Ortiz admits that prior to introducing the bill he did not research salt's role in food chemistry, its effect on flavor or his bill's ramifications for the restaurant industry. He tells me he was prompted to introduce the bill because his father used salt excessively for many years, developed high blood pressure and had a heart attack.
Emphasis mine. According to this statement, Oritz says that he did not consider that banning salt in restaurants would affect the flavor of the foods served in those restaurants. It isn't possible for this to be true. He's lying through his teeth.
“I think salt should be banned in restaurants. I ask if a dish has salt in it, and if I does, I get something else that doesn’t have salt,” Ortiz tells me, before going on to say that he has eaten, and expects he will continue to eat, among other things, ham, cheese and bread in restaurants, all of which contain salt.
So what he's saying is that he has found a way to satisfy his desire not to have salt in foods that works within the current set of rights and regulations. He doesn't want salt, and he doesn't get salt.
Perfect! It looks like he has found a workable solution to his personal conviction that salt is bad. I would expect other grown adults to be fully capable of arriving at their own opinions of the substance, and, if similar, take similar steps. Welcome to America... where you can make your own lifestyle work for you without legislating that everyone else must adopt it.
Yes, these people should be punished. But I agree with Spain's prison/court system when they say that prison is for violent crime.
Punishment aside, prison (in this sense) is a method of restricting disruptive peoples' access to society, thus eliminating their ability to disrupt society. These people are certainly disruptive to society. Your argument, therefore, must be that there is a more appropriate method to restrict their access to society besides imprisonment. I agree, in theory, since it is via electronic access, rather than physical access, that they have proven themselves a threat. If you can effectively deny their electronic access to society, then perhaps that is a viable solution. Imprisonment is a nice failsafe, though: in prison, their life is controlled, and thus their electronic access is controlled.
However, don't forget that while their vector is electronic, they have demonstrated themselves to be willing of crossing the mental threshold and engaging in harmful activities. Don't pretend that just because their crime is electronic that the impacts of this crime are any less real. They have stolen identities, causing financial damage to institutions and multifaceted damage to those individuals. Financial damage costs money to recover from. That money could be distributed amongst the populous (via fines, increased service rates, etc.), or burdened upon a few unlucky individuals (potentially ruining their lives), but there is a cost. Their botnet compromised millions of machines (if even one in every thousand crashed because of them, this is still substantial data and time loss), provided platforms for cyber-attacks, and burdened millions with spam messages. At a scale of 13 million machines, I wouldn't be surprised if some lives were lost.
I am assuming here that they're not stupid. They were perfectly aware of all of this. They knew the damage, pain, and mayhem that their actions were causing on a widespread level, and yet they went ahead and performed them. They have demonstrated that they are capable of inflicting significant harm to others for personal gain. While their current vector was electronic, I can understand why society (Spanish and as a whole) might want someone who has demonstrated this will to be removed from it.
I know I will be modded to Oblivion. But thanks I have Mono, open source, Cross platform and.Net Framework (and IMO better than Java). I don't have to muck around with my applications to be compatible with other OS.
I'm not going to mod you, but I will respond. Cross-platform initiatives like Mono and Java take a shot at addressing the realm that Crossover handles, but they are far from a working or complete solution. Here's why:
Many applications - specifically, many of the ones that are important enough to make a person choose an operating system - are not written in Mono or Java. The reason why is worthy of discussion, but that doesn't affect the fact that this is the case. These applications include the obvious set: the Microsoft Office suite, Photoshop, AutoCAD, ArcGIS, mainstream games, et cetera. Linux as a platform could be desired (by the users) or applied to increase productivity, but the criticality of these applications prohibits it from being even considered.
Now, Windows virtualization has done wonders for allowing such software to be usable in a Linux environment, but there are both integration and performance issues with that solution. Furthermore, it can be difficult for a nth-degree-removed user to justify to management why they still need a Windows license but want to go out of their way not to run Windows.
