OK, first of all, it's time for a reality check: nobody is holding anybody for ransom here.
Quite true - its a very sensationalistic headline, clearly intended to draw attention to the issue. Arguable, that worked.
Second, nobody, save possibly for the charity in question, is making money from the suffering of others.
Yes MS actually is trying to make money on the situation, and th charity is a non-profit IIRC. The issue is that by using the suffering of others as an opportunity to cash in, you have a vested interest in said human suffering.
Third, to attempt to make the charitable donor responsible for the suffering of the poor is plain backwards.
Again, not the issue and an obvious straw man. I didn't say anything about holding MS or the charity responsible for the suffering. The issue in question is that they (MS) are cashing in on it. They are responsible for their own actions and all the straw men in the wold won't change that.
It was one of the newer white ones, a PowerPC. From his description, it took a hell of a beating during his various posting duties (driving around in their hummer, bouncing around, getting tucked away in a hurry at times, etc.)
I had a friend who was deployed to Iraq a couple of years ago. He carried an iBook for a year and a half through the worst of it. A large zip-lock bag was how he got it through the desert. It didn't break down.
"This is sick," one UNHCR official told Press Esc on the condition of anonymity. "These guys have billions of dollars to spare, but they are still trying to drive website traffic by holding these unfortunate people to ransom."
Making money from the suffering of others means that they have a vested interest and benefit from the suffering of others. If perpetuating human suffering is the goal, then that's fine. If relieving human suffering is the goal, then its both counter productive and hypocritical.
Bill Gates is a "laughing stock" only to the proto-Geek who laughed at the Model T Ford
There are so many of them still around. Actually, its not BG whose the laughing stock - its the "IT" sector that's a laughing stock to every other engineering and technical discipline. Almost entirely because of the phrase "microsoft standard".
Some people are on his list just because they hold ranking positions on big companies, not for what they did.
How the hell did Bill Gate get on a list with Vince Cerf, John Postel, Robert Metcalfe, and Nicklaus Wirth? All he did was singlehandly pollute the Internet with spam, and lower IT standards to the point of making IT the laughing stock of the technology sector. Truly an intellectual midget among giants.
Their charitable giving, however, is not something they deserve flack for
If you're going to give, just give and don't make a game out of it. All the truly good charity they engage in is great, but to hold criticism back for something that deserves it doesn't really make sense.
By your own words, it really looks like it does though, particularly given the circumstances.
However, I think your point is valid. Neither MD5 or SHA1 are truly 'broken', and people who think they are don't understand the nature of the weaknesses found. Still, calling announcements of such findings propaganda doesn't really help. People might not understand cryptography well enough to see that SHA1 is still a good hashing algorithm, but they have a sense of what an ad hominem is.
Welcome to reality. What the business masses need is not what anyone sane and competent is willing to develop gratis. And that's the root of the problem. That's proprietary development's superweapon. That's Free Software's kryptonite.
Hmm... "reality", "superweapon", "kryptonite" - I think its clear who needs a reality check.
An accurate of the vast majority of business exchange situations are places that have used only outlook/exchange and nothing else, and only use a fraction of the features that outlook/exchange offer. And, those usually don't work well. Just one minor example is that outlook/Exchange doesn't include emails in replies and forwards - only aliases. And, don't forget that using exchange all but forces you to use MS's dhcp and dns servers (active directory) - which are plain lousy (yes, I'm being polite). That is, unless you really like a polluted dns environment and lack of version history/revision control and no auditing ability - to name just a few of the better aspects of MS's AD dns/dhcp capabilities. Exchange is in most cases a one step forward two steps back proposition.
Businesses use exchange because they were virtually born into it and don't know anything better, not because it meets their needs so perfectly. At this point, anything different is a tough sell only because its different, not from a lack of meeting people's needs.
Even whey they publish openly all but explicit instructions on how to break into them. This may be a good thing, however, since it may compel them to actually put good locks on their machines. Probably not, though. As per the usual closed-source mentality, they'll just take the pic down and somehow believe that will somehow make the problem go away. Security through obscurity never works.
