It's a fair point - In Aus, most people vote on party lines, and because we don't have a 'first past the post' system there are more parties (Left, Right, Green, Rural, Loonie). The Party system is much stronger, so people may not know the individuals, but generally have an idea of which party they think will best represent them or their views.
It's not perfect by any means, and we have the same problems about the political class floating off into a bubble disconnected from the rest of the country, but it just doesn't seem as extreme as elsewhere, and maybe the electorate, knowing that they have to vote (or at least show up) pays slightly more attention than they otherwise would.
The alternative, as far as I can see from a distance, is not just that the informed vote, but also the angriest and most motivated - so politicians spend their time trying to make their supporters angry and adopting extreme positions...
Australian here - compulsory voting works quite well - it's not really compulsory voting, more compulsory attendance; you have to show up but the ballot is secret, so you can just write swear words on it and draw rude pictures if you want - and some do.
But it has a huge effect on the political discourse - because parties don't need to 'get the vote out', politics becomes largely a squabble over the middle ground, and extremists on either side don't tend to do so well. Our politicians are usually pretty boring compared to overseas. Given all the other things we have to do as part of society, showing up every few years to vote seems a fairly small price to pay to keep democratic government ticking over.
Not sure how it would play elsewhere, but it works well for us... as does the whole preferential voting system; you can put your least disliked major party second last, and vote for other people first without 'wasting' your vote.
Anyway, back on topic: the selfie thing is a problem, as it breaks the whole secret ballot shtick. I can see the free speech argument, but there's a reason for secret ballots; without them you can get intimidation, coercion, people selling votes etc... sometimes I think we forget that these things were hard fought for a long time ago, and they shouldn't be given up without a lot of careful thought...
Folks seem to be missing the point that this involved tapping an American law firm, apparently in order to gain an edge during trade negotiations? (And similar stuff happening during recent climate negotiations?)
That kinda muddies the water I think; people spying on other people for national security is one thing, but when it spills over into the commercial world and UN politics then it's no longer security, but obtaining an advantage by underhand means.
Also, I'm curious - doesn't US law say something about not spying on americans? And aren't even lawyers technically citizens?
I guess as an aussie if the US wants to outsource that sort of thing to us I don't have a huge problem with it, but I would have thought more US folks would be upset...:-)
Schneier suggests elliptic key may be compromised and should be avoided... as with other public key systems it is based on a computationally hard one way problem, it's not beyond the realms of possibility that our TLA friends may have some special insight here.
As a side issue, I've been to vendor presentations where they've boasted about the ability of their advanced firewalls/edge devices to do real time MITM attacks using valid signing certs obtained from (at least one) top level CA, to enable companies to monitor gmail etc for 'IP protection'. Given the NSA's liking for compromising network devices I wouldn't be surprised if that method was also used.
Groklaw was there when much we take for granted was under attack, and as a rallying point was hugely influential as vested interest after vested interest tried to enclose the commons and steal from the common wealth. It outlived SCO, it saw Linux grow and thrive, and we rejoiced as it called the odds and gathered forces against one carpet bagging IP troll after another.
It is truly heart breaking to see PJ shutting up shop, and I only hope it helps to focus us on a greater danger than SCO ever was.
There are a bunch of folks who add client side encryption to drop box.
This mob: http://lock-box.com/ do a bunch of fancy client side key management to allow strong PKI management including revocation and re-keying of group accessed data. They're pretty good if you need a strong crypto layer on top of drop box, but there's a bunch of folks who add security to drop box with some balance of security and convenience.... but like many other posters have said, be very careful before sticking classified data on any of this stuff; it's unlikely to be suitable unless the solution's been given a rating.
Not true - numerous examples exist of civilisations large and small that have outgrown their resource base and crashed horribly. In fact, pretty much EVERY SINGLE CIVILISATION before ours has collapsed horribly. We would be different why?
(cf Jarad Diamond's book "Collapse" for a role call of civilisations and empires that have gone belly up - not all can be pinned on environmental collapse, but a lot can; just look at the sands of the middle east where the great empires of two thousand years ago were, possibly the Romans, the Maya, definitely the Norse settlements in Greenland and the polynesian settlement of Easter Island, etc. etc.)
