If I wanted to build a Linux system that would have the same functionality as this (nevermind that I could just go ahead and install Mandriva; I want to do it myself), how much effort would go into that sort of thing? Let's say I started with a Debian release, how difficult would it be to get all the software together to create a basic clone of something like this?
Yes, you would expect that. A quick look at the statistics for infection show that in relation to population, whites (Europeans) have a very low rate of infection in comparison to others.
It's certainly unusual and unexpected in such a short period of time, but it ought not be surprising that some people may have immune systems that can fight the HIV virus. It's evolution in action.
The Plague, which ravaged Europe and decimated its urban populations may be one reason the immunity (or strong resistance, if you prefer) to HIV was found first in a European. Those who survived the Plague, among those who were exposed to it, had a genetic trait that gave them immunity. This may be one reason why Europeans are generally less susceptible to the virus than other ethnicities whose populations were not exposed to a very widespread and violently virulent disease.
Good news for this guy! Hopefully the answer to the disease is found in his bloodstream.
It's not necessarily that these are ridiculous patents on things that have been around for a long time. It's that the granting of these patents forces all other companies to start protecting themselves by filing for patents on things that they never would have thought to patent before. Only in this way are they safe from the so-called "submarine patents" of competitors.
However, this mutually assured destruction style of research does little to progress the state of the art. It does a good job of cementing the current technology as an ad hoc standard, but it acts as a chilling effect on new technologies.
Not that I blame any company for doing this. It is the rules of the government that created this situation. Companies must learn to play by those rules or face elimination by competitors who understand the system and manipulate it successfully.
In the current day and age where the act of putting up a webpage which can be accessed by anyone around the world with an internet connection is as easy as signing into www.blogspot.com, the effort involved in stopping technology leaks such as encryption far outweighs the benefit of keeping it secret. Relying on an encryption to be safe because the algorithm or solution method is secret is akin to hiding your housekey under your doormat. Somewhere along the line, someone's going to figure it out and you're totally at their mercy after that.
The solution, as it is in most cases of security, is to rely on methods that are simply and thoroughly uncrackable. As we saw the other day, the time to determine the factors of a 640 bit number is 5 months. As computers get faster and algorithms get better, that time will diminish. Once quantum computers arrive, those encryption algorithms will be obsolete.
So use encryption which is not vulnerable. Don't stop the free flow of information to hide your weaknesses.
The reason that most people want to switch to Apple is the perceived quality that accompanies it. The reason people don't switch is because of cost and lack of software.
Keeping the prices high on what is essentially commodity hardware does nothing to alleviate the cost problem.
Customers buy DRM CDs and hand them over to you. You give them back a copy of the CD with the DRM removed, for the cost of the blank CD and a small service fee. Hold onto the original CD with customer records as evidence that the customer bought the CD and has the right to copy for personal use.
They may, however, impose a punishment on a student for behavior that is contrary to the school's rules. The student is at all times free to sever the relationship with the school and be free to behave in any manner of his choosing.
However, if you are saying that a school should be an agent of the government and be restricted from imposing punishments for violations of school code, then please see my other post further down in this article.
From a mathematical and scientific point of view, solving factors in constant time is very interesting. Security based on prime factorization will simply be one technology that will be obsolete if a general algorithm can be found that runs in constant time. I gave it 5 seconds because I don't know how many steps such an algorithm would take, but 15,000,000,000 CPU cycles ought to be enough.
Brute force will eventually figure out the factors, unless the universe experiences heat death first.
The real interesting thing is whether we can solve the problem simply and in a reasonable time (less than 5 seconds on modern hardware). Unfortunately, that algorithm is still not available.
The school is not barring anyone's freedom of speech. That's the first thing to realize here. The student exercised the right.
However, the school, having set forth in its student handbook the rules of student conduct and the prescribed penalties, has the right to enforce the rules against the students who agreed to them upon admission to the school. The student has the right, too, to decide to leave the school if the rules are so ornery or the penalties so harsh that he cannot abide by them. In such a case, the student cannot be punished by the school for any act, because he is not a member of the organization any longer.
Governments cannot make such rules (though they do so frequently). Private organizations, whether a large school or just a couple of friends, can decide the rules of inclusion into the group. If, as you may read below in my other post, the government decides to take that right away from a group (in this case forcing the college to accept any student speech), then it is an erosion of the rights despite its possible positive effects.
The end result of all this is that private schools will become another government agency restricted by law from abridging free speech despite their non-public nature.
Free Speech is one of those things that is widely misunderstood. It is simply the ability to speak freely and without government interference. The government is restricted from barring you from exercising your right to speak.
