When the open software on open standards has been constructed by design to be as non-extensible and user-unfriendly as possible with code that is so convoluted that it is effectively obfuscated just so that it becomes unreasonably difficult for it to be used with proprietary tools -- and by consequence any other tools, open or otherwise -- then it's putting a political goal ahead of a technical goal.
It should be neither surprising nor particularly unwarranted when the users jump ship from a project that doesn't match their goals to a project that does match their goals.
GCC was designed to be non-portable and non-extensible. It was written to make that difficult just to discourage businesses from developing proprietary extensions for it. In doing so, they've encouraged an inbred community where new features simply are never added. This is the exact same problem the cause the EGCS fork in the late 90s. LLVM, while politically less attractive, actually lets people do what they want. GCC dug their own grave here.
We got our PCjr in 1985 some time. It did not have the infamous chiclet keyboard that was so reviled. It was still a condensed keyboard with no function keys, however.
The lack of function keys definitely made office and productivity software written for the PC more difficult to use since it became a two key press. The keyboard didn't work well with combination presses with the Fn key, either, so you often had to press Fn, wait a moment, then press the key that corresponded to the key you wanted. It was cumbersome.
Other than that the computer worked great. I did a lot of BASIC programming on the cartridge, and the games were really quite good. We eventually got the RAM extension side cart that took the memory up to 768 KB. It helped quite a bit since you could often work in programs without having to swap your data disk out for the program disk, and there were several programs that required 256 KB to work. We kept this computer until 1990-91 when we got a screaming fast 486DX 33 MHz with 4 MB of RAM and a 130 MB hard drive (all direct from Intel thanks to a family member that works there!). When was the last time you bought a computer that was literally an order of magnitude faster than the one you bought 5 years ago?
So, it's the software that you download that verifies itself?
Yes.
It's not particularly different than relying on a repository signature. There's nothing stopping you from adding untrustworthy repositories in Linux, and if a repository is compromised signatures can be modified as well. There's a reason people are cautious about PPAs. Package managers are not immune to security issues, either.
Or, does Windows have a list of checked software along with their signatures?
The mechanism is just a digital certificate. The same as those used for SSL/TLS but with a different flag for use (code signing instead of just identity verification). It's not particularly more or less robust than an external metadata signature.
Windows checks all software, but it doesn't block unsigned software. It simply issues a warning. I'm not certain what it does for a revoked certificate or for a certificate for a program that no longer passes the signature check; I've never seen one. On recent editions of Windows Server, the enhanced IE security prevents executing programs from sites that are not trusted until you manually unblock the file on the properties window.
So these megacorps can freely use each other's overbroad patents-of-vague-concepts, but any time an independent inventor tries to get a business off the ground, he will be litigated into oblivion.
Nonsense. First you wait for your competitor to buy out the small independent inventor. Then you sue into oblivion. You'll never make any money litigating people that can't afford the kind of damages you need to claim to pay for your lawsuits.
No, faith is believing true that which you can neither prove nor disprove to be true. Believing true what you know to be false is insanity. Believing true what others claim to know as false is just a difference of opinion on reality. Faith doesn't require contrary evidence. It requires a lack of evidence.
The next time you're out, pick a random person you have no knowledge of around you. Imagine you were suddenly suffered to a stroke or heart attack. Would that person help you? You have no evidence either way. If you say they will, then you have faith. If you say they will not, you also still have faith. The only faithless answer is "I don't know".
1. That which cannot be observed by definition cannot affect our universe
An acceptable premise. Prove it. All you've done so far is stated that that which is not observable cannot be observed. Please keep in mind that the universe could well support coterminous realities. You may very well choose to define the problem away by defining the universe as the set of observable phenomena rather than the set of things that exist, but that still doesn't mean that that which cannot be observed does not exist.
On the other hand, one can simply say "observe the birth a universe" or "observe beyond the event horizon -- fuzzy or otherwise -- of a black hole". How about the two-slit experiment, which proves that there exist things that are not observable. Yes, yes, you can shrug it off and say "quantum mechanics" as if that actually explained it rather that simply supplied mathematics that merely describe it; merely supplying the *what* rather than the *how* or *why*. Even "observe the core of the sun" or even "observe the mantle the earth" are effectively only observable indirectly. Look at the findings on the composition of martial soil to see just how badly we do when we don't do direct observations and instead build models that appear to make 2 + 2 equal 4.
2. This is just another way of saying the 1st, unless you propose that there are observable things that are not measurable.
