"That is EXACTLY what he is saying given his comments regarding LLVM. Referring to this post in particular."
I suggest you re-read his post. If your opinion has not corrected by then, you might need to seek remedial help in Reading or English. "EXACTLY" and "not at all" are not synonyms, and this is actually not at all what he is saying in that post.
"a finger/palm print scanner on the weapon might be more reliable."
Only I really dont think it would be. It would be more complicated, which means more possible points of failure. A little mud or oil on your hand might interfere with the reader, or it might fail entirely for any of dozens of reasons.
Personalized weapons would be great in abstract, if you just imagine them perfectly formed, all technical problems worked out, and just as reliable as regular weapons. But for the foreseeable future that is a pipe dream.
"Okay. Is that a viable concern in this case? I could see where RFID signals could be coincidentally or intentionally jammed"
I think your second sentence answers your first, obviously it is a concern, and not simply because normal atmospheric interference can cause radio signals to be less than reliable.
It's theoretically possible that a system like this that was reliable enough could be developed, but I do not think it is possible with currently or imminently available technology. Not with anything like the required level of reliability. Because what it is going to be judged against are simple, robust, reliable mechanical systems that reflect more than a century of refinement. I have been working with computers since my cousin got a TRS-80 and computers have many wonderful qualities, but reliability has never been their strong suit.
"Maybe I'm missing something here, but wouldn't having a "smart" gun as described in TFS be a win/win for everyone? Gun owners can use their guns, but it someone steals it or disarms the gun owner, the gun is useless. Not sure why folks are complaining. Anyone want to enlighten me?"
Sure. If you are not familiar with the tool it might sound reasonable, I understand.
But safeties on firearms are a very important design element. The one element in the entire weapon that attracts, and deserves, the most attention. You might naively think its function is to prevent firing, but you would only be partly right. Yes, when the safety is engaged it prevents firing, and it's very important that it do this reliably. But it's even more important that it does not negatively affect the reliability of the weapon itself.
If the safety fails to engage then nothing bad should happen anyway. That's what muzzle control and weapons safety is all about. You always assume every firearm you come across is loaded and has no functioning safety, even when you know for a fact both of those things are false, it doesnt matter - that's how you handle a weapon, period.
But if the safety fails to disengage? The weapon is a useless lump of metal. And this is not a toy. If you need it and it fails your life and/or the lives of your loved ones are threatened.
"Most importantly: NO ONE forces you to buy this gun. She was just selling it to whomever wanted to buy it - and was getting hated for that. That's absolutely, unqualifiedly nuts."
If that were the case it would be fine. It's not. The broader context is what you are ignoring. There are open plans to outlaw any weapons that do not implement this flawed technology as soon as such a weapon is considered viable. And there is a distinct shortage of people who have any interest in using weapons secured by this system or anything like it among people who actually carry weapons. (Even if you do not understand why this should give you pause to wonder and ask some questions, no?)
It is unfortunate that technology, neutral on its own terms, gets sucked into this political sinkhole instead of being evaluated on its own terms. Unfortunate, but unavoidable at this point, because the technology at issue is driven by political, not technical requirements.
That could actually be read two ways, and you are choosing to read it in the more sinister way. Perhaps that is warranted, but not by anything I have seen.
I've seen no evidence anyone has harmed her or offered to harm her - and if I am wrong, if someone has done that, they should face consequences for that act. But what I do see is being done (and SHOULD be done) is that people are watching to see when she manages to get a distributor lined up, and informing said potential distributor of some context that might change their mind.
People are mad about this and have every right to be concerned.
I recently gave seamonkey a try, and the only real cant live without extension I havent been able to get to work with it is tree style tabs. But yeah, that one is pretty important to me.
(As an aside, the built-in extension search has really turned to crap. I can search for the exact name of the extension I am looking for, it's hosted at addons.mozilla.org even, yet for some reason they just cannot find that extension and you have to find a direct link somewhere else to even get to it. )
There is a big difference between life imprisonment and execution that you are missing.
With life imprisonment, it is at least possible for the system to realize a mistake has been made and partially rectify it. It actually happens shockingly often.
Once an execution has been carried out, however, we can no longer even partially rectify the error.
Absolutely we should support fixing the system more generally. But that should not stop us from also declaring a moratorium on capital punishment until that goal is accomplished.
I got started on an 8-bit Sinclair machine. I grew up on a farm and I remember taking my notebook (the paper kind) with me everywhere on the farm and working on little programs on my breaks. When I finished and typed it all in I wont pretend it always worked but I had a lot of fun and learned a lot.
