reading from other comments it looks like he used something that was under non-commercial license only. Which, ironically makes it non-OSS. So the GP is spot on: the guy is a freeloader and deserves no sympathy.
Not to be pedantic, but it's still OSS (Open-source Software)... just not FOSS (Free Open-source Software).
I work for a college, and we shape / police traffic to / from the Internet.
This was a necessity on our 3Mb link of many years ago, but has still been useful on our 1Gb link of today.
This policy has greatly improved the user experience. Interactive protocols have low latency, bulk transfer protocols get sent to the end of the line. Where we do slow down things, it isn't really noticed by most folks. After first implementing this many years ago, we immediately got positive feedback. Now it is just "how things are."
Hell, I shape / police traffic at home to my cable modem. VOIP and interactive ssh are still usable even with huge downloads going on now, and users hammering the public wifi I provide to my neighborhood.
You make a good case, and I agree. I'd like to know whether or not you told your customers how you were shaping their traffic.
I have no issue with enforcing (your idea of) quality of service on a network. What bothers me about Comcast is the general lack of transparency behind it all. Their policies should be public and open to scrutiny, minimally so I know what's going on with the service I'm paying for and ideally so they can be held directly accountable if they implement an absurd form of shaping.
The U of Wisconsin researchers developed a method to create these cells from stem cells.
Alright, not trolling here, just genuinely curious. My understanding, at last via information gleaned from Slashdot and other news-oriented sites, was that the US government contributes very little (relatively speaking) to the field of Stem Cell research; not only that, but they have tons of laws in place to complicate and/or hamstring such research, and the research is politically unpopular. It sounds like the USA should more or less fall off the face of the map in terms of groundbreaking Stem Cell research...
Why, then, does it also seem like a significant number of breakthroughs in the Stem Cell research field is still occurring in the States? Is the media overblowing the neglect, does USA research just persevere in the face of adversity, or is there some alternative system (patents, universities, academia, etc.) set up that allows us to sidestep these seemingly-crippling obstacles?
If the political taboo was alleviated and the restrictions removed, would we do even better? Just curious to hear some thoughts on the subject...
Every fanboy is going to post. Apple, Linux, and (yes) Windows.
Eventually every system, connected to other systems and used by humans, will be compromised. It's how those compromises are dealt with that is the measure of the system. Security through obscurity only works until someone realizes you're there.
Fix the holes or be ridiculed for being shite!
Microsoft continuously releases security patches, Linux requires a few patches (including updates), and EVENTUALLY Apple will release security updates to combat this problem.
Apple needs to face reality and fix security holes quickly. When you pander to the "lowest common denominator", you need to treat them as such. Damn! It just dawned on me, that's why there's an "App Store" for Macs. Security via a police state.
Never mind.
Cheers Apple, may you never lose your zealots. (Yes, sarcasm)
This whole "anti-fanboy rant preempting fanboy posts" thing is getting pretty annoying. If you see someone blinded by fandom, feel free to smack them down, but ranting against nobody in particular for something that hasn't been done yet is pretty stupid by all accounts...
Well that just reaffirms my concerns then. Ubuntu's UI is in some areas far less configurable than Windows 7.
I suppose there's a reason the Ubuntu web site barely mentions the word "Linux". The traditional benefit of everything being configurable in Linux does not translate to Ubuntu's philosophy, even if there's very little reason why it should not. Maybe Canonical just doesn't have the manpower/skill?
If you want configurability, you will not find it in Ubuntu, old or new. Neither GNOME nor Unity are highly-configurable user experiences. Granted, GNOME is more configurable than Unity...
No, for the Linux desktop, KDE wins the gold for configurability and integration. If you like the rest of what Ubuntu has to offer (bleeding-edge packages, Debian-based repository, etc.), use Kubuntu, an Ubuntu distribution that defaults to the kubuntu-desktop package instead of the ubuntu-desktop one. If you want a heavyweight desktop environment, the only reason to use GNOME or Unity over KDE is a simplified streamlined experience.
I suppose, either way, we're going to have to judge for ourselves whether or not we believe the story, and to what extent. I, personally, feel that it's not unlikely or surprising, but also that I don't really case. Who'd have thought someone able to morally justify slaughtering thousands wouldn't also find a way around whatever porn-related barriers they face?
So sure, Apple is the gatekeeper between the software world and their desktop devices. The App Store is that gate.
My copy of Steam disagrees. The App Store is just another delivery method for software.
You might as well try to make the same complaint about Ubuntu's Package Manager... Is it the dominant method for installing software on a Ubuntu machine? Yes. Is it guarded jealously by Ubuntu managers intent on preventing conflict, but ultimately preventing me from installing the latest and greatest? Yup. Is it the ONLY method? God no.
And now is when you realize that I was responding to a parent, whose projection was that Apple would eventually lock Macs fully down to just the App Store.
This is just the latest attempt to promote the Mac app store, but it's also another step toward what's ultimately coming. Mac computers will one day be every bit as closed off as iPhones and iPads, with all software having to come through the Mac app store the same way it has to now with the iPhone/iPad app stores. Everything Apple will then be a walled garden, with Apple as gatekeepers.