We can observe that the Ukranians hate their president. Measure it objectively. Quantify hate so that it can be expressed in numeric units. How many kiloHitlers are directed at Viktor Yanukovych?
3. This is true, but that's a fundamental limitation on all human endeavours, not just science.
Of course. That's the point. The point isn't that science is bad, or that it has no value, or that every day we don't learn more than we did yesterday. The point is that the human condition makes human science fundamentally flawed; it's not exempt just because it's science. The point is that acting like science is the only possible truth (rather than merely one of the better ones) when we know that humans are so fundamentally flawed is absurd. That authority you think science gives you to describe the universe? It doesn't. Don't be angry about it. Be skeptical, even of so-called "established truths". They're proven false more often than you'd think.
Religion is based on myth, legend and anecdotal evidence.
Nonsense. Religion is based on faith. Myth, legend, and anecdotes exist to provide a means to contemplate one's faith. In the context of religion, "truth" means "that which I accept on faith to be true" and nothing more. Unfortunately, dogmatic zealots (both religious and otherwise) project their faith on others. That is the problem with religion.
On the other hand, people treat science as some kind of infallible process. That eventually, an answer will be found if we try hard enough. That science has a monopoly on truth. In reality, science has several fundamental limitations.
1. It assumes everything that exists is observable by humans -- directly or indirectly. It has nothing to say about that which cannot be observed.
2. It assumes everything that exists is measurable by humans -- that it can be somehow quantified and tested. It has nothing to say about that which cannot be measured.
3. It assumes everything that exists is comprehensible by humans. It has nothing to say about that which cannot be comprehended by human intelligence.
We can work around the first two, usually with spherical cows. That last one is a major problem, however. Personally, I think it is the height of hubris to believe that the universe is obligated to exist and behave in a form that humans can observe and measure, let alone that intelligence is capable of understanding. There is no way a dog would understand even basic chemistry. Why do we assume humanity is not so limited?
Trust me, it's being paid for by everyone (including the one getting the "free" healthcare) - but the costs are hidden in your taxes.
You say that like it's not also true without socialized or universal heathcare. The only difference is that the costs are hidden in taxes, unpaid debt, and lost productivity instead of merely taxes. Or did you think all those unpaid medical bills just disappeared?
But if you don't have a bank, how can you establish a banking record? Once you get to a certain age, it becomes a Catch-22. Can't bank because don't have credit record. Don't have credit record because can't use bank.
This is why my parents got me a low maximum credit card (~$500) when I was a teenager. Just to establish a credit record so I wouldn't have trouble getting a bank loan in the future.
It traverses NAT seamlessly, even when you're behind NAT, too. The web interface also allows you to track Windows update status and some other security issues on the remote system.
It's also easier to set up and use than VNC. Setup is like installing an IM client on the destination system. Download, double-click, Next, Next, Next, Finish, enter LogMeIn credentials, done. Easier on the other end, too. Log in to LogMeIn website. Double click computer you want to log into from list. Session opens.
You'll notice that there is no way to become a citizen *before* birth. An abortion happens *before* birth, therefore no, fetuses are not citizens and would not count.
Shh. Keep spreading that about and some right wing extremist will try to pass a "9 month compromise" bill.
MMORPG can maybe be changed so you don't need to be on 24/7 to get the most of them / fell like you are paying for it so you better play 24/7.
Pretty much this. They build in pressure to play, or return to continue playing. WoW's rest XP was supposed to combat this, but in reality it just doesn't. Certainly once you hit level cap rest XP does fuck all for encouraging you to log off. Battle.Net ladders and all competitive rewards simply reward expertise gained from a small amount of talent and a tremendous amount of time. Keeping your subscription current, buying this year's multi-player FPS encourage return and repeat buyers. Mobile and web-based games like Farmville (and, I assume, Candy Crush) have incentives and micro-transactions to encourage time investments. Even games with time limits have amounts you can pay for extra time. "Fremium" games seem to be the most egregious violators. These games are built to be addicting, not entertaining.
The only real world analogs I can think of are TCGs and casino games. Is that what this is? An adapted gambling addiction?
It's the same as GoToMyPC. It allows a web-based client to access a computer remotely by installing a server daemon on the remote computer that connects directly to the central server which serves as a service broker. This bypasses the common problems of NAT traversal by initiating connections on both a VNC client and a VNC server. While net meeting software just uses the central server as a broker, the central server for web-based remote access hosts the web application and service broker. Technically, I think LogMeIn uses Hamachi, which is a virtual private network service they own.
