Who's biting the hand that feeds them? Not Theo. Theo has class. Theo lost some bucks. That sucks. But here's the thing: DARPA gets a lot more out of Theo then Theo ever hoped to get from DARPA. This is just another example of idiocy run rampant at the defense department. This is the same department, remember, that ascertained the necessity of protecting the Iraq Oil Ministry whilst the relics of civilation's birth were plundered. What's so important about the Oil Ministry? What have they got there? A bunch of loan guarantees with the French, vs. the cradle of civilazation? DOD fuckwit shitwits. These people are so stupid that they will put their own interests at risk in order to spite someone (a very intelligent someone) who doesn't tow their fucked up party line.
Theo will prevail. The current administration of the US DOD will go down in history as infamous self-important crusading intolerant assholes responsible for great world instability and economic chaos.
the tendancy of people to try to drag ethics into any topic where it doesn't belong (ie, anywhere outside a church),
I'm as athiestic as they come, and I still say ethics matter. In fact, I'll say that ethics matter more than anything else.
You apparently disagree. How do you organize your worldview? Is your penis at the apex, procreation uber alles? Do you obey the law because you don't have a choice, or because you believe laws represent society's best effort to achieve a better world? What would you do to make the world a better place? Or don't you care? Get what you can, and fuck the rest, right?
If such thinking goes on at the EFF, I won't be sponsoring it with cash donations. I like the EFF, but right now, they better seriously consider getting rid of this yahoo, or their credibility is going to take a serious hit.
Children can be all-consuming. Don't get so wrapped up in it that you forget about your wonderful wife. Finding time to do the things you used to do as a couple will become difficult. If you have family nearby, that can be a big help. It's easier to go out with an infant than with a toddler - they can't move, they mostly just eat and sleep (unless cursed w/ colic). Go out now, while you can. You can't shut kids off. They are 100% your responsibility, 24 hours a day. But you need a break. You both need to take breaks together. Find a babysitter. If you don't do these things, you may wake up one day wondering why you're living with a stranger.
How do you (SCO) plan to deal with the loss of community goodwill due to this lawsuit?
By obsequiously showing their solidarity with the unwashed slashdot masses, graciously granting us the opportunity to ask them questions.
Here's my question: Companies are just collections of individuals. Name the individuals hiding behind the SCO moniker who are directly reponsible for prosecuting this idiotic lawsuit.
Of course, this is the stupidest Ask Slashdot ever, as SCO will of course only deign to answer questions with the potential to cast them in a favorable light. Regardless, I will find out the answer to my question without any help from SCO. And I will be sure to never do business with any organization with whom those people are affiliated ever again.
A rising tide floats all boats--consider it like that. As the size of the economy increases, each man's share of it increases.
This popular nautical aphorism sounds nice. Of course the reason a rising tide raises all boats is that water is flat. Oddly, I've never heard any fans of this metaphor advocate that weath should be distributed so equitably.
There are two issues at play here. One concerns how and whether growth relates to happiness. The other concerns how the macroeconomic growth of the whole economy relates to the wealth of individuals.
For the sake of argument, let's say money makes people happy. It makes me happy, anyway, and my seat-of-the-pants assessment is that this holds true for lots of other people too.
Does this mean that maximizing macroeconomic growth will maximize happiness? Only if you buy into the boat floating business. Perhaps maximizing growth requires a grossly inequitable distribution of wealth and power. The ancient Egyptians built great pyramids. Would you like to have built them? Not I.
My gut tells me that growth is a good thing. My gut also tells me that growth uber alles is not. Growth is not the objective. Growth is a means to an end.
...the Internet. It would not be here if it was not for the military needing a fast, efficient way to send data to computers on a world wide basis.
True. DARPA funded a lot of the early architectural work. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it wouldn't have happened without them, though. The important part is that signifant funds and effort were applied toward technological advancement. Such efforts are often made the by the military, space exploration programs, etc. But to say the military itself is responsible for the advancements muddles the issue, I think.
I agree with the upthread poster's suggestion that we would all benefit from devoting more resources to extra-military R&D. There are a lot of cool things we could do that don't involve weapons.
None of this is to say that I'm anti-military, either. Not that I agree with the direction the suits are currently taking us, but that's a different subject.