It was actually several years later when I got access to a punch-card system, and by that time no one wanted to use that one, we were all on the new system, an early Vax minicomputer IIRC. It took up most of a room and then there were two more rooms on either side full of glass teletypes. Or you could access it from other terminals e.g. in the library. Fun times.
I think you learn more effectively that way though. It's not really all that hard to sit down with a cpu reference and a pen and some paper and write out a program by hand, checking your work at each step, and wind up with a working program written in longhand hexidecimal. It's time consuming, of course, but it's really not all that hard if you focus and spend the time.
The biggest thing is just mindset and expectation. If it's your mindset to just spew something rough out and then start debugging it, that's what you will do (and you will produce a lot of bugs, only some of which will have to be fixed in order to compile.) You will probably learn less and more slowly, though.
The parent poster may or may not have intended it this way, but he actually brings up a good point.
If you commit a capital crime in the US, are tried and convicted for it, and your skin is black, you have a MUCH higher chance of actually being executed for it.
Frankly that fact alone should be enough to rule out capital punishment in the US for the foreseeable future.
Did you not notice that the bug was re-opened the same day as the fix was not satisfactory, and months later it was closed again, with another workaround also acknowledged to be less than ideal? "Found a fix, so far it's working well. Will test more. Side-effect of the fix: blocked javascript won't be shown as blocked by chromium/chrome in the omnibar... "
This is no myth. It is clearly true that chromium could not reliably block scripts as recently as December of last year, and I have yet to see evidence that this problem which has affected Chrome from the very first release has actually been fully resolved at this point.
"HTTP Switchboard doesn't use the problematic API, which doesn't work reliably because it is asynchronous. It injects Content Security Policy header synchronously: it is rock solid in preventing JS from executing."
So I did a little checking and Http Switchboard appears to disagree with your 'rock solid' assessment. This is from late last year and is not resolved yet. This post by HTTP Switchboard author Raymond Hill, also from late last year, indicates he is still struggling with an asynchronous API. A temporary workaround was proposed to disable javascript entirely and then let the extension only activate rather than suppress, but this had undesirable and unworkable side effects.
"Reputation is something to respect, but hard technical facts come first for me."
Indeed. It appears the hard technical fact is that Chromes architecture still prevents proper noscript.
Eh, actually Firefox is supposed to be the light-weight, browser only version of Seamonkey. I see Seamonkey still includes an email client, an irc client, even a 'wysiwyg editor' that brings back memories of utter horror. The browser interface does seem to have changed a lot less, of course, but it still looks like the same over-engineered lump of cruft that inspired Firefox to begin with.
I took a look at Pale Moon and I am still not sure if it's a good idea or not.
There are a few points of departure and while most sound good a couple sound really bad. First off "disabled accessibility features." This sounds like a pointless stab in the face to our blind friends. I hope it's not as bad as it sounds, but disabling accessibility features does not sound like a sane design choice at all. And optimising for 'modern' cpus only is something I expect a talented but green 16 year old to think is a good idea, but it usually is not. Modern CPUs are already optimized to run ancient code to begin with so it's rare to see this actually improve performance significantly, and it will cause the program to break on old hardware or even on extremely new hardware when you try to use it in a VM (which typically simulates an older processor.)
If you know anything more about what accessibility options, exactly, they removed, and how practical it would be to try to re-enable and recompile it, please do let me know. So far I find very little information on their page.
Well they marked the bug as 'fixed' back in 2010 but I have continued to hear it does not actually work right. Here is one example. Giorgio (the NoScript guy) knows what he is talking about on this subject, so I suspect despite your screenshot there is still a problem.
Unless it's been rearchitected since I last looked into it it's actually impossible to do a proper noscript on chrome.
What you can do is suppress execution of javascript right before the final layout is done. But no earlier. Not at all acceptable. But exactly what I would expect from a browser written by an advertising company.
"Firefox becomes less usable and less configurable with each release. "
True, and it not just configurability. It's been on a persistent and unshakeable course of deteriorating functionality and usability for years. Even sticking to the long-term releases and avoiding the newest breakage it's still awful and obviously only getting worse. I think there is a real need for a fork of firefox and a sane team to maintain it, and I would be happy to contribute to some form of crowdfunding to bring it about, but...
"Might as well use Chrome at this point, it's virtually indistinguishable."
Sorry, I still think you are off-base here. As horrid as Firefox has become, it still has a ways to go before it can compete with Chrome for worst browser. It still uses the file system more-or-less correctly, and it's still possible (with extensions, at least) to disable javascript properly.
Firefox is horrible but it's still the best general purpose browser available, that's what makes the whole situation so horrific. If there were any other browser that were better I would be happy to switch, but these days it seems they all aspire to become adware just like chrome.
