"licenses depend on contract law, which _requires_ both parties to know exactly what they are entering into prior to acceptal. "
Contract law requires both parties to have the opportunity of knowing exactly what they're entering into prior to acceptance, not for them to actually know it. Signing a contract without reading it still results in being bound by the entirety of that contract if the signee(s) could have read it without signing, but chose not to do so or elected to only read some parts of it. It's also binding if the signee didn't understand some or all of it if they had the chance to get somebody who does understand it (e.g. a contract lawyer) to go over it with them.
" They actually have some good High End software such as BizTalk, SharePoint, SQL Server..."
And their Dynamics range, which despite being mostly based on stuff they acquired from other companies, has been subsequently reworked over many years into a set of packages that the people who use such things on a daily basis almost universally reckon are by far the most powerful, configurable, and easy-to-use systems of their type.
I'm not an MS lover by any stretch of the imagination, but a fair minded person should be willing to give credit when it's deserved, and the fact of the matter is that Microsoft produce some very good enterprise software that's extremely competitive price-wise with similar offerings from other companies.
"Hi, I'm Clippy. I think you're trying to enter a Microsoft Store. Would you like to: 1. Buy a PC with Windows(TM)(R) installed on it? 2. Buy some Microsoft(R) software to run on a PC you already have, or in addition to the PC you are buying in option (1)?" 3. Buy a Zune(TM)(R)?"
"In one sentence you claim it is garbage that kids die from chicken pox, in another you state it happens (even though rarely)."
Go ahead and quote a small part of what I actually wrote so you can pretend that you were entirely correct in claiming that children die of chicken pox. The fact that the sentence from which it was gleaned quite clearly stated that _the adult form of chicken pox_ is more severe that the childhood one (as is also for example the case with mumps), is of course irrelevant, as is the other trivial fact that none of the incredibly tiny number of recorded deaths from chicken pox were children despite them being by far the most likely group to contract it.
"Then again your dumb ass neglects to think of (or at least state) that I was using a generalization"
Oh look, an ad-hominem together with a desperate attempt to manoeuvre around having to admit that you were wrong. It is indeed rare to find such an edifying combination of defensive insulting, intellectual dishonesty, and hypocrisy in one compact package!
"I'm always amazed that people don't think that genocide is the most probable answer."
Some don't think it's the most probably answer for the following reasons:
1) fossil evidence from Israel and elsewhere indicates that Neanderthals and early humans peacefully coexisted for at least 50,000 years in close proximity to one another.
2) The population densities of both species were so low in any areas where evidence of them coexisting is found for it to be extremely unlikely that they'd have had any reason for sustained conflict with one another.
3) Human groups were as a rule no larger than those of the Neanderthals at the time when they became extinct, and their weapons technologies were similar, so it's unlikely that the dozen or so humans living near a dozen Neanderthals would have found the idea of getting into a fight with a species that was both significantly physically stronger and more durable than them at all attractive.
4) There is a growing body of evidence to indicate that human and Neanderthals traded with one another in ways that both species obviously thought were advantageous.
"How many situations involving different human cultures meeting have resulted in something else than total war and massacres?"
The key here is the term "cultures", which didn't exist in the small and mostly isolated human hunter-gatherer groups that were around 30,000 years ago. Both species lived in what were essentially extended families of at most 20 individuals who survived by hunting and gathering, so they spent the majority of their time in the major pursuit of all animals, i.e. finding enough to eat.
I suggest that you read about some of the anthropological studies that have been done into the few surviving hunter-gatherer human groups and the generosity, openness, and gentle curiosity that they display towards strangers to see why one cannot just assume that all humans are prone to behave in the same way as civilised humans do.
"None? Less than zero? Wiping off other humans who are slightly different than us is one of the few universal human traits"
It's one of the traits of very large groups of humans, not small, isolated ones. The total human population of Europe and the Middle East when the Neanderthals died out was in the low tens of thousands, and the fact that there's a growing body of evidence to indicate that even this small number of individuals was declining sharply at the transition point between the middle and late palaeolithic periods means that the likelihood of conflict between them was even more remote than would have been the case previously.
And it is IMO this sharp decline in humans at the time when Neanderthals disappeared that provides the best clue to the reason for it, because fossil evidence indicates that the populations of large game animals also declined significantly. It's here we find that one of the major differences between humans and Neanderthals could be the reason for our survival and their disappearance, because there's evidence that humans during this period fished and hunted small game, whereas Neanderthals appear to have been much more dependent on large game for both food and clothing. This greater flexibility in diet and clothes sources may well have made the difference between a sharp but survivable population decline for our species, and a more severe one among the Neanderthals that reduced their population to unsustainable levels.
"trait may also apply to ants"
Ants and termites build cities that can have populations of anything from thousands to millions of individuals, so it's not surprising to find that they act in ways that are sometimes uncannily similar to human groups of similar sizes and levels of organisation.
NB: the fact that we almost became extinct several times over the last 100,000 years is a good indicator of how easily a single event or set of events over a few years can push a species with a low population (and low populations are the only sustainable ones for large predators such as human and Neanderthal hunter-gatherers) into a terminal decline from which it's unable to recover.
"Consenting to unknown code running on your computer is consenting to ANY code running on your computer."
If this is the case, then inviting a girlfriend over for dinner and an overnight stay is consenting to anyone using your house and eating your food whenever they feel like doing so. People are after all largely interchangeable, and it's impossible to know what those you're familiar with are doing and thinking all the time even when you're nominally with them, so there's no difference between inviting somebody you know into your premises, and having a bunch of skinheads invite themselves to use your property, resources, and facilities whenever, and however they want.
"Thats what vista does and the UAC kicks in when you need admin access. There has been nothing but complaints and bitching about this."
People aren't bitching about UAC kicking in when they need admin access, they're bitching about the fact that it kicks in when they're doing all sorts of stuff that doesn't require admin access, that its messages are sometimes more cryptic and difficult to understand than equivalent ones on a locked-down corporate XP system, and that they frequently have to confirm the same operation several times.