I don't know of a bank or credit card company that has opened up their software.
Here's one. I'm not saying this is the norm, but it has happened. More importantly, it will continue happening.
I agree with your point, though. You can't always find GPL's apps where you want them. Personally, I still prefer them, if they are available. Not only can I see the source code, but a lot of other people can too. And yes, I do occasionally look at source code, and tweak a fiddly bit here or there. More importantly to me, however, is that GPL's software doesn't tie me to a particular vendor's product. What happens when the company that makes SuperApp goes out of business? What happens when said company gets greedy, and quadrulples the charge for the next upgrade? What happens when you don't want to upgrade, but are forced to, because a security flaw has been found that the company no longer cares to fix? What if the programmer who did all the work at said company leaves and would like to continue building on his own work?
And to those who say GPL advocates promote starving programmers: Bah Humbug. People do make money w/ GPL'd software. See Trolltech, for example. In their case, they leverage people's desire to produce proprietary code to fund the development of GPL'd software.
I still rely on a proprietary application or two, but by and large I've been able to transition to doing almost everything I need to do using free software. I made this transition specifically to avoid the traps and pitfalls of using proprietary software. So to me, "it runs on Linux" is no reason to use a program. Even if it's a useful program, I'll search high and low for an alternative. Even if an open source alternative is not as featurful, if it meets my needs, in the long run I find I avoid a lot of headaches.
Ahem, we are going to pay for? How about Iraqi oil is going to pay for. I haven't heard anyone in the adminstrations making any bones about that, either.
For an administration that values democracy so highly, they sure do a damn good job of telling the rest of the world to shut up and piss off.
I don't have a problem with the US pursuing these types of contracts, as long as the UN awards the contracts. But of course the administration's "the UN is becoming irrelevant" posturing always had as much to do with promoting US interests after the war as it did with prosecuring Saddam's transgressions.
CNN Money also reported that Halliburton recently ran ads "which sought power generator mechanics, water treatment and purification specialists, project managers, firefighters and specialists in dozens of other fields, was certainly well-timed to take advantage of what could soon be a boon to Halliburton's bottom line -- a plum U.S. government contract to help rebuild post-war Iraq".
The interesting part about this is that they were running these ads more than a month before the war in Iraq started!
Of course none of this has anything to do with Dickless "pay me now or pay me later" Cheney.
I think you hit the nail on the head. But here's the question. To what degree do we want our lives to be governed by actuarial accountants? How much can we trust them? Oh, math is math. But let's not let the word "statistics" get in the way of knowing that judgement calls are involved here.
This is really the BIG QUESTION for us all. How do you discern right from wrong? Correct and incorrect? Probable from improbable?
Think about Slashdot's moderation system for a moment. These guys are attempting to separate the wheat from the chaff. Whether they succeed or not, that is the goal. How would you improve on their method? How do you decide whether a statement is bullshit or prophetic?
Until someone can answer these types of questions definitively, I favor giving people the benefit of the doubt. Innocent until proven guilty. Else we are imposing poor judgement on people's livelyhood. Don't send people to jail when you don't really know what you're talking about.
Re:not a C/C++ compiler
on
RMS Turns 50
·
· Score: 1
gcc is still quite a bit behind commercial compilers in many areas
I don't thing OSS should receive any more "special" consideration than any other product.
Do you think public forms and documents should be distributed using proprietary formats, thereby compelling taxpayers who expect to benefit from their existence to aquire the same proprietary software? Do you see any irony in using proprietary software to manage the affairs of public institutions? (hint: proprietary is the opposite of public)
Of course we would rail against a bill requiring MS products to be considered! But this is not a apples to apples comparison. Apple to Microsoft might be (less so lately). OSS/Free Software to Microsoft is not.
Divorcing data from presentation is fine. I don't see anyone who's clued in complaining about that. The complaint is that the presentation half appears to be proprietary. If this is the case (and some people here are saying it's not) then how are you able to collaborate with people using non-MS product on the presentation of a document? You can't.
This is all a puny problem compared to the exclusionary potential of MS's DRM initiatives.
You may note that nowhere does this amendment specifically guarantee a "right to privacy". For some interesting commentary on this issue, you might read some of the comments made by the Supreme Court, in which they discuss the implications of the ninth amendment to the Constitution.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
In the United States, you can count these protections among your Constitutional rights.