In effect, a closed source Diebold has been put through the ringer.
The free market seems to work extremely well at distributing materials in a society, and the more its allowed to work the better it seems to work. It seems work poorly in dealing with abstract things like intellectual property, ideas, or scientific research. Take the need for new antibiotics. Strains of bacteria resistant to all but a couple of antibiotics are now showing up outside of hospitals. Although restraint in handing out antibiotics has reduced those appearances, the bacteria will eventually win unless new antibiotics are developed. Problem is, the market for them isn't big enough to justify expending resources to develop new antibiotics. By the time it is, lots of people will have to die, and it may not be possible to distribute the drugs well enough to help.
Its worth remembering that eradicating Polio in the US (and the Americas) could never have been accomplished by free market forces alone - it required a coordinated effort by organized entities decidedly not following free-market rules and methods. Polio was actually eradicated in Cuba in 1962, and not in the Americas until 1994.
I don't think the problem with the free market is not that it isn't free enough, but that it is only capable of addressing one kind of problem.
So it seems that a free market works great for certain kinds of challenges, and not very good for other kinds of challenges.
But it wasn't what I wrote (the first sentence and the link are the same). Their post is better I think, but different. The next time someone has a thing about something they think is silly in the text of a submission, just remember that the/. editors change it before posting - a lot.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, first of all, it's time for a reality check: nobody is holding anybody for ransom here.
Quite true - its a very sensationalistic headline, clearly intended to draw attention to the issue. Arguable, that worked.
Second, nobody, save possibly for the charity in question, is making money from the suffering of others.
Yes MS actually is trying to make money on the situation, and th charity is a non-profit IIRC. The issue is that by using the suffering of others as an opportunity to cash in, you have a vested interest in said human suffering.
Third, to attempt to make the charitable donor responsible for the suffering of the poor is plain backwards.
Again, not the issue and an obvious straw man. I didn't say anything about holding MS or the charity responsible for the suffering. The issue in question is that they (MS) are cashing in on it. They are responsible for their own actions and all the straw men in the wold won't change that.
Douglas Engelbart gets credit for the mouse, the gui, and a whole host of related technology, if not the modern PC as we know it. Not Xerox Parc.
One could argue that he didn't popularize them, but that's not necessarily what invention is about. Besides, neither did Xerox parc.
It was one of the newer white ones, a PowerPC. From his description, it took a hell of a beating during his various posting duties (driving around in their hummer, bouncing around, getting tucked away in a hurry at times, etc.)
I had a friend who was deployed to Iraq a couple of years ago. He carried an iBook for a year and a half through the worst of it. A large zip-lock bag was how he got it through the desert. It didn't break down.
He found a way. They can too.
If only they'd had one of these in the oval office in 2001. We might have headed off a disaster.
Maybe the ethical question is how to get politicians to submit to a brain scan, not whether or not to do it.
Bill Gates is a "laughing stock" only to the proto-Geek who laughed at the Model T Ford
There are so many of them still around. Actually, its not BG whose the laughing stock - its the "IT" sector that's a laughing stock to every other engineering and technical discipline. Almost entirely because of the phrase "microsoft standard".
Some people are on his list just because they hold ranking positions on big companies, not for what they did.
How the hell did Bill Gate get on a list with Vince Cerf, John Postel, Robert Metcalfe, and Nicklaus Wirth? All he did was singlehandly pollute the Internet with spam, and lower IT standards to the point of making IT the laughing stock of the technology sector. Truly an intellectual midget among giants.
Their charitable giving, however, is not something they deserve flack for
If you're going to give, just give and don't make a game out of it. All the truly good charity they engage in is great, but to hold criticism back for something that deserves it doesn't really make sense.
Once Apple adds the ability to negotiate EEE in Macs, they'll call it iEEE.
auto-updating mechanism for the third-party patches.