"People are surprised their 10 year old software that writes to c:\temp doesnt work anymore."
And other people such as you and Microsoft are surprised when people or companies who specifically bought new Windows PCs because they want to run their existing Windows software get pissed off when they find out that they've handed over a significant chunk of change for the computer equivalent of a chocolate kettle.
"Shame that even the good changes MS does is received with the same old bellyaching."
What people are bellyaching about is the horrid way these changes have been implemented, not the fact that MS have made a real effort to produce something with significantly better levels of security than any of their prior desktop OS offerings.
"Neanderthals are probably not any different in that way (it is probable, though, they disappeared because we humans killed them off)"
One _theory_ is that they disappeared because we (or rather, Cro-Magnon Man, who also disappeared around 8,000 BCE) killed them off, but there are plenty of other theories which are equally probable in that none of them have much in the way of supporting evidence. The only real answer to the question of why they died out is therefore the same as the one for so many other extinct lifeforms, i.e. we do not as yet know why they disappeared.
"they're a different species (which means they can still interbreed with humans and produce fertile offspring)"
Nobody as yet knows whether they could interbreed with Cro-Magnon man, or for that matter, other early human ancestor species that existed at the same time (e.g. late period Homo Erectus). It should also be noted that even if we could interbreed, there's a distinct possibility that any offspring would have been sterile, so Neanderthal genes from cross-breeds might not have been passed on to subsequent generations.
A good example to consider here is chimpanzees and their close relatives the bonobos, both of whom are very, very similar to humans at a genetic level. There is however no scientific evidence to suggest that we could successfully interbreed with them using purely natural means (i.e. without some form of genetic engineering), even though some other closely related species such as polar bears and brown bears not only can, but sometimes do interbreed, even in the wild.
It was removed from paediatric vaccines, including but by no means restricted to the one from MMR in 2001, so children who were born subsequently are very unlikely to have been exposed to it, and they definitely won't be getting any of it from the MMR vaccine.
"So what if there is no proof they 'cause' autism? Most vaccines are preserved in a deadly toxin composed of ~50% mercury that stays in your body for months. Injecting a toxic mercury compound isn't very high on my to-do list..."
Everything is toxic in high enough doses or if it finds its way into the wrong bits of our bodies, including stuff that we'd die pretty quickly without. Oxygen is one example: humans expire pretty quickly without it, but they'll die even more quickly if they inject bubbles of it into a vein or artery.
"The chances of coming in contact with the disease, and the seriousness of the disease, must be not insignificant for vaccination to make sense."
Here I agree, although it should be noted that the chances of coming into contact with many previously prevalent and lethal diseases has been significantly reduced in the Western world because of compulsory mass vaccination programmes (e.g. diphtheria, polio), so one has to be very careful about claiming that certain vaccinations aren't necessary because some diseases aren't a problem now in the countries where most Slashdotters live.
Having said the above however, I find the idea of vaccinating children against non-lethal inconvenience diseases such as chicken pox ludicrous, because the risk of dying from them is so remote that _any_ potential for serious consequences from allergic reactions / spoiled vaccine batches / whatever is unacceptable.
"Autism is horrible, so is your kid dying of meals, mumps, chicken pox, etc."
Chicken pox is so rarely fatal on its own that the chances of dying from it are statistically insignificant, especially among children, in whom the disease is usually less severe than it is or adults.
"Let's not spread hype/garbage."
Like for example garbage about kids dying from chicken pox?
"I'd imagine the purpose of the read out loud right is to protect playwrights from having people perform their plays without permission or compensation."
It's actually to protect sales of audiobooks, which authors get royalties from in addition to the ones they earn from printed versions.
The real question here therefore is whether a machine reading text aloud in real-time based on a set of algorithms counts as an audiobook, or whether it's something else entirely. IANAL either, but a bit of Googling reveals that an audiobook is a recording of a performance in much the same way as a music CD or a movie is a recorded performance. I don't know whether this is the legal definition of an audiobook, but most sources agree that this is the general definition, so it would be reasonable to expect the legal definition to be substantively similar.
The Kindle, in common with other real-time computer text-to-audio systems that have been around for well over two decades isn't using recorded performances, so it doesn't fit any definition of an audiobook that I could find (admittedly after not looking very far!). Furthermore, the fact that such technologies are venerable in computing terms means that they're something that pretty much goes with the territory; selling E-Books whose readers contain computers without which the E-Book's contents cannot be accessed therefore implies that any computer-related technology which is solely used to play those contents for the E-Book's buyer in a non-infringing way (i.e. without making unauthorised copies or public performances) is very unlikely indeed to be breaching anyone's copyright.
"The Author's Guild is cutting off its nose to spite its face here."
They're risking doing more than that, because Google have more than enough resources to put up a powerful defence if they want to push the issue, so if this actually goes to court, it could well end up with the legal definition of what does and does not constitute an audiobook becoming far narrower than it is now, while simultaneously convincing technology companies all over the world that there's a viable market for much better systems than any of the current ones. If this happens, then we could well see technology quite quickly evolving to the point where current robotic text-to-speech systems look very primitive indeed, and unlike anything the Kindle's likely to be capable of today, that really would have the potential to severely damage the market for recorded audiobooks.
"And of course, this was the same Gassee who told Jobs that there was no need to license MacOS to Sony and Philips."
And the same Gassee who refused to let Apple license it to AT&T when Sculley was at the helm.
"He's got quite a history of EPIC FAIL."
Yep. And in typical epic fail form, he blamed MS for Be's failure. Of course, there was more than an element of truth to his claims about Bill and the boys doing everything they could to prevent OEMs from shipping BeOS with computers, but he conveniently ignores the fact that MS already had a significant history of fighting dirty to prevent competitors to Windows from gaining a foot-hold, so a diligent CEO of a company selling an alternative OS that runs on the same hardware would have assumed this would happen, and planned his campaign accordingly.