You're absolutely right. A fortified house is not at all like a fortified phone. The marginal cost of improving communications security doesn't compare to that of bulletproofing a home. I'm not saying don't use encryption, etc. Quite the contrary. I think manufacturers of such devices are themselves culpable for not providing more stringent security measures.
What I'm saying is the absence of such measures does not equate to permission to be eavedropped upon. In the US, people have a constitutional right to privacy. Searches without warrent are unconstitutional. Eavedropping on people's phone conversations is little different than surveilling what people are doing in their home by peeking through their windows. If you walk past someone's house and see that they're watching TV, you are not a criminal. If you set up a camera outside someone's window to record everything they do, you are. If you inadvertantly overhear someone's phone conversation at the airport, you are not a criminal. If you tap someone's phone, you are. Or should be.
Unfortunately, our elected and appointed government officials are themselves acting against the public interest; and are attempting to convince the citizens of the US that it's OK to be imposed upon in this manner. It's not. We have Admiral Poindexter, a frickin' felon, heading up the Total Information Awareness program. Our attorney general, Asscruft, wants local utility workers to report people's private going's on, to which their special status makes them privy. Bad people. Bad people. Our own attorney general's actions should be considered criminal. Ironic.
The counterargument to this is that if you really want privacy, you need to use strong encryption or simply forget about using mobile phones that way.
The counterargument to your counterargument is that if you don't want people to break into your house, you should build it out of reinforced concrete, use bank vault doors, and multiple layers of bulletproof glass for your windows. That's silly. Instead, you prevail upon people that breaking into people's homes is bad, and punish people who do it. Must less costly, and quite effective.
Slashdot Mirror
Who's biting the hand that feeds them? Not Theo. Theo has class. Theo lost some bucks. That sucks. But here's the thing: DARPA gets a lot more out of Theo then Theo ever hoped to get from DARPA. This is just another example of idiocy run rampant at the defense department. This is the same department, remember, that ascertained the necessity of protecting the Iraq Oil Ministry whilst the relics of civilation's birth were plundered. What's so important about the Oil Ministry? What have they got there? A bunch of loan guarantees with the French, vs. the cradle of civilazation? DOD fuckwit shitwits. These people are so stupid that they will put their own interests at risk in order to spite someone (a very intelligent someone) who doesn't tow their fucked up party line.
Theo will prevail. The current administration of the US DOD will go down in history as infamous self-important crusading intolerant assholes responsible for great world instability and economic chaos.
the tendancy of people to try to drag ethics into any topic where it doesn't belong (ie, anywhere outside a church),
I'm as athiestic as they come, and I still say ethics matter. In fact, I'll say that ethics matter more than anything else.
You apparently disagree. How do you organize your worldview? Is your penis at the apex, procreation uber alles? Do you obey the law because you don't have a choice, or because you believe laws represent society's best effort to achieve a better world? What would you do to make the world a better place? Or don't you care? Get what you can, and fuck the rest, right?
If such thinking goes on in the EFF...
If such thinking goes on at the EFF, I won't be sponsoring it with cash donations. I like the EFF, but right now, they better seriously consider getting rid of this yahoo, or their credibility is going to take a serious hit.
Children can be all-consuming. Don't get so wrapped up in it that you forget about your wonderful wife. Finding time to do the things you used to do as a couple will become difficult. If you have family nearby, that can be a big help. It's easier to go out with an infant than with a toddler - they can't move, they mostly just eat and sleep (unless cursed w/ colic). Go out now, while you can. You can't shut kids off. They are 100% your responsibility, 24 hours a day. But you need a break. You both need to take breaks together. Find a babysitter. If you don't do these things, you may wake up one day wondering why you're living with a stranger.
How do you (SCO) plan to deal with the loss of community goodwill due to this lawsuit?
By obsequiously showing their solidarity with the unwashed slashdot masses, graciously granting us the opportunity to ask them questions.
Here's my question: Companies are just collections of individuals. Name the individuals hiding behind the SCO moniker who are directly reponsible for prosecuting this idiotic lawsuit.
