it's still not black and white. At least with GPLv2 you don't have to have all open hardware, IE the entire device doesn't have to be patent/license free,
Nor does the GPLv3 require this. It simply requires that I must be able to modify the GPLed code, re-compile it, and run it on the hardware you sold me.
Also since the FAT resides on a separate chip, then how does a license negotiation over that affect the GPL'd code, as long as the interface used in the kernel doesn't require a license?
FAT is implemented inside the linux kernel. How else would TomTom software read/write to a FAT file system?
Pricing in markets with weak competition is not about costs. It is about estimating how many customers will buy your product/service as a function of the price tag, subtracting costs, and choosing the price that maximizes profits. US celular services seem to be so overpriced that the costs are almost irrelevant.
The best thing would of course be to open the market to more competition by letting anyone offer cellular services. That doesn't work because the spectrum is a limited resource. So the next best solution is to auction rights to that limited resource to whoever will pay most. If you do this right, like the UK 3g spectrum auction was done, you make a LOT of money, that comes out of the cell phone companies expectation of future profits.
He says the laptop makers should remove the facial biometrics feature from their products because the vulnerability of this technology can't be fixed.
If that's the standard, all security features should be removed. Everything is somewhat vulnerable, and a determined intruder with infinite resource will almost always find a way in. The object is to make this unreasonably hard for most applications.
There are 2 ways to use biometrics. Either you use it as an alternative to a password, or you use it in addition to a password. In the first case, no matter how well it works you have only DECREASED your security, because the attacker can just choose the weakest link. In the second case, since biometrics are never 100% reliable you are liable to be shut off from your data... and if it is encrypted (as it should be if its security is a concern) this likely means irreversible loss of data.
The new system is that patents last 20 years from date of filing. The older system, however, was that patents lasted 17 years from the date they were GRANTED, and were secret until granted. Furthermore, companies had the procedural means to delay the process of getting their patent granted by YEARS, if they wanted to. And some companies have done just that.
The question about filesystems has come up a few times over on the Dell Mini forums. Basically the question is which is better to use on machines with SSDs? If you're not dealing with >4GB files, several people have suggested that you're better off formatting the drive as FAT32. I'll need to take a better look at this article when I get a chance, but it seems to be suggesting the same thing.
FAT32 is fine for a USB stick, but you shouldn't install an OS on it. The problem is that FAT32 has no concept of file ownership. So your operating system will be unable to restrict access to files based on the user, which is one of the building blocks of security on any modern OS. This way, any (malicious) process running on the system can overwrite critical system files to do arbitrary damage.
Even if you run windows XP as adminstrator, not all processes on your system run as administrator so you will still be (slightly) decreasing security by having it on a FAT32 filesystem.
It's an easy thing to fix - require that H1B visa holders receive the same pay and benefits for their work as the rest of the workforce. If companies really have problems finding citizens to fill jobs, and aren't just trolling for lower paid wage slaves, then it ought not to be a problem, right?
Man, I'd love to see the tech industry try to talk its way out of that.
Except how does one implement a non-discrimination policy in the us, where normally each worker can have a different pay than the guy sitting next to him, and isn't even supposed to know, cause it's inpolite to talk about it? (which by the way I think is just a trick to give the employer a knowledge advantage when bargaining over salary)
This would be implementable only in a company where salaries are decided according to established rules (typically, collective contracts with workers unions).
If you get mugged, the cash is lost [in the same way money "on" your credit card isn't]
It's not waterproof
It's flammable
It's not loch Ness monster-proof if you have at least treefitty. On the other hand, it cures AIDS.
Strokes for fokes, horse for coarses... I think.
I would say the main downside of a credit card (besides not curing aids like cash-injected-in-the-vein can) is that credit card companies are pocketing a few percentage points of each transaction you make. You think the vendors are paying it, not you. Think again. The consumer ultimately pays for everything.
No, I fear that freedom of expression on the internet is a luxury that only the stable Western democracies and a few non-Islamic dictatorships can afford.
Dictatorships do not like freedom of expression. Duh! Dictatorships are bad. Freedom of expression is good. How much doublethinking have you been doing to have such a twisted worldview?
WRONG. YOU ABSOLUTLY DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT
Oh you are writing all in caps so you must know everything...
Fords cars are 100% American and have been ever since they dumped the old style Focus here
Reread my post, bummer. I have a different definition of here, since I am in europe. I was saying ford sells european-style cars IN EUROPE. That was precisely my point: Ford (and everyone else who is in both markets) sell US-style cars in the US, and EU-style cars in Europe.
To counteract that problem, I change my DNA and fingerprints every few weeks, together with my windows login and password.