So in the end, for all BeOS's wonderful points (and there were many of them at the time, although most seem less wonderful from today's perspective), Apple made the right choice when they selected NeXT instead of Be, because it's very unlikely that they'd have achieved a tiny fraction of their current success if Gassee had been at the helm instead of Jobs.
With figures like those, a renewable power system based on this particular hamster technology would lead to a serious shortage of hamsters, so this could well be a good time to invest in both hamster futures, and buy shares in companies that offer serious hamster alternatives for those whose needs will no longer be served by a visit to a pet store.
Here's a link to a company whose shares might be about to skyrocket if this technology is adopted by (for example) the Chinese government. I'm not affiliated with them in any way, but I do have several of their fine products:
I'd have loved to be a fly on the wall when he had to tell Be inc's shareholders why selling all assets to Palm for $11 million in 2001 was better for them than letting Apple buy the same assets for $500 million in 1996.
"Apple, since MacOS X 1.5, for what I know, is in the process of ripping the balls off its Nextstep / OpenStep / YellowBox / Cocoa tools (reduction of Objective-C visibility"
In what way has Apple been reducing the visibility of Objective-C? The bulk of their MacOS X Cocoa programming documentation contains nothing except Objective-C examples, including the newer Leopard-specific stuff, and it's the only officially supported language for all iPhone / iPod Touch development. They were also publicly trumpeting the fact that Leopard developers had a new, enhanced version of Objective-C (Objective-C 2), so I completely fail to see how they can be accused of reducing its visibility.
"promotion of Java"
Apple stopped promoting Java for Cocoa development when MacOS 10.4 (Tiger) deprecated the Java-Cocoa bridge. They're also notorious for being well behind the JVM and language curve when compared to Windows, Linux and Solaris, all of which get new features a year or more before Apple deign to release them to OS X developers.
"and other neuteured languages like objective-c++"
You might also like to add a further set of "neutered" languages such as Python, Ruby, Object Pascal, F-Script, Smalltalk, and various others that have Cocoa bridges developed at Apple, outside Apple but with Apple help, or entirely independently of Apple. And of course there's AppleScript, which has been a supported Cocoa development platform for quite a while because it's an easy way to build prototypes of applications that will be eventually be written in Objective-C.
"{GnuStep} is perfect to dictate good conduct practices to the usual programmer."
Because programmers are famed for their love of being dictated to by people who aren't paying them for the privilege of doing so.
"They could employ the same system that the Xbox employs. Add an IR receiver."
A lot of people with an XBox 360 don't even have to go that far, because Microsoft have once again proved that they're ahead of curve, and have already equipped their system with a special facility that displays a red circle on the screen to indicate that all gaming has been suspended for an indefinite period. This lock-out mechanism so secure that the only way to resume gaming is by sending the machine back to Microsoft, where a specially trained technician will the reset the cunningly hidden Naughty Person flag, and then send it back after a suitable period has elapsed to teach people that being naughty has consequences.
"I know that it is a poor measure, but it seems like something that carries weight when talking with customers."
I reckon it would go right over the head of anyone silly enough to seriously consider adopting or changing a company IT strategy based on what amounts to a telemarketing call. There have been large numbers of Windows security problems of sufficient severity to have been covered by international media ranging from TV news to womens' magazines (seriously!) and everything in between, so it takes a "special" type of person to either have managed not to notice such things, or be willing to completely discount them because a snake oil salesman calls and makes a bunch of wild claims. If these are your customers, then I suggest you avoid complexities such as the number 4 when talking to them, and restrict yourself to simpler terms such as "none", "one", and "a lot".
"It seems like something that is nice and inspires confidence, and actually is true (but irrelevant)"
The fact that the best Linux security ratings are in the same ballpark as versions of Windows which have become notorious for their vulnerability to countless often trivial attacks is IMO less than inspiring in the confidence department, especially for those who don't really know what the EAR ratings for each system actually quantify.
"Wouldn't that work better to take a customers worry away then to educate them on FUD tactics, leaked source codes of windows being available, and the different comparisons of security flaws between operating systems?"
A simpler tactic would be to point out the fact that IBM have enough confidence in open source software to offer Linux for their high-end mainframes, that Google have been using a variety of FOSS options to run the biggest collection of Internet-facing computing resources on the planet for years with few notable security problems, and that Apple's MacOS X is based on an open-source UNIX implementation, includes a slew of other open-source elements, and still manages to have a far better security record than Windows. Then show them some news reports from national and international media covering various high-profile worms and other bits of malware that have brought corporate, hospital, government, and military Windows systems to their knees for long periods or allowed hackers to access confidential information, and ask them whether they really want to pay Microsoft for the chance of becoming part of such a prestigious casualty list.
IMO the best way to combat FUD with people who are susceptible to it is with more FUD, and the sheer volume of material out there from well known non-IT news organisations about various Windows security problems should make it very easy to put a Windows FUD package together that will make even the most IT-challenged business types suspicious of _any_ security-related claims from MS or their shills.
"The most safe operating systems are those that are in fighter jets and all, with an EAL of 6+"
A number of commercial embedded, mainframe (e.g IBM z/OS), and hard real-time systems are either at EAL 7, or in the process of being certified at that level.
"there are a bunch of normal OSes valuated at EAL4+, most of them open source, but also windows 2000, and I belief windows xp"
The only open source operating systems at EAL 4 are the Enterprise versions of Suse and Redhat, and lately, Solaris (which was certified quite some time before it went open source). Most other Linux distros are at EAL 2.
"Windows vista thus far is evaluated at EAL1"
The only thing this really proves is that it's fairly new, because EAL certification can be a long process, so the higher levels are only usually obtained by stuff that's been around for a while. This is because the levels are incremental in nature, i.e. each subsequent level builds on the requirements of the prior ones, so it's not in the least unusual for something that eventually leaches level 4 or above to have done so by first obtaining levels 1, 2, and 3.
NB: EAL certification isn't a reflection of the security level of an entire OS, but of various subsystems within that OS. It's therefore more than possible to be running a nominally EAL 4+ Linux system that's not actually anywhere near that level because it doesn't use any of the EAL 4+ certified subsystems for managing log-ins and other activities.
