When a judge makes a ruling like this, he's not "creating" a new law, but rather interpreting what the current laws say. So there is either a clear case where you put 2 and 2 together and get information brokers liable for the information they sell (ie by applying current liability laws vis-a-vis private information), or this judge will be overturned by the next highest court (in which case this judge looks like an idjut in court circles).
This is open to the whole world, not just USA/Canada. But there will probably not be a beta test server in Europe which means you might lag if you don't have a high quality connection.
So instead of the Big Crunch, we get Heat Death. The universe is slowly cooling, and will eventually cool to absolute zero (killing all life), or so the theory goes.
Dyson said, more or less, that life can store up some energy and wait for the universe to cool. Then it can use that difference in energies to do some useful work, and wait for the universe to cool again to the point where the difference is sufficient to do an equal amount of work. He proposes that life can do this indefinitely (I guess because energy difference is a continuous curve function against time? But IANAP.)
Yes I run Debian on my powerbook. Or used to. There's not as much point to it now because apple released their accelerated X11 server. Combine that with fink and their development tools and you can compile most of the common linux software (like I use gimp and a few functional programming tools). Okay so some things require a little bit o' porting still, but most of the common stuff will run.
About all you get by running linux on a powerbook is buggy power management, firewire, and no modem driver or video mirroring.
I can pretty easily write a program for unix that does this:
Makes the screen black, and displays a "Welcome to Athena" sign on screen that looks just like the real one. It takes the username and password, and invokes su to run a shell/window manager as the user. In the meanwhile it logs their username/password to a file in my directory.
I guess it depends if su is installed on Athena (IANAMITS I Am Not An MIT Student), but probably it is. If not, you can just put a hardware keystroke recorder on the computer.
Science suffers from the law of diminishing returns. It takes more and more money to get less and less useful data back as time goes on. Early scientific discovery (like Newton's discovery [okay, open to debate because the guy stole all his work from others] of the gravitational constant) cost very little money; now we're spending millions of dollars to send small ant colonies into space to see if they still build their tunnels correctly (yes, this was an actual experiment on Columbia in January).
My question is when do we stop? After a while we're going to have tried a lot of meaningless experiments which teach us a lot of things that don't improve the world at all. At that point we'll just be doing these for knowledge alone. That's all fine and good, but I don't consider it noble.
It's true that our curiosity and pursuit of knowledge helped us get where we are, but now we're left in a state of meaningless discovery.
Ah. I should have mentioned; the problem seems confined the newer white (aka dual-usb) ibooks. I'd actually prefer a slower ibook if it meant that I could take it on the road without worrying about battery life...
Not an IBM, but apple's ibooks have the same problem. The dropoff point on the battery goes up and up and up (for fun I held onto my last one until you unplugged it, the battery discharged to 97% before going dead). I was wondering if it was a charging problem or if there is a common li-ion battery manufacturer who is at fault...maybe a common manufacterer makes the same battery charging components for IBM and Apple, though?
You can have a look here
for some reports of the dead batteries (though most of the people there are blaming it on jaguar, I run linux on my ibook and have had the problem twice).
So stick it to apple while you're at it, eh? Of course if you're smart, buy the extended warranty. It will cost apple a lot more money to give you an extra battery every 3 months for 3 years than it will to fix/replace your ibook probably. Might as well teach them a lesson...
Maybe they could do this, it depends on the file. Obviously the md5sum of my mp3's are going to depend on what bitrate I use, how good the encoder was that made it, whether my cd had some barely detectable scratches on it that cdparanoia smoothed out, etc. So the same song might have many valid checksums.
I think it would be hard to determine which is a valid file, though. How could a peer to peer network make such a judgement call without some central authority? Like if they left it up to the users to vote (ie a whole bunch of people say this song isn't the right thing, a whole bunch of people say this song is the right thing), someone would just come along and poison the vote. Unless some more organized voting scheme were made. I can't think of anything other than a 'web of trust,' but then that takes away any anonimity that current p2p file sharing gives (which isn't much, but it's better than none).
And if they had some central user voting what was right and what wasn't...well now they have a central point of failure again, like napster.
