be using Linux. But if you want an example, I dare you to find a fully-featured sample editing and multi-track program like ProTools or Sound Forge for Linux. I also dare you to find a MIDI program as capable and easy to use as CakeWalk or CuBase. I dare you to show me a web browser for Linux that works anywhere close to as well as IE 5.5 in terms of performance, reliability, or the broadest accuracy when it comes to rendering real-world pages.
But don't mind me, I'm obviously living in a fantasy world where most people use Windows and wouldn't touch Linux with a 10-foot pole... oh, wait a minute, I'm NOT just dreaming that up!
It seems to me that the high level of security in OpenBSD is due to a careful effort toward correctness more than anything else. This not only improves security, but performance and reliability as well. Is this how you view it as well?
What do you think it would take to get companies to apply that same level of up-front care and correctness to ALL of their own products? For instance, I bet you would never get Microsoft to invest that kind of development cost in any home consumer flavor of Windows, because all their usability and marketing results tell them that most home consumers value an abundance over features of anything else. Why would/should Microsoft spend development costs on up-front correctness/security audits of a home consumer OS if it won't dramatically increase sales?
I'm a software developer (programmer). I work hard. But I can easily say that 60% or more of my time isn't spend programming or even bugfixing. Most of my time is spent investigating technical issues, hammering out new feature refinements and specifications with program manager and designers, teaching myself new skills, writing documentation, attending meetings to coordinate ongoing work and scheduling with team members, and other such things. These are all essential parts of a programmer's job, even though they aren't the actual act of coding.
As for the statement that was made about users being "afraid" to use the wealth of features in a program because they think some bug will surface, that's total nonsense. Usability studies show that most users don't use the features because they aren't aware that the features exist or simply have no need for the features at all. In the first case, the lack of feature visibility is entirely the fault of the designers of the feature; and in the second case, there's really no problem if your software is architected correctly (just because a new feature exists in a product, that doesn't mean it should take up memory and slow the execution of other, independent features in the product if it's not being used).
Of course, the ultimate solution (as I saw someone point out here earlier) is to design software to be as componentized as possible. Don't need a certain feature? Don't install that component. Saves disk space.
There are only two things to say about this article:
(1) Virginia Beach brought it upon themselves. If they had bothered to keep track of their important paperwork as they damn well knew they were supposed to, then there wouldn't be any problem.
(2) I just have to respond to this ludicrous pro-Linux propaganda:
Of course, that much money (just the money they're paying to take care of uncertain licenses) could probably also buy CD burners and enough blanks to create no-license-hassles copies of Linux or Free / Open / NetBSD for every computer the city owns.Gee, and would that also cover the higher support cost for Linux? How about the cost of moving all their software over to Linux? Oh wait--what about the cost of buying a shitload of new machines that actually have hardware devices supported by Linux? And the cost of hiring more highly trained people to maintain and perform IT services for those new Linux machines? Hrmm... what about the cost of developing their own software when they can't find equivalent Linux applications to take the place of their Windows counterparts? Oh, don't worry about any of that... after all, it's only tons of money, and what's money got to do with things like operating a government agency or a business?
Would you really fork over hundreds of dollars to a "company" claiming to operate out of the following address?
Dulux Electronics
5773 Woodway #304
Houston, Texas 77057
Yes, that really doesn't sound like some loser running a scam out of his apartment, does it?
C'mon people, use your brains! SEGA obviously didn't license out the usage of the Sonic the Hedgehog logo OR all those old SMS games, and the picture of this "player" looks very clearly like an old VCR, not a new device.
Also, did anyone think to check the WHOIS entry for this dude? Take a look:
[rr-n1-tor.opensrs.net]
Registrant:
ecommerce inc
5773 Woodway #304
houston, tx 77057
US
Domain Name: GAMEDVDPLAYER.COM
Administrative Contact:
roberts, scott carolbowman25@hotmail.com
5773 Woodway #304
houston, tx 77057
US
713-785-1636
Technical Contact:
roberts, scott carolbowman25@hotmail.com
5773 Woodway #304
houston, tx 77057
US
713-785-1636
Billing Contact:
roberts, scott carolbowman25@hotmail.com
5773 Woodway #304
houston, tx 77057
US
713-785-1636
Record last updated on 30-Nov-2000.
Record expires on 08-Nov-2001.
Record Created on 08-Nov-2000.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.SOG.NET 208.195.144.4
If this thing isn't a totally fabricated lie intended as a way to rip people off via PayPal, then it can't be much more than some single dude with some electronics knowledge who cannibalizes an old VCR, an SMS, and a DVD player and then jams all the parts together in an old Betamax player case.
I encourage everyone to call this loser and tell him to stop ripping people off!
Anyone who thinks Linux isn't already suffering badly from fragmentation needs to look at the facts:
- Most distributions use different filesystem hierarchies.