I would like to think that people would howl about this when it happens, of course. But I bet that Apple will sell it as a necessary security measure to protect against viruses and attacks, and that most Mac users (and most members of the public) will be all-too-willing to trade freedom for security. Sadly, it will probably only increase Mac sales--prompting other PC makers to follow suite with their own closed systems.
I shudder to think that we may one day look back and ask "Hey, remember when you could install whatever software you wanted on your computer without having to jailbreak it or void the warranty?"
And now, let the flood of "Oh, Apple would never do that" replies begin:
So here's my question: is it really so bad?
So sure, Apple is the gatekeeper between the software world and their desktop devices. The App Store is that gate. Apple works diligently to prevent malicious code from entering the App Store, push out software updates, etc. Their system is no longer open / free, and that sucks. Fortunately, we have Linux, FreeBSD, Windows (although I suspect MS will follow in Apple's footsteps), and a host of other operating systems to turn to if we want software freedom, console login, etc.
If Apple closed off their devices, I would still not rule them out. Obviously I wouldn't use them as a hacking platform, but if Apple allows FOSS into their App Store, I don't see how even my daily usage of their systems would change much. Apple systems would become less suitable for some niche things, like debugging, emulation, penetration testing, etc., but most of the time that's not what people use Apple for.
The issue comes when / if Apple starts preventing legitimate software from entering their App Store. If Apple makes the App Store the only gateway into their devices, you can bet that there will be a suit of lawsuits from whatever company gets barred, the EFF, etc.; if Apple loses these, then their platform will become open "enough" again. If they win, then that is the day I stop using Apple products, as they are no longer free and flexible enough for my tastes.
And even then, while Apple systems may not meet my tastes as a developer, the App Store gateway is a perfect model for my parents, grandparents, cousins, and siblings. The less maintenance they have to do, including software vetting and updates, the better.
This is a good thing; Apple is defining its market, and through this move it will be far more suitable for the 95% of the population that only ever wanted to use a computer as an appliance.
Judge Baker cited a recent child porn case where the US authorities raided the wrong people, because the real offenders were piggybacking on their Wi-Fi connections.
Surely the police raided the right people, the owners of the wireless device that facilitated the downloading. How they handled them after that however is debatable, but how would the police have been expected to solve the crime with out doing that?
Car analogy! If my car is caught on a video camera running over children, shouldn't they be allowed to go to the DMV with my license details, get my address and interview me?
Then again, there is the question of severity. Violation of traffic laws can point to willing risk to other members of society (speeding, running lights) or, in your example, (analogous) murder. File sharing is, more or less, victimless*. I would put it more on par with police going to the DMV, then your house, because they caught you not wearing your seatbelt on camera, and I would think that, legal or no, such a reaction is well out of line.
* Yes, I am aware of the economic impact of a failure to sell a product. However, file sharing is so far removed from actual purposeful purchase, and industry profits and sales have never been higher. I would imagine that if there was a serious impact worthy of putting the act on par with public endangerment or bodily harm, there would be at least some compelling evidence of effects to back it up, and there really isn't.
True. The problem, however, is that everyone jumped up and down to give all their personal data to the phone companies with subscription plans.
If my phone is prepaid and the phone company has no clue whatsoever who the phone belongs to, then the towers knowing the location of that phone means nothing.
I was always amazed at how many people were willing to get locked into plans.
Not so; it is easy to de-anonymize tracking information by looking at the heavily-traveled areas. Most likely, those are your workplace and your place of residence. I'll bet that's enough to uniquely identify the vast majority of people.
That's the problem with location information. It's invariably tied to your physical self and your lifestyle, anonymous or not.
The NSA have an excellent guide for securing Linux systems (particularly Redhat, but much is applicable to all distros), so they're hardly Windows-centric.
They also have developed a staple of (a) modern Linux security architecture, namely SELinux.
Initially - The majority portions of your reply (very detailed) I knew already. Thanks though, pretty accurate rundown.
However, yes, & I don't blame you - You may not believe it, but some operations I've done in notepad.exe in 32-bit OS environs (replace, from edit menu) is FASTER in the 64-bit model on Windows 7 64-bit.
Thanks, appreciate that. It's not whether or not I believe you so much as whether or not I can justify what you're asserting with (what I know of) the underlying technology. In this case, for example, I would expect the difference in performance to be much more tightly bound to the OS than to the application. For example, 32-bit Windows Server 2003 versus 64-bit Windows 7, you're testing different versions of Notepad on different operating systems. They have different scheduler optimizations, different background loads, and, to a significant extent, different internals. Not a good test!
32-bit Notepad on 64-bit Windows 7 versus 64-bit Notepad on 64-bit Windows 7 would be a test to run, and you would definitely have to do an accurate benchmark. I can't think, off the top of my head, why one would perform noticeably different then the other. One other poster mentioned cache coherency, but I tend to disagree in the common case, since regular (i.e., non-memory-intensive) applications share the same small virtual address space as their 32-bit equivalents.
otherwise... it's why I asked about NetBeans having 64-bit target capabilities for ALL languages the IDE supports... can NetBeans 7, do that (in a nutshell)... apk
So as far as I can tell, NetBeans modules (which add language support) are pure Java, and therefore will run in the JVM of your choice, be it 32-bit or 64-bit.