On the other side, even cross-platform languages like Mono and Java still can have platform dependencies written into them. Many applications need or use functionality beyond that which is provided in the.NET Runtime API and resort to native interface calls. Poor programming can result in hard-coded filesystem specifics (like path separators). Cross-platform-aware vendors may write Windows- and Linux-specific parts of their larger codebase, but others will not. Point being, an application is not cross-platform merely on virtue of being written in a cross-platform language.
Be it issues with language or issues with general compatibility, there is a need to run Windows applications in a Linux environment that is not really solvable without a compatibility layer like Crossover. Until (if ever) vendors actually make a point of releasing cross-platform builds (or platform-specific builds for all mainstream platforms), Crossover provides a low-cost functional solution to a real user and industry need, and with it removes a roadblock that can, for many, completely disqualify non-Windows operating systems as a platform choice.
Google searches have revealed nothing helpful (maybe I should Bing it...:) so I was hoping someone with more technical expertise on Slashdot could offer a suggestion.
Sorry, I can't help myself:) And now, in the interest of contributing positively (as opposed to not at all):
I'm assuming that the bottleneck is either network- or disk-bound (I wouldn't think the CPU could be unusably stressed supporting either of the transfer rates of the aforementioned devices). If it is disk-bound, you may benefit by working off of a different disk and using a nightly script to resynchronize your filesystems. Of course, put the shared folder that he accesses on the other disk... not your main disk... so you can read your OS's files in peace. If you don't have two disks available, buy a $100 external USB disk or something.
If you have some resources available, you can take the alternative path of turning your machine into the file server. Acquire a file server machine, configure it with your IP address and shares, copy your data over to it, and fire up your designer machine with a different IP address. Of course, this would make it so you now have to share those resources with the other guy, but perhaps that implicit throttling will highlight the need for the real solution: a file server.
It really depends. On a true manual transmission, you are correct. You are physically detaching the engine from the wheels when you pop the shifter into neutral. However, on automatic transmissions, it gets more complicated. Depending on the car (and I'm not sure where Toyota's systems fit in), the user's information is passed to the transmission through any number of methods. Some use mechanical valves and pressure to choose a gear (in which case, you are correct), while most modern-day transmissions have computers to do it.
Since computers now handle the operations necessary to convey choices made by the driver to the transmission, it's entirely possible that the computers in the car could cause fail to enter neutral even when the car is clearly placed there. This isn't inherently a bad thing... the computers use information from sensors and performance to choose optimal times to shift, maximizing efficiency and minimizing engine wear. These algorithms are very important, and have been responsible for some of the complex hybrid car systems and efficiency and reliability improvements that we enjoy. They just need to be very fault-tolerant.
My guess (and I'm talking out of my arse here) is that a software bug prevented the TCU from receiving commands. Complex embedded systems operate by transmitting asynchronous messages to each other via a message bus. Critical systems needs (i.e., when I hit the brake pedal, you must engage the break unit within 1ms) are met by attaching priorities to those messages, allowing the message bus to drop low-priority messages in favor of higher-priority ones when it is overwhelmed. I'd not be surprised if many of Toyota's systems shared the same message bus (at least, their accelerator and transmission control systems), and that the sudden acceleration issue is due to a software bug either taking down the message bus or flooding it with a super-high-priority message, causing it to discard lesser messages like transmission controls and power controls. I'm not speaking with any authority here, but if I was to engage in this challenge, that's the first place I'd look.
What would, in my opinion, be truly interesting is if this printer device can be used with beef cells to produce artificial steaks (etc.). This could potentially remove the agricultural overhead of growing the meat, while reducing prices, increasing availability, dissolving concerns of inhumanity, and (possibly) skittering past some of the vegetarian reservations. Furthermore, there's no integration issues trying to put the product back into a live and functioning body!
First of all, I find it hard to believe that it isn't already illegal to surreptitiously install software on someone's computer. And even more illegal to install software that steals data.
