Here in WA we have a lot of salty, sandy land, and wheat is on of our major exports. We have to GM wheat to grow in harsher areas if we want to keep up economic growth. Also if wheat can be grown in more arid terrain with less farmer supervision that'll help poorer countries too.
There's nothing wrong with GM food in itself, in fact we'll have to embrace it to keep up our lifestyles while the population grows (especially when global warming starts to become a problem). The only problem with it is the sticky issue of 'patenting' food.
I agree with you; if someone intentionally destroys the evidence of a murder they committed they should be punished for that murder. But that assumes that you 'know' that they committed the murder without the evidence. What if they accidentally wiped their hard disk? What if someone framing them secretly put a powerful electromagnet to their laptop just as the case started?
It's all about reasonable doubt; in this case (I hope) she was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, if the jury isn't sure beyond a reasonable doubt they shouldn't assume that missing evidence is proof that the evidence was destroyed by the defendant.
As someone else wrote; the correct course of action would be to charge her for obstructing the course of justice and whatever P2P charge was laid against her (as long as she is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt).
Why are so many/. readers depressed? I know we've been/.ing for years and Linux still isn't dominant, but I've read this whole thread and it seems every other person here is discussing their experience with anti-depressants.
What D-Wave has done is begun with the standard approaches to building metal-based processors and modified them in such a way that these processors use quantum mechanics in order to accelerate computation.
Wow, they use quantum mechanics? Every chemical reaction in our universe uses quantum mechanics; they couldn't be more vague if they tried. They're clearly trying to capitalize on the 'quantum computer' buzz.
1) The problem with one time pads isn't generating random text to XOR with, it's getting that text from A to B without relying on weaker crypto.
2) Pseudo-random number generators (with a sufficiently random seed) aren't good enough? Then maybe you'll be able to tell me what comes next after this base64 encoded output of the/dev/urandom implementation on FreeBSD:
No, the grandparent is right. By avoiding our excellent pseudo-random number generators and going with this hacked together entropy generator you're more likely to decrease your security because of flaws in the hardware than gain a practical increase in security.
If everyone who searches for, say, "flower pots" also searches for "fertilizer" Google can use that information to target fertilizer ads, or show fertilizer related search results, at people who are searching for flower pots. Without knowing that both the "flower pots" and "fertilizer" searches are from same person they can't do this.
It's also important to note that they're not tieing the searches to you, they're tieing your searches to each other.
It has been very good to read non-alarmist, well reasoned messages on Google privacy issues posted in this discussion so far. Kudos Slashdot!
A buggy, difficult to set up, ugly version of MS Office? I don't think OS X using businesses would go for that, even if they know of CrossOver (which not many do).
(And please spare me the obligatory "BUT IT'S BUGGY, DIFFICULT TO SET UP AND UGLY NEWAY LOL")
The anecdote about Cray's undocumented instructions was to show that the NSA do more than just buy the supercomputers they use.. I guess you have to spell it out for some people.
"Now you know that the NSA can't even figure out how to get electricity set up so that they can power their billion dollar computers, meanwhile your company, which you consider to be run by dopes probably, has multiple plans to deal with such issues. The reason for this is simple:
The NSA does not design computers, they just buy them on contract from big companies like IBM or whoever. All they have to do is write a check."
The NSA have a chip fabrication facility at Ft. Meade, presumeably to make chips which have designs too sensitive to contract out other fabricators. Plus they're apparently the largest single employer of mathematicians in the world. I think they do a little more than write checks.
Apparently their electricity budget is 21 million dollars. I'll let you work back from the price of a kWh in Baltimore to find just how many UPS devices it would take to keep them running for any substantial length of time. If you can't be bothered to do the math; basically it would require a small power plant.
NSA running a bunch of supercomputers != An office block
IBM? We're not talking about ThinkPads here, we're talking about supercomputers. Judging by the apparently useless undocumented instructions which appear in Cray supercomputer manuals, the NSA works with Cray to get supercomputers which are optimized for breaking specific crypto. Something tells me they can plug them in..
Re-evolution is rather flattering, it implies that we're the end result of evolution; but it's silly to think that our more distant cousins are 'less evolved' than us because they're smaller/not-conscious. They have been around for just as long as we have, and if they have changed less than us that only shows how successful their genes are.