I'd agree - except that the games I buy on Steam are not 'retail price'. DRM sucks, but if I can get Portal for $5, I'm prepared to do it as a throw away. There seem to be games on Steam for $20 or less that are sold (in Australia) at $US 50 or more.
I'm happy to pay a bit more to not have DRM (ta iTunes), but not multiples...
Some facts as I understand them snarfed from the web - corrections welcomed...
rough cost of (wholesale) energy per kilowatt hour (kwh): ~5c CO2 cost per kwh: ~1kg (coal power: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/pns/faq.html) time for my (small) 1 litre (~ 1kw) kettle to boil when full is ~ 5 minutes which compares well with the theoretical energy for a 1litre at ~350kj, or 350 seconds time for 1kw . Hence power for a small boiled kettle is a killowatt for 1/10 of an hour, or 0.1 kwh
So I get... Kettle boiling: costs ~.5c, and ~ 100g,... the article says a kettle take 15g, which I don't get even close to; maybe clever people boil just enough to make single cups only?
If the article was true, Google doing "more than 200m" searches a day would spend ~ $20m a day on power, or ~ $7billion a year, consuming 100,000 megawatt hours, or a continuous drain of 4,000 megawatts (about the power output of a small US state). On the authors figures, total power consumption would be ~ 650 megawatts, which is still pretty huge, and would still be spending ~ $1billion a year.
Google use cheap, mass produced low power units in gigantic numbers - estimates are hard to come by, I will estimate 200,000 based on inflating some public estimates (e.g. http://arnab.org/blog/how-many-computers-does-google-have).
Energy cost of networking is significant, but I do not believe as great as machines; I'll add 50% for good luck. Utility server machines are dropping in power (~100-200w) but also require cooling, UPSs and network etc., so let's call it 500w all up (figures are difficult to get; everyone is selling something power center wise) - so I get 100 megawatts; or 1/6th of the author's estimate, or 1/40th of the true kettle figure.
I'd say that the author is overstating the case to make a political point - if I was cynical I'd point out the author has also just launched a business to 'green your web site' by installing monitoring software, estimating the energy cost of searches to it, and then buying carbon offsets on your behalf, so it is in his interests to overestimate such usage..
It's probably more similar to 'squad leader' than it is to 3rd edition D&D though. Not sure why it got called D&D. Dungeons of DragonCraft might be more appropriate.
It's fun at the moment, but it feels a bit like fairy floss - there doesn't seem to be much depth.
Meanwhile I'm curious as to how wizards are going to go charging for 'virtual minitures' and stuff, and the jury's still out on their online subscription offering. Could be good, but I suspect the freeware stuff will be better - already we're seeing some pretty neat character generators out there.
I've been using GWT a bit to modify an existing velocity based application.
It was a bit of work to get my head around, until I realised it was two separate things.
First, it's a nifty way of writing GUI widgets in java, and auto-converting them to javascript.
Secondly, it's an RPC mechanism for AJAX like cleverness.
Now for me, that second one wasn't so necessary. I have a nice REST-style back end with an existing data structures. So once I stopped trying to splice GWT/RPC on top of that, and just used GWT for widget creation (using POST and GET from GWT), it all went swimmingly.
I think there is an expectation that you'll do your entire site in GWT; however I've found it quite useful to just do some nice widgets in GWT, and keep most of the site classic velocity; it's easier and faster to maintain that way.
I think GWT will take off when there is a richer 'standard' widget library - when you can build an editor like gmail's in as a single component. But at the moment gmail doesn't use GWT, presumably because it's tricky to do something that complex.
OpenID seems neat, but isn't it wide open for phishing?
I go to 'evilwebsite.com', give it my openID, and it directs me to 'notmyopenidprovider.com', with a login page that looks real - I enter my credentials and it's all over? It's the bank game all over again, especially as I'm *expecting* that I might be redirected and asked for my password...
A union doesn't work for IT. What we need is what the doctors, lawyers, engineers and accountants have - a decent Professional Association.