I think the issue here (and it's legit, in my opinion) is the deliberate conscious awareness of the types of data being made available. I'm sure somewhere in EULAs and/or liability waivers, most software is protected legally. The issue that needs addressing is the general ineffectiveness of EULA-style notification relative to user awareness. Just because the information is available doesn't mean that it is effectively disclosed.
Second, if that's not already illegal, why are they making a law that only targets one specific type of software?
Either the entire plan is utterly ignorant or this is a "foot in the door" to outlaw P2P.
It brings to mind exactly what they mean by "P2P". Do they mean decentralized autonomously-forming peer networks? Because surprisingly few pieces of software actually qualify for this. Or does this include networks that utilize central tracking services (like BitTorrent) or superhubs (like Limewire)? How about master servers that facilitate peer awareness and communication? Or just master servers in general that regard all clients as peers?
It seems like "P2P" is just a buzzword to these people, and that's likely to manifest in the court's interpretation of the laws (should any be passed). Likely, "P2P" will be legally interpreted as "file sharing", and include everything from Windows networking and FTP through BitTorrent.
Either way, I think our government has more important issues to deal with right now
I'm not as sure as you seem about this. Software that shares data without the user's explicit awareness could (minimally) introduce or expose vulnerabilities and (potentially) exploit them (given the general underground nature of some of this software). This results in users' systems being, in general, less locked down and less secure. For example, if a plain-text password file is shared, even the most secure user system could fall. Mandating user awareness and providing authorities with a legal avenue to pursue against more illicit software (like IE toolbar extensions) could certainly score a blow towards creating a more secure computing space.
With the US failing utterly in cyber defense, the legal ability to pursue this end may actually end up being pretty damned important.
Even if the control machines loose DNS resolution, might not the botnet be configured to fall back to connecting to well known IP addresses to accept commands? Seems like the logical thing to do if you are creating an illegal network...
Well, here are a few thoughts:
Microsoft probably thoroughly reverse-engineered the botnet client code prior to seeking the court's assistance. Therefore, they have a very good understanding of the botnet's control algorithms. They probably derived those domain names and took those specific measures in response to their understanding of those algorithms.
For a botnet, hard-coding IP addresses could be riskier than DNS names. If someone is trying to shut you down, it's easier on their part to pick a specific set of IP addresses and (with cooperation of their respective ISPs) get them shut down or (without said cooperation) firewalled.
For a botnet, it's much faster and easier to change your IP address and update a DNS entry, leaving the botnet code alone. If you have to change those hard-coded addresses, you have to not only rebuild and push new code, but update every infected system (and any network admin on a legit controlled network knows that there can be issues with this). With the DNS entry they have a central point to update.
I'd not be surprised if Microsoft chose this specific botnet because it had a vulnerability that was within the reach of a court to address
As others have pointed out, this teaches every other botnet author a lesson on what can be done. The problem ain't solved by a longshot, but maybe the Internet is safe for another night (cue Batman music).
It would be nice if, should it intend to pull the plug on OpenSolaris support, Oracle would do a GPL release of ZFS... or maybe the entire OpenSolaris operating system (kernel, userspace, etc.).
It seems like a huge waste to lose a huge resilient code base like that to obscurity. Plus, Linux is definitely one of Oracle's strategic technologies.
The removal of the copyright and authorship data contained in the pirated code was a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, thus providing a basis for suit for that action in violation of the JMRI license.
A part of me is laughing that the deservedly-derided DMCA actually ended up being a legal foundation for the violation:)
The summary says that it's not merely age discrimination, then goes on to say that they hire younger workers because they are cheaper, without bothering to account for experience. That is age discrimination.
That is not age discrimination. Younger workers are hired because they are cheaper, not because they are younger. If two people cost the same and the older of the two was better-qualified, but the younger was hired anyway, that is age discrimination. I can see why you would be confused, since younger people tend to also cost less.