That does not mean that you have that right everywhere. Your rights end, goes the phrase, where mine begin. Private property is one space where you are restricted in your speech. Public property, on the other hand, is where you ought to be unrestricted. Private sector entities (individuals, companies, and organizations) have the right to bar you from activities of the entity if they do not approve of your speech. This used to be an inherent right.
If we force private institutions to accept any and all free speech, despite the fact that it may injure, slander, or be antithetical to the institutions' charter, then we are in essence forcing them to act as a government agency, i.e. statute-restricted non-discriminatory agency. The institutions do not have the right to act as they deem appropriate, but must act in accord with governmental regulation.
Constitutional Amendments like the ERA were big steps in usurping the rights of private institutions. If we follow this line of thinking through, where schools ought to be prevented from punishing students who break school rules, then we can see that the end result is that schools and government move closer to each other and the value of private schooling is diminished.
Will it go that far? Hopefully not, and the school will realize what a mistake it is making. However, the odds are more likely that the growth of government will continue unabated and it will absorb all educational institutions as time goes by, piece by piece, right by right.
And this would also not be unusual with a Closed Source product. The key here isn't 'control', it is 'freedom'. In fact, it is because the codebase is not controlled that the customers are able to exercise their freedom to select service vendors. In the CSS scenario, only approved licensees of the source code would be able to make those improvements. In the OSS one, anyone with enough brains and tuits could do it.
Maybe it's a bad thing to get hung up on the terminology here, but I do not think that 'control' is an inherent trait of OSS whereas 'freedom' is.
Slashdot Mirror
Does the TOS really restrict this? And does such a clause make it necessary for them to police the database for infringements?
If I wanted to build a Linux system that would have the same functionality as this (nevermind that I could just go ahead and install Mandriva; I want to do it myself), how much effort would go into that sort of thing? Let's say I started with a Debian release, how difficult would it be to get all the software together to create a basic clone of something like this?
I forgot the link:
2 &cid=14024541
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=16820
This is a link to another Slashdot post by another user, but I thought it would be interesting in response to your comment.
Also, see my other post in this thread regarding the extremely low incidence of AIDS (not HIV infection) among Asians.
Yes, you would expect that. A quick look at the statistics for infection show that in relation to population, whites (Europeans) have a very low rate of infection in comparison to others.
http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/stats.htm#aidsrace
The low rate among Asians is also noteworthy.
It's certainly unusual and unexpected in such a short period of time, but it ought not be surprising that some people may have immune systems that can fight the HIV virus. It's evolution in action.
The Plague, which ravaged Europe and decimated its urban populations may be one reason the immunity (or strong resistance, if you prefer) to HIV was found first in a European. Those who survived the Plague, among those who were exposed to it, had a genetic trait that gave them immunity. This may be one reason why Europeans are generally less susceptible to the virus than other ethnicities whose populations were not exposed to a very widespread and violently virulent disease.
Good news for this guy! Hopefully the answer to the disease is found in his bloodstream.
Man. Who cares?
It's not a release. It's nothing special.
I guess it's Saturday, so there's probably not such a large variety of story submissions to choose from.
But, oh man, who cares?
It's not necessarily that these are ridiculous patents on things that have been around for a long time. It's that the granting of these patents forces all other companies to start protecting themselves by filing for patents on things that they never would have thought to patent before. Only in this way are they safe from the so-called "submarine patents" of competitors.
However, this mutually assured destruction style of research does little to progress the state of the art. It does a good job of cementing the current technology as an ad hoc standard, but it acts as a chilling effect on new technologies.
Not that I blame any company for doing this. It is the rules of the government that created this situation. Companies must learn to play by those rules or face elimination by competitors who understand the system and manipulate it successfully.
In the current day and age where the act of putting up a webpage which can be accessed by anyone around the world with an internet connection is as easy as signing into www.blogspot.com, the effort involved in stopping technology leaks such as encryption far outweighs the benefit of keeping it secret. Relying on an encryption to be safe because the algorithm or solution method is secret is akin to hiding your housekey under your doormat. Somewhere along the line, someone's going to figure it out and you're totally at their mercy after that.
The solution, as it is in most cases of security, is to rely on methods that are simply and thoroughly uncrackable. As we saw the other day, the time to determine the factors of a 640 bit number is 5 months. As computers get faster and algorithms get better, that time will diminish. Once quantum computers arrive, those encryption algorithms will be obsolete.
So use encryption which is not vulnerable. Don't stop the free flow of information to hide your weaknesses.
The reason that most people want to switch to Apple is the perceived quality that accompanies it. The reason people don't switch is because of cost and lack of software.