We don't need a Union to help with collective bargaining of base pay rates and do the other things Unions do well, because we're professionals, and generally don't have the problems underpaid blue collar workers have.
However we could very much use a Professional Association to help with dodgy employers, legal aid for badly treated members (think all those stories of people fired for showing security flaws), bulk rate bargaining on things like indemnity insurance, advising government on IT issues, and (and this is the biggie; think doctors) enforcing professional standards.
In Australia we have the 'Australian Computing Society', but as far as I can tell it's been subverted by industry sources such as recruitment agencies and large IT employers, and does sod all with regards to representing IT workers. However a ground swell take over bid and a bit of branch stacking could probably get it back on track. Follow that up with an act of parliment (like with lawyers, doctors etc.) to set standards and you're on the gravy train.
Then, if you're evil, you insist that all 'security related' IT work can only be done by an 'ACS approved IT security worker', and your off-shoring worries go out the window. (It's a scam, but one used very successfully by other professions - cf all the stuff in the states about not buying cheap scripts from those naughty cheap Canadian doctors...:-) ).
* automatic transmission * power assisted steering * synchromesh clutches * automatic choke * anti-lock brakes * traction control etc. etc. etc.
Cars *are* complicated, and a lot of effort has gone into hiding that complexity in a modern car, so that all the user has to do these days is set speed and direction. Try driving an old, big car (or truck!) where you have to double de-clutch, crank the engine to start, manually set the mixture with the choke and be built like Arnie to steer the thing. Sure users still crash cars, but it's usually 'pilot error' now rather than 'mechanical failure', or 'workload induced failure'.
So (with the obvious exception of Mac OS X:-) ), I claim most computers are still at the usability stage of automobiles in the 30s (they've had similar years of development) - sure you don't have to prime each cylinder with fuel before you start, but they're still very complex to run.
But the fact they're complex doesn't mean that you can't hide that from a casual user attempting simple tasks.
There's been lots of folks here saying that the punishment is too tough, given that violent crimes don't get as much.
This is something I could never figure out. If someone steals $10,000 from a local store they get 5 years, if a white collar crim steals $10M from a retirement fund, they get community service.
This guy did, single handed, massive damage to the entire internet. Do the sums - the real cost of spam is probably ~ 1c when you average in lost time and productivity of end recipients, which is even greater than the network costs. Over 10 years, he probably caused ~$30,000,000 damage to a huge number of strangers.
Looked at that way, spammers do more damage than most virus writers, and they are professionals doing it for money; hence harsh punishment is appropriate.
Punishments for financial crimes should be commensurate to the damage caused; and this lad caused heaps.
Now what would be really good is if they started going after the suppliers who pay for the spam... *starts drooling*.
I've written two dozen patents for my firm, all of them to avoid being sued ourselves over doing our everyday bread-and-butter stuff.
I went to a lot of work to make them easily
understandable by laymen, especially the lawyers who would be working on them. Examples, diagrams, etc. - they had the lot.
When they came back for review, I had a huge amount of trouble understanding them. They'd been translated into legalese, the diagrams had all been removed or replaced, the technical terms had been generalised... it was very difficult for me to figure out what they were saying, and it would be straight out impossible for anyone else to figure them out.
The idea that patents are to spread knowledge is laughable; as the parent says we're not allowed to read them anyway, but even if we could they're not in technical language, they're in a specific dialect of legalese so only patent lawyers can understand them. I think they kinda like it that way.
This is all a bit sad. Sanjay is actually carrying the blame here for a lot of things that occured on the watch of his predecessor Charles Wang.
Charles
was CEO during a lot of the time here, but was very disciplined about not usine emails etc. Charles jumped ship once things started to look bad, and Sanjay, who may not be lilly-white, looks like he's going to carry all the blame.
Sanjay may not have been financially perfect, but he none-the-less cleaned things up and did a great deal of good for Computer Associates. He turned it from a 'vendor of last resort' to being a half reasonable company to deal with, and introduced the beginnings of an ethical culture.
