Now, if that's not a bad attitude I don't know what is.
Do you actually have a good opinion of the world at large? If so, you should take a good long look around. The world is not all ashambles, but it's nothing to be proud of either...
But if you run Debian, you can very easily install usable XFree86 bits, a usable kernel, and the current Xine bits. It's then just a question of finding a.deb for the Xine CSS plugin, and you should be able to watch movies---I can.
Use vlc. Much easier to use than xine, and it's packaged with debian.
There's still a rather large issue trying to define what's what.
Simply because it's complicated doesn't mean it's not worth the effort. Wouldn't the same semantics problems be part of any law? Eventually, the law works out an appropriate set of boundaries and definitions.
If such personal information [...] is considered "private" property then what exactly is public record, or for that matter any such information about X person.
Not being in the legal field, I can't answer conclusively, but perhaps information that is already publicly accessible through the government would be pubic record? Your name for instance. Anything else would be purely opt-in (as if you were permitting someone use of your property for a particular purpose). For example, a phone number and/or address listing in a phone book.
Esp. considering that corporations are considered a person under the law. Frankly I want to be able to investigate the shit they pull without being sued.
This is a good point. Should you be able to sue someone for merely having personal information about you, or should you only be able to sue over its use? So you can sue a corp for disseminating info about you, but not for possessing info on you and vice versa. This comes back to the limits question.
but why go with such a method in the first place when we have perfectly good privacy law.
I think he meant that considering personal information a form of property would result in the type of protection everyone is looking for. Privacy is simply one way of handling personal information.
Maybe because some of us are college students and we do not have a TV in our room because our room is tiny , but we do have a computer and a decent computer monitor so we would like to use the computer to watch DVDs when we have a break in our sucky schedule!
some of the happiest people I've ever met were "comfortable" with their beliefs.
Ignorance is bliss hm?
They were comfortable and thus didn't feel they had to convince me they were right.
So what you're saying, is they didn't even bother trying to convince you because they couldn't really explain their beliefs.
A certain amount of questioning is healthy, but too much questioning can be just as destructive as too much belief. What should I do with my life? Why should I do it? All these questions become very difficult to answer when you strip away all your beliefs.
No they're not, they just require time to think. Unfortunately, people's attention spans are far too short to do any pondering of their own these days. Questoning everything is absolutely vital; it's the difference between being an individual, and being a sheep.
One dumb and careless user can turn the most secure environment into an open bank vault with a sign blazing "take what you can carry!"
Not in a well-designed, secure operating system.;-)
In such a system, the user can be taken out of the equation so to speak. Security constraints are based solely on practical, quantitative entities which must satisfy certain criteria, instead of the ad-hoc, qualitative methods currently in widespread use.
That's all well and good, but we aren't running symbolic lisp machines. The architecture you are suggesting is what Linux and most other operating systems use, but with a differen flavour: a monolithic kernel implementing whatever services an application may need or find useful. This is a development nightmare when it reaches a certain size. The proper way to build a reliable, maintainable operating system is to have as small a trusted core as possible, then graft functionality onto it via extensions. Not kernel linked modules, but protected memory applications.
See: L4 and EROS for examples. They both componentize the operating system (which you seem to like), but communication is via message which are byte streams. In the end, the fundamental communication is still the byte stream, but using it you can build an object oriented operating system.
Mathematically proven to be totally secure and also bug free?
Secure. Proving something bug-free is very difficult, but is an area of intense research.
You said it yourself. Not 100% bug free...now wich is it? What is this golden OS that is bug free and TOTALLY secure, yet isn't totally secure or bug free. Maybe you should have read your paragraph again?
Why don't you think about it a little more yourself? I'll give you a hint: bug != security hole (necessarily). Only in poorly designed operating systems does a bug allow exploits. The very severe bugs may cause some degree of compromise even in secure systems, but if the security model is sound, the breach is always isolated.
Anyway...if it was 100% 'secure', wouldn't that make it immune to attacks? [...]
Be careful with your assumptions.
secure:
1: free from fear or doubt
2: free from danger or risk
3: kept safe or defended from danger or injury or loss
4: remote from any source of danger
5: not likely to fail or give way
6: able to withstand attack
Only one of the above refers to resilience against attacks. There are always attacks that cannot be protected against (ie. DOS attacks), but we can make the system reliable enough to not buckle and fail, and which will not be compromised under these attacks. That's security.