You're that paranoid, and you use windows? You should be underground somewhere in a faraday cage running some obscure BSD variant no one has heard about, and posting to the internet using a telepathic connection to the lynx-enabled terminal just outside the faraday cage...
Foreign makes have better fuel efficiency and more variety to choose from.
Not really (...)
Actually, pretty much all companies that operate in both US and EU markets have different models for each market, with a BIG difference in fuel efficiency. This includes american companies... At least, Ford has a decent market share in Europe and the cars it sells here are "european" cars, meaning that they go by european standards of size and fuel-efficiency... But even the asian car-makers sell huge boxes in the US that nobody would buy here in europe.
By the way, last I read the auto fleet in europe is currently about TWICE more fuel-efficient than the US fleet... although the numbers themselves are not that impressive. I think it's about 14 vs 7 km/l.
They used to just pour public money into the coffers of FIAT whenever it had trouble, but with EU rules on competition that was no longer allowed. So they started giving bout money if you scrapped an old car to get a new one...
Maybe the person with the junker will buy a used car that costs them about how much they're being reimbursed by the government for
If it's anything like similar schemes in europe, you only get the voucher for buying a NEW car.
At one point the italian "left-wing" government gave you a 1-year public transport pass if you trashed a car and did NOT buy another one, just to make believe this was about ecology and not about backwards robin-hooding.
But from the ecological point of view, I am told the ecological impact of building a car is in the same order of magnitude of that of driving it around for most of its lifetime, so encouraging people to trash still usable vehicles may not be the best idea...
So my choices are pay money and host a server or see a little AD to have some other company do all the work for me?
I think it's easier for me to have a little AD on the side of the page when I log into Twitter. Easier and free.
Or use adblock, and wait for twitter,facebook and Co. to go bankrupt when enough people join you... Then distributed, open alternatives will be the only option...
I once took a personality test that was based on 8 or 9 people sitting in a room, and asked to roleplay a situation (planning for some sort of bogus project) in front of an HR woman who watched us.
My overall impression was that, although the whole exercise was rather silly, the HR woman was pretty smart and knew what she was doing. While I wouldn't use such a technique to select someone to hire, I might use it to discard those one or two people who have serious problems working in a group, or too little imagination or D&D experience to figure out what is going on....
Unfortunately, I was told by some colleagues that at the time HR was being used to find excuses to not hire people who had done well on technical interviews or internships, to enforce an unofficial "we're not hiring now" policy.
When I was doing an internship a few years ago, a colleague of mine (who was working to fund her masters degree) told me the first job after her bachelors degree in computer science had been writing software for nuclear submarines.
She worked in some high security, underground place with thick steel doors (did she? well either she told me that or it's my imagination again...) and they showed them videos of what happened when they made mistakes: everyone drowns... or the submarine gets crushed by pressure, or whatever, depending on the bug. I don't think accidentally releasing nukes was one of the scenarios though...
Maybe they should show the microsoft programmers some of those videos.
My biggest complainst are that I cannot get a static IP on my home wireless while getting DHCP everywhere else
Then tell your home wireless to reserve an IP address for your laptop's MAC address. It's an option in the Netgear router I use.
Sadly, the last couple routers I have used do not have this very basic and essential feature. Sucks when you get a piece-of-crap hardware from the vendor with your dsl connection.
How can Linux win me back? Whatever machine I bring home from Best Buy has to "just work" at the end of the install/config program. Is that too much to ask for?
Just buy a machine with linux preinstalled if you want no hassles, especially for laptops. And for desktop pcs in my experience everything does just work out of the box nowadays.
I would agree with this. When talking to grandma about trying Linux since all she wants to do is check e-mail, look at pictures of the grand kids and keep her MySpace page updated(...)
There was a similar issue in Italy. If you are a foreigner (from some non-EU country) legally working in Italy, and you want your family to join you, you can apply for them to get a visa. Since some of the countries these people come from have very poor records on this type of stuff, there was a proposal to verify this (no idea if it was accepted) with a DNA test, to see if those you claim are your children really are.
Big brother issues aside, the problem is that some children may be adopted, and that the issue of parenthood is not as clear-cut as we would like to think. As well as the old latin saying:
Slashdot Mirror
it's still not black and white. At least with GPLv2 you don't have to have all open hardware, IE the entire device doesn't have to be patent/license free,
Nor does the GPLv3 require this. It simply requires that I must be able to modify the GPLed code, re-compile it, and run it on the hardware you sold me.
Also since the FAT resides on a separate chip, then how does a license negotiation over that affect the GPL'd code, as long as the interface used in the kernel doesn't require a license?
FAT is implemented inside the linux kernel. How else would TomTom software read/write to a FAT file system?
one of the worst configuration file formats ever
Wrong. I hold up for example: XML, the Windows Registry, and sendmail.cf
The argument is over, and you lose... or does mentioning sendmail.cf not trigger Godwin's law?