For small installations or for supporting users in a workgroup at remote locations, it works fine. Larger installations tend to get something more enterprise-y like Bomgar.
Should they have the authority to remove that too only to tell you about it later in a blog?
Microsoft Security Essentials is antivirus software. By definition it must have the authority to remove, isolate, disable, and delete software from your computer. The computer owners installed MS Security Essentials precisely to perform this specific service.
Have any Tor installations been removed that were not associated with Sefnit? It appears to me that the only software that was removed was the specific version of Tor that Sefnit used and, in most cases, when the Tor client has been installed a system service (which is very, very non-standard). MS did not remove the most recent version of the client.
I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm certain that giving everyone the ability to make anything in the way that only expensive fabrication factories could before will be as revolutionary in it's own way as the Internet has been for language, publishing, news reporting, etc.
That's what I was wondering, too. If the patents expire in 2015, then the patents were filed in 1995. If they didn't start lawsuits until 2012, why doesn't laches apply? They didn't sue for 17 years. It's not fair that they start now.
Of course, none of these suits has actually gone to trial, it appears.
This actually makes some sense because it would be very easy to abuse.
A large corporation could spin off an independent (ha!) subsidiary, which has full ownership (HA!) of the production facilities. Worse, you could fracture your production facilities into numerous independent subsidiaries, thus forcing patent holders to file a dozen lawsuits, and fighting the "oh, we just do X, you have to prove that it infringes" in every one, or just shutting down a tenth of the whole production. You'd be pricing patent holders out of lawsuits, and in many cases they already are under our current system.
This definitely *is* the goal, and people who imagine automation destroying lives and healthy job prospects don't understand economics.
And I'm afraid you don't understand reality. Humans aren't interchangeable parts. Someone who has spent 10, 20, or 30 years in a profession can't seamlessly transition to a new job with equal compensation. The underlying problem is that while society and economies adapts rapidly to change, individuals adapt slowly to change. If it takes a human 5 years to master a craft, what happens when those skills cease to be useful? They now have to start over. However, their expenses haven't decreased. They may not be able to relocate because of their family or for political reasons. If they could simply move to where their skills were in demand, we would have seen American auto workers emigrate en-masse. How can someone with a home and a family stop earning wages long enough to retrain well enough to get a job with equivalent compensation? That is the problem with technology eliminating jobs.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, this site needs some editors!
So do I. I'm also willing to bet printer manufacturers will sell it for $80.
When the open software on open standards has been constructed by design to be as non-extensible and user-unfriendly as possible with code that is so convoluted that it is effectively obfuscated just so that it becomes unreasonably difficult for it to be used with proprietary tools -- and by consequence any other tools, open or otherwise -- then it's putting a political goal ahead of a technical goal.
It should be neither surprising nor particularly unwarranted when the users jump ship from a project that doesn't match their goals to a project that does match their goals.
GCC was designed to be non-portable and non-extensible. It was written to make that difficult just to discourage businesses from developing proprietary extensions for it. In doing so, they've encouraged an inbred community where new features simply are never added. This is the exact same problem the cause the EGCS fork in the late 90s. LLVM, while politically less attractive, actually lets people do what they want. GCC dug their own grave here.
We got our PCjr in 1985 some time. It did not have the infamous chiclet keyboard that was so reviled. It was still a condensed keyboard with no function keys, however.
The lack of function keys definitely made office and productivity software written for the PC more difficult to use since it became a two key press. The keyboard didn't work well with combination presses with the Fn key, either, so you often had to press Fn, wait a moment, then press the key that corresponded to the key you wanted. It was cumbersome.
Other than that the computer worked great. I did a lot of BASIC programming on the cartridge, and the games were really quite good. We eventually got the RAM extension side cart that took the memory up to 768 KB. It helped quite a bit since you could often work in programs without having to swap your data disk out for the program disk, and there were several programs that required 256 KB to work. We kept this computer until 1990-91 when we got a screaming fast 486DX 33 MHz with 4 MB of RAM and a 130 MB hard drive (all direct from Intel thanks to a family member that works there!). When was the last time you bought a computer that was literally an order of magnitude faster than the one you bought 5 years ago?
Yes.
It's not particularly different than relying on a repository signature. There's nothing stopping you from adding untrustworthy repositories in Linux, and if a repository is compromised signatures can be modified as well. There's a reason people are cautious about PPAs. Package managers are not immune to security issues, either.