"A completely valid argument -- and possibly a persuasive one as well, if the boss is smart - involves the comparison of an open and strong encryption algorithm vs and weak but closed one."
Good examples of this are PGP and CSS:
PGP uses a known, open algorithm that has been implemented by several completely open source programs for many years. This has not resulted in PGP encryption being compromised, because PGP relies on security by design rather than security through obscurity.
CSS is a classic example of security through obscurity that relied on nobody knowing how it worked. While this approach might have had some validity a couple of decades ago, the speed at which knowledge propagates on the Internet means that you only need one person to work out what system is being used for it to become common knowledge in at most a few days among all of those who are interested in such things.
"If security through obscurity can't keep wartime governments in power, it probably doesn't do much."
The DMCA and similar legislation in other countries containing anti-circumvention clauses is another excellent example of the ineffectiveness of security through obscurity, because these clauses wouldn't be required if so many DRM systems didn't primarily rely on people not knowing how they work.
Meanwhile, the completely open PGP secure-by-design approach has proven to be so difficult to break that the UK is enacting legislation to make it a crime (punishable by lengthy prison sentences) not to give the police your keys to any encrypted content they want to look at. This is because, unlike the MS shills who blather about the advantages of security-through-obscurity, there are plenty of criminals and terrorists with a sufficient grasp of security matters in general to know that only an utter fool would entrust confidential (and possibly incriminating) information to something whose many examples of ineffectiveness go back to the time of the ancient Greeks.
NB: security through obscurity can be valid as part of a complete defence-in-depth strategy _that also includes one or more *effective* layers of security by design_. If the security by design layers are ineffective however, then the best that one can hope for by adding layers of obscurity is delaying the inevitable, because putting your house in the centre of a maze won't stop people from stealing your stuff if those who bother to negotiate it find that the front door isn't locked..
Only on PCs, where it never had much market share to speak of anyway. It is however still very much alive in the server and supercomputer world.
"Embedded is owned by ARM almost as completely as x86 rules the desktop."
If of course by "embedded" one means "mobile phones and MP3 players", and not aerospace / space / military systems, medical devices, music synthesizers, automotive control and monitoring systems, video games consoles, printers, routers / switches, security systems, air conditioners, TV sets, set-top-boxes, and a vast number of other embedded applications, where ARM not only doesn't rule, but has no notable presence whatsoever. Strangely, the "dead" PowerPC is still going strong in many of these sectors, together of course with other "dead" chips such as the Hitachi SuperH series, a number of PIC variants, stuff from Rabbit Semiconductor, and the venerable Z80.
"The underlying economic reality of maintaining a 100% proprietary stack tied to a proprietary foundation seems to dictate that MS will need to do something, but not necessarily this."
A more probable scenario is that they'll follow Apple's example of using and contributing to a steadily increasing number of open source projects for some parts of the overall stack, while keeping others proprietary to prevent third parties from building competing Windows "distros".
"What Apple does in the EU is in fact illegal, and the EC has been investigating this for the past three years or so, I guess."
The EU was investigating different prices for iTunes stores in various countries, which is indeed illegal. However, the fact that the EU permits each member country to have its own media distributors and rights collection agencies means that far from it being illegal for Apple to have separate stores and sets of music for each EU member, they're actually required to do so because of the antiquated media distribution and licensing model that the EU has refused to change despite repeated requests from satellite TV companies and Internet media distributors to do so.
"Knowing the amazing speed of the EC I think we can expect a verdict somewhere around 2012."
The EU antitrust investigation into iTunes stores was concluded in January 2008, and resulted in a order for Apple to bring the prices charged to their UK customers in line with those for the rest of the EU. A good summary of the decision can be found at:
Note the last paragraph about the Commission's position on different content for different EU countries, which it says is a copyright requirement, and not therefore due to restrictive business practices on Apple's part.
"Why download pixilated 700 meg pirate rips to bypass the disc nonsense?"
The point isn't about bypassing the disks so much as the fact that I resent having spent a lot of money for something with deliberate limitations which I wouldn't have to work around if I'd downloaded a free pirate version from the Internet, or bought an uncannily similar boxed set from a Chinese guy with a market stall for a small fraction of what I paid to earn the privilege of shouting "Yippee, I'm making Peter Jackson richer".
"I just rip my DVDs to divX files using AutoGK set at 100% quality and store them on my media PC."
The fact that there's plenty of free, easy-to-use software for every major platform (i.e. Linux, Windows, MacOS X) and a variety of minor / obsolete ones that can rip DVDs and remove annoying stuff like "no-skip" parts, region codes, and ads IMO only serves to highlight the stupidity of forcing manufacturers of stand-alone domestic equipment to disable areas of functionality when they detect a "protected" commercial DVD.
"I'm lazy and dumb and that's good enough for me"
This is also an excellent description of me, so we're once again back to the point of why mass market equipment being made today has to be functionally shackled by an obsolete DRM system that even addled people like myself can work around with ease. What they're obviously trying to do is prevent people from copying rented DVDs, but anyone who wants to do this already can, and the system affects DVDs people own too, so the net effect is to annoy legitimate customers without doing anything to prevent people from copying rented material if that's what they want to do.
I could indeed rip my original disks to DIVX, but this merely serves to highlight the stupidity of forcing entire classes of consumer electronics devices to disable basic elements of their functionality in an effort prevent illegal mass content distribution that's already happening on a vast scale because CSS is such an ineffective protection mechanism that it might as well not be there.
Even more idiotic is the fact that they're doing this with home systems that no pirate of any sort would even consider using for piracy purposes. Professional counterfeiters need high-volume, high reliability systems, and amateurs use the Internet, so the only possible explanation for crippling domestic equipment with no Internet capabilities that's only designed to make a few copies a month is sheer bloody-mindedness.