Yeah I have been in the game since the 80s also, and I think you are full of roasted excrement. If the service degradation had been a technical rather than a political issue then why is it that customers all across the country reported the issue was resolved when they rerouted through a VPN hmm? Cogents fault my arse.
We pay for Internet access, not intranet access. No one wants the latter - compuserve and prodigy and the like are not what we want. That it is what the ISPs would prefer to give us anyway, of course, but they know we wont buy it if we have a choice.
This is a move to take away that choice - to kill the internet and replace with a series of walled gardens that can be more effectively 'monetized.' Without even having to coax the customers into signing new contracts!
"You have no idea what you're talking about. I get tired of having to correct people on this subject."
You should quit 'correcting' people because you are wrong.
The vast majority of your post is simply distraction - some of what you say is true but it's not relevant.
"Netflix was completely irresponsible in the way they designed and maintained their service. They were approached by every major ISP in the country with plans to help alleviate the problems they were causing in the ISPs last mile."
And there is the crux of your error. Netflix simply provided a service. The ISPs customers then wanted to use that service via the connection they already paid for. And that use *reveals* - does not create, mind you, but *reveals* - the fact that the ISPs are overselling and under-delivering.
And they have been for decades. The big ones have taken massive subsidies to build infrastructure, pocketed the money, but refuse to actually build the infrastructure.
And now they are using the crappy state of their infrastructure as an excuse to shake down third parties.
And you are defending this? Seriously?
I hope you are getting paid a lot for this, because your personal integrity will not recover.
I've driven for multiple decades, across three continents, on both sides of the road. I've drive every day all day long during certain periods and I am sure if I had a mileage metre it would have rolled over a few times by now. I have never earned a single point on my insurance. So yeah, I think it's fair to say I drive better than most of the population.
I do not believe this is the result of any superhuman talent, virtually anyone could do as well if they would take it seriously. Unfortunately people in general are being taught not to take anything seriously and just blame someone else when they screw up.
Slashdot Mirror
"That is EXACTLY what he is saying given his comments regarding LLVM.
Referring to this post in particular."
I suggest you re-read his post. If your opinion has not corrected by then, you might need to seek remedial help in Reading or English. "EXACTLY" and "not at all" are not synonyms, and this is actually not at all what he is saying in that post.
"The code is licensed so liberally that Stallman's arguments literally boil down to "everyone can use it so it's not free"."
Stallman has always acknowledged it as Free and continues to do so.
Dont be a troll.
"a finger/palm print scanner on the weapon might be more reliable."
Only I really dont think it would be. It would be more complicated, which means more possible points of failure. A little mud or oil on your hand might interfere with the reader, or it might fail entirely for any of dozens of reasons.
Personalized weapons would be great in abstract, if you just imagine them perfectly formed, all technical problems worked out, and just as reliable as regular weapons. But for the foreseeable future that is a pipe dream.
"Okay. Is that a viable concern in this case? I could see where RFID signals could be coincidentally or intentionally jammed"
I think your second sentence answers your first, obviously it is a concern, and not simply because normal atmospheric interference can cause radio signals to be less than reliable.
It's theoretically possible that a system like this that was reliable enough could be developed, but I do not think it is possible with currently or imminently available technology. Not with anything like the required level of reliability. Because what it is going to be judged against are simple, robust, reliable mechanical systems that reflect more than a century of refinement. I have been working with computers since my cousin got a TRS-80 and computers have many wonderful qualities, but reliability has never been their strong suit.
"Maybe I'm missing something here, but wouldn't having a "smart" gun as described in TFS be a win/win for everyone? Gun owners can use their guns, but it someone steals it or disarms the gun owner, the gun is useless. Not sure why folks are complaining. Anyone want to enlighten me?"
Sure. If you are not familiar with the tool it might sound reasonable, I understand.
But safeties on firearms are a very important design element. The one element in the entire weapon that attracts, and deserves, the most attention. You might naively think its function is to prevent firing, but you would only be partly right. Yes, when the safety is engaged it prevents firing, and it's very important that it do this reliably. But it's even more important that it does not negatively affect the reliability of the weapon itself.
If the safety fails to engage then nothing bad should happen anyway. That's what muzzle control and weapons safety is all about. You always assume every firearm you come across is loaded and has no functioning safety, even when you know for a fact both of those things are false, it doesnt matter - that's how you handle a weapon, period.
But if the safety fails to disengage? The weapon is a useless lump of metal. And this is not a toy. If you need it and it fails your life and/or the lives of your loved ones are threatened.