Of course, this is the stupidest Ask Slashdot ever, as SCO will of course only deign to answer questions with the potential to cast them in a favorable light. Regardless, I will find out the answer to my question without any help from SCO. And I will be sure to never do business with any organization with whom those people are affiliated ever again.
A rising tide floats all boats--consider it like that. As the size of the economy increases, each man's share of it increases.
This popular nautical aphorism sounds nice. Of course the reason a rising tide raises all boats is that water is flat. Oddly, I've never heard any fans of this metaphor advocate that weath should be distributed so equitably.
There are two issues at play here. One concerns how and whether growth relates to happiness. The other concerns how the macroeconomic growth of the whole economy relates to the wealth of individuals.
For the sake of argument, let's say money makes people happy. It makes me happy, anyway, and my seat-of-the-pants assessment is that this holds true for lots of other people too.
Does this mean that maximizing macroeconomic growth will maximize happiness? Only if you buy into the boat floating business. Perhaps maximizing growth requires a grossly inequitable distribution of wealth and power. The ancient Egyptians built great pyramids. Would you like to have built them? Not I.
My gut tells me that growth is a good thing. My gut also tells me that growth uber alles is not. Growth is not the objective. Growth is a means to an end.
...the Internet. It would not be here if it was not for the military needing a fast, efficient way to send data to computers on a world wide basis.
True. DARPA funded a lot of the early architectural work. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it wouldn't have happened without them, though. The important part is that signifant funds and effort were applied toward technological advancement. Such efforts are often made the by the military, space exploration programs, etc. But to say the military itself is responsible for the advancements muddles the issue, I think.
I agree with the upthread poster's suggestion that we would all benefit from devoting more resources to extra-military R&D. There are a lot of cool things we could do that don't involve weapons.
None of this is to say that I'm anti-military, either. Not that I agree with the direction the suits are currently taking us, but that's a different subject.
I don't know of a bank or credit card company that has opened up their software.
Here's one. I'm not saying this is the norm, but it has happened. More importantly, it will continue happening.
I agree with your point, though. You can't always find GPL's apps where you want them. Personally, I still prefer them, if they are available. Not only can I see the source code, but a lot of other people can too. And yes, I do occasionally look at source code, and tweak a fiddly bit here or there. More importantly to me, however, is that GPL's software doesn't tie me to a particular vendor's product. What happens when the company that makes SuperApp goes out of business? What happens when said company gets greedy, and quadrulples the charge for the next upgrade? What happens when you don't want to upgrade, but are forced to, because a security flaw has been found that the company no longer cares to fix? What if the programmer who did all the work at said company leaves and would like to continue building on his own work?
And to those who say GPL advocates promote starving programmers: Bah Humbug. People do make money w/ GPL'd software. See Trolltech, for example. In their case, they leverage people's desire to produce proprietary code to fund the development of GPL'd software.
I still rely on a proprietary application or two, but by and large I've been able to transition to doing almost everything I need to do using free software. I made this transition specifically to avoid the traps and pitfalls of using proprietary software. So to me, "it runs on Linux" is no reason to use a program. Even if it's a useful program, I'll search high and low for an alternative. Even if an open source alternative is not as featurful, if it meets my needs, in the long run I find I avoid a lot of headaches.
I wasn't talking about paying for the war. I was talking about paying for reconstruction. Read before you post.
Not only expecting this war, but expecting to get contracts...
The one that we are going to actually pay for
Ahem, we are going to pay for? How about Iraqi oil is going to pay for. I haven't heard anyone in the adminstrations making any bones about that, either.
For an administration that values democracy so highly, they sure do a damn good job of telling the rest of the world to shut up and piss off.
I don't have a problem with the US pursuing these types of contracts, as long as the UN awards the contracts. But of course the administration's "the UN is becoming irrelevant" posturing always had as much to do with promoting US interests after the war as it did with prosecuring Saddam's transgressions.
CNN Money also reported that Halliburton recently ran ads "which sought power generator mechanics, water treatment and purification specialists, project managers, firefighters and specialists in dozens of other fields, was certainly well-timed to take advantage of what could soon be a boon to Halliburton's bottom line -- a plum U.S. government contract to help rebuild post-war Iraq".
The interesting part about this is that they were running these ads more than a month before the war in Iraq started!
Of course none of this has anything to do with Dickless "pay me now or pay me later" Cheney.