Slashdot Mirror
"licenses depend on contract law, which _requires_ both parties to know exactly what they are entering into prior to acceptal. "
Contract law requires both parties to have the opportunity of knowing exactly what they're entering into prior to acceptance, not for them to actually know it. Signing a contract without reading it still results in being bound by the entirety of that contract if the signee(s) could have read it without signing, but chose not to do so or elected to only read some parts of it. It's also binding if the signee didn't understand some or all of it if they had the chance to get somebody who does understand it (e.g. a contract lawyer) to go over it with them.
" They actually have some good High End software such as BizTalk, SharePoint, SQL Server..."
And their Dynamics range, which despite being mostly based on stuff they acquired from other companies, has been subsequently reworked over many years into a set of packages that the people who use such things on a daily basis almost universally reckon are by far the most powerful, configurable, and easy-to-use systems of their type.
I'm not an MS lover by any stretch of the imagination, but a fair minded person should be willing to give credit when it's deserved, and the fact of the matter is that Microsoft produce some very good enterprise software that's extremely competitive price-wise with similar offerings from other companies.
"Hi, I'm Clippy. I think you're trying to enter a Microsoft Store. Would you like to:
1. Buy a PC with Windows(TM)(R) installed on it?
2. Buy some Microsoft(R) software to run on a PC you already have, or in addition to the PC you are buying in option (1)?"
3. Buy a Zune(TM)(R)?"
"In one sentence you claim it is garbage that kids die from chicken pox, in another you state it happens (even though rarely)."
Go ahead and quote a small part of what I actually wrote so you can pretend that you were entirely correct in claiming that children die of chicken pox. The fact that the sentence from which it was gleaned quite clearly stated that _the adult form of chicken pox_ is more severe that the childhood one (as is also for example the case with mumps), is of course irrelevant, as is the other trivial fact that none of the incredibly tiny number of recorded deaths from chicken pox were children despite them being by far the most likely group to contract it.
"Then again your dumb ass neglects to think of (or at least state) that I was using a generalization"
Oh look, an ad-hominem together with a desperate attempt to manoeuvre around having to admit that you were wrong. It is indeed rare to find such an edifying combination of defensive insulting, intellectual dishonesty, and hypocrisy in one compact package!
"I'm always amazed that people don't think that genocide is the most probable answer."
Some don't think it's the most probably answer for the following reasons:
1) fossil evidence from Israel and elsewhere indicates that Neanderthals and early humans peacefully coexisted for at least 50,000 years in close proximity to one another.
2) The population densities of both species were so low in any areas where evidence of them coexisting is found for it to be extremely unlikely that they'd have had any reason for sustained conflict with one another.
3) Human groups were as a rule no larger than those of the Neanderthals at the time when they became extinct, and their weapons technologies were similar, so it's unlikely that the dozen or so humans living near a dozen Neanderthals would have found the idea of getting into a fight with a species that was both significantly physically stronger and more durable than them at all attractive.
4) There is a growing body of evidence to indicate that human and Neanderthals traded with one another in ways that both species obviously thought were advantageous.
"How many situations involving different human cultures meeting have resulted in something else than total war and massacres?"
The key here is the term "cultures", which didn't exist in the small and mostly isolated human hunter-gatherer groups that were around 30,000 years ago. Both species lived in what were essentially extended families of at most 20 individuals who survived by hunting and gathering, so they spent the majority of their time in the major pursuit of all animals, i.e. finding enough to eat.
I suggest that you read about some of the anthropological studies that have been done into the few surviving hunter-gatherer human groups and the generosity, openness, and gentle curiosity that they display towards strangers to see why one cannot just assume that all humans are prone to behave in the same way as civilised humans do.
"None? Less than zero? Wiping off other humans who are slightly different than us is one of the few universal human traits"
It's one of the traits of very large groups of humans, not small, isolated ones. The total human population of Europe and the Middle East when the Neanderthals died out was in the low tens of thousands, and the fact that there's a growing body of evidence to indicate that even this small number of individuals was declining sharply at the transition point between the middle and late palaeolithic periods means that the likelihood of conflict between them was even more remote than would have been the case previously.
And it is IMO this sharp decline in humans at the time when Neanderthals disappeared that provides the best clue to the reason for it, because fossil evidence indicates that the populations of large game animals also declined significantly. It's here we find that one of the major differences between humans and Neanderthals could be the reason for our survival and their disappearance, because there's evidence that humans during this period fished and hunted small game, whereas Neanderthals appear to have been much more dependent on large game for both food and clothing. This greater flexibility in diet and clothes sources may well have made the difference between a sharp but survivable population decline for our species, and a more severe one among the Neanderthals that reduced their population to unsustainable levels.
"trait may also apply to ants"
Ants and termites build cities that can have populations of anything from thousands to millions of individuals, so it's not surprising to find that they act in ways that are sometimes uncannily similar to human groups of similar sizes and levels of organisation.
NB: the fact that we almost became extinct several times over the last 100,000 years is a good indicator of how easily a single event or set of events over a few years can push a species with a low population (and low populations are the only sustainable ones for large predators such as human and Neanderthal hunter-gatherers) into a terminal decline from which it's unable to recover.
"Consenting to unknown code running on your computer is consenting to ANY code running on your computer."
If this is the case, then inviting a girlfriend over for dinner and an overnight stay is consenting to anyone using your house and eating your food whenever they feel like doing so. People are after all largely interchangeable, and it's impossible to know what those you're familiar with are doing and thinking all the time even when you're nominally with them, so there's no difference between inviting somebody you know into your premises, and having a bunch of skinheads invite themselves to use your property, resources, and facilities whenever, and however they want.
"Thats what vista does and the UAC kicks in when you need admin access. There has been nothing but complaints and bitching about this."
People aren't bitching about UAC kicking in when they need admin access, they're bitching about the fact that it kicks in when they're doing all sorts of stuff that doesn't require admin access, that its messages are sometimes more cryptic and difficult to understand than equivalent ones on a locked-down corporate XP system, and that they frequently have to confirm the same operation several times.
"People are surprised their 10 year old software that writes to c:\temp doesnt work anymore."