"Most importantly: NO ONE forces you to buy this gun. She was just selling it to whomever wanted to buy it - and was getting hated for that. That's absolutely, unqualifiedly nuts."
If that were the case it would be fine. It's not. The broader context is what you are ignoring. There are open plans to outlaw any weapons that do not implement this flawed technology as soon as such a weapon is considered viable. And there is a distinct shortage of people who have any interest in using weapons secured by this system or anything like it among people who actually carry weapons. (Even if you do not understand why this should give you pause to wonder and ask some questions, no?)
It is unfortunate that technology, neutral on its own terms, gets sucked into this political sinkhole instead of being evaluated on its own terms. Unfortunate, but unavoidable at this point, because the technology at issue is driven by political, not technical requirements.
The founding fathers prohibited standing armies for a reason.
"Moderate" our rights and safety away because of irrational fears?
Education is a better response.
That could actually be read two ways, and you are choosing to read it in the more sinister way. Perhaps that is warranted, but not by anything I have seen.
I've seen no evidence anyone has harmed her or offered to harm her - and if I am wrong, if someone has done that, they should face consequences for that act. But what I do see is being done (and SHOULD be done) is that people are watching to see when she manages to get a distributor lined up, and informing said potential distributor of some context that might change their mind.
People are mad about this and have every right to be concerned.
I recently gave seamonkey a try, and the only real cant live without extension I havent been able to get to work with it is tree style tabs. But yeah, that one is pretty important to me.
(As an aside, the built-in extension search has really turned to crap. I can search for the exact name of the extension I am looking for, it's hosted at addons.mozilla.org even, yet for some reason they just cannot find that extension and you have to find a direct link somewhere else to even get to it. )
There is a big difference between life imprisonment and execution that you are missing.
With life imprisonment, it is at least possible for the system to realize a mistake has been made and partially rectify it. It actually happens shockingly often.
Once an execution has been carried out, however, we can no longer even partially rectify the error.
Absolutely we should support fixing the system more generally. But that should not stop us from also declaring a moratorium on capital punishment until that goal is accomplished.
I got started on an 8-bit Sinclair machine. I grew up on a farm and I remember taking my notebook (the paper kind) with me everywhere on the farm and working on little programs on my breaks. When I finished and typed it all in I wont pretend it always worked but I had a lot of fun and learned a lot.
It was actually several years later when I got access to a punch-card system, and by that time no one wanted to use that one, we were all on the new system, an early Vax minicomputer IIRC. It took up most of a room and then there were two more rooms on either side full of glass teletypes. Or you could access it from other terminals e.g. in the library. Fun times.
I think you learn more effectively that way though. It's not really all that hard to sit down with a cpu reference and a pen and some paper and write out a program by hand, checking your work at each step, and wind up with a working program written in longhand hexidecimal. It's time consuming, of course, but it's really not all that hard if you focus and spend the time.
The biggest thing is just mindset and expectation. If it's your mindset to just spew something rough out and then start debugging it, that's what you will do (and you will produce a lot of bugs, only some of which will have to be fixed in order to compile.) You will probably learn less and more slowly, though.
"You're assuming that, statistically, African Americans statistically commit the same kinds of murders as others"
No, I am not. That is explicitly controlled for by only counting capital murder cases.
The parent poster may or may not have intended it this way, but he actually brings up a good point.
If you commit a capital crime in the US, are tried and convicted for it, and your skin is black, you have a MUCH higher chance of actually being executed for it.
Frankly that fact alone should be enough to rule out capital punishment in the US for the foreseeable future.
"This fixes #35"
Did you not notice that the bug was re-opened the same day as the fix was not satisfactory, and months later it was closed again, with another workaround also acknowledged to be less than ideal? "Found a fix, so far it's working well. Will test more. Side-effect of the fix: blocked javascript won't be shown as blocked by chromium/chrome in the omnibar... "
This is no myth. It is clearly true that chromium could not reliably block scripts as recently as December of last year, and I have yet to see evidence that this problem which has affected Chrome from the very first release has actually been fully resolved at this point.
"HTTP Switchboard doesn't use the problematic API, which doesn't work reliably because it is asynchronous. It injects Content Security Policy header synchronously: it is rock solid in preventing JS from executing."
So I did a little checking and Http Switchboard appears to disagree with your 'rock solid' assessment. This is from late last year and is not resolved yet. This post by HTTP Switchboard author Raymond Hill, also from late last year, indicates he is still struggling with an asynchronous API. A temporary workaround was proposed to disable javascript entirely and then let the extension only activate rather than suppress, but this had undesirable and unworkable side effects.