Unfortunately, programming experience doesn't linearly scale with code quality. Eventually, the gain in code quality tapers off, and the more-experienced higher-salaried employee is not worth paying extra for. There are exceptions... some people are just phenomenal developers and are hard to replace... but this article is not about them.
Why not? They have over 20 years of experience dealing with bugs. For years, Slashdot has called for Microsoft to be more proactive hunting down bugs... and you complain when they are?
Also, flash is an additional layer for the processor to deal with beyond the browser engine itself, lending to extra exchanges of information between browser and flash plugin.
Um... no. Just because Flash is invoked from the browser and rendering within the browser's page doesn't mean that Flash is one layer abstracted from the processor. In fact, browsers (at least Firefox and Chrome) run Flash as a separate process (at least on Linux, which is all I have available at the moment). What this means is that Flash runs as a peer process to the browser... not an embedded runtime. Information exchanges are limited basically to user input (minimal) and graphical output (also pretty minimal relative to Flash's computation and rendering). Flash running within a browser should run roughly as well as Flash running outside of the browser.
Contrast this to Javascript; Javascript is run within an engine embedded in the browser, which means it shares it resources with the browser process. It is also linked intimately with the contents of the browser page, meaning that there's little purpose to outsource its work to another process when most of its work deals with the data stored in the browser. This is more what you are talking about.
Flash does its own thing; Javascript and HTML5 operate within a runtime and are abstracted (at least, initially) from the processor. Optimizations made by Chrome's V8 and Firefox's Tracemonkey engines are intended to bring HTML5/Javascript closer in-line to Flash's domain through various optimizations, but Flash still has the advantage. It's nothing special about Flash; rather, Flash just has the privilege of being detached from the browser, whereas HTML5 and Javascript are intimately integrated with it.
Just because there's an LGPL project supporting something doesn't mean that patents and licenses don't apply. For more information about this, read the FFMPEG FAQ.
Mozlla's concerns don't seem related at all to the implementation of the video. Rather, they're concerned about the licensing issues related to their usage of it. According to the article (and the summary, at that), the only reason H264 is even legally embeddable in current software is due to a free-to-viewer clause, and even that may permanently expire in 2010.
Currently, most of the web (Flash excluded) is free to generate. I can make an HTML document, or a tool to generate HTML documents, and render those HTML documents without paying or owing anybody anything. To legally generate H264 files, you must pay for a license. To build software that generates H264 files, the software company must pay for a license. And (possibly) after 2010, a viewer or viewer software may have to pay for a license to watch the content. These are some pretty huge issues to overcome.
It's like being only allowed to watch State-sponsored TV and government approved books in libraries, and then suddenly being allowed to experience the wealth of the world.
Yeah... it's not just like that. It's exactly that:)
4chan and the dark underbelly of the internet aside, I hope this gives people a taste of culture/information other than what's force-fed down their throats and see what they're missing out on.
The Internet is about way more than culture. It provides individual access to the sum wealth of human information. Good, bad, underbelly, culture... those are all subjective. That's the beauty of it. By providing the individual with the opportunity to access any information, but not requiring them to access any specific information, the Internet provides an individual with unprecedented potential. They can do exactly what they want with that potential, be it 4chan, China-like censorship, or full-fledged involvement in mainstream cultures.
Maybe many of the people in China love their country's protective hand. We'll never know until they can choose whether or not to have it.
You raise a good point with your analogy, but it's not quite so apt. While you are correct in analyzing this as a cost-benefit ratio, you make the mistake of ignoring the fact that third-parties already have invested most or all of the cost, and have made their services available to anyone for free! The current state of things is such that:
Due to the current suites of tools available, the cost-benefit is extremely low. This change increases the accuracy of the results and decreases the work necessary for existing sites to perform. They're already performing, mind you... it's just less load on theirs and Blizzard's servers now.
I would wager that the largest impact this change has is:
How these third-party sites gain their data, and
The cost of entry for new third-party sites
From the user's point of view, things will likely remain relatively constant.