Only for poorly designed security models. There are security models out there that have been mathematically proven secure (EROS).
While implementations may not be 100% bug-free, a properly designed system can severely limit the damage of any single compromise. I'm sure the only reason you think it can't be done, is because of the mediocre state of "popular" operating systems.
The real question is why people stick around in an area with a food shortage? Is it going to go away? Not likely. Why do people focus on getting food to these areas (and thus fostering dependence on charity)? Why not just move the people out of there? I bet it would be cheaper in the long run, and the people can actually move to an area where they can survive on their own. Is there something I'm missing here?
Why no time travellers then? I'll tell ya why...
on
Time Travel
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· Score: 1
Alot of people have been wondering: "if time travel is possible, why haven't we already met time travellers? Surely they're not THAT good at concealing themselves."
Let me say this once for you people: they have a damn time machine! If they fscked up and accidentally revealed themselves, they (or someone) could just go back and change it so they are not revealed and we would never know.
This isn't to say I actually believe in time travel, it's simply a logical conclusion if it were possible.
Re:If time travel was going to be made possible...
on
Time Travel
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· Score: 1
They probably just copied the whole httpd directory to the new machine without changing anything. If the original httpd on freebsd chroot'd,/bin/ls would have been there. That way they're running IIS on Win*, but they still have/bin/ls, et al. because they didn't bother to get rid of the directory contents that IIS didn't need.
Slashdot Mirror
Go where?
Bla, bla, bla. All that touchy-feely, feel-good crap can't buy me one of these [porsche.com].
And exactly what do you hope to accomplish with one of those?
Things like floating remote controls and underwater lightning are also included.
Apparently, 'repeat customer' doesn't mean much to this company.
I've got four college degrees, one in math and two from MIT, [...]
;-)
I'm guessing the last isn't in "how to use preview".
if (person.slashdotUserName == 'naasking') { person.screwOver(); }
:-)
Funny haha, not funny heehee...
Now, if that's not a bad attitude I don't know what is.
Do you actually have a good opinion of the world at large? If so, you should take a good long look around. The world is not all ashambles, but it's nothing to be proud of either...
innovation is 99% persperation, and 1% insperation
:-)
"If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much."
~ Nicola Tesla ~
Sorry, couldn't resist...
But if you run Debian, you can very easily install usable XFree86 bits, a usable kernel, and the current Xine bits. It's then just a question of finding a .deb for the Xine CSS plugin, and you should be able to watch movies---I can.
Use vlc. Much easier to use than xine, and it's packaged with debian.
It's a rather illuminating indication of the sorry state of security in operating systems these days.
There's still a rather large issue trying to define what's what.
Simply because it's complicated doesn't mean it's not worth the effort. Wouldn't the same semantics problems be part of any law? Eventually, the law works out an appropriate set of boundaries and definitions.
If such personal information [...] is considered "private" property then what exactly is public record, or for that matter any such information about X person.
Not being in the legal field, I can't answer conclusively, but perhaps information that is already publicly accessible through the government would be pubic record? Your name for instance. Anything else would be purely opt-in (as if you were permitting someone use of your property for a particular purpose). For example, a phone number and/or address listing in a phone book.
Esp. considering that corporations are considered a person under the law. Frankly I want to be able to investigate the shit they pull without being sued.
This is a good point. Should you be able to sue someone for merely having personal information about you, or should you only be able to sue over its use? So you can sue a corp for disseminating info about you, but not for possessing info on you and vice versa. This comes back to the limits question.
but why go with such a method in the first place when we have perfectly good privacy law.
Is there?
I think he meant that considering personal information a form of property would result in the type of protection everyone is looking for. Privacy is simply one way of handling personal information.
Maybe because some of us are college students and we do not have a TV in our room because our room is tiny , but we do have a computer and a decent computer monitor so we would like to use the computer to watch DVDs when we have a break in our sucky schedule!
;-)
And your sentences for that matter...
Why do we keep writing and amending and rewriting laws that do the SAME THING as previous laws?
Job security. Also, try replacing 'laws' with 'software'.