May not make sense to some of you, but I am trying to go completely 64-bit here (may sound strange, but string processing seems faster on it, even notepad.exe itself, by far, vs. 32-bit in native 32-bit OS environs no less - very noticeable!)
I'm going to go off-topic for a second to address your post. Firstly, preliminary research (I mean that) suggests that NetBeans is pure Java, so it will run in whatever JVM you have. Both 32- and 64-bit JVMs are offered, so it sounds like NetBeans will run in 64-bit mode. However, there is also information that suggests the NetBeans installer only supports the 32-bit JVM, so you'll likely have to install it with a 32-bit application, but can run it as a 64-bit application.
Regardless, I feel that you're a bit misguided about the nature of 64-bit architectures. Let me list for you the big advantages that 64-bit has over 32-bit:
(1): You can directly access a 64-bit virtual memory space. This means that individual applications aren't limited to 3 GB of virtual address space like they are in a 32-bit world.
(2): You have access to some more modern architecture features over 32-bit systems.
(3): A single register can hold 8 bytes instead of 4 bytes.
So let's break this down. (1) means that applications that use huge amounts of memory (over 3 GB) at the same time will likely run faster. Most applications come nowhere near this, and NetBeans is no exception. Unless you're running enterprise applications or database servers, you shouldn't notice any change from this strength, and even then, only those applications need to be 64-bit to gain the advantage. You can use 32-bit NetBeans to build a 64-bit GlassFish application.
(2) means that your system's paging layouts and execution environment can take advantage of some of the offerings of the modern architecture for both security and efficiency. This is almost entirely handled by the kernel, meaning that if you're running a 64-bit kernel, you're fine. Actually, modern 32-bit kernels can also take advantage of 64-bit architecture security features, so either way you're good. A 64-bit kernel can easily run 32-bit applications, so (2) alone isn't a reason to favor 64-bit applications.
Finally, (3) means that certain operations dealing with gigantic numbers will be more efficient. It also means that compilers can do some slight optimization tricks on non-huge values. Unless you're running a math-intensive application (MatLab, Mathematica, etc.) , you shouldn't notice any difference from this.
I suppose, in summary, that your claim that even Notepad runs faster in 64-bit seems unlikely. Most applications gain no noticeable advantage being 32-bit over 64-bit. If you care about efficiency, use a 64-bit kernel, and run whatever applications are most convenient. If you want to read up on 64-bit architectures, check out Wikipedia.
Except that truecrypt heavily advertises this feature, so if you decrypt your volume and it has pictures of fuzzy kittens, they'll say "ha ha very funny, I said kiddie porn, not kitty porn. Now decrypt the secret volume."
Plausible deniability, in this case, means that there is no confirming evidence that there is data there. In this case, the poster is referring to this.
That said, presence of TrueCrypt drivers or bootloader would probably shatter that, and even without those, the court system isn't even remotely logical. All the prosecution has to do is convince a bunch of (non-technical) people that it's relevant, and you're back to "encrypted blob", see my OP, etc..
I assume you're talking about someone being convicted even though the encryption of the evidence wasn't broken. You might want to read that appeal ruling carefully. It implies that there is other evidence (testimony, likely), that contradicts the perp's claim that there was nothing encrypted on the computer, implying there was no encrypted kiddie-porn on the computer. The appeals court is basically saying that yes, it's mostly irrelevant that there happens to be PGP on a commonly configured computer. But there's enough evidence that pictures of a child were uploaded to the computer to make it irrelevant that the PGP is irrelevant. So the fact that PGP is common isn't enough of an argument to overturn any of the case.
So basically the testimony is enough to convict so even if the jury had relied on the existence of PGP it's not enough to un-convict. I.e., you don't "get off on a technicality" unless the technicality actually changes the validity of the evidence against you.
What they didn't do there is state as a precedent that the existence of encryption software is in itself evidence of a crime. In case that's where you're going.
Mostly going for:
We find that evidence of appellant’s internet use and the existence of an encryption program on his computer was at least somewhat relevant to the state’s case against him.
... and...
Evidence of appellant’s computer usage and the presence of an encryption program on his computer was relevant to the state’s case. We affirm the district court’s evidentiary rulings.
Sure, it could be worse, but that's not a good quote to hear in a US justice system. The UK has certainly crossed this line, but you'd be a fool not to see the US heading there too.
It seems to me that, increasingly, the legislative drive is to criminalize a failure to decrypt data, rather than actually needing the data as evidence. The idea is to give the failure to decrypt data a higher penalty than the actual crime for which you are being prosecuted, thus coercing you into decrypting the data. I mean, why bother trying to crack, break, or coerce the decryption factors when you can just build a stronger case?
