This really doesn't suprise me. With tools like ssh and shells installed by default, Linux is just plain easier to use remotely. Linux machines would also tend to stay up and online, whereas (predominantly Windows) desktops are often shut off when not in use. So, Linux makes the best "control console" for a botnet. The "army" should still be made up of Windows desktop machines, due to their large numbers.
Your information can only be stored with your consent. Doing something automatically without informing the subject beforehand is not allowed. Sure but that raises exactly the problem GP was talking about with his metaphor. Put another way, if a coworker comes to your house for dinner, can you write about it in your diary? Apparently in Germany, you'd have to get permission from your coworker first.
Giving someone a business card is consent, as is walking past a "video surveillance ahead" sign. How about putting a link to your privacy policy on your home page? That's about as visible as a sign.
While the law seems helpful, it seems like it would create quite a few unintentional problems. A time limit (such as 18 months) would be a little easier to deal with.
BTW Google OWNS the 767. It is for the use of the founders and maybe other execs. According to the Wall Street Journal, your assertion is incorrect:
Mr. Page says he and Mr. Brin bought the plane themselves and will use it for personal travel. He says there's no plan for Google to reimburse the duo for its costs. A Google spokesman says the plane has no formal connection with the company. A retraction on your part would be nice.
Let's see, on one hand, we have a 16-bit integer. On the other hand, we have computers that can do almost a billion multiplies per second. Nope, shouldn't be a problem... oh wait. The Pentium bug was much more difficult to hit, yet with millions of them out there, people managed to hit it while doing important computations (money, safety, etc). Another post mentions structural engineers using Excel, and I doubt they are doing just simple sums and averages; Would you really want go through an earthquake in a building with safety margins calculated in Excel?
They could be contradictory. But realistically, it would be relatively easy to achieve harmony on the basis that the default position was everyone having privacy and no personal data collection being allowed without explicit consent, and then codifying some reasonable exceptions.
If its relatively easy, please explain how you would maintain SOX or ISO 9001 compliance while not keeping any personally identifiable records of your customers. It's way more difficult than you make it out to be. Also, the exceptions-only approach sounds like outlawing all international trade and then enabling it on a product-by-product basis; That seems to give the government way more control than they ought to have.
What, follow the union of laws from both countries, which could be self-contradictory and make doing any business at all impossible?
We really do need to streamline privacy standards and make them more compatible across international boundaries. Ten years ago people were not concerned about a user in country A running an app on a server in country B which stores his personal data in country C, but today that's a reality. If the laws were similar enough, one could do that sort of thing without too many problems, but today its a legal minefield, even though many companies just like to pretend that it's not a problem.
Also, streamlining is goal we can achieve realistically; Years ago, international trade was very cumbersome, but modern laws and procedures has made it highly efficient. Laws and regulations did not disappear, but a great deal of regularization (WTO, EU, NAFTA, etc) and clarification made it work.
His dispute was not about the facts of the matter, but rather, the conduct of the people who pursued it; his claim that the morally correct way to handle it would have been to first shoot off a private email to the guy who made the error.
C'mon, how can you call a game where the guys kick the ball with their feet and never handle it on the field (except for the clown in the colorful suit), football?! That's why it's called football. Ah, so the head, chest, and knees are part of the foot. Good to know.
You do realize all those times are in milliseconds, right? So, the largest difference between your computer and one of the servers is 27 milliseconds, and the leading "-" in front of the hostname means it isn't even being used for synchronization. Also, either you didn't let it settle for a while, or your local computer clock is inaccurate, because you are still polling once a minute. A "healthy" computer clock will lower the poll frequency significantly if the local and estimated net clocks don't jitter much. I did have one machine with a clock that just sucked, so I had to make sure it was a client of another machine which could act as the timekeeper on my home network, and make sure it polled the timekeeper often.
Personally, I don't use the pool, and instead find some stable servers near to my ISP. But you really can't argue against the NTP pool as a default setup, since it works everywhere. So, if it bothers you, find some closer servers or convince your ISP to run a time server (many are already doing so). In both cities I've lived in, I was able to find an open stratum-1 server with a ~20ms delay (Thank you GPS).