I have a personal interest in Sanjay, as he was responsible for the first open source project in CA (my java ldap browser: http://www.jxplorer.org/ / http://sourceforge.net/projects/jxplorer) and put in train the events that led to CA embracing linux and open sourcing their Ingres database. He went to a lot of effort to change the internal culture of CA (which used to be just plain feral), and in general things improved greatly under his reign... it was very sad to see him go, and I hope he survives the court action.
Parent is on drugs. The Sydney Morning Herald DOES NOT REQUIRE REGISTRATION. They sometimes stick a page up suggesting that you register... but you are free to ignore it...!
In this article the same anonymous author points out that the reason the U.S. are so fond of their wierd patent system is that they own most of the wierd patents, and can make a bunch 'o cash if they can fast talk others (Australia in this instance) into accepting the same system.
In an interview with Stirling Moss (legendary racing car driver of the fifties/sixties) he describes how when he was ahead of the pack on a wet course, he would sometimes fake sliding and fishtailing to make it look more dangerous than it was. The other competitors would see this and think "well if Moss is in trouble, *I'd* better take it easy" and slow down a little.
So o.k., Steve Jobs *says* that Apple aren't making money, and the online music business has no profit margin... but heck, *I* don't like having competition either...:-)
There's not really enough evidence in the post to go on, but the example exploit is pure nuisence java script, which has nothing to do with java
Reference is made in the text to ancient *java* bugs, but no detail is given as to how they might be related to the current, claimed bug.
If there's more here than meets the eye I'd like to see it, but there doesn't seem to be any meat in this announcement, it seems to be just a historical retrospective and an annoying-but-not-dangerous-or-new snippet of javascript.
Slashdot Mirror
Too Late, it's been done - check out 'TulipCoin' at https://tulipcoins.github.io/
PonziCoin was also very 'successful'.
It seems to be at the stage where the fish will bite on bare hooks, with no bait, and a large sign attached saying 'warning, this is a hook'.
It's a fair point - In Aus, most people vote on party lines, and because we don't have a 'first past the post' system there are more parties (Left, Right, Green, Rural, Loonie). The Party system is much stronger, so people may not know the individuals, but generally have an idea of which party they think will best represent them or their views.
It's not perfect by any means, and we have the same problems about the political class floating off into a bubble disconnected from the rest of the country, but it just doesn't seem as extreme as elsewhere, and maybe the electorate, knowing that they have to vote (or at least show up) pays slightly more attention than they otherwise would.
The alternative, as far as I can see from a distance, is not just that the informed vote, but also the angriest and most motivated - so politicians spend their time trying to make their supporters angry and adopting extreme positions...
Australian here - compulsory voting works quite well - it's not really compulsory voting, more compulsory attendance; you have to show up but the ballot is secret, so you can just write swear words on it and draw rude pictures if you want - and some do.
But it has a huge effect on the political discourse - because parties don't need to 'get the vote out', politics becomes largely a squabble over the middle ground, and extremists on either side don't tend to do so well. Our politicians are usually pretty boring compared to overseas. Given all the other things we have to do as part of society, showing up every few years to vote seems a fairly small price to pay to keep democratic government ticking over.
Not sure how it would play elsewhere, but it works well for us... as does the whole preferential voting system; you can put your least disliked major party second last, and vote for other people first without 'wasting' your vote.
Anyway, back on topic: the selfie thing is a problem, as it breaks the whole secret ballot shtick. I can see the free speech argument, but there's a reason for secret ballots; without them you can get intimidation, coercion, people selling votes etc... sometimes I think we forget that these things were hard fought for a long time ago, and they shouldn't be given up without a lot of careful thought...
Folks seem to be missing the point that this involved tapping an American law firm, apparently in order to gain an edge during trade negotiations? (And similar stuff happening during recent climate negotiations?)
That kinda muddies the water I think; people spying on other people for national security is one thing, but when it spills over into the commercial world and UN politics then it's no longer security, but obtaining an advantage by underhand means.
Also, I'm curious - doesn't US law say something about not spying on americans? And aren't even lawyers technically citizens?