While you are trained in Computer Science and are actively applying Computer Science to your job, you are not working as a Computer Scientist.
You are working as a network administrator. Like any field, network administration benefits from knowledge of other fields. In your case, you are using your knowledge and training in Computer Science, Mathematics, and (I'm sure) other fields to your current problem, and it's better off for it. You are practically applying scientific fields.
Most of the work I did while working on my Computer Science degree was on textbook and paper. Computers were occasionally used for mock-ups and proofs of concept, but most of the lessons that I learned were pure theory. Think about that... you don't need computers to practice Computer Science (and, indeed, the early forefathers of the field didn't even have them).
Sadly, the majority of CS majors end up getting jobs in IT, network administration, etc. This because there are way more jobs building things than there are researching them. CS people are often sought out for those jobs because their CS training is very applicable to the work (as you so clearly demonstrated). However, don't fool yourself. Even if your job title reads "Computer Scientist", most corporations see that as analogous to "guy who knows how to use a computer". Computer Science is all about the theory.
If you're reading this as some sort of elitism, you're reading it incorrectly. It's an important technical distinction, and one that is becoming more apparent as the field matures and Computer Science ascends towards the HTW just as Information Technology drifts towards Engineering.
Personally, I think people should pay the artists for their work, they should pay the recording industry for their work, and if the music isn't worth 99 cents to them, they shouldn't get the music.
So let me begin with: Opinion Alert! The following post is pure speculation and opinion, but done with the utmost sincerity!
I agree with your point, but I'd like to note something that I believe to be true, namely that the only reason we can pay 99 cents for a movie is due to an industry adaptation that has been motivated in a large part by that very piracy. Prior to digital piracy pioneers like Napster, getting a single good song was not really an option. You had to buy an entire pricey CD. Downloading music legally also wasn't an option; you had to go to a store. The music industry created and funded the marketing, hype, publicity, content, and talent necessary to successfully Make Us Want Something, then failed to provide it at any reasonable price.
It is my belief that piracy is many things, among them a consumer movement in reaction to an unnaturally-imbalanced industry. Pirated music has, over the last fifteen years, frequently been a better product than that produced by the music industry. It was downloadable, accessible, and lacked both DRM and license management shenanigans. It was a pure and simple solution to an otherwise unsolvable problem: a consumer movement!
Now, that doesn't make it right or ethical, but it doesn't make it evil either. The recording industry dragged their heels and did their very best (as they still are) to hinder the simple and fair distribution of their product, when that was exactly what consumers wanted. In response, consumers resorted to illegal activity, and most are better off for it.
The Napster of the past is what recording industries should have established years prior. A very significant impetus behind the current state of consumer-oriented legal music sharing like iTunes was (and is) perceived losses due to the piracy front. And look what we have now... split albums, downloadable content, DRM-free songs... It's done its share of good and then some. Piracy is forcing a hand that is using its own entrenched power to remain still, and the world is better for it.
Many people out there have pirated a significant share of music, and bought a significant amount as well. As legal avenues open (Amazon MP3 is great!), their usage of piracy has definitely declined. Nobody feels good about depriving someone of their just due, but it isn't always a bad thing to do so. Sometimes an illegal act is the only counterweight that one can provide.
Wouldn't this defeat the purpose of anonymization? I mean, the newspaper columnist would be the logical target for who to pursue after something finds its way through this channel. I guess the newspaper itself would have to print the article on the subject anonymously, which doesn't help it much more than printing the leak directly under the same conditions, because they could still be traced (after all, they wrote the article on it) by their subjects. I guess the real benefit would be making sure it's etched in stone, post-apocalypse.
It's a good question, and important that people understand it, so here goes. The scenario is as follows:
A newspaper posts a generic link, something like "If you know of any local scandals, post them anonymously at https://www.wikileaks.com/submit/newspaper-name/!"