Keeping the prices high on what is essentially commodity hardware does nothing to alleviate the cost problem.
If you don't agree to the EULA, you can't use the software. Isn't that the way it works? So good riddance.
2) is obviously a fat little squirrel. I like to draw squirrels a little thinner: 1xf
Business idea:
Customers buy DRM CDs and hand them over to you. You give them back a copy of the CD with the DRM removed, for the cost of the blank CD and a small service fee. Hold onto the original CD with customer records as evidence that the customer bought the CD and has the right to copy for personal use.
Not workable?
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/0 8/034230&tid=160&tid=98
I must have been absent the day they taught us that shining lasers into our eyes was safe.
They may, however, impose a punishment on a student for behavior that is contrary to the school's rules. The student is at all times free to sever the relationship with the school and be free to behave in any manner of his choosing.
However, if you are saying that a school should be an agent of the government and be restricted from imposing punishments for violations of school code, then please see my other post further down in this article.
Geneva conventions bar the use of maiming weapons, and one that would blind the enemy combatant is right out.
Works for me, except that those student handbooks really do cover the gamut of student 'crimes'.
Alcohol consumption? Check.
Threatening a school employee? Check.
Causing a disturbance? Check.
From a mathematical and scientific point of view, solving factors in constant time is very interesting. Security based on prime factorization will simply be one technology that will be obsolete if a general algorithm can be found that runs in constant time. I gave it 5 seconds because I don't know how many steps such an algorithm would take, but 15,000,000,000 CPU cycles ought to be enough.
Brute force will eventually figure out the factors, unless the universe experiences heat death first.
The real interesting thing is whether we can solve the problem simply and in a reasonable time (less than 5 seconds on modern hardware). Unfortunately, that algorithm is still not available.
Sorry. It's irrelevant, uninteresting, and I probably should have chosen a better name.
The school is not barring anyone's freedom of speech. That's the first thing to realize here. The student exercised the right.
However, the school, having set forth in its student handbook the rules of student conduct and the prescribed penalties, has the right to enforce the rules against the students who agreed to them upon admission to the school. The student has the right, too, to decide to leave the school if the rules are so ornery or the penalties so harsh that he cannot abide by them. In such a case, the student cannot be punished by the school for any act, because he is not a member of the organization any longer.
Governments cannot make such rules (though they do so frequently). Private organizations, whether a large school or just a couple of friends, can decide the rules of inclusion into the group. If, as you may read below in my other post, the government decides to take that right away from a group (in this case forcing the college to accept any student speech), then it is an erosion of the rights despite its possible positive effects.
The end result of all this is that private schools will become another government agency restricted by law from abridging free speech despite their non-public nature.
Free Speech is one of those things that is widely misunderstood. It is simply the ability to speak freely and without government interference. The government is restricted from barring you from exercising your right to speak.
That does not mean that you have that right everywhere. Your rights end, goes the phrase, where mine begin. Private property is one space where you are restricted in your speech. Public property, on the other hand, is where you ought to be unrestricted. Private sector entities (individuals, companies, and organizations) have the right to bar you from activities of the entity if they do not approve of your speech. This used to be an inherent right.
If we force private institutions to accept any and all free speech, despite the fact that it may injure, slander, or be antithetical to the institutions' charter, then we are in essence forcing them to act as a government agency, i.e. statute-restricted non-discriminatory agency. The institutions do not have the right to act as they deem appropriate, but must act in accord with governmental regulation.
Constitutional Amendments like the ERA were big steps in usurping the rights of private institutions. If we follow this line of thinking through, where schools ought to be prevented from punishing students who break school rules, then we can see that the end result is that schools and government move closer to each other and the value of private schooling is diminished.
Will it go that far? Hopefully not, and the school will realize what a mistake it is making. However, the odds are more likely that the growth of government will continue unabated and it will absorb all educational institutions as time goes by, piece by piece, right by right.
And this would also not be unusual with a Closed Source product. The key here isn't 'control', it is 'freedom'. In fact, it is because the codebase is not controlled that the customers are able to exercise their freedom to select service vendors. In the CSS scenario, only approved licensees of the source code would be able to make those improvements. In the OSS one, anyone with enough brains and tuits could do it.
Maybe it's a bad thing to get hung up on the terminology here, but I do not think that 'control' is an inherent trait of OSS whereas 'freedom' is.
Haha! Let's make fun of sick people!
It was completely irrelevant to the topic at hand and serves no purpose but to make light of a seriously ill person (who subsequently died).
There's something sickening here, and it's the editors' lack of respect for others and journalistic integrity.