Such a drive could just provide you with a straight path to more severe and less-defensible prosecution! The drive seems more useful in the context of preserving corporate and financial secrets from theft rather than protecting one's self from law enforcement.
And by the way, if the aforementioned legislative push bothers you as much as it does me, donate to the EFF; this shit has to stop.
The actual Vericode post says it's both the iPhone and Android versions. I'm not sure why the article linked in the summary [and thus the summary] only mentions the Android version.
I wonder then, does the web browser interface do something similar, minus the GPS info of course? What about the Pandora One desktop app?
There are specs for getting geolocation information via JavaScript, so possibly. However, your browseri s supposed to ask your permission prior. This also doesn't preclude other Pandora components, such as Flash, which may have their own API.
That said, am I the only one who just doesn't care? This company is providing bandwidth and fronting music industry negotiations in order to deliver a useful and valuable service to me for free. As per the implicit (and explicit) contract with almost every modern free service, it's a willing exchange of information, and I'm perfectly willing to trade my phone ID and location for this service (for now).
It would be nice, though, if there was an Android requirement that each application disclosed exactly what data it was collecting, and for what purpose, in order to be included in the Marketplace.
Yay! Another uninsightful "correlation is not causation" post that spews that phrase out when no one in the article or in the research was making the claim they were attempting to debunk.
From TFA:
Of all of the classes offered in high school, Algebra II is the leading predictor of college and work success, according to research that has launched a growing national movement to require it of graduates.
... and...
The study showed that of those who held top-tier jobs, 84 percent had taken Algebra II or a higher class as their last high school math course. Only 50 percent of employees in the bottom tier had taken Algebra II.
“Algebra II does increase the likelihood of being employed in a good job,” they reported, although warning that many factors come into play.
Yes, the article makes exactly the claim the OP says it does, and yes, the OP's point is well-made. It's like saying "most of the world's geniuses could read novels by the age of 4, so parents should focus on teaching their kids to read novels by the age of 4 if they want them to be geniuses." It's an absurdly stupid claim.
Let me guess... you didn't take Algebra II in high school?:P
That said, I'm in full support of requiring Algebra II in high school. I think continuously pushing students is a great learning technique, and I also think the world would be a better place if everyone had an understanding of these principles.
Or, perhaps, academics don't see any reasons to contribute to something that'll erase anything they might add because of Wikipedia's No Original Research clause?
Why would this be any more of a problem? Academic authors ought to be able to cite research papers just like anyone else; in fact, they could even cite their own publications.
The goal isn't to use Wikipedia as a new publishing mechanism for academic papers. It's to get academics (who probably have a better understanding of a nice suite of topics versus their non-academic counterparts) to contribute material to the encyclopedia. The belief is that, in many cases, that material will be higher quality due to its academic origins. However, the material is still subject to all of the constraints that any other material is.
If Wikipedia didn't have these standards, it could not ever hope to hold its own as a legitimate source of quality research, which is the goal it seems to be striving for.
If the American military will agree to stop selling all these oppressive regimes jets, tanks, weapons, and training--all us software developers will agree to stop selling them software.
The American military is often ridiculed for their role in strengthening oppressive regimes. These companies, on the other hand, actively deny their role in suppressing the free speech rights of other countries' citizenry. Whether or not they are legally permitted to supply that software is not the point; they should be held publicly accountable for their actions, and rightfully face any resulting backlash.
The organized criminals who are raking in the money are well protected in their home countries so this is essentially a big game of whack a mole until people better protect their computers (good luck with that).
Agreed, kind of. Users can only do so much, especially when zero-days are frequent targets of vulnerabilities and vendors do lazy and irresponsible patching and damage control.
We need well-enforced international criminal penalties for both the spammers themselves, as well as the corporations that hire them. Remove the monetary incentive and both the motive and means drop significantly. This also reduces the overall incentive to infect others' machines as a nice side effect.
What would also be interesting is legislation holding a corporation accountable (to an extent) for damages caused by infections that leveraged their products as a vector. I imagine that would light a fire under Adobe's feet to actually patch responsibly.
Seriously, you think the use of some BSD code is what made the difference?
You do understand that their kernel, Darwin, uses XNU at its core, which is largely composed of the Mach Microkernel and BSD. Leveraging these mature projects spared Apple (NeXT, at the time) from having to design, develop, and debug a kernel from scratch.
At the time a patent is submitted, the total research cost invested in creating the patent (specifically) is also registered alongside this patent. This cost must be justifiable and subject to some set of reasonable constraints. Alternatively, the patent submitter can choose to omit a cost, and the cost will default to something like $50,000.
The patent, once granted, functions as usual.
At any time during the patent's lifetime, money can be paid towards it (by any party, group of parties, or even the government), and if the amount of money meets 110% of the research cost of the patent, the money is given to the submitter and the patent permanently enters the public domain.
Otherwise, the patent proceeds as usual...
The idea here is that there's still a reward for companies to do research (110% of costs reimbursed is guaranteed profit), but any patent critical or important enough to a company or society can be forced into the public domain at will. If, say, a cancer-curing drug is patented, the U.S. Government could pay the fee and the drug becomes available to everyone. If Google wants to buy some patents identified to conflict with VP8, same deal.