Someone with a local scandal does just that: they sign into Wikileaks at the aforementioned URL and post their information
Wikileaks now has the local scandal, and it is associated with the newspaper that published the leak (via the newspaper-name component of the URL)
Wikileaks contacts the newspaper, and gives just them access to the information for two weeks (the exclusivity is a reward for attracting the information via their link)
Newspaper publishes the information, scandal, oh noes!
Two weeks later, Wikileaks releases the information publicly on their site
Now, specifically regarding your question... it would not defeat the purpose of anonymous submission. The newspaper columnist knows nothing about the person who actually submitted the information. The columnist only knows the information through Wikileaks. The newspaper would print an article by a columnist attributing the information to an anonymous source. The columnist is not anonymous - but they're not the one who leaked the information, so it's all good.
It's actually a pretty cool idea, but I am worried about the fire it would draw from the Powers That Be regarding Wikileaks. Enough power (read: governments) can trace and stop it, and maybe de-anonymize the incoming stream with enough resources. Wikileaks must either become recognized as an asset or ride below that threshold.
For your boss to try to dictate how you work like this is a form of micromanagement which demonstrates distrust.
Exactly. I don't think it's unreasonable for the boss to trust his employees to know which type of person they are, and what type of environment is conducive to their performance.
Some of my best programming has been done "in the zone" with music playing over my headphones. Many factors contribute to which type of music I prefer on any given day, or whether I prefer any at all; it's very much subjective. What I can say is that it's very frustrating to be distracted, and it's very frustrating to write bad or sloppy code. My environmental choices are absolutely chosen specifically to do the best job that I can, and music is often an influential factor in this.
The entire mentality that:
You don't know what's best for you,
Your boss does know what's best for you, and
You would operate against the interests of your company
... is offensive and demeaning to you, and if your boss doesn't stop screwing around with this absurdity, I side with the parent and recommend you look for a new job where you get the respect that you deserve.
What cannot be faked is what ones peers and friends agree upon regarding who an individual really is, and that the human in wuestion really is the person they agree it is. If all the friends and neighbors agree you really are Bob, then you're Bob regardless of what you do, or what data is stored in electronic systems. This is an unwieldy (nearly impossible) metric for access to a bar, authentication for into services, permission to drive, or asserting your ID at the bank to get your money. However, at its heart, community consistency could be the unalterable root from which all the other identification methods would rely upon. Basically one can create all kinds of electronic, physical, and technology based systems that will need to get reset when they are faked or forged or incorrect. To rely on other electronic systems for that reset is flawed and misses the essential nature of how people understand and use interpersonal identity.
I disagree. Community relationships can be forged just as easily (if not easier) than biometrics in every sense.
First, you have to ask yourself "which community?" With modern transportation, Bob's community could easily span his state. With modern communication, Bob's community could span the entire world. Concepts of traditional associations and communities are in a state of constant flux. To Bob's closest friends, he may be a blob of text. It's entirely possible that Bob goes throughout life without anybody ever truly knowing him. And even if he develops close relationships, they may be difficult to extract and correlate enough to develop any serious sense of him. Just go read an obituary... those are a person's closest contacts giving their most sincere impressions of that person. Do you feel like you really know him after reading one? Is it really likely that they do?
Then, you have to ask yourself "what consistency?" To his World of Warcraft pals he may be a secret agent astronaut millionaire. To his Facebook friends, he may seem a fun, insightful guy who loves to play sports. To his parents, whom he visits on holidays, he might be a successful banker. To his landlord, he might be a deadbeat who lost his banking job in the recession. All of these personas are maintainable and verifiable in the context of his community relationships.
So bring forgery into account. Online, forgery is easy, as long as there's internal consistency with his community. In person is more difficult, but there are physical look-alikes and actors who could pull it off. Someone claiming to be Bob could completely redefine his community impression with enough determination. Point is, someone can easily pretend to be Bob, with or without his blessing, in any of his community relationships if they devote enough time and circumstance works in their favor.