I guess as an aussie if the US wants to outsource that sort of thing to us I don't have a huge problem with it, but I would have thought more US folks would be upset... :-)
Schneier suggests elliptic key may be compromised and should be avoided... as with other public key systems it is based on a computationally hard one way problem, it's not beyond the realms of possibility that our TLA friends may have some special insight here.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-how-to-remain-secure-surveillance
As a side issue, I've been to vendor presentations where they've boasted about the ability of their advanced firewalls/edge devices to do real time MITM attacks using valid signing certs obtained from (at least one) top level CA, to enable companies to monitor gmail etc for 'IP protection'. Given the NSA's liking for compromising network devices I wouldn't be surprised if that method was also used.
Groklaw was there when much we take for granted was under attack, and as a rallying point was hugely influential as vested interest after vested interest tried to enclose the commons and steal from the common wealth. It outlived SCO, it saw Linux grow and thrive, and we rejoiced as it called the odds and gathered forces against one carpet bagging IP troll after another.
It is truly heart breaking to see PJ shutting up shop, and I only hope it helps to focus us on a greater danger than SCO ever was.
Vale Groklaw.
rather than [sending all that money to Ireland, then Holland, then Ireland, then a Swiss bank account]
(was: rather than sending all that money to the States)
There, fixed that for you...!
There are a bunch of folks who add client side encryption to drop box.
This mob: http://lock-box.com/ do a bunch of fancy client side key management to allow strong PKI management including revocation and re-keying of group accessed data. They're pretty good if you need a strong crypto layer on top of drop box, but there's a bunch of folks who add security to drop box with some balance of security and convenience. ... but like many other posters have said, be very careful before sticking classified data on any of this stuff; it's unlikely to be suitable unless the solution's been given a rating.
Not true - numerous examples exist of civilisations large and small that have outgrown their resource base and crashed horribly. In fact, pretty much EVERY SINGLE CIVILISATION before ours has collapsed horribly. We would be different why?
(cf Jarad Diamond's book "Collapse" for a role call of civilisations and empires that have gone belly up - not all can be pinned on environmental collapse, but a lot can; just look at the sands of the middle east where the great empires of two thousand years ago were, possibly the Romans, the Maya, definitely the Norse settlements in Greenland and the polynesian settlement of Easter Island, etc. etc.)
I'd agree - except that the games I buy on Steam are not 'retail price'. DRM sucks, but if I can get Portal for $5, I'm prepared to do it as a throw away. There seem to be games on Steam for $20 or less that are sold (in Australia) at $US 50 or more.
I'm happy to pay a bit more to not have DRM (ta iTunes), but not multiples...
Some facts as I understand them snarfed from the web - corrections welcomed...
rough cost of (wholesale) energy per kilowatt hour (kwh): ~5c
CO2 cost per kwh: ~1kg (coal power: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/pns/faq.html)
time for my (small) 1 litre (~ 1kw) kettle to boil when full is ~ 5 minutes which compares well with the theoretical energy for a 1litre at ~350kj, or 350 seconds time for 1kw . Hence power for a small boiled kettle is a killowatt for 1/10 of an hour, or 0.1 kwh
So I get... ... the article says a kettle take 15g, which I don't get even close to; maybe clever people boil just enough to make single cups only?
Kettle boiling: costs ~.5c, and ~ 100g,
If the article was true, Google doing "more than 200m" searches a day would spend ~ $20m a day on power, or ~ $7billion a year, consuming 100,000 megawatt hours, or a continuous drain of 4,000 megawatts (about the power output of a small US state). On the authors figures, total power consumption would be ~ 650 megawatts, which is still pretty huge, and would still be spending ~ $1billion a year.
Google use cheap, mass produced low power units in gigantic numbers - estimates are hard to come by, I will estimate 200,000 based on inflating some public estimates (e.g. http://arnab.org/blog/how-many-computers-does-google-have).
Energy cost of networking is significant, but I do not believe as great as machines; I'll add 50% for good luck. Utility server machines are dropping in power (~100-200w) but also require cooling, UPSs and network etc., so let's call it 500w all up (figures are difficult to get; everyone is selling something power center wise) - so I get 100 megawatts; or 1/6th of the author's estimate, or 1/40th of the true kettle figure.