He's going to port apt-get to OS X?
in order for anybody to give, a) they must first show a profit to have something to give, and b) there's got to be something in it for the donor.
No, in order for somebody to give, a) they must want to help their fellow human beings
Chinese propaganda
it has nothing to do with nationality
By your own words, it really looks like it does though, particularly given the circumstances.
However, I think your point is valid. Neither MD5 or SHA1 are truly 'broken', and people who think they are don't understand the nature of the weaknesses found. Still, calling announcements of such findings propaganda doesn't really help. People might not understand cryptography well enough to see that SHA1 is still a good hashing algorithm, but they have a sense of what an ad hominem is.
Welcome to reality. What the business masses need is not what anyone sane and competent is willing to develop gratis. And that's the root of the problem. That's proprietary development's superweapon. That's Free Software's kryptonite.
Hmm... "reality", "superweapon", "kryptonite" - I think its clear who needs a reality check.
An accurate of the vast majority of business exchange situations are places that have used only outlook/exchange and nothing else, and only use a fraction of the features that outlook/exchange offer. And, those usually don't work well. Just one minor example is that outlook/Exchange doesn't include emails in replies and forwards - only aliases. And, don't forget that using exchange all but forces you to use MS's dhcp and dns servers (active directory) - which are plain lousy (yes, I'm being polite). That is, unless you really like a polluted dns environment and lack of version history/revision control and no auditing ability - to name just a few of the better aspects of MS's AD dns/dhcp capabilities. Exchange is in most cases a one step forward two steps back proposition.
Businesses use exchange because they were virtually born into it and don't know anything better, not because it meets their needs so perfectly. At this point, anything different is a tough sell only because its different, not from a lack of meeting people's needs.
Not to mention that they hold refugee children hostage
It would have been nice if the parent poster had included an example (maybe with a link) of a clinic 'left with almost nothing' just the same.
Diebold voting machines are safe.
Even whey they publish openly all but explicit instructions on how to break into them. This may be a good thing, however, since it may compel them to actually put good locks on their machines. Probably not, though. As per the usual closed-source mentality, they'll just take the pic down and somehow believe that will somehow make the problem go away. Security through obscurity never works.
In effect, a closed source Diebold has been put through the ringer.
Perhaps, but not the PHBs.
Don't they mean purify humanity?
If you read TFA, their secondary target market is for the military, so they want to use it for people too.
you missed the joke part - I guess I should have been a little more obvious...
The poster could have left off the 'and humans' part.
The plasma has gluon particles.
The guy looks a bit short for a stormtrooper...
This thing would probably easily deflect flying chairs...
The problem with the magical free market.
The free market seems to work extremely well at distributing materials in a society, and the more its allowed to work the better it seems to work. It seems work poorly in dealing with abstract things like intellectual property, ideas, or scientific research. Take the need for new antibiotics. Strains of bacteria resistant to all but a couple of antibiotics are now showing up outside of hospitals. Although restraint in handing out antibiotics has reduced those appearances, the bacteria will eventually win unless new antibiotics are developed. Problem is, the market for them isn't big enough to justify expending resources to develop new antibiotics. By the time it is, lots of people will have to die, and it may not be possible to distribute the drugs well enough to help.
Its worth remembering that eradicating Polio in the US (and the Americas) could never have been accomplished by free market forces alone - it required a coordinated effort by organized entities decidedly not following free-market rules and methods. Polio was actually eradicated in Cuba in 1962, and not in the Americas until 1994.
I don't think the problem with the free market is not that it isn't free enough, but that it is only capable of addressing one kind of problem.
So it seems that a free market works great for certain kinds of challenges, and not very good for other kinds of challenges.
But it wasn't what I wrote (the first sentence and the link are the same). Their post is better I think, but different. The next time someone has a thing about something they think is silly in the text of a submission, just remember that the /. editors change it before posting - a lot.
Not a complaint - an observation.
Actually, he's saying "I want to be dictator of the USA"
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
George w Bush, Washington, D.C., Dec. 19, 2000