All in all it's a good idea (using md5sums), but the implementation might be tricky (or I might just be paranoid).
The area flooded in August, not a few weeks ago (although I look out my window and yes, the Elbe is a meter or two above normal right now. It is normal for the Terrassanufer (lower street downtown) to get covered in water occassionally). Most of the flood damage was restricted to the very downtown of the city, though. I live three blocks from the river...we lost electricity for a few days but water really wasn't a problem.
Earthquakes probably won't happen here; floods are not a great risk as the Elbe valley rises very quickly as you walk away from the river. The plant is not right at the river's edge so it will not have much trouble, I think...
So much for being a top 10 reviewer. Her reviews reviewed:
1 of 23 people found the following review helpful: 0 of 12 people found the following review helpful: 0 of 13 people found the following review helpful: 1 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
It goes on like that through her entire list.
Maybe these meta-reviews are influenced by the dot, but they're good numbers to have when reading someone's review. If everybody actually goes out of their way to check the "No, this review wasn't helpful" box, that should tell you something about how good a job the reviewer did...
There are some important things to remember when comparing price/quality.
IDE drives have gotten cheap because everybody uses them. So companies expect Joe Blow to buy their disk drive because it has more GB per dollar. They'll use cheap motors, cheap heads, and cheap platters to lower their cost so they can get Joe to buy their disk.
Tape drives, on the other hand, stay expensive because they are not subject to the normal consumer market. So they retain higher quality parts and smaller capacity. Most people don't have to do full backups every night, and again most incremental backups aren't overly huge, so non-gargantuan tape capacities are okay for a lot of the market. The drive and tape manufacturers aren't about to go ruining reliability just to satisfy the high-capacity end of the market; they can make enough money doing what they're doing.
So use tape if you want your data. Use IDE if you want to look like you're making backups. It's your money (and hopefully only your data)...
Hm...hopefully you'll be saying that in 3 months. A problem is occuring with a lot of ibooks recently. It seems that a huge number have shipped with bad PMU's that, over a few months, destroy your battery. There's been a lot of people posting about it here. I've already seen reports of it happening with 800mhz ibooks (on the ppc-linux mailing lists). My 700mhz one's battery drops to 0% from 93% now, and the battery is only ~3 months old! The reason I say they seem to have bad PMU's is that people get replacement batteries under warranty and they die the same way. Looks like Apple is just letting people's warranties run out rather than replacing the PMUs (or whatever the problem may be):-(.
Don't get me wrong, I love my ibook, it's just that there's something seriously wrong with battery life...Hopefully you don't run into the problem that the rest of us have, but if you do join us in screaming at apple:).
To further on Scooby's post a little (though it's a reply to yours)...they have physical access to the box. Anyone with physical access can be root if you give them a few minutes. All they have to do feign a power outage, shut off your machine, pull the disk, put it in their own machine and mount it.
Unless you have an encrypted filesystem, of course...but then if the machine *does* need to be rebooted, you'll need to give your hosting company the password for that anyway.
It is a good idea to change the root pass of course, but remember it won't fix all your worries...
Ask if they will search your box for illegal materials. (you be surprised how many said yes) That means you are not the only one with root. so throw them out of the list.
You present a lot of great questions, but remember: A -> B != ~A -> ~B. They might have root on your box even if they don't search it. So better be anal and just ask them if they'll be logging into your box ever.
In fact if you are running debian apt-get install apache will automatically configure
If you are running debian. My mother can install win2k and get iis running without a problem, but she can't install Debian (things are getting a little easier with tasksel, but you still need to know how to partition a disk, you have to know what packages you need, and in general you have to have a clue about networking, the weird hardware in your box, etc). Somehow, in my mind, that means setting up iis from scratch is easier...but what do I know?
And you're still talking about a "hi this is my webserver" webserver (except it can say it dynamically and securely). Note that when I say webserver I mean the machine, not just the server software. Feel free to tell me setting up raid5, trunking, ldap, or nfs is easier in linux than windows....I've done both. Windows is easier.