I haven't seen the word 'evolution' consistantly misused like this since Pokemon.. "Gather 'round everyone, this Bulbusaur is EVOLVING!"
While we're on Dell, is it just me or have they made their site completely un-browseable? All there is on dell.com is a link to one product, and the product description is terrible. And people wonder why Apple is doing so much better..
Lots of people say they don't like PHP and say everyone should go with RoR, but no-one says why. Why is PHP so terrible? Is it the rich API, universal support, good development tools, good community, great documentation? What is it about PHP that some people don't like?
You're the one getting angry and name-calling about some true statements I made about an Office suite. If you get angry when someone speaks ill of a piece of software which isn't your own, you're a fanboy idiot. "Nooo, OpenOffice is holy! You lie, you lie! It's not true!! *sniff*"
"Under enough eyeballs all bugs are shallow". I'd rather use software which has been checked for security holes, by the company, hackers, anyone, than software which hasn't.
"I've used Openoffice on systems that have 96MB of RAM -- Other than it being a bit slow. I have not noticed any usability issues."
New rule: If you don't know what a page file/swap partition is, you don't get the rest of your post read.
Most of what you wrote I answered in another response, but as to these:
"you don't mind using a piece of software which no-one will have audited,"
What makes you think office was audited?
Gee, I don't know, maybe the fact that is a discussion on a vulnerability which was found in PowerPoint? That vulnerability didn't find itself.
You have no idea what you are talking about. None at all. Every part of OO is scriptable.
Even if OOo was as richly scriptable as Office (which it simply isn't), it's multiplatform and thus can't have the same integration with other parts of the OS.
"Disclaimer: I'm not an MS fanboy, "
Yes you are. If you weren't you would not have lied so much.
"Yes you are."? I hate replying to a post only to realise I'm responding to someone with a mental age of a schoolboy.. You have yet to point out where I have said something which isn't true, but you have said Office isn't audited and will only have read only support for ODF; both false.
I've never known Microsoft to allow any arbitrary Office user to phone them up...
I've never known anyone in an IT department who knows how to sort out an OOo problem either.
If I wanted to script my documents, I'd use LaTeX and do it properly.
That's text documents covered (let's ignore the massive API, thorough documentation, events, key combos, community support, pre-written example code, friends/coworkers who know it too, IDE, and easy to master language). Now what about spreadsheets and databases?
??? What is that?
You write your scripts in it; it has syntax checking, debugging, auto completion, variable watching, a massive library of help and sample code, etc.
I've found that most of their documentation doesn't cover odd corner cases, that "clippy" is useless and trial and error is usually the best way to go with either suite.
Clippy may be useless but MS Office Online isn't. Most Office users need to learn to use the F1 key; you can't expect an animated paperclip to guess what you're trying to do.
If you think trial and error is the best way to get what you want it's no wonder you don't appreciate what MS Office has over OOo.
As to the rest... the fact that others don't use it is self-serving. That's not a feature of Office, it's a result of the monopoly MSFT tries to establish.
Most of the reasons are problems with OOo which have nothing to do with user base. There are some problems caused only by the fact that everyone uses MS Office and no-one uses OOo, but businesses and home users don't care about the reason for these problems. We're trying to make good documents quickly and easily, not tip the scale against the evil MS.
you're not going to need the pre-written macro code which is everywhere for Office,
you don't need the excellent VBA IDE,
you don't need the excellent documentation,
you're not going to use the entire systems implemented in Office (Excel and Access systems are commonplace where I work, they're commercial and not in-house software),
you don't mind not being able to properly use the documents everyone outside your organisation will be using, and the documents your employees will be bringing from home,
you don't mind the GUI not matching the rest of your system,
you don't mind using a piece of software which no-one will have audited,
you can't wait for Office 2007 for ODF,
and you don't need a rich macro API.
This is fine for writing up your homework but in the places I've worked it's just not good enough. It's like comparing Dillo to Firefox.
Disclaimer: I'm not an MS fanboy, I'm glad OOo is giving MS more pressure to make Office better, but it has a long way to go before it can compete.
Slashdot Mirror
Here in WA we have a lot of salty, sandy land, and wheat is on of our major exports. We have to GM wheat to grow in harsher areas if we want to keep up economic growth. Also if wheat can be grown in more arid terrain with less farmer supervision that'll help poorer countries too.