- Most distributions require you to either build from source (so as to build in a distribution-specific way) or install binaries that were precompiled specifically for that distribution.
- In the Linux world, you've got to have these ridiculous tools that actually tweak makefiles and such *before* compiling to make everything is buildable on whatever specific distribution you're running.
- It's nearly impossible (and extremely difficult) to write simple GUI tools for basic system configuration (such as hardware installation/removal, configuring a network, etc) that will work an any distribution, because so much of the low-level system guts needed by such tools are different from one distribution to the next.
- Every distribution includes different programs, different libraries, etc, with no defined set of common tools, programs, and libraries that are guaranteed to exist on all distributions.
The fact that Linux is already so fragmented is the number one reason why Linux can't come close to competing with the ease-of-use of Windows or Macintosh platforms.
There are basically three reasons that people get pains in their hands, wrists, and forearms from using computer keyboards:
1) They are using a non-split keyboard and have large hands, so their wrists must always be bent at a somewhat outward-cocked angle (with the wrists nearly touching) in order to type on a straight keyboard.
2) They are actually resting their wrists on the front edge of their desk or keyboard and all the motion that takes place during their keypresses is limited to the fingers. This places strain on the muscles and tendons in the wrist and forearm. The proper way to type (both more quickly/accurately and without inducing pain) is to keep your wrists floating/elevated above the keyboard, and to just let your fingertips sort of hang down and dance around on the keys as you type. The upward/downward motion of a keypress is supposed to come just as much from elbow movements and moving the entire forearm up-and-down as it is from moving your fingers.
3) People have the keyboard positioned incorrectly in relation to their body. The keyboard should be placed at a vertical height equal to or just below your elbows when your arms hang at your side, and the keyboard should be inclined forward or backward (or even level) to whatever position you need such that your wrists, when floating about an inch above the keyboard, are level (not cocked upward or downward at a weird angle).
So basically I'm advocating the use of split keyboards, and I'm advocating proper ergonomic technique while typing.
Personally, I used to hate split keyboards because I wasn't used to typing on them and always screwed up which keys I wanted to hit... but then I bought a split keyboard for use at home and got used to typing on it over a period of about 1 week, only to find that in the end it is far more comfortable because it keeps your wrists at a more natural angle.
Even so, I've been typing away on computers since I was 10 years old and I've never had any kind of serious wrist/hand/arm trouble. If I find that something I'm doing is uncomfortable or strenuous, then I stop immediately and change the way I'm doing things. The worst thing you can do is just keep repeating a strenuous activity over and over again.
As for this "KeyBowl" product, it sounds really lame. I don't care how much research they claim to have done with it--the mathematical combinations prove that it simply can't do everything a normal keyboard can accomplish, and there's obviously going to be a weird learning curve associated with it. Not only that, but the idea of an input device is that it should be standardized and/or intuitive enough that you can use any device that requires input. If you were to only learn to use one of these keybowl things, where would that leave you when you had to walk down to your co-worker's office and assist with a computer problem? How effective are DVORAK keyboard users when they have to assist with a computer that uses a QWERTY keyboard? The keybowl is a gimmicky product that plays off the fears of people who have pains but haven't thought to try proper ergonimic technique.
Oh, and one more thing: if you're ever in the market to buy your first split keyboard, be careful to buy one that has the split in the right place! Many generic-brand split keyboards place the split between the keys in a non-standard way, so if you get used to typing on that keyboard you'll be lost when you have to type on a standard split keyboard. Microsoft's keyboards put the split in the standard place (between the pairs F5/F6; 6/7; T/Y; G/H; B/N) so that's a good baseline to use for comparison even if you don't like their keyboards.
The problem with copyright is that the copyright holder can continue to hold the copyright even after they have stopped producing the copyrighted material.
I think the copyright law should change to basically say (without any loopholes of any kind) that if a copyright holder has previously actively produced goods or services based on that copyright, but then halts production of goods or services based on that copyright for a period of over 400 days, that the copyright is lost and the idea that was copyrighted is then public domain from that point forward. The same should be true of patents.
This would permit initial R&D time to get a product off the ground, and would permit for roughly annual releases of new versions or incarnations of products based on the same idea, but when that one company stops supplying products based on the copyrighted idea then anyone else can pick up the idea and run with it. This fosters innovation without stifling it in any way.
At Rice University, there is enough geekiness and enough backlash against conformity that we were able to select totally meaningless (and humorous) figures as our homecoming king and queen, making a statement in the process.
My junior year the student body voted the Transco Tower (a corporate skyscraper in downtown Houston) homecoming king and Richard Smalley (that egotistical, Nobel-prize-in-chemistry-winning, buckyball-molesting piece of shit excuse for a Chem102 professor) as homecoming queen.
I think the best part was the response from the receptionist in the main lobby of the Transco tower when our student body representative called and informed her that their building would have to make an appearance in our parade.