And other people such as you and Microsoft are surprised when people or companies who specifically bought new Windows PCs because they want to run their existing Windows software get pissed off when they find out that they've handed over a significant chunk of change for the computer equivalent of a chocolate kettle.
"Shame that even the good changes MS does is received with the same old bellyaching."
What people are bellyaching about is the horrid way these changes have been implemented, not the fact that MS have made a real effort to produce something with significantly better levels of security than any of their prior desktop OS offerings.
"Neanderthals are probably not any different in that way (it is probable, though, they disappeared because we humans killed them off)"
One _theory_ is that they disappeared because we (or rather, Cro-Magnon Man, who also disappeared around 8,000 BCE) killed them off, but there are plenty of other theories which are equally probable in that none of them have much in the way of supporting evidence. The only real answer to the question of why they died out is therefore the same as the one for so many other extinct lifeforms, i.e. we do not as yet know why they disappeared.
"they're a different species (which means they can still interbreed with humans and produce fertile offspring)"
Nobody as yet knows whether they could interbreed with Cro-Magnon man, or for that matter, other early human ancestor species that existed at the same time (e.g. late period Homo Erectus). It should also be noted that even if we could interbreed, there's a distinct possibility that any offspring would have been sterile, so Neanderthal genes from cross-breeds might not have been passed on to subsequent generations.
A good example to consider here is chimpanzees and their close relatives the bonobos, both of whom are very, very similar to humans at a genetic level. There is however no scientific evidence to suggest that we could successfully interbreed with them using purely natural means (i.e. without some form of genetic engineering), even though some other closely related species such as polar bears and brown bears not only can, but sometimes do interbreed, even in the wild.
"Thiomersal is very toxic by inhalation, ..."
It was removed from paediatric vaccines, including but by no means restricted to the one from MMR in 2001, so children who were born subsequently are very unlikely to have been exposed to it, and they definitely won't be getting any of it from the MMR vaccine.
"So what if there is no proof they 'cause' autism? Most vaccines are preserved in a deadly toxin composed of ~50% mercury that stays in your body for months. Injecting a toxic mercury compound isn't very high on my to-do list..."
Everything is toxic in high enough doses or if it finds its way into the wrong bits of our bodies, including stuff that we'd die pretty quickly without. Oxygen is one example: humans expire pretty quickly without it, but they'll die even more quickly if they inject bubbles of it into a vein or artery.
"The chances of coming in contact with the disease, and the seriousness of the disease, must be not insignificant for vaccination to make sense."
Here I agree, although it should be noted that the chances of coming into contact with many previously prevalent and lethal diseases has been significantly reduced in the Western world because of compulsory mass vaccination programmes (e.g. diphtheria, polio), so one has to be very careful about claiming that certain vaccinations aren't necessary because some diseases aren't a problem now in the countries where most Slashdotters live.
Having said the above however, I find the idea of vaccinating children against non-lethal inconvenience diseases such as chicken pox ludicrous, because the risk of dying from them is so remote that _any_ potential for serious consequences from allergic reactions / spoiled vaccine batches / whatever is unacceptable.
"Autism is horrible, so is your kid dying of meals, mumps, chicken pox, etc."
Chicken pox is so rarely fatal on its own that the chances of dying from it are statistically insignificant, especially among children, in whom the disease is usually less severe than it is or adults.
"Let's not spread hype/garbage."
Like for example garbage about kids dying from chicken pox?
"I'd imagine the purpose of the read out loud right is to protect playwrights from having people perform their plays without permission or compensation."
It's actually to protect sales of audiobooks, which authors get royalties from in addition to the ones they earn from printed versions.
The real question here therefore is whether a machine reading text aloud in real-time based on a set of algorithms counts as an audiobook, or whether it's something else entirely. IANAL either, but a bit of Googling reveals that an audiobook is a recording of a performance in much the same way as a music CD or a movie is a recorded performance. I don't know whether this is the legal definition of an audiobook, but most sources agree that this is the general definition, so it would be reasonable to expect the legal definition to be substantively similar.
The Kindle, in common with other real-time computer text-to-audio systems that have been around for well over two decades isn't using recorded performances, so it doesn't fit any definition of an audiobook that I could find (admittedly after not looking very far!). Furthermore, the fact that such technologies are venerable in computing terms means that they're something that pretty much goes with the territory; selling E-Books whose readers contain computers without which the E-Book's contents cannot be accessed therefore implies that any computer-related technology which is solely used to play those contents for the E-Book's buyer in a non-infringing way (i.e. without making unauthorised copies or public performances) is very unlikely indeed to be breaching anyone's copyright.
"The Author's Guild is cutting off its nose to spite its face here."
They're risking doing more than that, because Google have more than enough resources to put up a powerful defence if they want to push the issue, so if this actually goes to court, it could well end up with the legal definition of what does and does not constitute an audiobook becoming far narrower than it is now, while simultaneously convincing technology companies all over the world that there's a viable market for much better systems than any of the current ones. If this happens, then we could well see technology quite quickly evolving to the point where current robotic text-to-speech systems look very primitive indeed, and unlike anything the Kindle's likely to be capable of today, that really would have the potential to severely damage the market for recorded audiobooks.
"And of course, this was the same Gassee who told Jobs that there was no need to license MacOS to Sony and Philips."
And the same Gassee who refused to let Apple license it to AT&T when Sculley was at the helm.
"He's got quite a history of EPIC FAIL."
Yep. And in typical epic fail form, he blamed MS for Be's failure. Of course, there was more than an element of truth to his claims about Bill and the boys doing everything they could to prevent OEMs from shipping BeOS with computers, but he conveniently ignores the fact that MS already had a significant history of fighting dirty to prevent competitors to Windows from gaining a foot-hold, so a diligent CEO of a company selling an alternative OS that runs on the same hardware would have assumed this would happen, and planned his campaign accordingly.
So in the end, for all BeOS's wonderful points (and there were many of them at the time, although most seem less wonderful from today's perspective), Apple made the right choice when they selected NeXT instead of Be, because it's very unlikely that they'd have achieved a tiny fraction of their current success if Gassee had been at the helm instead of Jobs.
