We certainly need more surveillance for the bereaved to watch their loved one's last moments. Too bad that over 90% of surveillance in the most CCTV happy state can't be used to tell anything more than that something bad happened when the police are reminded.
We need a DNA database of everybody. That way you can be proven innocent!
Of course officials will blame the guy pointing out their failures rather than fix them. The DHS is second in power only to the IRS to act outside of the 5th amendment.
My bet is anyone with a permutation of Chris Soghoian's name already has a 'SSSSS' on his boarding pass.
Also, keep in mind, that Cisco has been known to deny clearly existing problems in the past. I personally sat with a Cisco engineer and showed him what frames were wrong on an LACP problem, and he continued to insist it was this "freeware OS stuff" that was causing the problems with the switch. Too bad the ethereal scrapes were from a Windows server...
Anyone willing to submit to Apple's digital rights management schemes, and their "I want a computer to treat me like an idiot" deserves what they get. Really.
I remember there being some sort of kernel module in Linux 1.0 or 1.2 (ibcs I think) that would allow it to understand (not necessarily run) SCO-type binaries, which I thought were in COFF format. This would have been inherited from Microsoft's UNIX of even longer ago, or System V, or both.
I let coffee ferment in day-old beer in college, about 10 years ago. Unfortunately someone consumed all the evidence.
Seriously, there were breweries doing this in 1999 in Seattle (where else), so they are going to have to use a lot of weasel words to make the patent hold water.
So that SCO's customers can make the move to Open Source more easily. SCO is falling behind on the technical curve, but has a large customer base that's rather open source averse. This move by Martens legitimizes his product in the eyes of the SCO user base (not being pinko commie unamerican hackers), and those users will undoubtedly see that open source is not second-rate software. As SCO continues its decline to oblivion, this increases the chances that those customers will choose an open source os to migrate to, rather than Windows.
BTW, so why not bash MySQL for running on Windows too? What prevented customers from just compiling the MySQL source code on SCO? Nothing - it probably ran there. The money SCO paid for something that probably already ran on their product just takes money out of their litigation war chest, and that's a good thing in my eyes.
So, banning and restricting access is supposed to protect our children? Great, except that like alcohol and drugs, kids will get a hold of what they want to, especially without parental guidance. Yet another law will not protect children from irresponsible or careless parents. It's like banning sex education in the hopes that the teen pregancy rate goes down - all it does is increase the incidence of STDs.
Incidentally, video games have become more violent, and pornography is easier to access than ever. Perhaps this is a release of the violent or preverted urges, and as a result violent crime is at its lowest rate ever. Sure it's become more sensational, but the statistics don't lie. In terms of sexual crimes, the reporting rate is better than what it was, and the numbers across most western nations are still lower than ever. (Source: DOJ )
I think you're confusing 'rite' with 'right'. A degree gives you no additional rights. It is, however, a rite that you perform to boost your self-worth and perhaps others' opinion of you on first impression.
This seems to depend on the state. University of Virginia is, at least with the total tallies of what I have seen friends spend, cheaper than University (college? who knows) of Richmond, for example.
Like anything, shop around, and you don't always get what you pay for.
1. A big name helps with recruiters and MBA types. I have met plenty of idiots from schools big in CS too, so having gone there does not exempt you from flipping the bozo bit.
2. You probably don't want to work for the people that do care about where you got your degree.
3. A degree is a bonus, not a ticket to a job, since it's really hard to build a company who care more about pedigree than capability. I have worked at a few of those, and it sucked.
4. If you came and applied with me, I would ask you the following question: "what did you learn other than a (couple of) programming language(s)?" Once you have experience, the question will be "what value have you provided to your previous companies? where did you win, and what did you learn from your failures?" Note that there is nothing about your school in there. I would thank you for your time if you stated that going to MIT exempted you from answering that.
For pseudo-sciences like computer science (asbestos suit is on), especially computer science where things change so quickly, what you get from any university is a leg up. Typically what you learn is subject to Heisenbergs Uncertainty Principle, where profs tend to err by focusing on location. In plain language, you will gradute with exactly what you needed to know four years ago. Be prepared to catch up;-)
Not having read the book, but as someone who still plays the odd game of AD&D (22 years and counting) I found the state and layout of the second edition lamentable at best, and am not surprised that this review was so bad.