Anyway, wanted to toss this out there. Refine or reject as appropriate:)
Slashdot Mirror
Please stop calling every single person who is tinkering with code a 'researcher'...
Researcher: One who conducts research.
Did he conduct research? Yes.
Then he is a researcher.
reading from other comments it looks like he used something that was under non-commercial license only. Which, ironically makes it non-OSS. So the GP is spot on: the guy is a freeloader and deserves no sympathy.
Not to be pedantic, but it's still OSS (Open-source Software) ... just not FOSS (Free Open-source Software).
I work for a college, and we shape / police traffic to / from the Internet.
This was a necessity on our 3Mb link of many years ago, but has still been useful on our 1Gb link of today.
This policy has greatly improved the user experience. Interactive protocols have low latency, bulk transfer protocols get sent to the end of the line. Where we do slow down things, it isn't really noticed by most folks. After first implementing this many years ago, we immediately got positive feedback. Now it is just "how things are."
Hell, I shape / police traffic at home to my cable modem. VOIP and interactive ssh are still usable even with huge downloads going on now, and users hammering the public wifi I provide to my neighborhood.
You make a good case, and I agree. I'd like to know whether or not you told your customers how you were shaping their traffic.
I have no issue with enforcing (your idea of) quality of service on a network. What bothers me about Comcast is the general lack of transparency behind it all. Their policies should be public and open to scrutiny, minimally so I know what's going on with the service I'm paying for and ideally so they can be held directly accountable if they implement an absurd form of shaping.
The U of Wisconsin researchers developed a method to create these cells from stem cells.
Alright, not trolling here, just genuinely curious. My understanding, at last via information gleaned from Slashdot and other news-oriented sites, was that the US government contributes very little (relatively speaking) to the field of Stem Cell research; not only that, but they have tons of laws in place to complicate and/or hamstring such research, and the research is politically unpopular. It sounds like the USA should more or less fall off the face of the map in terms of groundbreaking Stem Cell research...
Why, then, does it also seem like a significant number of breakthroughs in the Stem Cell research field is still occurring in the States? Is the media overblowing the neglect, does USA research just persevere in the face of adversity, or is there some alternative system (patents, universities, academia, etc.) set up that allows us to sidestep these seemingly-crippling obstacles?
If the political taboo was alleviated and the restrictions removed, would we do even better? Just curious to hear some thoughts on the subject...
Every fanboy is going to post. Apple, Linux, and (yes) Windows.
Eventually every system, connected to other systems and used by humans, will be compromised. It's how those compromises are dealt with that is the measure of the system. Security through obscurity only works until someone realizes you're there.
Fix the holes or be ridiculed for being shite!
Microsoft continuously releases security patches, Linux requires a few patches (including updates), and EVENTUALLY Apple will release security updates to combat this problem.
Apple needs to face reality and fix security holes quickly. When you pander to the "lowest common denominator", you need to treat them as such. Damn! It just dawned on me, that's why there's an "App Store" for Macs. Security via a police state.
Never mind.
Cheers Apple, may you never lose your zealots. (Yes, sarcasm)
This whole "anti-fanboy rant preempting fanboy posts" thing is getting pretty annoying. If you see someone blinded by fandom, feel free to smack them down, but ranting against nobody in particular for something that hasn't been done yet is pretty stupid by all accounts...
Well that just reaffirms my concerns then. Ubuntu's UI is in some areas far less configurable than Windows 7.
I suppose there's a reason the Ubuntu web site barely mentions the word "Linux". The traditional benefit of everything being configurable in Linux does not translate to Ubuntu's philosophy, even if there's very little reason why it should not. Maybe Canonical just doesn't have the manpower/skill?
If you want configurability, you will not find it in Ubuntu, old or new. Neither GNOME nor Unity are highly-configurable user experiences. Granted, GNOME is more configurable than Unity...
No, for the Linux desktop, KDE wins the gold for configurability and integration. If you like the rest of what Ubuntu has to offer (bleeding-edge packages, Debian-based repository, etc.), use Kubuntu, an Ubuntu distribution that defaults to the kubuntu-desktop package instead of the ubuntu-desktop one. If you want a heavyweight desktop environment, the only reason to use GNOME or Unity over KDE is a simplified streamlined experience.
Is it too cynical to mention that the US government has a vested interest in denigrating Bin Laden, and that he's no longer around to deny this claim?
Only if you mention that even if he were around, he'd probably deny it regardless of whether or not it is true.
Then again, the story isn't unbelievable. Just take a look at some interesting Google Trends results:
I suppose, either way, we're going to have to judge for ourselves whether or not we believe the story, and to what extent. I, personally, feel that it's not unlikely or surprising, but also that I don't really case. Who'd have thought someone able to morally justify slaughtering thousands wouldn't also find a way around whatever porn-related barriers they face?
My copy of Steam disagrees. The App Store is just another delivery method for software.
