This leads me to 2 questions: "can patching be regulated?" and "should patching be regulated?". It seems obvious the free market can't keep our computers secure.
There's no need for new regulation. The government need only change product liability laws so that consumers can sue over damages suffered over software that remains unpatched after the company becomes aware of exploits. After that, the free market will take care of things nicely.
If the employer AND the government AND the congressman AND apparently no one else will listen to this boob, maybe, just maybe, his issue ain't that important and he should quit bellyaching.
Does this also apply to engineers of electronic voting systems?
HP are just pissed that others only supply kits because printer ink refills are absurdly expensive, totally out of proportion with what it costs to make them.
Wrong. HP is pissed that it spent millions of dollars developing inks with particular properties, only to have competitors pillage the final recipe. Chemical formulations are certainly patentable, and HP is well within its rights to defend its IP.
For the same reasons that many posters have already discussed, I'm not a big fan of inkjets in general. But if HP is going to invest the money to develop new inks, they have the right to enjoy the benefits.
There were 2,700 astronomers in Prague during that 10-day period. But only 10% of them voted this afternoon.
The low voter turnout is hardly a surprise. Most scientists would not go for the entire conference, and most of them have probably got better things to do than quibble about the status of Pluto. I saw an interview on TV from one astronomer who had been at the conference that week, but didn't stay for the vote. He commented that the room in which the vote was held typically held ~400 people.
O'Reilly has all sorts of "interesting" trademarks. They have trademarked the Camel on the Perl books.
Considering that many people refer to the O'Reilly perl books simply as "the camel book" and the "llama book", I don't think O'Reilly is out of line. Clearly people (or at least IT people) mentally link the O'Reilly perl book to the image of the camel (and llama), so a trademark is perfectly reasonable.
The only thing that is interesting about this article is the fact that they've done it with photonic crystal waveguides. My own lab the same thing with silicon-on-insulator waveguides (not photonic crystals though). We are currently testing various biosensors, including a high-resolution (2 Angstrom target) spectrometer for interogating atomic spectra. On of our other designs has been shown to measure sugar concentrations in water, and we're moving to detecting actual biomolecules over the next few weeks.
These guys have great PR but, like most scientific advances, the improvement is really only a tiny step.
So we know that Diebold is capable of producing secure ATM systems, and that money is the root of all evil in politics, and that we have insufficient voter turnout. So here's my plan for a foolproof voting system.:)
Each polling station will consist of one (1) secure Diebold ATM system, which is capable of accessing the bank accounts of the Republican and Democratic parties. Voters will walk into the voting booth, and withdraw $20 from the bank account of their favourite party. At the end of the election, the party that has received the most votes/withdrawals from their account wins. To cap it off, voters have a new incentive to participate in "the process."
Alternately, the system can be turned upside-down, and people remove money from the account of their least favourite party. Not only does one side win, but the other side is bankrupt!
Are they ready for it? You can't just pick any non-industrialized nation, point and say "this is where our billion dollar software project will be made."
As opposed to putting a billion dollar project in an industrial nation? Would you say that the U.S. was "ready" for 9/11? Risk is just a part of doing business.
Didn't we already see this demonstrated in the Futurama episode where Fry eats the sandwich from the 20th century? I mean, those were worms, but they were tiny and seemed to be rewireing Fry okay. I know I could sure use some of them worms...
Now if someone tries to patent this method, Futurama will surely count as prior art!
This is unfortunate for the US. If the US doesn't do something about their patent system, it is very likely that they will fall behind China and India in terms of innovation.
But the U.S. is doing something about it. They're pressuring China and India to adopt US-style IP laws.
If I did my math right, isn't that like 9-something-billion per year in fines? And doesn't MS generate something like 40 billion per year in revenue? I say they won't even notice....
$900 million per year actually. That is before the investors with their litigation-happy lawyers get in on the act. A company's job is to make money, and to engage in actions that result in losing an extra ~$1 billion (after tax) in profits is just asking for an avalanche of lawsuits from unhappy shareholders.