The decline, in my mind, started with the release of the Wilderness and Dungeoneers' books, and adding complexity that while making the game more realistic, really contributed little to the overall enjoyment of the game (and the binding on the books was awful - the pages fell out in the first year).
I guess the same could be said of AD&D as an extension of the original D&D game, but that would be splitting hairs.
The old DMG, all said, was a fine piece of work. It took a long time to digest and to understand, and probably even longer for a DM to come up with the set of rules he chose to apply for his players. The basic rules were simple, and you could add as much complexity as you wanted.
Apple closed their hardware specs again after a short period of opening up. Something about having hoped that other companies would eat PC market share and not their own. Right.
The better question here is: Is the IBM Power5 series truly open? If so, it should run any OS with support for that platform, if not now, but real soon. That would include *BSD, the open version of BeOS, or whatever Linux flavour you want.
If it's a closed back-room deal involving a closed OS loader, this would be more difficult, but considering SuSe is involved I would not be surprised; their willingness to sell out to the likes of Nvidia could be argued to have pushed back OSS/FSS support for NVidia for some time.
This is precisely why Brazil, China, and even Germany are moving towards open-source. The US Government cannot insert backdoors into this stuff that would affect anyone not wanting to be affected, unlike Microsoft stuff. Remember the NSA keys in the Windows NT crypto libraries?
The US can continue to run Windows, be our guest, but the point is moot since much of US Government software is developed in India anyways. No back doors there, for sure.
Game consoles: Cheaper to develop for PC Games: Much more flexible
I think one of the key reasons that gaming consoles are (again maybe, whatever) so compelling to game developers is because the hardware is standardized. Sure, you have DirectX on the PeeCee, but this by no means guarantees that the PC it is installed on can support the features. So you need to punt on the PC by allowing dials and levers to adjust graphics and sound options. The CPU figures in too. Then you have several hundred common video card models, a dozen or so sound card drivers, and a few dozen driver combinations for each that may or may not work as advertised.
All of this adds up to one big headache to the game dev.
The disadvantage of the console is that once a game is shipped, you cannot patch it without sending out new media to registered customers. That's expensive. It forces game dev managers to think like movie producers (but software is harder than moving pictures) and results in a static offering.
On the PC, you can make patches available on the web site, allow mods to be developed, and develop a more vibrant user community. Just check the Battlefield 1942 mod, or Half-Life.
Neither will go away. People keep saying the PC sucks as a game platform, and that may be true. But there is stuff you can do with a PC you can't with a console, even with wired ones. For that you have to account for less than with a PC.
Then there is the question of NTSC/PAL screen resolution vs PC screen resolution. Even an old S3 ViRGE card would be fast at that res (just kidding, but point made).
Uh, two wrongs don't make a right, but here's the way the court will likely deal with you:
1. You intended to break the law. 2. You received harm in the process. 3. Court declines judgement in your favor.
In any civilized society it stems to reason that once you decide to violate the laws of that society the people who protect the lawful citizens will protect you less. After all, harm came to you because you chose to break the law in the first place. This is called the 'social contract.' It's just unfortunate most of us are asleep in high school when this is taught.
Case in point: Drunk driving
You get in the car drunk, you drive, and have an accident. How mad are you that your insurance is not valid? I for one would object to you claiming the insurance company is violating the terms of their contract with you. I would rather that you assume the cost of violating the law and not make my insurance rates go up.
In some countries there is zero tolerance - you may drive up to a certain limit (read: the police have no right to stop you from driving unless there is evidence to the contrary), but take the risk that if you're involved in an accident you will be guilty of drunk driving (it's evidence to the contrary).
OK, ok, in Canada some burglar sued a homeowner because the guy fell through an improperly marked (from the roof, that is) skylight, and won. So sad, I guess we cannot protect everyone from themselves.
Even worse, you assume that:
they are doing something bad to your computer. They in fact, do exactly the same that MSIM, a number of DLL's delivered with your P2P client, and other software does. Better than the spyware programs, they do not collect stuff about your indiviual habits. No trojan, no spyware, just studying the network seeing how this propagates.
They indend to enforce copyright holders' rights or something
That there is no 'will' involved by the end user executing the program when they double-click on what they have downloaded, twice (once to open the zip, once to execute).
That Epic would actually care about the feelings of people stealing from them.