Pricing in markets with weak competition is not about costs. It is about estimating how many customers will buy your product/service as a function of the price tag, subtracting costs, and choosing the price that maximizes profits. US celular services seem to be so overpriced that the costs are almost irrelevant.
The best thing would of course be to open the market to more competition by letting anyone offer cellular services. That doesn't work because the spectrum is a limited resource. So the next best solution is to auction rights to that limited resource to whoever will pay most. If you do this right, like the UK 3g spectrum auction was done, you make a LOT of money, that comes out of the cell phone companies expectation of future profits.
He says the laptop makers should remove the facial biometrics feature from their products because the vulnerability of this technology can't be fixed. If that's the standard, all security features should be removed. Everything is somewhat vulnerable, and a determined intruder with infinite resource will almost always find a way in. The object is to make this unreasonably hard for most applications.
There are 2 ways to use biometrics. Either you use it as an alternative to a password, or you use it in addition to a password. In the first case, no matter how well it works you have only DECREASED your security, because the attacker can just choose the weakest link. In the second case, since biometrics are never 100% reliable you are liable to be shut off from your data... and if it is encrypted (as it should be if its security is a concern) this likely means irreversible loss of data.
The new system is that patents last 20 years from date of filing. The older system, however, was that patents lasted 17 years from the date they were GRANTED, and were secret until granted. Furthermore, companies had the procedural means to delay the process of getting their patent granted by YEARS, if they wanted to. And some companies have done just that.
The question about filesystems has come up a few times over on the Dell Mini forums. Basically the question is which is better to use on machines with SSDs? If you're not dealing with >4GB files, several people have suggested that you're better off formatting the drive as FAT32. I'll need to take a better look at this article when I get a chance, but it seems to be suggesting the same thing.
FAT32 is fine for a USB stick, but you shouldn't install an OS on it. The problem is that FAT32 has no concept of file ownership. So your operating system will be unable to restrict access to files based on the user, which is one of the building blocks of security on any modern OS. This way, any (malicious) process running on the system can overwrite critical system files to do arbitrary damage.
Even if you run windows XP as adminstrator, not all processes on your system run as administrator so you will still be (slightly) decreasing security by having it on a FAT32 filesystem.
It's an easy thing to fix - require that H1B visa holders receive the same pay and benefits for their work as the rest of the workforce. If companies really have problems finding citizens to fill jobs, and aren't just trolling for lower paid wage slaves, then it ought not to be a problem, right?
Man, I'd love to see the tech industry try to talk its way out of that.
Except how does one implement a non-discrimination policy in the us, where normally each worker can have a different pay than the guy sitting next to him, and isn't even supposed to know, cause it's inpolite to talk about it? (which by the way I think is just a trick to give the employer a knowledge advantage when bargaining over salary)
This would be implementable only in a company where salaries are decided according to established rules (typically, collective contracts with workers unions).
I've used cold hard cash
It has some drawbacks as well:
Strokes for fokes, horse for coarses... I think.
I would say the main downside of a credit card (besides not curing aids like cash-injected-in-the-vein can) is that credit card companies are pocketing a few percentage points of each transaction you make. You think the vendors are paying it, not you. Think again. The consumer ultimately pays for everything.
No, I fear that freedom of expression on the internet is a luxury that only the stable Western democracies and a few non-Islamic dictatorships can afford.
Dictatorships do not like freedom of expression. Duh! Dictatorships are bad. Freedom of expression is good. How much doublethinking have you been doing to have such a twisted worldview?
WARNING: dont click on this link, just copy the wget command to a shell. Dont say I didn't warn you...
I don't care. I don't let random pages execute scripts. In fact, I have a policy of strictly not enabling scripts on any page linked from slashdot...
WRONG. YOU ABSOLUTLY DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT
Oh you are writing all in caps so you must know everything...
Fords cars are 100% American and have been ever since they dumped the old style Focus here
Reread my post, bummer. I have a different definition of here, since I am in europe. I was saying ford sells european-style cars IN EUROPE. That was precisely my point: Ford (and everyone else who is in both markets) sell US-style cars in the US, and EU-style cars in Europe.
I can't even begin to the imagine the fun of catching a company using healthcare information in such an unbelievably illegal fashion.
You won't, cause they won't tell you why you're not being hired.
To counteract that problem, I change my DNA and fingerprints every few weeks, together with my windows login and password.
You're that paranoid, and you use windows? You should be underground somewhere in a faraday cage running some obscure BSD variant no one has heard about, and posting to the internet using a telepathic connection to the lynx-enabled terminal just outside the faraday cage...