You might as well try to make the same complaint about Ubuntu's Package Manager... Is it the dominant method for installing software on a Ubuntu machine? Yes. Is it guarded jealously by Ubuntu managers intent on preventing conflict, but ultimately preventing me from installing the latest and greatest? Yup. Is it the ONLY method? God no.
And now is when you realize that I was responding to a parent, whose projection was that Apple would eventually lock Macs fully down to just the App Store.
This is just the latest attempt to promote the Mac app store, but it's also another step toward what's ultimately coming. Mac computers will one day be every bit as closed off as iPhones and iPads, with all software having to come through the Mac app store the same way it has to now with the iPhone/iPad app stores. Everything Apple will then be a walled garden, with Apple as gatekeepers.
I would like to think that people would howl about this when it happens, of course. But I bet that Apple will sell it as a necessary security measure to protect against viruses and attacks, and that most Mac users (and most members of the public) will be all-too-willing to trade freedom for security. Sadly, it will probably only increase Mac sales--prompting other PC makers to follow suite with their own closed systems.
I shudder to think that we may one day look back and ask "Hey, remember when you could install whatever software you wanted on your computer without having to jailbreak it or void the warranty?"
And now, let the flood of "Oh, Apple would never do that" replies begin:
So here's my question: is it really so bad?
So sure, Apple is the gatekeeper between the software world and their desktop devices. The App Store is that gate. Apple works diligently to prevent malicious code from entering the App Store, push out software updates, etc. Their system is no longer open / free, and that sucks. Fortunately, we have Linux, FreeBSD, Windows (although I suspect MS will follow in Apple's footsteps), and a host of other operating systems to turn to if we want software freedom, console login, etc.
If Apple closed off their devices, I would still not rule them out. Obviously I wouldn't use them as a hacking platform, but if Apple allows FOSS into their App Store, I don't see how even my daily usage of their systems would change much. Apple systems would become less suitable for some niche things, like debugging, emulation, penetration testing, etc., but most of the time that's not what people use Apple for.
The issue comes when / if Apple starts preventing legitimate software from entering their App Store. If Apple makes the App Store the only gateway into their devices, you can bet that there will be a suit of lawsuits from whatever company gets barred, the EFF, etc.; if Apple loses these, then their platform will become open "enough" again. If they win, then that is the day I stop using Apple products, as they are no longer free and flexible enough for my tastes.
And even then, while Apple systems may not meet my tastes as a developer, the App Store gateway is a perfect model for my parents, grandparents, cousins, and siblings. The less maintenance they have to do, including software vetting and updates, the better.
This is a good thing; Apple is defining its market, and through this move it will be far more suitable for the 95% of the population that only ever wanted to use a computer as an appliance.
Surely the police raided the right people, the owners of the wireless device that facilitated the downloading. How they handled them after that however is debatable, but how would the police have been expected to solve the crime with out doing that?
Car analogy! If my car is caught on a video camera running over children, shouldn't they be allowed to go to the DMV with my license details, get my address and interview me?
Then again, there is the question of severity. Violation of traffic laws can point to willing risk to other members of society (speeding, running lights) or, in your example, (analogous) murder. File sharing is, more or less, victimless*. I would put it more on par with police going to the DMV, then your house, because they caught you not wearing your seatbelt on camera, and I would think that, legal or no, such a reaction is well out of line.
* Yes, I am aware of the economic impact of a failure to sell a product. However, file sharing is so far removed from actual purposeful purchase, and industry profits and sales have never been higher. I would imagine that if there was a serious impact worthy of putting the act on par with public endangerment or bodily harm, there would be at least some compelling evidence of effects to back it up, and there really isn't.
> Location tracking is part of the spec...
True. The problem, however, is that everyone jumped up and down to give all their personal data to the phone companies with subscription plans.
If my phone is prepaid and the phone company has no clue whatsoever who the phone belongs to, then the towers knowing the location of that phone means nothing.
I was always amazed at how many people were willing to get locked into plans.
Not so; it is easy to de-anonymize tracking information by looking at the heavily-traveled areas. Most likely, those are your workplace and your place of residence. I'll bet that's enough to uniquely identify the vast majority of people.
That's the problem with location information. It's invariably tied to your physical self and your lifestyle, anonymous or not.
The NSA have an excellent guide for securing Linux systems (particularly Redhat, but much is applicable to all distros), so they're hardly Windows-centric.
They also have developed a staple of (a) modern Linux security architecture, namely SELinux.
Initially - The majority portions of your reply (very detailed) I knew already. Thanks though, pretty accurate rundown.
However, yes, & I don't blame you - You may not believe it, but some operations I've done in notepad.exe in 32-bit OS environs (replace, from edit menu) is FASTER in the 64-bit model on Windows 7 64-bit.
Thanks, appreciate that. It's not whether or not I believe you so much as whether or not I can justify what you're asserting with (what I know of) the underlying technology. In this case, for example, I would expect the difference in performance to be much more tightly bound to the OS than to the application. For example, 32-bit Windows Server 2003 versus 64-bit Windows 7, you're testing different versions of Notepad on different operating systems. They have different scheduler optimizations, different background loads, and, to a significant extent, different internals. Not a good test!