The slashdot community appears fixated with the idea of shallow patents. Nearly every patent article posted on the main page makes some sweeping, vague comment about how stupid or "obvious" or evil the cited patent is... but I very rarely see any links to the exact patent text, or concrete arguments about why the patent shouldn't have been granted.
It's easy in hindsight to look at an idea someone else came up with and to say it was just common sense. What's difficult is to come up with an important new idea and then protect your ability to profit from it. I think that the Slashdot community needs to either (1) stop bitching about how stupid or "obvious" certain patents are or how they never should have been granted, or (2) start citing exact patent text, exposing prior published art, and getting people with real legal skills to decipher the meaning and give examples of the scope the patent could cover.
Gore: As an animatronic robot created, operated, and solely owned by Disney corporation, I strongly believe it is our nation's responsibility to protect our precious children from the likes of governer George W. Bush. The governer claims that he is in support of better education and lower pollution for our children, but in reality we all know that he wants to force children to suck on automobile tail pipes at least 4 hours a day and joyously release tens of cans of flourocarbons into the atmosphere as punishment for being elderly. After all, who's smirk are you going to trust--my pretentious one, or Bush's sheepish one?
Bush:As governer of Texas, I have worked to bring smart Democrats and Republicans together on key issues so that I wouldn't have to think about such difficult things as gradeschool education and individual rights. While driving our gas-guzzling SUV by the local oil refinery last week, my wife and I were reminded of the importance of taking money from special interest groups and then accusing the vice-president of doing the same. My opponent's heart has been darkened by his own invention, twisting him into a Satanic freak like those third party candidates. (Although, those third party candidates aren't as bad as Gore, so vote for them if you don't vote for me).
I work for Microsoft, and this supposed letter is an obvious hoax. Not only is the content of the letter composed very poorly (BillG and any other upper management types use spelling and grammar checkers before sending their mails and never make such grotesque and obvious mistakes), but it is addressed to "all@microsoft.com", which is a non-existant e-mail alias. Additionally, no internal Microsoft employee would address an e-mail to "alias@microsoft.com" because that would cause the mail to travel unnecessarily outside of the corporate exchange servers, across internet pathways, and back into the intended recipients. All corporate e-mail is sent to other users on our corporate network, so you never see mail addressed like this from one employee to another.
But the difference between the non-drug examples of risk that you cited and the usage of "recreational" drugs is NECESSITY. It's necessary to drive cars and use fuel and produce energy in order to support our society and to survive within it. However, it is in no way NECESSARY to use recreational drugs.
If you can produce a document describing one click purchasing that was published prior to September 12, 1997, you can earn the $10,000 bounty.
Hey, that's easy! Just set the date back on your PC and host a personal web server...
And he doesn't want to stop at censoring it; he actually wants to outlaw it.
Even after reading the article to which you linked, I'm unable to understand where you got that idea. Nader discusses the problem (I don't think anyone can deny that violent material falling into children's hands without proper parental guidance is a good thing), but he doesn't propose a concrete solution, quite possibly because he didn't have one worked out in his own mind at the time (May 1999).
I've been unable to find a current, specific discussion of this issue on the Nader campaign site, but I would suspect based on the rest of his (and the Green Party's) positions that he would be entirely in support of stronger laws that outlaw the sale of such products to minors. If adults want to purchase such materials for themselves or their children, that's their right, but the government has an obligation to keep that material out of the hands of children when parents fail to do the job themselves.
It's very easy to say that the government should stay out of the issue entirely because that's the path of least resistance for both government and for consumers of the material, but you've got to realize that when a parent fails to provide a healthy atmosphere in which their child can develop, it becomes the government's responsbility to care for the well-being of that child. It doesn't matter whether the parent is strung out on drugs or is failing to review and restrict/guide the child's access to graphic material--in both cases the child suffers consequences due to the parent's negligence. The child becomes a victim, and the government has a responsibility to step in and protect.
For all you people who still think that using mind-altering drugs should be legal because it is a victimless crime, you should listen to this argument:
These crimes are never victimless. If an individual uses drugs, they make victims out of their friends, spouses, children already born, children in-utero, and the complete strangers they kill accidentally or intentionally while under the influence or while dealing in the illegal drugs underground market.
The people who live in the neighborhood of a drug addict become victims, because the drug addict brings along a lower standard of living and brings other people around the neighborhood that you don't want there... people who don't respect the law or human life very much at all.
This is why drug usage is never a victimless crime. Some people argue that "as long as an individual is responsible about how they do it, it's fine and doesn't hurt anyone". In reality, it's simply not possible to be responsible enough to bring the risk of making someone else a victim down to zero.
This is why mind-altering drugs not used for medical purposes need to continue to be illegal, and it's why we need to continue to fight against it. While I'm all for individual freedoms, I draw the line at actions individuals take which bring negative consequences upon innocent bystanders.