Imagine trying to set up a iis webserver with SSL support and a complex application like php groupware (I am assuming similar products exists in the asp world). It can't possibly be easier then debian.
Here we go again...I can't comment on groupware. I've set up groupware for windows before, and it's a no-brainer, but I've never done it under linux. I guess I'll play this weekend. But hey, at least I can admit when I don't know something:).
As for SSL: I don't need to imagine this, because I've done it on both windows and linux. It looks like you haven't, so let me clue you in. IIS has supported SSL for a long time, and setup is a snap. IIS is much easier to set up and maintain when you're managing lots of virtual hosts (and waaaaay less headache when all the virtual hosts need their own ssl certs)...if you're running a serious webserver this could be useful.
And before you call me an ms-lover or whatever fun names you have saved for guys that say what I say, my primary job is unix administration. I don't like microsoft as a company, and run only linux on my home pc boxen (and mostly linux with a few solaris servers at work, though I was forced to set up new win2k servers when the windows administrator revealed his incompetence:)). I just think ignoring a competing product doesn't make the one you settled with better. You should really play with both...Of course this is slashdot we're talking on, here....
I booted up my PC and typed "apt-get install apache" but it didn't work (login incorrect).
Be honest. Setting up a debian (or redhat, or whatever) box with apache takes more of a clue than setting up a windows computer with iis. Especially if it's a *real* webserver, and not just your personal "Yay! I set up a webserver!" webserver. But I'm okay with that. I'm not saying that iis is better/will be better tuned, I'm just saying it's easier to set up.
I don't think it's good to try and convince the world otherwise...at least not until I'm telling the truth;-). But needing a clue to set up a webserver is a good thing...I didn't hear as much moaning about the latest apache worm as I did about the code red worm, for example...
Slashdot Mirror
When a judge makes a ruling like this, he's not "creating" a new law, but rather interpreting what the current laws say. So there is either a clear case where you put 2 and 2 together and get information brokers liable for the information they sell (ie by applying current liability laws vis-a-vis private information), or this judge will be overturned by the next highest court (in which case this judge looks like an idjut in court circles).
/* IANAL */
#include <disclaimer.h>
Where'd you read that? From the bulletin board:
So instead of the Big Crunch, we get Heat Death. The universe is slowly cooling, and will eventually cool to absolute zero (killing all life), or so the theory goes.
Dyson said, more or less, that life can store up some energy and wait for the universe to cool. Then it can use that difference in energies to do some useful work, and wait for the universe to cool again to the point where the difference is sufficient to do an equal amount of work. He proposes that life can do this indefinitely (I guess because energy difference is a continuous curve function against time? But IANAP.)
Yes I run Debian on my powerbook. Or used to. There's not as much point to it now because apple released their accelerated X11 server. Combine that with fink and their development tools and you can compile most of the common linux software (like I use gimp and a few functional programming tools). Okay so some things require a little bit o' porting still, but most of the common stuff will run.
About all you get by running linux on a powerbook is buggy power management, firewire, and no modem driver or video mirroring.
I can pretty easily write a program for unix that does this:
Makes the screen black, and displays a "Welcome to Athena" sign on screen that looks just like the real one. It takes the username and password, and invokes su to run a shell/window manager as the user. In the meanwhile it logs their username/password to a file in my directory.
I guess it depends if su is installed on Athena (IANAMITS I Am Not An MIT Student), but probably it is. If not, you can just put a hardware keystroke recorder on the computer.
Unix does not a secure system make.
Well, I have some karma to burn, too, I guess.
Science suffers from the law of diminishing returns. It takes more and more money to get less and less useful data back as time goes on. Early scientific discovery (like Newton's discovery [okay, open to debate because the guy stole all his work from others] of the gravitational constant) cost very little money; now we're spending millions of dollars to send small ant colonies into space to see if they still build their tunnels correctly (yes, this was an actual experiment on Columbia in January).
My question is when do we stop? After a while we're going to have tried a lot of meaningless experiments which teach us a lot of things that don't improve the world at all. At that point we'll just be doing these for knowledge alone. That's all fine and good, but I don't consider it noble.