"Reputation is something to respect, but hard technical facts come first for me."
Indeed. It appears the hard technical fact is that Chromes architecture still prevents proper noscript.
Eh, actually Firefox is supposed to be the light-weight, browser only version of Seamonkey. I see Seamonkey still includes an email client, an irc client, even a 'wysiwyg editor' that brings back memories of utter horror. The browser interface does seem to have changed a lot less, of course, but it still looks like the same over-engineered lump of cruft that inspired Firefox to begin with.
I took a look at Pale Moon and I am still not sure if it's a good idea or not.
There are a few points of departure and while most sound good a couple sound really bad. First off "disabled accessibility features." This sounds like a pointless stab in the face to our blind friends. I hope it's not as bad as it sounds, but disabling accessibility features does not sound like a sane design choice at all. And optimising for 'modern' cpus only is something I expect a talented but green 16 year old to think is a good idea, but it usually is not. Modern CPUs are already optimized to run ancient code to begin with so it's rare to see this actually improve performance significantly, and it will cause the program to break on old hardware or even on extremely new hardware when you try to use it in a VM (which typically simulates an older processor.)
If you know anything more about what accessibility options, exactly, they removed, and how practical it would be to try to re-enable and recompile it, please do let me know. So far I find very little information on their page.
Well they marked the bug as 'fixed' back in 2010 but I have continued to hear it does not actually work right. Here is one example. Giorgio (the NoScript guy) knows what he is talking about on this subject, so I suspect despite your screenshot there is still a problem.
Unless it's been rearchitected since I last looked into it it's actually impossible to do a proper noscript on chrome.
What you can do is suppress execution of javascript right before the final layout is done. But no earlier. Not at all acceptable. But exactly what I would expect from a browser written by an advertising company.
"Firefox becomes less usable and less configurable with each release. "
True, and it not just configurability. It's been on a persistent and unshakeable course of deteriorating functionality and usability for years. Even sticking to the long-term releases and avoiding the newest breakage it's still awful and obviously only getting worse. I think there is a real need for a fork of firefox and a sane team to maintain it, and I would be happy to contribute to some form of crowdfunding to bring it about, but...
"Might as well use Chrome at this point, it's virtually indistinguishable."
Sorry, I still think you are off-base here. As horrid as Firefox has become, it still has a ways to go before it can compete with Chrome for worst browser. It still uses the file system more-or-less correctly, and it's still possible (with extensions, at least) to disable javascript properly.
Firefox is horrible but it's still the best general purpose browser available, that's what makes the whole situation so horrific. If there were any other browser that were better I would be happy to switch, but these days it seems they all aspire to become adware just like chrome.
Yeah I have been in the game since the 80s also, and I think you are full of roasted excrement. If the service degradation had been a technical rather than a political issue then why is it that customers all across the country reported the issue was resolved when they rerouted through a VPN hmm? Cogents fault my arse.
We pay for Internet access, not intranet access. No one wants the latter - compuserve and prodigy and the like are not what we want. That it is what the ISPs would prefer to give us anyway, of course, but they know we wont buy it if we have a choice.
This is a move to take away that choice - to kill the internet and replace with a series of walled gardens that can be more effectively 'monetized.' Without even having to coax the customers into signing new contracts!
If this is legal law is dead.
"You have no idea what you're talking about. I get tired of having to correct people on this subject."
You should quit 'correcting' people because you are wrong.
The vast majority of your post is simply distraction - some of what you say is true but it's not relevant.
"Netflix was completely irresponsible in the way they designed and maintained their service. They were approached by every major ISP in the country with plans to help alleviate the problems they were causing in the ISPs last mile."
And there is the crux of your error. Netflix simply provided a service. The ISPs customers then wanted to use that service via the connection they already paid for. And that use *reveals* - does not create, mind you, but *reveals* - the fact that the ISPs are overselling and under-delivering.
And they have been for decades. The big ones have taken massive subsidies to build infrastructure, pocketed the money, but refuse to actually build the infrastructure.
And now they are using the crappy state of their infrastructure as an excuse to shake down third parties.
And you are defending this? Seriously?
I hope you are getting paid a lot for this, because your personal integrity will not recover.
I've driven for multiple decades, across three continents, on both sides of the road. I've drive every day all day long during certain periods and I am sure if I had a mileage metre it would have rolled over a few times by now. I have never earned a single point on my insurance. So yeah, I think it's fair to say I drive better than most of the population.
I do not believe this is the result of any superhuman talent, virtually anyone could do as well if they would take it seriously. Unfortunately people in general are being taught not to take anything seriously and just blame someone else when they screw up.