The mechanism is just a digital certificate. The same as those used for SSL/TLS but with a different flag for use (code signing instead of just identity verification). It's not particularly more or less robust than an external metadata signature.
Windows checks all software, but it doesn't block unsigned software. It simply issues a warning. I'm not certain what it does for a revoked certificate or for a certificate for a program that no longer passes the signature check; I've never seen one. On recent editions of Windows Server, the enhanced IE security prevents executing programs from sites that are not trusted until you manually unblock the file on the properties window.
FTP: Still sucking because it was invented with NCP in mind.
Nonsense. First you wait for your competitor to buy out the small independent inventor. Then you sue into oblivion. You'll never make any money litigating people that can't afford the kind of damages you need to claim to pay for your lawsuits.
No, faith is believing true that which you can neither prove nor disprove to be true. Believing true what you know to be false is insanity. Believing true what others claim to know as false is just a difference of opinion on reality. Faith doesn't require contrary evidence. It requires a lack of evidence.
The next time you're out, pick a random person you have no knowledge of around you. Imagine you were suddenly suffered to a stroke or heart attack. Would that person help you? You have no evidence either way. If you say they will, then you have faith. If you say they will not, you also still have faith. The only faithless answer is "I don't know".
An acceptable premise. Prove it. All you've done so far is stated that that which is not observable cannot be observed. Please keep in mind that the universe could well support coterminous realities. You may very well choose to define the problem away by defining the universe as the set of observable phenomena rather than the set of things that exist, but that still doesn't mean that that which cannot be observed does not exist.
On the other hand, one can simply say "observe the birth a universe" or "observe beyond the event horizon -- fuzzy or otherwise -- of a black hole". How about the two-slit experiment, which proves that there exist things that are not observable. Yes, yes, you can shrug it off and say "quantum mechanics" as if that actually explained it rather that simply supplied mathematics that merely describe it; merely supplying the *what* rather than the *how* or *why*. Even "observe the core of the sun" or even "observe the mantle the earth" are effectively only observable indirectly. Look at the findings on the composition of martial soil to see just how badly we do when we don't do direct observations and instead build models that appear to make 2 + 2 equal 4.
We can observe that the Ukranians hate their president. Measure it objectively. Quantify hate so that it can be expressed in numeric units. How many kiloHitlers are directed at Viktor Yanukovych?
Of course. That's the point. The point isn't that science is bad, or that it has no value, or that every day we don't learn more than we did yesterday. The point is that the human condition makes human science fundamentally flawed; it's not exempt just because it's science. The point is that acting like science is the only possible truth (rather than merely one of the better ones) when we know that humans are so fundamentally flawed is absurd. That authority you think science gives you to describe the universe? It doesn't. Don't be angry about it. Be skeptical, even of so-called "established truths". They're proven false more often than you'd think.
Nonsense. Religion is based on faith. Myth, legend, and anecdotes exist to provide a means to contemplate one's faith. In the context of religion, "truth" means "that which I accept on faith to be true" and nothing more. Unfortunately, dogmatic zealots (both religious and otherwise) project their faith on others. That is the problem with religion.
On the other hand, people treat science as some kind of infallible process. That eventually, an answer will be found if we try hard enough. That science has a monopoly on truth. In reality, science has several fundamental limitations.
1. It assumes everything that exists is observable by humans -- directly or indirectly. It has nothing to say about that which cannot be observed.
2. It assumes everything that exists is measurable by humans -- that it can be somehow quantified and tested. It has nothing to say about that which cannot be measured.
3. It assumes everything that exists is comprehensible by humans. It has nothing to say about that which cannot be comprehended by human intelligence.
We can work around the first two, usually with spherical cows. That last one is a major problem, however. Personally, I think it is the height of hubris to believe that the universe is obligated to exist and behave in a form that humans can observe and measure, let alone that intelligence is capable of understanding. There is no way a dog would understand even basic chemistry. Why do we assume humanity is not so limited?
You say that like it's not also true without socialized or universal heathcare. The only difference is that the costs are hidden in taxes, unpaid debt, and lost productivity instead of merely taxes. Or did you think all those unpaid medical bills just disappeared?
But if you don't have a bank, how can you establish a banking record? Once you get to a certain age, it becomes a Catch-22. Can't bank because don't have credit record. Don't have credit record because can't use bank.