Just think of the patent licensing fees they can charge!
Why shouldn't they be able to patent? This is a novel and useful technology reduced to practice for the first time, and is exactly the kind of thing that patents were designed to cover.
Don't want to pay royalties? Fine, go back to the previous (and more expensive) method of desalination. If the new method has value, you should expect to compensate the inventors over the lifetime of the patent. After that, it's all yours.
Despite your aversion to teaching good grammar, that may be the most useful thing you can teach them. Poor grammar really marks a person in the working world, regardless of their final profession. If you teaching them grammar is out of the question, at least make a good grammar book part of the recommended/required reading list. Students always need a good reference, but seldom buy one unles forced. My own favourite is "English 3200", which is a programmed English coursebook that teaches grammar in 3200 easy lessons.:)
Assuming grammar is out of the question, it is useful to discuss when certain types of writing are appropriate. My own high school curriculum focussed almost entirely on writing "persuasive essays", trying to prove a point about Macbeth and his wife. That class of writing is almost nonexistent in the engineering disciplines, but that is almost all students know how to write. Writing assignments for short memos, research reports, etc would be good.
And tell them how to write good emails. Lord knows that's the most common form of written communication these days.
It's not clear. NPR had a story discussing this last week. The outbreak is wide enough that people are beginning to wonder if there's a hole in the efficacy of the MMR vaccines. Normally the vaccine is inneffective in 10% of the population, but the way it's spreading makes it seem like there's a wider problem of some sort.
I also wonder if it could have been that there were bad batches of vaccine or something. Then again, i don't know what the demographic background of the people effected is. If it's people from all over the country (a possibility with college students) then the cause will be different if it's just people from a cluster of states in the mid-west.
The article and other news outlets are blaming it on two major factors. The mumps-measles-rubella vaccine shifted from a one-dose variety to a two-dose in the late 1980s. Many people didn't get the second dose, leading to a lowered immunity. That same generation are now going to school and meeting other susceptible people. Instant outbreak.
Also there was a medical study that indicated some links between the vaccin and autism some time ago. The claim was largely retracted, but it was scary enough that some families didn't have their children vaccinated.
What does somewhat surprise me is the university students getting this disease. Don't the universities require proof of up-to-date innoculations for incoming students?
What is interesting about it is the fact that it is lobbying. Lobbying is only organized, legalized bribery! Microsoft lobbies both Republicans and Democrats because it really doesn't care who is in power as long as they can buy the legislation they want. The fact that it was found illegal is something they will probably take care of with the next round of legislation (and partly paid for by Microsoft along with all other companies looking for a special favor).
Perverse though it may be, lobbyists are one of three constitutionally protected professions in the United States. The First Amendment guarantees the right to "petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Unless you can get a constitutional amendment through, things are not going to change much.
For those who are interested, the other two professions are lawyers (the right to counsel) and journalists (the right to a free press).
If he wants to blame someone for a massive court settlement, perhaps he should try looking in the mirror. RIM had the chance to settle this for a pittance early on, but decided to role the dice in court and lost. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/29/17 26238
The patent system certainly needs some fixing, but outlawing stupid CEOs at the same time would also be a big help. I'm not going to get my hopes up though.
Why should we be surprised that hard radiation does enough cellular damage to increase the onset of aging? Is this really a shock?
The article submitter has watched way too many Star Trek episodes if he thinks that travelling to the moon is going to have a noticable time dilation effect. Light travels at 3e8 metres/second. The distance to the moon is ~1.3 light seconds (300,000 km). Unless the moon landing astronauts made that trip in under a minute, there will be no relativistic effects.
As a physicist, I can tell you that travelling in space is not by itself enough to slow time down. You need to be moving very fast indeed.
They're changing features that work great now (tabbed browsing) and adding a whole bunch of features that the vast majority of end users really don't care much about (new data storage layer for bookmarks and history, extended search plugin format, updates to the extension system to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions). How Microsoft-esque...
If by Microsoft-esque you mean that version 1 has the features to keep 99% of the user base happy, you're absolutely right.