It's true that our curiosity and pursuit of knowledge helped us get where we are, but now we're left in a state of meaningless discovery.
http://www.theforce.net/theater/
Ah. I should have mentioned; the problem seems confined the newer white (aka dual-usb) ibooks. I'd actually prefer a slower ibook if it meant that I could take it on the road without worrying about battery life...
Bummer :(. /me crosses ordering an extended warranty off his list of things to do before april...
Not so :). See my previous post about apple's batteries. We have the same problems...
Not an IBM, but apple's ibooks have the same problem. The dropoff point on the battery goes up and up and up (for fun I held onto my last one until you unplugged it, the battery discharged to 97% before going dead). I was wondering if it was a charging problem or if there is a common li-ion battery manufacturer who is at fault...maybe a common manufacterer makes the same battery charging components for IBM and Apple, though?
You can have a look here for some reports of the dead batteries (though most of the people there are blaming it on jaguar, I run linux on my ibook and have had the problem twice).
So stick it to apple while you're at it, eh? Of course if you're smart, buy the extended warranty. It will cost apple a lot more money to give you an extra battery every 3 months for 3 years than it will to fix/replace your ibook probably. Might as well teach them a lesson...
I only see 20 games listed here. Some games won more than one award. So the title should be, "25 best game categories", not "25 best games"
Reid
Maybe they could do this, it depends on the file. Obviously the md5sum of my mp3's are going to depend on what bitrate I use, how good the encoder was that made it, whether my cd had some barely detectable scratches on it that cdparanoia smoothed out, etc. So the same song might have many valid checksums.
I think it would be hard to determine which is a valid file, though. How could a peer to peer network make such a judgement call without some central authority? Like if they left it up to the users to vote (ie a whole bunch of people say this song isn't the right thing, a whole bunch of people say this song is the right thing), someone would just come along and poison the vote. Unless some more organized voting scheme were made. I can't think of anything other than a 'web of trust,' but then that takes away any anonimity that current p2p file sharing gives (which isn't much, but it's better than none).
And if they had some central user voting what was right and what wasn't...well now they have a central point of failure again, like napster.
All in all it's a good idea (using md5sums), but the implementation might be tricky (or I might just be paranoid).
The area flooded in August, not a few weeks ago (although I look out my window and yes, the Elbe is a meter or two above normal right now. It is normal for the Terrassanufer (lower street downtown) to get covered in water occassionally). Most of the flood damage was restricted to the very downtown of the city, though. I live three blocks from the river...we lost electricity for a few days but water really wasn't a problem.
Earthquakes probably won't happen here; floods are not a great risk as the Elbe valley rises very quickly as you walk away from the river. The plant is not right at the river's edge so it will not have much trouble, I think...
So much for being a top 10 reviewer. Her reviews reviewed:
1 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
0 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
0 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
1 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
It goes on like that through her entire list.
Maybe these meta-reviews are influenced by the dot, but they're good numbers to have when reading someone's review. If everybody actually goes out of their way to check the "No, this review wasn't helpful" box, that should tell you something about how good a job the reviewer did...
There are some important things to remember when comparing price/quality.
IDE drives have gotten cheap because everybody uses them. So companies expect Joe Blow to buy their disk drive because it has more GB per dollar. They'll use cheap motors, cheap heads, and cheap platters to lower their cost so they can get Joe to buy their disk.
Tape drives, on the other hand, stay expensive because they are not subject to the normal consumer market. So they retain higher quality parts and smaller capacity. Most people don't have to do full backups every night, and again most incremental backups aren't overly huge, so non-gargantuan tape capacities are okay for a lot of the market. The drive and tape manufacturers aren't about to go ruining reliability just to satisfy the high-capacity end of the market; they can make enough money doing what they're doing.
So use tape if you want your data. Use IDE if you want to look like you're making backups. It's your money (and hopefully only your data)...