With figures like those, a renewable power system based on this particular hamster technology would lead to a serious shortage of hamsters, so this could well be a good time to invest in both hamster futures, and buy shares in companies that offer serious hamster alternatives for those whose needs will no longer be served by a visit to a pet store.
Here's a link to a company whose shares might be about to skyrocket if this technology is adopted by (for example) the Chinese government. I'm not affiliated with them in any way, but I do have several of their fine products:
http://www.realhamster.com/
I'd have loved to be a fly on the wall when he had to tell Be inc's shareholders why selling all assets to Palm for $11 million in 2001 was better for them than letting Apple buy the same assets for $500 million in 1996.
"Apple, since MacOS X 1.5, for what I know, is in the process of ripping the balls off its Nextstep / OpenStep / YellowBox / Cocoa tools (reduction of Objective-C visibility"
In what way has Apple been reducing the visibility of Objective-C? The bulk of their MacOS X Cocoa programming documentation contains nothing except Objective-C examples, including the newer Leopard-specific stuff, and it's the only officially supported language for all iPhone / iPod Touch development. They were also publicly trumpeting the fact that Leopard developers had a new, enhanced version of Objective-C (Objective-C 2), so I completely fail to see how they can be accused of reducing its visibility.
"promotion of Java"
Apple stopped promoting Java for Cocoa development when MacOS 10.4 (Tiger) deprecated the Java-Cocoa bridge. They're also notorious for being well behind the JVM and language curve when compared to Windows, Linux and Solaris, all of which get new features a year or more before Apple deign to release them to OS X developers.
"and other neuteured languages like objective-c++"
You might also like to add a further set of "neutered" languages such as Python, Ruby, Object Pascal, F-Script, Smalltalk, and various others that have Cocoa bridges developed at Apple, outside Apple but with Apple help, or entirely independently of Apple. And of course there's AppleScript, which has been a supported Cocoa development platform for quite a while because it's an easy way to build prototypes of applications that will be eventually be written in Objective-C.
"{GnuStep} is perfect to dictate good conduct practices to the usual programmer."
Because programmers are famed for their love of being dictated to by people who aren't paying them for the privilege of doing so.
"They could employ the same system that the Xbox employs. Add an IR receiver."
A lot of people with an XBox 360 don't even have to go that far, because Microsoft have once again proved that they're ahead of curve, and have already equipped their system with a special facility that displays a red circle on the screen to indicate that all gaming has been suspended for an indefinite period. This lock-out mechanism so secure that the only way to resume gaming is by sending the machine back to Microsoft, where a specially trained technician will the reset the cunningly hidden Naughty Person flag, and then send it back after a suitable period has elapsed to teach people that being naughty has consequences.
"I know that it is a poor measure, but it seems like something that carries weight when talking with customers."
I reckon it would go right over the head of anyone silly enough to seriously consider adopting or changing a company IT strategy based on what amounts to a telemarketing call. There have been large numbers of Windows security problems of sufficient severity to have been covered by international media ranging from TV news to womens' magazines (seriously!) and everything in between, so it takes a "special" type of person to either have managed not to notice such things, or be willing to completely discount them because a snake oil salesman calls and makes a bunch of wild claims. If these are your customers, then I suggest you avoid complexities such as the number 4 when talking to them, and restrict yourself to simpler terms such as "none", "one", and "a lot".
"It seems like something that is nice and inspires confidence, and actually is true (but irrelevant)"
The fact that the best Linux security ratings are in the same ballpark as versions of Windows which have become notorious for their vulnerability to countless often trivial attacks is IMO less than inspiring in the confidence department, especially for those who don't really know what the EAR ratings for each system actually quantify.
"Wouldn't that work better to take a customers worry away then to educate them on FUD tactics, leaked source codes of windows being available, and the different comparisons of security flaws between operating systems?"
A simpler tactic would be to point out the fact that IBM have enough confidence in open source software to offer Linux for their high-end mainframes, that Google have been using a variety of FOSS options to run the biggest collection of Internet-facing computing resources on the planet for years with few notable security problems, and that Apple's MacOS X is based on an open-source UNIX implementation, includes a slew of other open-source elements, and still manages to have a far better security record than Windows. Then show them some news reports from national and international media covering various high-profile worms and other bits of malware that have brought corporate, hospital, government, and military Windows systems to their knees for long periods or allowed hackers to access confidential information, and ask them whether they really want to pay Microsoft for the chance of becoming part of such a prestigious casualty list.
IMO the best way to combat FUD with people who are susceptible to it is with more FUD, and the sheer volume of material out there from well known non-IT news organisations about various Windows security problems should make it very easy to put a Windows FUD package together that will make even the most IT-challenged business types suspicious of _any_ security-related claims from MS or their shills.
"The most safe operating systems are those that are in fighter jets and all, with an EAL of 6+"
A number of commercial embedded, mainframe (e.g IBM z/OS), and hard real-time systems are either at EAL 7, or in the process of being certified at that level.
"there are a bunch of normal OSes valuated at EAL4+, most of them open source, but also windows 2000, and I belief windows xp"
The only open source operating systems at EAL 4 are the Enterprise versions of Suse and Redhat, and lately, Solaris (which was certified quite some time before it went open source). Most other Linux distros are at EAL 2.
"Windows vista thus far is evaluated at EAL1"
The only thing this really proves is that it's fairly new, because EAL certification can be a long process, so the higher levels are only usually obtained by stuff that's been around for a while. This is because the levels are incremental in nature, i.e. each subsequent level builds on the requirements of the prior ones, so it's not in the least unusual for something that eventually leaches level 4 or above to have done so by first obtaining levels 1, 2, and 3.
NB: EAL certification isn't a reflection of the security level of an entire OS, but of various subsystems within that OS. It's therefore more than possible to be running a nominally EAL 4+ Linux system that's not actually anywhere near that level because it doesn't use any of the EAL 4+ certified subsystems for managing log-ins and other activities.