For example, most of quantum theory can be ignored when modelling a bridge, which simplifies things a bit.
:-)
lol. Just a bit?
some of the happiest people I've ever met were "comfortable" with their beliefs.
Ignorance is bliss hm?
They were comfortable and thus didn't feel they had to convince me they were right.
So what you're saying, is they didn't even bother trying to convince you because they couldn't really explain their beliefs.
A certain amount of questioning is healthy, but too much questioning can be just as destructive as too much belief. What should I do with my life? Why should I do it? All these questions become very difficult to answer when you strip away all your beliefs.
No they're not, they just require time to think. Unfortunately, people's attention spans are far too short to do any pondering of their own these days. Questoning everything is absolutely vital; it's the difference between being an individual, and being a sheep.
One dumb and careless user can turn the most secure environment into an open bank vault with a sign blazing "take what you can carry!"
;-)
Not in a well-designed, secure operating system.
In such a system, the user can be taken out of the equation so to speak. Security constraints are based solely on practical, quantitative entities which must satisfy certain criteria, instead of the ad-hoc, qualitative methods currently in widespread use.
That's all well and good, but we aren't running symbolic lisp machines. The architecture you are suggesting is what Linux and most other operating systems use, but with a differen flavour: a monolithic kernel implementing whatever services an application may need or find useful. This is a development nightmare when it reaches a certain size. The proper way to build a reliable, maintainable operating system is to have as small a trusted core as possible, then graft functionality onto it via extensions. Not kernel linked modules, but protected memory applications.
See: L4 and EROS for examples. They both componentize the operating system (which you seem to like), but communication is via message which are byte streams. In the end, the fundamental communication is still the byte stream, but using it you can build an object oriented operating system.
Mathematically proven to be totally secure and also bug free?
Secure. Proving something bug-free is very difficult, but is an area of intense research.
You said it yourself. Not 100% bug free...now wich is it? What is this golden OS that is bug free and TOTALLY secure, yet isn't totally secure or bug free. Maybe you should have read your paragraph again?
Why don't you think about it a little more yourself? I'll give you a hint: bug != security hole (necessarily). Only in poorly designed operating systems does a bug allow exploits. The very severe bugs may cause some degree of compromise even in secure systems, but if the security model is sound, the breach is always isolated.
Anyway...if it was 100% 'secure', wouldn't that make it immune to attacks? [...]
Be careful with your assumptions.
secure:
1: free from fear or doubt
2: free from danger or risk
3: kept safe or defended from danger or injury or loss
4: remote from any source of danger
5: not likely to fail or give way
6: able to withstand attack
Only one of the above refers to resilience against attacks. There are always attacks that cannot be protected against (ie. DOS attacks), but we can make the system reliable enough to not buckle and fail, and which will not be compromised under these attacks. That's security.
Object Oriented paradigm? That belongs on top of an operating system (like Plan9), not built into it.
Only for poorly designed security models. There are security models out there that have been mathematically proven secure (EROS).
While implementations may not be 100% bug-free, a properly designed system can severely limit the damage of any single compromise. I'm sure the only reason you think it can't be done, is because of the mediocre state of "popular" operating systems.
You can still restart programs in persistant RAM you know... A computer would be pretty useless without that feature.
The real question is why people stick around in an area with a food shortage? Is it going to go away? Not likely. Why do people focus on getting food to these areas (and thus fostering dependence on charity)? Why not just move the people out of there? I bet it would be cheaper in the long run, and the people can actually move to an area where they can survive on their own. Is there something I'm missing here?
Alot of people have been wondering: "if time travel is possible, why haven't we already met time travellers? Surely they're not THAT good at concealing themselves."
Let me say this once for you people: they have a damn time machine! If they fscked up and accidentally revealed themselves, they (or someone) could just go back and change it so they are not revealed and we would never know.
This isn't to say I actually believe in time travel, it's simply a logical conclusion if it were possible.
shhh... don't blow our cover. ;-)
They probably just copied the whole httpd directory to the new machine without changing anything. If the original httpd on freebsd chroot'd, /bin/ls would have been there. That way they're running IIS on Win*, but they still have /bin/ls, et al. because they didn't bother to get rid of the directory contents that IIS didn't need.