This is why my parents got me a low maximum credit card (~$500) when I was a teenager. Just to establish a credit record so I wouldn't have trouble getting a bank loan in the future.
Excellent. Now get your grandmother who lives two states over to do it over the phone.
It traverses NAT seamlessly, even when you're behind NAT, too. The web interface also allows you to track Windows update status and some other security issues on the remote system.
It's also easier to set up and use than VNC. Setup is like installing an IM client on the destination system. Download, double-click, Next, Next, Next, Finish, enter LogMeIn credentials, done. Easier on the other end, too. Log in to LogMeIn website. Double click computer you want to log into from list. Session opens.
Shh. Keep spreading that about and some right wing extremist will try to pass a "9 month compromise" bill.
Pretty much this. They build in pressure to play, or return to continue playing. WoW's rest XP was supposed to combat this, but in reality it just doesn't. Certainly once you hit level cap rest XP does fuck all for encouraging you to log off. Battle.Net ladders and all competitive rewards simply reward expertise gained from a small amount of talent and a tremendous amount of time. Keeping your subscription current, buying this year's multi-player FPS encourage return and repeat buyers. Mobile and web-based games like Farmville (and, I assume, Candy Crush) have incentives and micro-transactions to encourage time investments. Even games with time limits have amounts you can pay for extra time. "Fremium" games seem to be the most egregious violators. These games are built to be addicting, not entertaining.
The only real world analogs I can think of are TCGs and casino games. Is that what this is? An adapted gambling addiction?
It's the same as GoToMyPC. It allows a web-based client to access a computer remotely by installing a server daemon on the remote computer that connects directly to the central server which serves as a service broker. This bypasses the common problems of NAT traversal by initiating connections on both a VNC client and a VNC server. While net meeting software just uses the central server as a broker, the central server for web-based remote access hosts the web application and service broker. Technically, I think LogMeIn uses Hamachi, which is a virtual private network service they own.
For small installations or for supporting users in a workgroup at remote locations, it works fine. Larger installations tend to get something more enterprise-y like Bomgar.
Your question is answered in TFA. They were mining BitCoins.
Microsoft Security Essentials is antivirus software. By definition it must have the authority to remove, isolate, disable, and delete software from your computer. The computer owners installed MS Security Essentials precisely to perform this specific service.
Have any Tor installations been removed that were not associated with Sefnit? It appears to me that the only software that was removed was the specific version of Tor that Sefnit used and, in most cases, when the Tor client has been installed a system service (which is very, very non-standard). MS did not remove the most recent version of the client.
You're just spreading FUD about a non-story. This is less interesting than all those stories about antivirus false positives rendering Windows unable to boot.
Yeah, and look how that turned out.
I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm certain that giving everyone the ability to make anything in the way that only expensive fabrication factories could before will be as revolutionary in it's own way as the Internet has been for language, publishing, news reporting, etc.
That's what I was wondering, too. If the patents expire in 2015, then the patents were filed in 1995. If they didn't start lawsuits until 2012, why doesn't laches apply? They didn't sue for 17 years. It's not fair that they start now.
Of course, none of these suits has actually gone to trial, it appears.
This actually makes some sense because it would be very easy to abuse.
A large corporation could spin off an independent (ha!) subsidiary, which has full ownership (HA!) of the production facilities. Worse, you could fracture your production facilities into numerous independent subsidiaries, thus forcing patent holders to file a dozen lawsuits, and fighting the "oh, we just do X, you have to prove that it infringes" in every one, or just shutting down a tenth of the whole production. You'd be pricing patent holders out of lawsuits, and in many cases they already are under our current system.
GNU Classpath, GCJ, GIJ. IKVM.NET, technically, too.
And I'm afraid you don't understand reality. Humans aren't interchangeable parts. Someone who has spent 10, 20, or 30 years in a profession can't seamlessly transition to a new job with equal compensation. The underlying problem is that while society and economies adapts rapidly to change, individuals adapt slowly to change. If it takes a human 5 years to master a craft, what happens when those skills cease to be useful? They now have to start over. However, their expenses haven't decreased. They may not be able to relocate because of their family or for political reasons. If they could simply move to where their skills were in demand, we would have seen American auto workers emigrate en-masse. How can someone with a home and a family stop earning wages long enough to retrain well enough to get a job with equivalent compensation? That is the problem with technology eliminating jobs.
This always seemed like the obvious move.
Can someone explain why they didn't just do this instead? Does this classification require legislation or something?