"A completely valid argument -- and possibly a persuasive one as well, if the boss is smart - involves the comparison of an open and strong encryption algorithm vs and weak but closed one."
Good examples of this are PGP and CSS:
PGP uses a known, open algorithm that has been implemented by several completely open source programs for many years. This has not resulted in PGP encryption being compromised, because PGP relies on security by design rather than security through obscurity.
CSS is a classic example of security through obscurity that relied on nobody knowing how it worked. While this approach might have had some validity a couple of decades ago, the speed at which knowledge propagates on the Internet means that you only need one person to work out what system is being used for it to become common knowledge in at most a few days among all of those who are interested in such things.
"If security through obscurity can't keep wartime governments in power, it probably doesn't do much."
The DMCA and similar legislation in other countries containing anti-circumvention clauses is another excellent example of the ineffectiveness of security through obscurity, because these clauses wouldn't be required if so many DRM systems didn't primarily rely on people not knowing how they work.
Meanwhile, the completely open PGP secure-by-design approach has proven to be so difficult to break that the UK is enacting legislation to make it a crime (punishable by lengthy prison sentences) not to give the police your keys to any encrypted content they want to look at. This is because, unlike the MS shills who blather about the advantages of security-through-obscurity, there are plenty of criminals and terrorists with a sufficient grasp of security matters in general to know that only an utter fool would entrust confidential (and possibly incriminating) information to something whose many examples of ineffectiveness go back to the time of the ancient Greeks.
NB: security through obscurity can be valid as part of a complete defence-in-depth strategy _that also includes one or more *effective* layers of security by design_. If the security by design layers are ineffective however, then the best that one can hope for by adding layers of obscurity is delaying the inevitable, because putting your house in the centre of a maze won't stop people from stealing your stuff if those who bother to negotiate it find that the front door isn't locked..
"PPC is dead."
Only on PCs, where it never had much market share to speak of anyway. It is however still very much alive in the server and supercomputer world.
"Embedded is owned by ARM almost as completely as x86 rules the desktop."
If of course by "embedded" one means "mobile phones and MP3 players", and not aerospace / space / military systems, medical devices, music synthesizers, automotive control and monitoring systems, video games consoles, printers, routers / switches, security systems, air conditioners, TV sets, set-top-boxes, and a vast number of other embedded applications, where ARM not only doesn't rule, but has no notable presence whatsoever. Strangely, the "dead" PowerPC is still going strong in many of these sectors, together of course with other "dead" chips such as the Hitachi SuperH series, a number of PIC variants, stuff from Rabbit Semiconductor, and the venerable Z80.
"The underlying economic reality of maintaining a 100% proprietary stack tied to a proprietary foundation seems to dictate that MS will need to do something, but not necessarily this."
A more probable scenario is that they'll follow Apple's example of using and contributing to a steadily increasing number of open source projects for some parts of the overall stack, while keeping others proprietary to prevent third parties from building competing Windows "distros".
"What Apple does in the EU is in fact illegal, and the EC has been investigating this for the past three years or so, I guess."
The EU was investigating different prices for iTunes stores in various countries, which is indeed illegal. However, the fact that the EU permits each member country to have its own media distributors and rights collection agencies means that far from it being illegal for Apple to have separate stores and sets of music for each EU member, they're actually required to do so because of the antiquated media distribution and licensing model that the EU has refused to change despite repeated requests from satellite TV companies and Internet media distributors to do so.
"Knowing the amazing speed of the EC I think we can expect a verdict somewhere around 2012."
The EU antitrust investigation into iTunes stores was concluded in January 2008, and resulted in a order for Apple to bring the prices charged to their UK customers in line with those for the rest of the EU. A good summary of the decision can be found at:
http://www.cgsh.com/sony_bmg_successful_in_eu_investigation_of_apple's_itunes_platform/
Note the last paragraph about the Commission's position on different content for different EU countries, which it says is a copyright requirement, and not therefore due to restrictive business practices on Apple's part.
"Apple makes a big deal (and charges more than $100) of each of their dot releases."
Unlike benevolent and innovative MS, who charge more than $100 for "upgrading" to a different SKU of the same dot release.
"Why download pixilated 700 meg pirate rips to bypass the disc nonsense?"
The point isn't about bypassing the disks so much as the fact that I resent having spent a lot of money for something with deliberate limitations which I wouldn't have to work around if I'd downloaded a free pirate version from the Internet, or bought an uncannily similar boxed set from a Chinese guy with a market stall for a small fraction of what I paid to earn the privilege of shouting "Yippee, I'm making Peter Jackson richer".
"I just rip my DVDs to divX files using AutoGK set at 100% quality and store them on my media PC."
The fact that there's plenty of free, easy-to-use software for every major platform (i.e. Linux, Windows, MacOS X) and a variety of minor / obsolete ones that can rip DVDs and remove annoying stuff like "no-skip" parts, region codes, and ads IMO only serves to highlight the stupidity of forcing manufacturers of stand-alone domestic equipment to disable areas of functionality when they detect a "protected" commercial DVD.
"I'm lazy and dumb and that's good enough for me"
This is also an excellent description of me, so we're once again back to the point of why mass market equipment being made today has to be functionally shackled by an obsolete DRM system that even addled people like myself can work around with ease. What they're obviously trying to do is prevent people from copying rented DVDs, but anyone who wants to do this already can, and the system affects DVDs people own too, so the net effect is to annoy legitimate customers without doing anything to prevent people from copying rented material if that's what they want to do.
I could indeed rip my original disks to DIVX, but this merely serves to highlight the stupidity of forcing entire classes of consumer electronics devices to disable basic elements of their functionality in an effort prevent illegal mass content distribution that's already happening on a vast scale because CSS is such an ineffective protection mechanism that it might as well not be there.
Even more idiotic is the fact that they're doing this with home systems that no pirate of any sort would even consider using for piracy purposes. Professional counterfeiters need high-volume, high reliability systems, and amateurs use the Internet, so the only possible explanation for crippling domestic equipment with no Internet capabilities that's only designed to make a few copies a month is sheer bloody-mindedness.