As far as the "average user" is concerned, what features is Firefox actually missing right now? It renders webpages, keeps bookmarks, has tabs and stores webpage passwords. That's enough for the vast majority of the world's users.
But would you prefer that the development team declare victory and stop coding? The Firefox team could stop development today and Joe User would be happily surfing with Firefox version 1 for many years to come. Any new developments are going to be for that last 1% category, because everyone else is happy.
Many posters are claiming that this is not enough to make a real difference to MS, but I disagree. $2.36 million per day is not chump change.
Microsoft's revenues are ~$40 billion annually, leading to a ~$13 billion profit. $2.36 million per day is $861 million per year, or 6% of Microsoft's yearly profits. While it won't kill them, figures like that are enough to make investors (and their lawsuit-happy lawyers) sit up and take notice.
It's also important to realize that this will only be the beginning. If MS continues to flout the EU's penalties, they will only get stiffer. In a fight between a multinational corporation and a multinational government, I'm betting on the EU this time.
I think groupthink in this case is exactly the point - the voters don't want Diebold machines counting their votes. Diebold has taken virtually no action to reassure the public that everything is legit - they could release their source code, for example.
Tragically even this isn't enough. Diebold runs on Windows, a closed source operating system. Diebold could well release its part of the vote counting source code, but code auditors still cannot be sure that the OS itself isn't mucking around underneath.
They want 500,000 one Kilowatt generators. How much CO2 will that be? Oh wait they are not in US, so pollution does not count.
Because they are burning wood and cow dung, which was produced by taking CO2 out of the atmosphere in the first place, there is no effect. To be sure there will be particulate pollution, such as soot, but CO2 production is not a problem.
I wonder if this applies only to videogames, or to games in general. It wouldn't surprise me, for example, to find that the brains of chess or go players would also age differently.
Lots of posters are wondering what the big deal is. How can a Google OS possibly kill Windows? I would argue that it doesn't have to kill Windows to hurt Microsoft. Microsoft loses money on virtually all of its operations except for two cash cows: the Windows OS and Office. Those allow MS to lose loads of cash on other stuff (TV things, Xbox, search engine wars, etc).
If a Google OS forces MS to lower the prices on Windows, it destroys a critical source of free cash that MS uses to wage war in other areas. Google may have well decided that, in addition to serving as useful advertising, a Google OS may be just the thing to put MS on the defensive. It hurts Microsoft's cash flow, presents a real threat to their financial operations and prevents them from attacking Google's own profitable areas.
This is way outside my area of understanding. Could someone briefly explain what a BIOS rootkit could actually do if it was installed?
Naively, I would have thought that an OS rootkit would have already have access to my files, along with the full resources of the OS. What additional damage could a a BIOS rootkit do? Would it have access to anything other than disk files? Could it, for example, send data out (i.e. my credit card #) over a network connection, or does the BIOS need extra help to access that stuff?
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This leads me to 2 questions: "can patching be regulated?" and "should patching be regulated?". It seems obvious the free market can't keep our computers secure.
There's no need for new regulation. The government need only change product liability laws so that consumers can sue over damages suffered over software that remains unpatched after the company becomes aware of exploits. After that, the free market will take care of things nicely.
If the employer AND the government AND the congressman AND apparently no one else will listen to this boob, maybe, just maybe, his issue ain't that important and he should quit bellyaching.
Does this also apply to engineers of electronic voting systems?
Wrong. HP is pissed that it spent millions of dollars developing inks with particular properties, only to have competitors pillage the final recipe. Chemical formulations are certainly patentable, and HP is well within its rights to defend its IP.
For the same reasons that many posters have already discussed, I'm not a big fan of inkjets in general. But if HP is going to invest the money to develop new inks, they have the right to enjoy the benefits.
There were 2,700 astronomers in Prague during that 10-day period. But only 10% of them voted this afternoon.