I'd say that the author is overstating the case to make a political point - if I was cynical I'd point out the author has also just launched a business to 'green your web site' by installing monitoring software, estimating the energy cost of searches to it, and then buying carbon offsets on your behalf, so it is in his interests to overestimate such usage..
D&D 4th edition is a cute table top wargame.
It's probably more similar to 'squad leader' than it is to 3rd edition D&D though. Not sure why it got called D&D. Dungeons of DragonCraft might be more appropriate.
It's fun at the moment, but it feels a bit like fairy floss - there doesn't seem to be much depth.
Meanwhile I'm curious as to how wizards are going to go charging for 'virtual minitures' and stuff, and the jury's still out on their online subscription offering. Could be good, but I suspect the freeware stuff will be better - already we're seeing some pretty neat character generators out there.
I've been using GWT a bit to modify an existing velocity based application.
It was a bit of work to get my head around, until I realised it was two separate things.
First, it's a nifty way of writing GUI widgets in java, and auto-converting them to javascript.
Secondly, it's an RPC mechanism for AJAX like cleverness.
Now for me, that second one wasn't so necessary. I have a nice REST-style back end with an existing data structures. So once I stopped trying to splice GWT/RPC on top of that, and just used GWT for widget creation (using POST and GET from GWT), it all went swimmingly.
I think there is an expectation that you'll do your entire site in GWT; however I've found it quite useful to just do some nice widgets in GWT, and keep most of the site classic velocity; it's easier and faster to maintain that way.
I think GWT will take off when there is a richer 'standard' widget library - when you can build an editor like gmail's in as a single component. But at the moment gmail doesn't use GWT, presumably because it's tricky to do something that complex.
YMMV :-)
OpenID seems neat, but isn't it wide open for phishing?
I go to 'evilwebsite.com', give it my openID, and it directs me to 'notmyopenidprovider.com', with a login page that looks real - I enter my credentials and it's all over? It's the bank game all over again, especially as I'm *expecting* that I might be redirected and asked for my password...
Or am I missing something?
- Chris
A union doesn't work for IT. What we need is what the doctors, lawyers, engineers and accountants have - a decent Professional Association.
:-) ).
We don't need a Union to help with collective bargaining of base pay rates and do the other things Unions do well, because we're professionals, and generally don't have the problems underpaid blue collar workers have.
However we could very much use a Professional Association to help with dodgy employers, legal aid for badly treated members (think all those stories of people fired for showing security flaws), bulk rate bargaining on things like indemnity insurance, advising government on IT issues, and (and this is the biggie; think doctors) enforcing professional standards.
In Australia we have the 'Australian Computing Society', but as far as I can tell it's been subverted by industry sources such as recruitment agencies and large IT employers, and does sod all with regards to representing IT workers. However a ground swell take over bid and a bit of branch stacking could probably get it back on track. Follow that up with an act of parliment (like with lawyers, doctors etc.) to set standards and you're on the gravy train.
Then, if you're evil, you insist that all 'security related' IT work can only be done by an 'ACS approved IT security worker', and your off-shoring worries go out the window. (It's a scam, but one used very successfully by other professions - cf all the stuff in the states about not buying cheap scripts from those naughty cheap Canadian doctors...
... and then, at the end of the performance, the guitar sets itself on fire!
I see your analogy, and I raise it:
:-) ), I claim most computers are still at the usability stage of automobiles in the 30s (they've had similar years of development) - sure you don't have to prime each cylinder with fuel before you start, but they're still very complex to run.
* automatic transmission
* power assisted steering
* synchromesh clutches
* automatic choke
* anti-lock brakes
* traction control
etc. etc. etc.
Cars *are* complicated, and a lot of effort has gone into hiding that complexity in a modern car, so that all the user has to do these days is set speed and direction. Try driving an old, big car (or truck!) where you have to double de-clutch, crank the engine to start, manually set the mixture with the choke and be built like Arnie to steer the thing. Sure users still crash cars, but it's usually 'pilot error' now rather than 'mechanical failure', or 'workload induced failure'.
So (with the obvious exception of Mac OS X
But the fact they're complex doesn't mean that you can't hide that from a casual user attempting simple tasks.