Foreign makes have better fuel efficiency and more variety to choose from.
Not really (...)
Actually, pretty much all companies that operate in both US and EU markets have different models for each market, with a BIG difference in fuel efficiency. This includes american companies... At least, Ford has a decent market share in Europe and the cars it sells here are "european" cars, meaning that they go by european standards of size and fuel-efficiency... But even the asian car-makers sell huge boxes in the US that nobody would buy here in europe.
By the way, last I read the auto fleet in europe is currently about TWICE more fuel-efficient than the US fleet... although the numbers themselves are not that impressive. I think it's about 14 vs 7 km/l.
Maybe the person with the junker will buy a used car that costs them about how much they're being reimbursed by the government for
If it's anything like similar schemes in europe, you only get the voucher for buying a NEW car. At one point the italian "left-wing" government gave you a 1-year public transport pass if you trashed a car and did NOT buy another one, just to make believe this was about ecology and not about backwards robin-hooding.
But from the ecological point of view, I am told the ecological impact of building a car is in the same order of magnitude of that of driving it around for most of its lifetime, so encouraging people to trash still usable vehicles may not be the best idea...
So my choices are pay money and host a server or see a little AD to have some other company do all the work for me? I think it's easier for me to have a little AD on the side of the page when I log into Twitter. Easier and free.
Or use adblock, and wait for twitter,facebook and Co. to go bankrupt when enough people join you... Then distributed, open alternatives will be the only option...
I once took a personality test that was based on 8 or 9 people sitting in a room, and asked to roleplay a situation (planning for some sort of bogus project) in front of an HR woman who watched us.
My overall impression was that, although the whole exercise was rather silly, the HR woman was pretty smart and knew what she was doing. While I wouldn't use such a technique to select someone to hire, I might use it to discard those one or two people who have serious problems working in a group, or too little imagination or D&D experience to figure out what is going on....
Unfortunately, I was told by some colleagues that at the time HR was being used to find excuses to not hire people who had done well on technical interviews or internships, to enforce an unofficial "we're not hiring now" policy.
When I was doing an internship a few years ago, a colleague of mine (who was working to fund her masters degree) told me the first job after her bachelors degree in computer science had been writing software for nuclear submarines.
She worked in some high security, underground place with thick steel doors (did she? well either she told me that or it's my imagination again...) and they showed them videos of what happened when they made mistakes: everyone drowns... or the submarine gets crushed by pressure, or whatever, depending on the bug. I don't think accidentally releasing nukes was one of the scenarios though...
Maybe they should show the microsoft programmers some of those videos.
Economists have no mathamatics training.
...Those who can count and those who can't
Hold your protests in the voting booth, not in the streets. Then something will really happen.
Sure, do your duty of voting once every 5 years, and shun every other form of social and political engagement. Yeah right.
Protesting in the streets is as much a part of democracy as voting is.
My biggest complainst are that I cannot get a static IP on my home wireless while getting DHCP everywhere else
I did just this setup yesterday and it does work with network manager on ubuntu intrepid. Not sure why you have this problem.
My biggest complainst are that I cannot get a static IP on my home wireless while getting DHCP everywhere else
Then tell your home wireless to reserve an IP address for your laptop's MAC address. It's an option in the Netgear router I use.
Sadly, the last couple routers I have used do not have this very basic and essential feature. Sucks when you get a piece-of-crap hardware from the vendor with your dsl connection.
I'm with you. If my laptop Broadcom wireless worked out of the box on Ubuntu, I'd be using that instead of Windows.
It's not out of the box, but it's simple enough, and it worked for me twice already on 2 different laptops. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx/Feisty_No-Fluff
How can Linux win me back? Whatever machine I bring home from Best Buy has to "just work" at the end of the install/config program. Is that too much to ask for?
Just buy a machine with linux preinstalled if you want no hassles, especially for laptops. And for desktop pcs in my experience everything does just work out of the box nowadays.
I would agree with this. When talking to grandma about trying Linux since all she wants to do is check e-mail, look at pictures of the grand kids and keep her MySpace page updated(...)
Your grandma uses myspace? Oh my god... http://www.flickr.com/photos/driveafastercar/2110340303/sizes/o/
There was a similar issue in Italy. If you are a foreigner (from some non-EU country) legally working in Italy, and you want your family to join you, you can apply for them to get a visa. Since some of the countries these people come from have very poor records on this type of stuff, there was a proposal to verify this (no idea if it was accepted) with a DNA test, to see if those you claim are your children really are.
Big brother issues aside, the problem is that some children may be adopted, and that the issue of parenthood is not as clear-cut as we would like to think. As well as the old latin saying:
Mater semper certa est, pater numquam.