32-bit Notepad on 64-bit Windows 7 versus 64-bit Notepad on 64-bit Windows 7 would be a test to run, and you would definitely have to do an accurate benchmark. I can't think, off the top of my head, why one would perform noticeably different then the other. One other poster mentioned cache coherency, but I tend to disagree in the common case, since regular (i.e., non-memory-intensive) applications share the same small virtual address space as their 32-bit equivalents.
otherwise... it's why I asked about NetBeans having 64-bit target capabilities for ALL languages the IDE supports... can NetBeans 7, do that (in a nutshell)... apk
So as far as I can tell, NetBeans modules (which add language support) are pure Java, and therefore will run in the JVM of your choice, be it 32-bit or 64-bit.
Cheers!
May not make sense to some of you, but I am trying to go completely 64-bit here (may sound strange, but string processing seems faster on it, even notepad.exe itself, by far, vs. 32-bit in native 32-bit OS environs no less - very noticeable!)
I'm going to go off-topic for a second to address your post. Firstly, preliminary research (I mean that) suggests that NetBeans is pure Java, so it will run in whatever JVM you have. Both 32- and 64-bit JVMs are offered, so it sounds like NetBeans will run in 64-bit mode. However, there is also information that suggests the NetBeans installer only supports the 32-bit JVM, so you'll likely have to install it with a 32-bit application, but can run it as a 64-bit application.
Regardless, I feel that you're a bit misguided about the nature of 64-bit architectures. Let me list for you the big advantages that 64-bit has over 32-bit:
So let's break this down. (1) means that applications that use huge amounts of memory (over 3 GB) at the same time will likely run faster. Most applications come nowhere near this, and NetBeans is no exception. Unless you're running enterprise applications or database servers, you shouldn't notice any change from this strength, and even then, only those applications need to be 64-bit to gain the advantage. You can use 32-bit NetBeans to build a 64-bit GlassFish application.
(2) means that your system's paging layouts and execution environment can take advantage of some of the offerings of the modern architecture for both security and efficiency. This is almost entirely handled by the kernel, meaning that if you're running a 64-bit kernel, you're fine. Actually, modern 32-bit kernels can also take advantage of 64-bit architecture security features, so either way you're good. A 64-bit kernel can easily run 32-bit applications, so (2) alone isn't a reason to favor 64-bit applications.
Finally, (3) means that certain operations dealing with gigantic numbers will be more efficient. It also means that compilers can do some slight optimization tricks on non-huge values. Unless you're running a math-intensive application (MatLab, Mathematica, etc.) , you shouldn't notice any difference from this.
I suppose, in summary, that your claim that even Notepad runs faster in 64-bit seems unlikely. Most applications gain no noticeable advantage being 32-bit over 64-bit. If you care about efficiency, use a 64-bit kernel, and run whatever applications are most convenient. If you want to read up on 64-bit architectures, check out Wikipedia.
Except that truecrypt heavily advertises this feature, so if you decrypt your volume and it has pictures of fuzzy kittens, they'll say "ha ha very funny, I said kiddie porn, not kitty porn. Now decrypt the secret volume."
Plausible deniability, in this case, means that there is no confirming evidence that there is data there. In this case, the poster is referring to this.
That said, presence of TrueCrypt drivers or bootloader would probably shatter that, and even without those, the court system isn't even remotely logical. All the prosecution has to do is convince a bunch of (non-technical) people that it's relevant, and you're back to "encrypted blob", see my OP, etc..
I assume you're talking about someone being convicted even though the encryption of the evidence wasn't broken. You might want to read that appeal ruling carefully. It implies that there is other evidence (testimony, likely), that contradicts the perp's claim that there was nothing encrypted on the computer, implying there was no encrypted kiddie-porn on the computer. The appeals court is basically saying that yes, it's mostly irrelevant that there happens to be PGP on a commonly configured computer. But there's enough evidence that pictures of a child were uploaded to the computer to make it irrelevant that the PGP is irrelevant. So the fact that PGP is common isn't enough of an argument to overturn any of the case.
So basically the testimony is enough to convict so even if the jury had relied on the existence of PGP it's not enough to un-convict. I.e., you don't "get off on a technicality" unless the technicality actually changes the validity of the evidence against you.
What they didn't do there is state as a precedent that the existence of encryption software is in itself evidence of a crime. In case that's where you're going.
Mostly going for:
We find that evidence of appellant’s internet use and the existence of an encryption program on his computer was at least somewhat relevant to the state’s case against him.
... and ...
Evidence of appellant’s computer usage and the presence of an encryption program on his computer was relevant to the state’s case. We affirm the district court’s evidentiary rulings.
Sure, it could be worse, but that's not a good quote to hear in a US justice system. The UK has certainly crossed this line, but you'd be a fool not to see the US heading there too.
God bless Minnesota :/
But I agree, that's how it's supposed to work.