There's nothing wrong with GM food in itself, in fact we'll have to embrace it to keep up our lifestyles while the population grows (especially when global warming starts to become a problem). The only problem with it is the sticky issue of 'patenting' food.
I agree with you; if someone intentionally destroys the evidence of a murder they committed they should be punished for that murder. But that assumes that you 'know' that they committed the murder without the evidence. What if they accidentally wiped their hard disk? What if someone framing them secretly put a powerful electromagnet to their laptop just as the case started?
It's all about reasonable doubt; in this case (I hope) she was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, if the jury isn't sure beyond a reasonable doubt they shouldn't assume that missing evidence is proof that the evidence was destroyed by the defendant.
As someone else wrote; the correct course of action would be to charge her for obstructing the course of justice and whatever P2P charge was laid against her (as long as she is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt).
It's good to see companies which patent and sue about trivial ideas get sued themselves. Remember the trash can patent?
Why are so many /. readers depressed? I know we've been /.ing for years and Linux still isn't dominant, but I've read this whole thread and it seems every other person here is discussing their experience with anti-depressants.
Wow, they use quantum mechanics? Every chemical reaction in our universe uses quantum mechanics; they couldn't be more vague if they tried. They're clearly trying to capitalize on the 'quantum computer' buzz.
I do hate that idea, that's why I wouldn't use Writely for private documents..
Programmers make mistakes, and it also helps to clarify where a variable comes from and that extra caution should be taken with it.
If you don't think it's bad for security just check to see how many PHP vulnerabilities are limited to people who keep register_globals enabled.
2) Pseudo-random number generators (with a sufficiently random seed) aren't good enough? Then maybe you'll be able to tell me what comes next after this base64 encoded output of the
No, the grandparent is right. By avoiding our excellent pseudo-random number generators and going with this hacked together entropy generator you're more likely to decrease your security because of flaws in the hardware than gain a practical increase in security.
If everyone who searches for, say, "flower pots" also searches for "fertilizer" Google can use that information to target fertilizer ads, or show fertilizer related search results, at people who are searching for flower pots. Without knowing that both the "flower pots" and "fertilizer" searches are from same person they can't do this.
It's also important to note that they're not tieing the searches to you, they're tieing your searches to each other.
It has been very good to read non-alarmist, well reasoned messages on Google privacy issues posted in this discussion so far. Kudos Slashdot!
A buggy, difficult to set up, ugly version of MS Office? I don't think OS X using businesses would go for that, even if they know of CrossOver (which not many do).
(And please spare me the obligatory "BUT IT'S BUGGY, DIFFICULT TO SET UP AND UGLY NEWAY LOL")
The anecdote about Cray's undocumented instructions was to show that the NSA do more than just buy the supercomputers they use.. I guess you have to spell it out for some people.
s .html
IBM/Lenovo? http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/offers/buytoday_thinkpad
You can have the last word, I'm sure it won't be worth responding to.
"Now you know that the NSA can't even figure out how to get electricity set up so that they can power their billion dollar computers, meanwhile your company, which you consider to be run by dopes probably, has multiple plans to deal with such issues. The reason for this is simple:
The NSA does not design computers, they just buy them on contract from big companies like IBM or whoever. All they have to do is write a check."
The NSA have a chip fabrication facility at Ft. Meade, presumeably to make chips which have designs too sensitive to contract out other fabricators. Plus they're apparently the largest single employer of mathematicians in the world. I think they do a little more than write checks.
Apparently their electricity budget is 21 million dollars. I'll let you work back from the price of a kWh in Baltimore to find just how many UPS devices it would take to keep them running for any substantial length of time. If you can't be bothered to do the math; basically it would require a small power plant.
NSA running a bunch of supercomputers != An office block
IBM? We're not talking about ThinkPads here, we're talking about supercomputers. Judging by the apparently useless undocumented instructions which appear in Cray supercomputer manuals, the NSA works with Cray to get supercomputers which are optimized for breaking specific crypto. Something tells me they can plug them in..
Re-evolution is rather flattering, it implies that we're the end result of evolution; but it's silly to think that our more distant cousins are 'less evolved' than us because they're smaller/not-conscious. They have been around for just as long as we have, and if they have changed less than us that only shows how successful their genes are.