Why does everything have to be a privacy invasion?
Super market bar code scanners don't read the lot number and time stamp of the can, so they don't know which can YOU bought.
What they are interested in is 'when does beer sell'? For the purpose of this discussion it's irrelevant whether you consider this beer or not.
If you're supplying customers, you can only maximize profit, market share, and minimize churn, you need to get the beer to where people want to buy it. Retailers don't have lots of space, so they appreciate anything (and reward it with better placement) you do to minimize the inventory.
So it's just them doing their job, and they can't identify you. They would probably accumulate a dozen TB on superbowl weekend if they did, and I don't see how they could make individual data be valuable (other than the trending to get the beer to the store you want to buy it at). Heck, they probably accumulate a couple dozen TB without your personal data in there. Besides, most other retail products companies do this to a greater or lesser extent, so telling them to stop wont make anyone else stop, and just imagine, GM knows your name when you buy their car.
Lexmark also protects their stuff by inserting chips into toner and ink cartridges and then suing refillers for breaches under the DMCA. In europe the EU body in charge of monopolies is looking into this, so lets hope they beat the stuffing out of them.
Lexmark is definitely the biggest offender (and also has the highest consumable prices in general, in cents per page), but if they can get away with it, why not follow suit?
After ruling readable punch card ballots illegal and ruling in favor of Blacks with Misdemeanor convictions can't vote in spite of what the election law and constitution say, the Judges announced today that "all your votes are belong to us" - presumably Dubya agreed.
Uh... I think my US Visa just got cancelled... NO CARRIER
Look, Darl wants spammers to use SCO software - this is why they paid them to write this, we look bad, and all the reward does is launder the money.
Little does he know that a) they now have his email, b) if they had to use a UNIX-like operating system they would probably also choose Linux, c) just what does he think they will use all the money and zombies for?
Disclaimer: this is intended as satire. I use Windows, so please don't sue mr. macbride. (are you really female and married to a big mac?)
Either UCITA or DMCA had a clause about unlawful circumvention. If there is some part here that is encrypted (xor 81 or whatever), even if documented, could be unlawful circumvention, and could land them 5 years of jail or something like that. I am gonna read and check up on that.
Slashdot Mirror
Tell me, this cannot be!
We certainly need more surveillance for the bereaved to watch their loved one's last moments. Too bad that over 90% of surveillance in the most CCTV happy state can't be used to tell anything more than that something bad happened when the police are reminded.
We need a DNA database of everybody. That way you can be proven innocent!
Of course officials will blame the guy pointing out their failures rather than fix them. The DHS is second in power only to the IRS to act outside of the 5th amendment.
My bet is anyone with a permutation of Chris Soghoian's name already has a 'SSSSS' on his boarding pass.
Also, keep in mind, that Cisco has been known to deny clearly existing problems in the past. I personally sat with a Cisco engineer and showed him what frames were wrong on an LACP problem, and he continued to insist it was this "freeware OS stuff" that was causing the problems with the switch. Too bad the ethereal scrapes were from a Windows server...
I have agree, I had the same experience.
Change the look of the print button on the tool bar, and people's brains generate an uncaught exception. Then it sucks, because it's "not office".
People don't want to think - look at the mindless crud they print out from the web or office to paper every day.
Anyone willing to submit to Apple's digital rights management schemes, and their "I want a computer to treat me like an idiot" deserves what they get. Really.
Let 'em pay.
I remember there being some sort of kernel module in Linux 1.0 or 1.2 (ibcs I think) that would allow it to understand (not necessarily run) SCO-type binaries, which I thought were in COFF format. This would have been inherited from Microsoft's UNIX of even longer ago, or System V, or both.
Am I wrong here?
I let coffee ferment in day-old beer in college, about 10 years ago. Unfortunately someone consumed all the evidence.
Seriously, there were breweries doing this in 1999 in Seattle (where else), so they are going to have to use a lot of weasel words to make the patent hold water.
So that SCO's customers can make the move to Open Source more easily. SCO is falling behind on the technical curve, but has a large customer base that's rather open source averse. This move by Martens legitimizes his product in the eyes of the SCO user base (not being pinko commie unamerican hackers), and those users will undoubtedly see that open source is not second-rate software. As SCO continues its decline to oblivion, this increases the chances that those customers will choose an open source os to migrate to, rather than Windows.