It depends on what kind of accuracy you want. In the NTP papers, they discovered an error proportional to RTT (~= ping time), and error for a single host was often not zero-mean. The symmetry assumption is at best a crude approximation, and modern networks have made it worse. So, having more servers to keep the average latency lower is always a good thing. Ideally every ISP should provide this for their clients, keeping commodity internet bandwidth to a minimum.
Obviously one will have to work it into the rather large existing NTP codebase, but at it's heart this problem is quite simple: If a clock source disappears, try resolving the host again. The NTP protocol is pretty much a heartbeat as it is. Now, one could face the problem of another host getting the old IP so fast that you start following that host, but I'd argue that isn't really a problem in 99% of cases. If it is, use only servers with a static IPs.
Well no that would help Linux, and that's not "everyone". No, it would help everyone. Some could use ZFS directly (Sun,OpenSolaris,Apple,*BSD), and companies such as Microsoft would be able to apply long published FS techniques without being sued. How is that "just Linux?"
Second if companies like NetApp didn't do the R&D behind their patents? Then "everyone" wouldn't benefit either. If BSD had been patented, OS development would have been set back years. Most of NetApp's work came from (quite open) database research; They translated it to the world of file systems. While it was good work, I don't think it deserves a *20 year* monopoly. That's far too long in the computer industry. Since you like patents so much, what do you think of Amazon's 1-click patent? I guess there's no way that kind of amazing work would get done without 20 years of protection, right?
Third wishing Sun luck, means that you've already decides the case and presumed guilt or innocence. I tend to err on the side of the company making a product for everyone to use, rather than the company trying to sue people while not offering an inferior product. NetApp has done some cool things, but the technology they are suing over is already quite dated, and they have never made an attempt at offering a product for normal people to use. In contrast, anyone can get ZFS for free.
Yeah, did you know that this little thing called the Constitution has a clause in it (not an amendment either, like that much ignored list of 10 amendments called "the bill of rights", but an ACTUAL clause in it) that states that ALL treaties entered into by CONGRESS shall be the supreme law of the land? Way to miss the point. GP wants to know where it was specified, he didn't say that we shouldn't break treaties or laws.
The treaty you are referring to, is the "UN, Nuclear Arms NPT (Non Proliferation Treaty)". Sure I don't approve of the UN either, but that is a treaty we've entered into by allowing the tyrants in DC to do as they pleased. In that case you shouldn't have any trouble quoting the part of the NPT treaty which states you can't transfer weapons within your country via air. I'll save you the trouble: It's not there. This may be regulated by the IAEA somehow, in which case you should quote the regulation covering it. The only possible relation to the NPT is that it requires states to follow IAEA guidelines.
While this was certainly a fuckup, I doubt it was illegal (I'd be happy to be shown otherwise with proof). Russia would have trouble dismantling some of their remote weapon sites if they could not transport weapon components via air, so I doubt this limitation would be present in treaties.
Anyone who has studied filesystems in depth knows about NetApp's WAFL, that NetApp has defended its patents, and that ZFS uses a lot of ideas from WAFL. Questions about ZFS violating WAFL patents came up on LKML months ago, and probably earlier elsewhere. People have been wondering why Linux doesn't have anything like ZFS, and a large part of the answer to that is patents; The Tux2 filesystem would have been a lot like ZFS but was stopped due to patent grumblings. I wish Sun luck in overturning the patents, since that would help everyone, but this lawsuit should not come at a surprise to anyone.
What's the fun in that? Where's the international auto-company conspiracy I was expecting? I bought this tinfoil hat, and demand to have a justification for using it...
Slashdot Mirror
In SOVIET RUSSIA, cliché euphemisms you.
I never before thought of Alt-Ctl-Del as a metaphor for Cholera. I like Windows even less now...
This really doesn't suprise me. With tools like ssh and shells installed by default, Linux is just plain easier to use remotely. Linux machines would also tend to stay up and online, whereas (predominantly Windows) desktops are often shut off when not in use. So, Linux makes the best "control console" for a botnet. The "army" should still be made up of Windows desktop machines, due to their large numbers.
Well, we still have expertsexchange.com.
After all, you wouldn't want a novice performing that operation, would you?
But do they have oxygen free copper? I can't have oxygen distorting my bits...
No, I don't think a 767 is necessary, and it's fine to be annoyed. However, its important to be annoyed at the right people.
While the law seems helpful, it seems like it would create quite a few unintentional problems. A time limit (such as 18 months) would be a little easier to deal with.