It has to do with statistics.
I think you hit the nail on the head. But here's the question. To what degree do we want our lives to be governed by actuarial accountants? How much can we trust them? Oh, math is math. But let's not let the word "statistics" get in the way of knowing that judgement calls are involved here.
This is really the BIG QUESTION for us all. How do you discern right from wrong? Correct and incorrect? Probable from improbable?
Think about Slashdot's moderation system for a moment. These guys are attempting to separate the wheat from the chaff. Whether they succeed or not, that is the goal. How would you improve on their method? How do you decide whether a statement is bullshit or prophetic?
Until someone can answer these types of questions definitively, I favor giving people the benefit of the doubt. Innocent until proven guilty. Else we are imposing poor judgement on people's livelyhood. Don't send people to jail when you don't really know what you're talking about.
gcc is still quite a bit behind commercial compilers in many areas
Curious. Behind which compilers in which areas?
I don't thing OSS should receive any more "special" consideration than any other product.
Do you think public forms and documents should be distributed using proprietary formats, thereby compelling taxpayers who expect to benefit from their existence to aquire the same proprietary software? Do you see any irony in using proprietary software to manage the affairs of public institutions? (hint: proprietary is the opposite of public)
Of course we would rail against a bill requiring MS products to be considered! But this is not a apples to apples comparison. Apple to Microsoft might be (less so lately). OSS/Free Software to Microsoft is not.
...my optimistic side is ever hopeful that we'll someday have a crooked policitian who has the will to stick to his guns on an issue.
:P
Uhhm, oh shit, a big slow softball, too easy, must resist...
You are, of course, a genius. But I'm sure you already know that... ;)
That is to say, what are the chances that these methods are actively being used by attackers?
Do you think it's valid to rate the severity of a compromise by whether it's being actively exploited right now?
Divorcing data from presentation is fine. I don't see anyone who's clued in complaining about that. The complaint is that the presentation half appears to be proprietary. If this is the case (and some people here are saying it's not) then how are you able to collaborate with people using non-MS product on the presentation of a document? You can't.
This is all a puny problem compared to the exclusionary potential of MS's DRM initiatives.
OTOH, MIT is an 'institute'. So instead of saying 'when I was in college', you say 'when I was institutionalized'.
You may note that nowhere does this amendment specifically guarantee a "right to privacy". For some interesting commentary on this issue, you might read some of the comments made by the Supreme Court, in which they discuss the implications of the ninth amendment to the Constitution.
The fourth amendment reads:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
In the United States, you can count these protections among your Constitutional rights.
You're absolutely right. A fortified house is not at all like a fortified phone. The marginal cost of improving communications security doesn't compare to that of bulletproofing a home. I'm not saying don't use encryption, etc. Quite the contrary. I think manufacturers of such devices are themselves culpable for not providing more stringent security measures.
What I'm saying is the absence of such measures does not equate to permission to be eavedropped upon. In the US, people have a constitutional right to privacy. Searches without warrent are unconstitutional. Eavedropping on people's phone conversations is little different than surveilling what people are doing in their home by peeking through their windows. If you walk past someone's house and see that they're watching TV, you are not a criminal. If you set up a camera outside someone's window to record everything they do, you are. If you inadvertantly overhear someone's phone conversation at the airport, you are not a criminal. If you tap someone's phone, you are. Or should be.
Unfortunately, our elected and appointed government officials are themselves acting against the public interest; and are attempting to convince the citizens of the US that it's OK to be imposed upon in this manner. It's not. We have Admiral Poindexter, a frickin' felon, heading up the Total Information Awareness program. Our attorney general, Asscruft, wants local utility workers to report people's private going's on, to which their special status makes them privy. Bad people. Bad people. Our own attorney general's actions should be considered criminal. Ironic.
Invasion of privacy bad. Encryption good.
The counterargument to this is that if you really want privacy, you need to use strong encryption or simply forget about using mobile phones that way.
The counterargument to your counterargument is that if you don't want people to break into your house, you should build it out of reinforced concrete, use bank vault doors, and multiple layers of bulletproof glass for your windows. That's silly. Instead, you prevail upon people that breaking into people's homes is bad, and punish people who do it. Must less costly, and quite effective.