BTW, so why not bash MySQL for running on Windows too? What prevented customers from just compiling the MySQL source code on SCO? Nothing - it probably ran there. The money SCO paid for something that probably already ran on their product just takes money out of their litigation war chest, and that's a good thing in my eyes.
So, banning and restricting access is supposed to protect our children? Great, except that like alcohol and drugs, kids will get a hold of what they want to, especially without parental guidance. Yet another law will not protect children from irresponsible or careless parents. It's like banning sex education in the hopes that the teen pregancy rate goes down - all it does is increase the incidence of STDs.
Incidentally, video games have become more violent, and pornography is easier to access than ever. Perhaps this is a release of the violent or preverted urges, and as a result violent crime is at its lowest rate ever. Sure it's become more sensational, but the statistics don't lie. In terms of sexual crimes, the reporting rate is better than what it was, and the numbers across most western nations are still lower than ever. (Source: DOJ )
I think you're confusing 'rite' with 'right'. A degree gives you no additional rights. It is, however, a rite that you perform to boost your self-worth and perhaps others' opinion of you on first impression.
This seems to depend on the state. University of Virginia is, at least with the total tallies of what I have seen friends spend, cheaper than University (college? who knows) of Richmond, for example.
Like anything, shop around, and you don't always get what you pay for.
My two cents is:
;-)
1. A big name helps with recruiters and MBA types. I have met plenty of idiots from schools big in CS too, so having gone there does not exempt you from flipping the bozo bit.
2. You probably don't want to work for the people that do care about where you got your degree.
3. A degree is a bonus, not a ticket to a job, since it's really hard to build a company who care more about pedigree than capability. I have worked at a few of those, and it sucked.
4. If you came and applied with me, I would ask you the following question: "what did you learn other than a (couple of) programming language(s)?" Once you have experience, the question will be "what value have you provided to your previous companies? where did you win, and what did you learn from your failures?" Note that there is nothing about your school in there. I would thank you for your time if you stated that going to MIT exempted you from answering that.
For pseudo-sciences like computer science (asbestos suit is on), especially computer science where things change so quickly, what you get from any university is a leg up. Typically what you learn is subject to Heisenbergs Uncertainty Principle, where profs tend to err by focusing on location. In plain language, you will gradute with exactly what you needed to know four years ago. Be prepared to catch up
Not having read the book, but as someone who still plays the odd game of AD&D (22 years and counting) I found the state and layout of the second edition lamentable at best, and am not surprised that this review was so bad.
The decline, in my mind, started with the release of the Wilderness and Dungeoneers' books, and adding complexity that while making the game more realistic, really contributed little to the overall enjoyment of the game (and the binding on the books was awful - the pages fell out in the first year).
I guess the same could be said of AD&D as an extension of the original D&D game, but that would be splitting hairs.
The old DMG, all said, was a fine piece of work. It took a long time to digest and to understand, and probably even longer for a DM to come up with the set of rules he chose to apply for his players. The basic rules were simple, and you could add as much complexity as you wanted.
Just my 2 cents. Another nail in the coffin.
Apple closed their hardware specs again after a short period of opening up. Something about having hoped that other companies would eat PC market share and not their own. Right.
The better question here is: Is the IBM Power5 series truly open? If so, it should run any OS with support for that platform, if not now, but real soon. That would include *BSD, the open version of BeOS, or whatever Linux flavour you want.
If it's a closed back-room deal involving a closed OS loader, this would be more difficult, but considering SuSe is involved I would not be surprised; their willingness to sell out to the likes of Nvidia could be argued to have pushed back OSS/FSS support for NVidia for some time.
This is precisely why Brazil, China, and even Germany are moving towards open-source. The US Government cannot insert backdoors into this stuff that would affect anyone not wanting to be affected, unlike Microsoft stuff. Remember the NSA keys in the Windows NT crypto libraries?
The US can continue to run Windows, be our guest, but the point is moot since much of US Government software is developed in India anyways. No back doors there, for sure.
Actually, we all host our sites on your box. So does CI Host. Thanks!