The low voter turnout is hardly a surprise. Most scientists would not go for the entire conference, and most of them have probably got better things to do than quibble about the status of Pluto. I saw an interview on TV from one astronomer who had been at the conference that week, but didn't stay for the vote. He commented that the room in which the vote was held typically held ~400 people.
Considering that many people refer to the O'Reilly perl books simply as "the camel book" and the "llama book", I don't think O'Reilly is out of line. Clearly people (or at least IT people) mentally link the O'Reilly perl book to the image of the camel (and llama), so a trademark is perfectly reasonable.
The only thing that is interesting about this article is the fact that they've done it with photonic crystal waveguides. My own lab the same thing with silicon-on-insulator waveguides (not photonic crystals though). We are currently testing various biosensors, including a high-resolution (2 Angstrom target) spectrometer for interogating atomic spectra. On of our other designs has been shown to measure sugar concentrations in water, and we're moving to detecting actual biomolecules over the next few weeks.
These guys have great PR but, like most scientific advances, the improvement is really only a tiny step.
So we know that Diebold is capable of producing secure ATM systems, and that money is the root of all evil in politics, and that we have insufficient voter turnout. So here's my plan for a foolproof voting system. :)
Each polling station will consist of one (1) secure Diebold ATM system, which is capable of accessing the bank accounts of the Republican and Democratic parties. Voters will walk into the voting booth, and withdraw $20 from the bank account of their favourite party. At the end of the election, the party that has received the most votes/withdrawals from their account wins. To cap it off, voters have a new incentive to participate in "the process."
Alternately, the system can be turned upside-down, and people remove money from the account of their least favourite party. Not only does one side win, but the other side is bankrupt!
No, it raises a very good question.
Are they ready for it? You can't just pick any non-industrialized nation, point and say "this is where our billion dollar software project will be made."
As opposed to putting a billion dollar project in an industrial nation? Would you say that the U.S. was "ready" for 9/11? Risk is just a part of doing business.
Didn't we already see this demonstrated in the Futurama episode where Fry eats the sandwich from the 20th century? I mean, those were worms, but they were tiny and seemed to be rewireing Fry okay. I know I could sure use some of them worms...
Now if someone tries to patent this method, Futurama will surely count as prior art!
This is unfortunate for the US. If the US doesn't do something about their patent system, it is very likely that they will fall behind China and India in terms of innovation.
But the U.S. is doing something about it. They're pressuring China and India to adopt US-style IP laws.
If I did my math right, isn't that like 9-something-billion per year in fines? And doesn't MS generate something like 40 billion per year in revenue? I say they won't even notice....
$900 million per year actually. That is before the investors with their litigation-happy lawyers get in on the act. A company's job is to make money, and to engage in actions that result in losing an extra ~$1 billion (after tax) in profits is just asking for an avalanche of lawsuits from unhappy shareholders.
Just think of the patent licensing fees they can charge!
Why shouldn't they be able to patent? This is a novel and useful technology reduced to practice for the first time, and is exactly the kind of thing that patents were designed to cover.
Don't want to pay royalties? Fine, go back to the previous (and more expensive) method of desalination. If the new method has value, you should expect to compensate the inventors over the lifetime of the patent. After that, it's all yours.
Assuming grammar is out of the question, it is useful to discuss when certain types of writing are appropriate. My own high school curriculum focussed almost entirely on writing "persuasive essays", trying to prove a point about Macbeth and his wife. That class of writing is almost nonexistent in the engineering disciplines, but that is almost all students know how to write. Writing assignments for short memos, research reports, etc would be good.
And tell them how to write good emails. Lord knows that's the most common form of written communication these days.
It's not clear. NPR had a story discussing this last week. The outbreak is wide enough that people are beginning to wonder if there's a hole in the efficacy of the MMR vaccines. Normally the vaccine is inneffective in 10% of the population, but the way it's spreading makes it seem like there's a wider problem of some sort.
I also wonder if it could have been that there were bad batches of vaccine or something. Then again, i don't know what the demographic background of the people effected is. If it's people from all over the country (a possibility with college students) then the cause will be different if it's just people from a cluster of states in the mid-west.