So what really is a person's identity? It's not community relationships any more than it's biometrics. All of those are third-person impressions of an organism, and they only certify identity through temporal and physical correlation of their data. The only physical identity that is Bob is his brain, which (for now) cannot be duplicated and (spiritually) will never be (if that's the kind of thing you believe in). Even then, Bob can change in an instant with brain trauma... a complete rewiring!... but it's still Bob, from society's (and the law's) point of view.
His identity is not absolutely verifiable for the same reason it's unique... it resides in a medium that is neither fully understood nor fully expressible. For all practical purposes, Bob will remain the sum of his parts, both socially and biometrically. Our ability to gauge Bob, like our ability to impersonate him, is based squarely on our perceptive capabilities and our time investment, and biometrics (especially retinal scans and DNA prototyping) are pretty damned capable.
Slashdot Mirror
This thread is bad and you should feel bad!
Ortiz admits that prior to introducing the bill he did not research salt's role in food chemistry, its effect on flavor or his bill's ramifications for the restaurant industry. He tells me he was prompted to introduce the bill because his father used salt excessively for many years, developed high blood pressure and had a heart attack.
Emphasis mine. According to this statement, Oritz says that he did not consider that banning salt in restaurants would affect the flavor of the foods served in those restaurants. It isn't possible for this to be true. He's lying through his teeth.
“I think salt should be banned in restaurants. I ask if a dish has salt in it, and if I does, I get something else that doesn’t have salt,” Ortiz tells me, before going on to say that he has eaten, and expects he will continue to eat, among other things, ham, cheese and bread in restaurants, all of which contain salt.
So what he's saying is that he has found a way to satisfy his desire not to have salt in foods that works within the current set of rights and regulations. He doesn't want salt, and he doesn't get salt.
Perfect! It looks like he has found a workable solution to his personal conviction that salt is bad. I would expect other grown adults to be fully capable of arriving at their own opinions of the substance, and, if similar, take similar steps. Welcome to America ... where you can make your own lifestyle work for you without legislating that everyone else must adopt it.
Yes, these people should be punished. But I agree with Spain's prison/court system when they say that prison is for violent crime.
Punishment aside, prison (in this sense) is a method of restricting disruptive peoples' access to society, thus eliminating their ability to disrupt society. These people are certainly disruptive to society. Your argument, therefore, must be that there is a more appropriate method to restrict their access to society besides imprisonment. I agree, in theory, since it is via electronic access, rather than physical access, that they have proven themselves a threat. If you can effectively deny their electronic access to society, then perhaps that is a viable solution. Imprisonment is a nice failsafe, though: in prison, their life is controlled, and thus their electronic access is controlled.
However, don't forget that while their vector is electronic, they have demonstrated themselves to be willing of crossing the mental threshold and engaging in harmful activities. Don't pretend that just because their crime is electronic that the impacts of this crime are any less real. They have stolen identities, causing financial damage to institutions and multifaceted damage to those individuals. Financial damage costs money to recover from. That money could be distributed amongst the populous (via fines, increased service rates, etc.), or burdened upon a few unlucky individuals (potentially ruining their lives), but there is a cost. Their botnet compromised millions of machines (if even one in every thousand crashed because of them, this is still substantial data and time loss), provided platforms for cyber-attacks, and burdened millions with spam messages. At a scale of 13 million machines, I wouldn't be surprised if some lives were lost.
I am assuming here that they're not stupid. They were perfectly aware of all of this. They knew the damage, pain, and mayhem that their actions were causing on a widespread level, and yet they went ahead and performed them. They have demonstrated that they are capable of inflicting significant harm to others for personal gain. While their current vector was electronic, I can understand why society (Spanish and as a whole) might want someone who has demonstrated this will to be removed from it.
I know I will be modded to Oblivion. But thanks I have Mono, open source, Cross platform and .Net Framework (and IMO better than Java). I don't have to muck around with my applications to be compatible with other OS.