Hm...hopefully you'll be saying that in 3 months. A problem is occuring with a lot of ibooks recently. It seems that a huge number have shipped with bad PMU's that, over a few months, destroy your battery. There's been a lot of people posting about it here. I've already seen reports of it happening with 800mhz ibooks (on the ppc-linux mailing lists). My 700mhz one's battery drops to 0% from 93% now, and the battery is only ~3 months old! The reason I say they seem to have bad PMU's is that people get replacement batteries under warranty and they die the same way. Looks like Apple is just letting people's warranties run out rather than replacing the PMUs (or whatever the problem may be) :-(.
:).
Don't get me wrong, I love my ibook, it's just that there's something seriously wrong with battery life...Hopefully you don't run into the problem that the rest of us have, but if you do join us in screaming at apple
Ah. Well, you can secure lilo so that you can't choose kernel parameters at boot-time...that'll make this sort of attack not work any more.
To further on Scooby's post a little (though it's a reply to yours)...they have physical access to the box. Anyone with physical access can be root if you give them a few minutes. All they have to do feign a power outage, shut off your machine, pull the disk, put it in their own machine and mount it.
Unless you have an encrypted filesystem, of course...but then if the machine *does* need to be rebooted, you'll need to give your hosting company the password for that anyway.
It is a good idea to change the root pass of course, but remember it won't fix all your worries...
Ask if they will search your box for illegal materials. (you be surprised how many said yes) That means you are not the only one with root. so throw them out of the list.
You present a lot of great questions, but remember: A -> B != ~A -> ~B. They might have root on your box even if they don't search it. So better be anal and just ask them if they'll be logging into your box ever.
In fact if you are running debian apt-get install apache will automatically configure
:).
:)). I just think ignoring a competing product doesn't make the one you settled with better. You should really play with both...Of course this is slashdot we're talking on, here....
If you are running debian. My mother can install win2k and get iis running without a problem, but she can't install Debian (things are getting a little easier with tasksel, but you still need to know how to partition a disk, you have to know what packages you need, and in general you have to have a clue about networking, the weird hardware in your box, etc). Somehow, in my mind, that means setting up iis from scratch is easier...but what do I know?
And you're still talking about a "hi this is my webserver" webserver (except it can say it dynamically and securely). Note that when I say webserver I mean the machine, not just the server software. Feel free to tell me setting up raid5, trunking, ldap, or nfs is easier in linux than windows....I've done both. Windows is easier.
Imagine trying to set up a iis webserver with SSL support and a complex application like php groupware (I am assuming similar products exists in the asp world). It can't possibly be easier then debian.
Here we go again...I can't comment on groupware. I've set up groupware for windows before, and it's a no-brainer, but I've never done it under linux. I guess I'll play this weekend. But hey, at least I can admit when I don't know something
As for SSL: I don't need to imagine this, because I've done it on both windows and linux. It looks like you haven't, so let me clue you in. IIS has supported SSL for a long time, and setup is a snap. IIS is much easier to set up and maintain when you're managing lots of virtual hosts (and waaaaay less headache when all the virtual hosts need their own ssl certs)...if you're running a serious webserver this could be useful.
And before you call me an ms-lover or whatever fun names you have saved for guys that say what I say, my primary job is unix administration. I don't like microsoft as a company, and run only linux on my home pc boxen (and mostly linux with a few solaris servers at work, though I was forced to set up new win2k servers when the windows administrator revealed his incompetence
I booted up my PC and typed "apt-get install apache" but it didn't work (login incorrect).
;-). But needing a clue to set up a webserver is a good thing...I didn't hear as much moaning about the latest apache worm as I did about the code red worm, for example...
Be honest. Setting up a debian (or redhat, or whatever) box with apache takes more of a clue than setting up a windows computer with iis. Especially if it's a *real* webserver, and not just your personal "Yay! I set up a webserver!" webserver. But I'm okay with that. I'm not saying that iis is better/will be better tuned, I'm just saying it's easier to set up.
I don't think it's good to try and convince the world otherwise...at least not until I'm telling the truth
I don't think he was talking about buying win2k...
Egads, people pirate software?!?
Much of his personal fortune come from the IPO of PayPal and subsequent sale to eBay.
Let's not forget all the money he took from his customers....
Thank you Kurt Vonnegut.