I haven't seen the word 'evolution' consistantly misused like this since Pokemon.. "Gather 'round everyone, this Bulbusaur is EVOLVING!"
So the second best CPU maker and the second best GPU maker pair up? Unless AMD+ATI have an ace up their sleeve this won't be good for competition.
While we're on Dell, is it just me or have they made their site completely un-browseable? All there is on dell.com is a link to one product, and the product description is terrible. And people wonder why Apple is doing so much better..
Lots of people say they don't like PHP and say everyone should go with RoR, but no-one says why. Why is PHP so terrible? Is it the rich API, universal support, good development tools, good community, great documentation? What is it about PHP that some people don't like?
You're the one getting angry and name-calling about some true statements I made about an Office suite. If you get angry when someone speaks ill of a piece of software which isn't your own, you're a fanboy idiot. "Nooo, OpenOffice is holy! You lie, you lie! It's not true!! *sniff*"
"Under enough eyeballs all bugs are shallow". I'd rather use software which has been checked for security holes, by the company, hackers, anyone, than software which hasn't.
Audits don't have to be done by the people who wrote the code..
"I've used Openoffice on systems that have 96MB of RAM -- Other than it being a bit slow. I have not noticed any usability issues."
New rule: If you don't know what a page file/swap partition is, you don't get the rest of your post read.
Most of what you wrote I answered in another response, but as to these:
l 06/07-06OpenSourceProjectPR.mspx "bidirectional translation support"
"you don't mind using a piece of software which no-one will have audited,"
What makes you think office was audited?
Gee, I don't know, maybe the fact that is a discussion on a vulnerability which was found in PowerPoint? That vulnerability didn't find itself.
"you can't wait for Office 2007 for ODF,"
The ODF support in 2007 will be read only. It will also be crippled from the looks of it.
https://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/ju
"and you don't need a rich macro API."
You have no idea what you are talking about. None at all. Every part of OO is scriptable.
Even if OOo was as richly scriptable as Office (which it simply isn't), it's multiplatform and thus can't have the same integration with other parts of the OS.
"Disclaimer: I'm not an MS fanboy, "
Yes you are. If you weren't you would not have lied so much.
"Yes you are."? I hate replying to a post only to realise I'm responding to someone with a mental age of a schoolboy.. You have yet to point out where I have said something which isn't true, but you have said Office isn't audited and will only have read only support for ODF; both false.
I've never known Microsoft to allow any arbitrary Office user to phone them up...
... the fact that others don't use it is self-serving. That's not a feature of Office, it's a result of the monopoly MSFT tries to establish.
S creenshot_364lo.jpg
They're both brown, but all the controls behave and look differently..
I've never known anyone in an IT department who knows how to sort out an OOo problem either.
If I wanted to script my documents, I'd use LaTeX and do it properly.
That's text documents covered (let's ignore the massive API, thorough documentation, events, key combos, community support, pre-written example code, friends/coworkers who know it too, IDE, and easy to master language). Now what about spreadsheets and databases?
??? What is that?
You write your scripts in it; it has syntax checking, debugging, auto completion, variable watching, a massive library of help and sample code, etc.
I've found that most of their documentation doesn't cover odd corner cases, that "clippy" is useless and trial and error is usually the best way to go with either suite.
Clippy may be useless but MS Office Online isn't. Most Office users need to learn to use the F1 key; you can't expect an animated paperclip to guess what you're trying to do.
If you think trial and error is the best way to get what you want it's no wonder you don't appreciate what MS Office has over OOo.
As to the rest
Most of the reasons are problems with OOo which have nothing to do with user base. There are some problems caused only by the fact that everyone uses MS Office and no-one uses OOo, but businesses and home users don't care about the reason for these problems. We're trying to make good documents quickly and easily, not tip the scale against the evil MS.
As for not matching the GUI, speak for yourself. It fits in just fine on my Gnome desktop.
Really? It doesn't fit in well on mine: http://img153.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=38652_
This is fine for writing up your homework but in the places I've worked it's just not good enough. It's like comparing Dillo to Firefox.
Disclaimer: I'm not an MS fanboy, I'm glad OOo is giving MS more pressure to make Office better, but it has a long way to go before it can compete.