Game consoles: Cheaper to develop for
PC Games: Much more flexible
I think one of the key reasons that gaming consoles are (again maybe, whatever) so compelling to game developers is because the hardware is standardized. Sure, you have DirectX on the PeeCee, but this by no means guarantees that the PC it is installed on can support the features. So you need to punt on the PC by allowing dials and levers to adjust graphics and sound options. The CPU figures in too. Then you have several hundred common video card models, a dozen or so sound card drivers, and a few dozen driver combinations for each that may or may not work as advertised.
All of this adds up to one big headache to the game dev.
The disadvantage of the console is that once a game is shipped, you cannot patch it without sending out new media to registered customers. That's expensive. It forces game dev managers to think like movie producers (but software is harder than moving pictures) and results in a static offering.
On the PC, you can make patches available on the web site, allow mods to be developed, and develop a more vibrant user community. Just check the Battlefield 1942 mod, or Half-Life.
Neither will go away. People keep saying the PC sucks as a game platform, and that may be true. But there is stuff you can do with a PC you can't with a console, even with wired ones. For that you have to account for less than with a PC.
Then there is the question of NTSC/PAL screen resolution vs PC screen resolution. Even an old S3 ViRGE card would be fast at that res (just kidding, but point made).
Pick your poison.
1. You intended to break the law.
2. You received harm in the process.
3. Court declines judgement in your favor.
In any civilized society it stems to reason that once you decide to violate the laws of that society the people who protect the lawful citizens will protect you less. After all, harm came to you because you chose to break the law in the first place. This is called the 'social contract.' It's just unfortunate most of us are asleep in high school when this is taught.
Case in point: Drunk driving
You get in the car drunk, you drive, and have an accident. How mad are you that your insurance is not valid? I for one would object to you claiming the insurance company is violating the terms of their contract with you. I would rather that you assume the cost of violating the law and not make my insurance rates go up.
In some countries there is zero tolerance - you may drive up to a certain limit (read: the police have no right to stop you from driving unless there is evidence to the contrary), but take the risk that if you're involved in an accident you will be guilty of drunk driving (it's evidence to the contrary).
OK, ok, in Canada some burglar sued a homeowner because the guy fell through an improperly marked (from the roof, that is) skylight, and won. So sad, I guess we cannot protect everyone from themselves.
Even worse, you assume that:
They in fact, do exactly the same that MSIM, a number of DLL's delivered with your P2P client, and other software does. Better than the spyware programs, they do not collect stuff about your indiviual habits. No trojan, no spyware, just studying the network seeing how this propagates.
So it's just them doing their job, and they can't identify you. They would probably accumulate a dozen TB on superbowl weekend if they did, and I don't see how they could make individual data be valuable (other than the trending to get the beer to the store you want to buy it at). Heck, they probably accumulate a couple dozen TB without your personal data in there. Besides, most other retail products companies do this to a greater or lesser extent, so telling them to stop wont make anyone else stop, and just imagine, GM knows your name when you buy their car.
Just my 2 cents.
No, it tastes like Mokovskaya Vodka. It's mixed with terpentine to ensure proper flavor, I am sure of it.
Lexmark also protects their stuff by inserting chips into toner and ink cartridges and then suing refillers for breaches under the DMCA. In europe the EU body in charge of monopolies is looking into this, so lets hope they beat the stuffing out of them.
Lexmark is definitely the biggest offender (and also has the highest consumable prices in general, in cents per page), but if they can get away with it, why not follow suit?
But then again, it's ok if they fire people for bing pregnant in the factories making IBM Thinkpads, HPs and Dells.
Link
After ruling readable punch card ballots illegal and ruling in favor of Blacks with Misdemeanor convictions can't vote in spite of what the election law and constitution say, the Judges announced today that "all your votes are belong to us" - presumably Dubya agreed.
...
Uh... I think my US Visa just got cancelled
NO CARRIER
Look, Darl wants spammers to use SCO software - this is why they paid them to write this, we look bad, and all the reward does is launder the money.
Little does he know that a) they now have his email, b) if they had to use a UNIX-like operating system they would probably also choose Linux, c) just what does he think they will use all the money and zombies for?
Disclaimer: this is intended as satire. I use Windows, so please don't sue mr. macbride. (are you really female and married to a big mac?)
Either UCITA or DMCA had a clause about unlawful circumvention. If there is some part here that is encrypted (xor 81 or whatever), even if documented, could be unlawful circumvention, and could land them 5 years of jail or something like that. I am gonna read and check up on that.