The article and other news outlets are blaming it on two major factors. The mumps-measles-rubella vaccine shifted from a one-dose variety to a two-dose in the late 1980s. Many people didn't get the second dose, leading to a lowered immunity. That same generation are now going to school and meeting other susceptible people. Instant outbreak.
Also there was a medical study that indicated some links between the vaccin and autism some time ago. The claim was largely retracted, but it was scary enough that some families didn't have their children vaccinated.
What does somewhat surprise me is the university students getting this disease. Don't the universities require proof of up-to-date innoculations for incoming students?
Perverse though it may be, lobbyists are one of three constitutionally protected professions in the United States. The First Amendment guarantees the right to "petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Unless you can get a constitutional amendment through, things are not going to change much.
For those who are interested, the other two professions are lawyers (the right to counsel) and journalists (the right to a free press).
The patent system certainly needs some fixing, but outlawing stupid CEOs at the same time would also be a big help. I'm not going to get my hopes up though.
The article submitter has watched way too many Star Trek episodes if he thinks that travelling to the moon is going to have a noticable time dilation effect. Light travels at 3e8 metres/second. The distance to the moon is ~1.3 light seconds (300,000 km). Unless the moon landing astronauts made that trip in under a minute, there will be no relativistic effects.
As a physicist, I can tell you that travelling in space is not by itself enough to slow time down. You need to be moving very fast indeed.
They're changing features that work great now (tabbed browsing) and adding a whole bunch of features that the vast majority of end users really don't care much about (new data storage layer for bookmarks and history, extended search plugin format, updates to the extension system to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions). How Microsoft-esque...
If by Microsoft-esque you mean that version 1 has the features to keep 99% of the user base happy, you're absolutely right.
As far as the "average user" is concerned, what features is Firefox actually missing right now? It renders webpages, keeps bookmarks, has tabs and stores webpage passwords. That's enough for the vast majority of the world's users.
But would you prefer that the development team declare victory and stop coding? The Firefox team could stop development today and Joe User would be happily surfing with Firefox version 1 for many years to come. Any new developments are going to be for that last 1% category, because everyone else is happy.
Microsoft's revenues are ~$40 billion annually, leading to a ~$13 billion profit. $2.36 million per day is $861 million per year, or 6% of Microsoft's yearly profits. While it won't kill them, figures like that are enough to make investors (and their lawsuit-happy lawyers) sit up and take notice.
It's also important to realize that this will only be the beginning. If MS continues to flout the EU's penalties, they will only get stiffer. In a fight between a multinational corporation and a multinational government, I'm betting on the EU this time.
Tragically even this isn't enough. Diebold runs on Windows, a closed source operating system. Diebold could well release its part of the vote counting source code, but code auditors still cannot be sure that the OS itself isn't mucking around underneath.
They want 500,000 one Kilowatt generators. How much CO2 will that be?
Oh wait they are not in US, so pollution does not count.
Because they are burning wood and cow dung, which was produced by taking CO2 out of the atmosphere in the first place, there is no effect. To be sure there will be particulate pollution, such as soot, but CO2 production is not a problem.
I wonder if this applies only to videogames, or to games in general. It wouldn't surprise me, for example, to find that the brains of chess or go players would also age differently.
If a Google OS forces MS to lower the prices on Windows, it destroys a critical source of free cash that MS uses to wage war in other areas. Google may have well decided that, in addition to serving as useful advertising, a Google OS may be just the thing to put MS on the defensive. It hurts Microsoft's cash flow, presents a real threat to their financial operations and prevents them from attacking Google's own profitable areas.
This is way outside my area of understanding. Could someone briefly explain what a BIOS rootkit could actually do if it was installed?
Naively, I would have thought that an OS rootkit would have already have access to my files, along with the full resources of the OS. What additional damage could a a BIOS rootkit do? Would it have access to anything other than disk files? Could it, for example, send data out (i.e. my credit card #) over a network connection, or does the BIOS need extra help to access that stuff?
A botnet named Brain. Coming soon, a botnet named Pinky.