It seems to me that, increasingly, the legislative drive is to criminalize a failure to decrypt data, rather than actually needing the data as evidence. The idea is to give the failure to decrypt data a higher penalty than the actual crime for which you are being prosecuted, thus coercing you into decrypting the data. I mean, why bother trying to crack, break, or coerce the decryption factors when you can just build a stronger case?
There are several examples of this on Slashdot.
Such a drive could just provide you with a straight path to more severe and less-defensible prosecution! The drive seems more useful in the context of preserving corporate and financial secrets from theft rather than protecting one's self from law enforcement.
And by the way, if the aforementioned legislative push bothers you as much as it does me, donate to the EFF; this shit has to stop.
The actual Vericode post says it's both the iPhone and Android versions. I'm not sure why the article linked in the summary [and thus the summary] only mentions the Android version.
I wonder then, does the web browser interface do something similar, minus the GPS info of course? What about the Pandora One desktop app?
There are specs for getting geolocation information via JavaScript, so possibly. However, your browseri s supposed to ask your permission prior. This also doesn't preclude other Pandora components, such as Flash, which may have their own API.
That said, am I the only one who just doesn't care? This company is providing bandwidth and fronting music industry negotiations in order to deliver a useful and valuable service to me for free. As per the implicit (and explicit) contract with almost every modern free service, it's a willing exchange of information, and I'm perfectly willing to trade my phone ID and location for this service (for now).
It would be nice, though, if there was an Android requirement that each application disclosed exactly what data it was collecting, and for what purpose, in order to be included in the Marketplace.
Yay! Another uninsightful "correlation is not causation" post that spews that phrase out when no one in the article or in the research was making the claim they were attempting to debunk.
From TFA:
Of all of the classes offered in high school, Algebra II is the leading predictor of college and work success, according to research that has launched a growing national movement to require it of graduates.
... and ...
The study showed that of those who held top-tier jobs, 84 percent had taken Algebra II or a higher class as their last high school math course. Only 50 percent of employees in the bottom tier had taken Algebra II. “Algebra II does increase the likelihood of being employed in a good job,” they reported, although warning that many factors come into play.
Yes, the article makes exactly the claim the OP says it does, and yes, the OP's point is well-made. It's like saying "most of the world's geniuses could read novels by the age of 4, so parents should focus on teaching their kids to read novels by the age of 4 if they want them to be geniuses." It's an absurdly stupid claim.
Let me guess... you didn't take Algebra II in high school? :P
That said, I'm in full support of requiring Algebra II in high school. I think continuously pushing students is a great learning technique, and I also think the world would be a better place if everyone had an understanding of these principles.
Or, perhaps, academics don't see any reasons to contribute to something that'll erase anything they might add because of Wikipedia's No Original Research clause?
Why would this be any more of a problem? Academic authors ought to be able to cite research papers just like anyone else; in fact, they could even cite their own publications.
The goal isn't to use Wikipedia as a new publishing mechanism for academic papers. It's to get academics (who probably have a better understanding of a nice suite of topics versus their non-academic counterparts) to contribute material to the encyclopedia. The belief is that, in many cases, that material will be higher quality due to its academic origins. However, the material is still subject to all of the constraints that any other material is.
If Wikipedia didn't have these standards, it could not ever hope to hold its own as a legitimate source of quality research, which is the goal it seems to be striving for.
If the American military will agree to stop selling all these oppressive regimes jets, tanks, weapons, and training--all us software developers will agree to stop selling them software.
The American military is often ridiculed for their role in strengthening oppressive regimes. These companies, on the other hand, actively deny their role in suppressing the free speech rights of other countries' citizenry. Whether or not they are legally permitted to supply that software is not the point; they should be held publicly accountable for their actions, and rightfully face any resulting backlash.
The organized criminals who are raking in the money are well protected in their home countries so this is essentially a big game of whack a mole until people better protect their computers (good luck with that).
Agreed, kind of. Users can only do so much, especially when zero-days are frequent targets of vulnerabilities and vendors do lazy and irresponsible patching and damage control.
We need well-enforced international criminal penalties for both the spammers themselves, as well as the corporations that hire them. Remove the monetary incentive and both the motive and means drop significantly. This also reduces the overall incentive to infect others' machines as a nice side effect.
What would also be interesting is legislation holding a corporation accountable (to an extent) for damages caused by infections that leveraged their products as a vector. I imagine that would light a fire under Adobe's feet to actually patch responsibly.
Seriously, you think the use of some BSD code is what made the difference?
You do understand that their kernel, Darwin, uses XNU at its core, which is largely composed of the Mach Microkernel and BSD. Leveraging these mature projects spared Apple (NeXT, at the time) from having to design, develop, and debug a kernel from scratch.
Yes, this is a hell of a leg-up.
Here's my patent reform plan:
The idea here is that there's still a reward for companies to do research (110% of costs reimbursed is guaranteed profit), but any patent critical or important enough to a company or society can be forced into the public domain at will. If, say, a cancer-curing drug is patented, the U.S. Government could pay the fee and the drug becomes available to everyone. If Google wants to buy some patents identified to conflict with VP8, same deal.
Anyway, wanted to toss this out there. Refine or reject as appropriate :)