There's been lots of folks here saying that the punishment is too tough, given that violent crimes don't get as much.
This is something I could never figure out. If someone steals $10,000 from a local store they get 5 years, if a white collar crim steals $10M from a retirement fund, they get community service.
This guy did, single handed, massive damage to the entire internet. Do the sums - the real cost of spam is probably ~ 1c when you average in lost time and productivity of end recipients, which is even greater than the network costs. Over 10 years, he probably caused ~$30,000,000 damage to a huge number of strangers.
Looked at that way, spammers do more damage than most virus writers, and they are professionals doing it for money; hence harsh punishment is appropriate.
Punishments for financial crimes should be commensurate to the damage caused; and this lad caused heaps.
Now what would be really good is if they started going after the suppliers who pay for the spam... *starts drooling*.
Treason never prospers. what's the reason? For when it prospers, none dare call it treason.
- Sir John Fortescue (15th century?)
I've written two dozen patents for my firm, all of them to avoid being sued ourselves over doing our everyday bread-and-butter stuff.
I went to a lot of work to make them easily understandable by laymen, especially the lawyers who would be working on them. Examples, diagrams, etc. - they had the lot.
When they came back for review, I had a huge amount of trouble understanding them. They'd been translated into legalese, the diagrams had all been removed or replaced, the technical terms had been generalised... it was very difficult for me to figure out what they were saying, and it would be straight out impossible for anyone else to figure them out.
The idea that patents are to spread knowledge is laughable; as the parent says we're not allowed to read them anyway, but even if we could they're not in technical language, they're in a specific dialect of legalese so only patent lawyers can understand them. I think they kinda like it that way.
This is all a bit sad. Sanjay is actually carrying the blame here for a lot of things that occured on the watch of his predecessor Charles Wang.
Charles was CEO during a lot of the time here, but was very disciplined about not usine emails etc. Charles jumped ship once things started to look bad, and Sanjay, who may not be lilly-white, looks like he's going to carry all the blame.
Sanjay may not have been financially perfect, but he none-the-less cleaned things up and did a great deal of good for Computer Associates. He turned it from a 'vendor of last resort' to being a half reasonable company to deal with, and introduced the beginnings of an ethical culture.
I have a personal interest in Sanjay, as he was responsible for the first open source project in CA (my java ldap browser: http://www.jxplorer.org/ / http://sourceforge.net/projects/jxplorer) and put in train the events that led to CA embracing linux and open sourcing their Ingres database. He went to a lot of effort to change the internal culture of CA (which used to be just plain feral), and in general things improved greatly under his reign... it was very sad to see him go, and I hope he survives the court action.
Parent is on drugs. The Sydney Morning Herald DOES NOT REQUIRE REGISTRATION . They sometimes stick a page up suggesting that you register... but you are free to ignore it...!
Mmm... and as another poster has pointed out, this is the first of a two parter; the second came out today:4 0.html
http://smh.com.au/articles/2004/08/01/10912985768
'Trade Deal a Free Kick for Software Racketeers'
In this article the same anonymous author points out that the reason the U.S. are so fond of their wierd patent system is that they own most of the wierd patents, and can make a bunch 'o cash if they can fast talk others (Australia in this instance) into accepting the same system.
In an interview with Stirling Moss (legendary racing car driver of the fifties/sixties) he describes how when he was ahead of the pack on a wet course, he would sometimes fake sliding and fishtailing to make it look more dangerous than it was. The other competitors would see this and think "well if Moss is in trouble, *I'd* better take it easy" and slow down a little.
So o.k., Steve Jobs *says* that Apple aren't making money, and the online music business has no profit margin... but heck, *I* don't like having competition either... :-)
At first blush this seems plain wrong.
There's not really enough evidence in the post to go on, but the example exploit is pure nuisence java script, which has nothing to do with java
Reference is made in the text to ancient *java* bugs, but no detail is given as to how they might be related to the current, claimed bug.
If there's more here than meets the eye I'd like to see it, but there doesn't seem to be any meat in this announcement, it seems to be just a historical retrospective and an annoying-but-not-dangerous-or-new snippet of javascript.
Am I missing something here?