And as a special bonus, ligatures also help screw up find text and accessibility. What's not to love?
Let's see, on one hand, we have a 16-bit integer. On the other hand, we have computers that can do almost a billion multiplies per second. Nope, shouldn't be a problem... oh wait. The Pentium bug was much more difficult to hit, yet with millions of them out there, people managed to hit it while doing important computations (money, safety, etc). Another post mentions structural engineers using Excel, and I doubt they are doing just simple sums and averages; Would you really want go through an earthquake in a building with safety margins calculated in Excel?
Reference.
If its relatively easy, please explain how you would maintain SOX or ISO 9001 compliance while not keeping any personally identifiable records of your customers. It's way more difficult than you make it out to be. Also, the exceptions-only approach sounds like outlawing all international trade and then enabling it on a product-by-product basis; That seems to give the government way more control than they ought to have.
What, follow the union of laws from both countries, which could be self-contradictory and make doing any business at all impossible?
We really do need to streamline privacy standards and make them more compatible across international boundaries. Ten years ago people were not concerned about a user in country A running an app on a server in country B which stores his personal data in country C, but today that's a reality. If the laws were similar enough, one could do that sort of thing without too many problems, but today its a legal minefield, even though many companies just like to pretend that it's not a problem.
Also, streamlining is goal we can achieve realistically; Years ago, international trade was very cumbersome, but modern laws and procedures has made it highly efficient. Laws and regulations did not disappear, but a great deal of regularization (WTO, EU, NAFTA, etc) and clarification made it work.
Maybe Theo should follow his own advice.
Actually, based on TFA, the title should be:
"Google considers limited and careful experimentation with video ads"
Seriously, read the article, the title is not what the quoted guy said at all.
Cool. I'll be looking forward to it.
You do realize all those times are in milliseconds, right? So, the largest difference between your computer and one of the servers is 27 milliseconds, and the leading "-" in front of the hostname means it isn't even being used for synchronization. Also, either you didn't let it settle for a while, or your local computer clock is inaccurate, because you are still polling once a minute. A "healthy" computer clock will lower the poll frequency significantly if the local and estimated net clocks don't jitter much. I did have one machine with a clock that just sucked, so I had to make sure it was a client of another machine which could act as the timekeeper on my home network, and make sure it polled the timekeeper often.
Personally, I don't use the pool, and instead find some stable servers near to my ISP. But you really can't argue against the NTP pool as a default setup, since it works everywhere. So, if it bothers you, find some closer servers or convince your ISP to run a time server (many are already doing so). In both cities I've lived in, I was able to find an open stratum-1 server with a ~20ms delay (Thank you GPS).
It depends on what kind of accuracy you want. In the NTP papers, they discovered an error proportional to RTT (~= ping time), and error for a single host was often not zero-mean. The symmetry assumption is at best a crude approximation, and modern networks have made it worse. So, having more servers to keep the average latency lower is always a good thing. Ideally every ISP should provide this for their clients, keeping commodity internet bandwidth to a minimum.
Obviously one will have to work it into the rather large existing NTP codebase, but at it's heart this problem is quite simple: If a clock source disappears, try resolving the host again. The NTP protocol is pretty much a heartbeat as it is. Now, one could face the problem of another host getting the old IP so fast that you start following that host, but I'd argue that isn't really a problem in 99% of cases. If it is, use only servers with a static IPs.
While this was certainly a fuckup, I doubt it was illegal (I'd be happy to be shown otherwise with proof). Russia would have trouble dismantling some of their remote weapon sites if they could not transport weapon components via air, so I doubt this limitation would be present in treaties.
It's the only way to be sure.
Anyone who has studied filesystems in depth knows about NetApp's WAFL, that NetApp has defended its patents, and that ZFS uses a lot of ideas from WAFL. Questions about ZFS violating WAFL patents came up on LKML months ago, and probably earlier elsewhere. People have been wondering why Linux doesn't have anything like ZFS, and a large part of the answer to that is patents; The Tux2 filesystem would have been a lot like ZFS but was stopped due to patent grumblings. I wish Sun luck in overturning the patents, since that would help everyone, but this lawsuit should not come at a surprise to anyone.
What's the fun in that? Where's the international auto-company conspiracy I was expecting? I bought this tinfoil hat, and demand to have a justification for using it...