I'm not going to mod you, but I will respond. Cross-platform initiatives like Mono and Java take a shot at addressing the realm that Crossover handles, but they are far from a working or complete solution. Here's why:
Many applications - specifically, many of the ones that are important enough to make a person choose an operating system - are not written in Mono or Java. The reason why is worthy of discussion, but that doesn't affect the fact that this is the case. These applications include the obvious set: the Microsoft Office suite, Photoshop, AutoCAD, ArcGIS, mainstream games, et cetera. Linux as a platform could be desired (by the users) or applied to increase productivity, but the criticality of these applications prohibits it from being even considered.
Now, Windows virtualization has done wonders for allowing such software to be usable in a Linux environment, but there are both integration and performance issues with that solution. Furthermore, it can be difficult for a nth-degree-removed user to justify to management why they still need a Windows license but want to go out of their way not to run Windows.
On the other side, even cross-platform languages like Mono and Java still can have platform dependencies written into them. Many applications need or use functionality beyond that which is provided in the .NET Runtime API and resort to native interface calls. Poor programming can result in hard-coded filesystem specifics (like path separators). Cross-platform-aware vendors may write Windows- and Linux-specific parts of their larger codebase, but others will not. Point being, an application is not cross-platform merely on virtue of being written in a cross-platform language.
Be it issues with language or issues with general compatibility, there is a need to run Windows applications in a Linux environment that is not really solvable without a compatibility layer like Crossover. Until (if ever) vendors actually make a point of releasing cross-platform builds (or platform-specific builds for all mainstream platforms), Crossover provides a low-cost functional solution to a real user and industry need, and with it removes a roadblock that can, for many, completely disqualify non-Windows operating systems as a platform choice.
Google searches have revealed nothing helpful (maybe I should Bing it... :) so I was hoping someone with more technical expertise on Slashdot could offer a suggestion.
Sorry, I can't help myself :) And now, in the interest of contributing positively (as opposed to not at all):
I'm assuming that the bottleneck is either network- or disk-bound (I wouldn't think the CPU could be unusably stressed supporting either of the transfer rates of the aforementioned devices). If it is disk-bound, you may benefit by working off of a different disk and using a nightly script to resynchronize your filesystems. Of course, put the shared folder that he accesses on the other disk ... not your main disk ... so you can read your OS's files in peace. If you don't have two disks available, buy a $100 external USB disk or something.
If you have some resources available, you can take the alternative path of turning your machine into the file server. Acquire a file server machine, configure it with your IP address and shares, copy your data over to it, and fire up your designer machine with a different IP address. Of course, this would make it so you now have to share those resources with the other guy, but perhaps that implicit throttling will highlight the need for the real solution: a file server.
Best of luck.
It really depends. On a true manual transmission, you are correct. You are physically detaching the engine from the wheels when you pop the shifter into neutral. However, on automatic transmissions, it gets more complicated. Depending on the car (and I'm not sure where Toyota's systems fit in), the user's information is passed to the transmission through any number of methods. Some use mechanical valves and pressure to choose a gear (in which case, you are correct), while most modern-day transmissions have computers to do it.
Since computers now handle the operations necessary to convey choices made by the driver to the transmission, it's entirely possible that the computers in the car could cause fail to enter neutral even when the car is clearly placed there. This isn't inherently a bad thing ... the computers use information from sensors and performance to choose optimal times to shift, maximizing efficiency and minimizing engine wear. These algorithms are very important, and have been responsible for some of the complex hybrid car systems and efficiency and reliability improvements that we enjoy. They just need to be very fault-tolerant.
My guess (and I'm talking out of my arse here) is that a software bug prevented the TCU from receiving commands. Complex embedded systems operate by transmitting asynchronous messages to each other via a message bus. Critical systems needs (i.e., when I hit the brake pedal, you must engage the break unit within 1ms) are met by attaching priorities to those messages, allowing the message bus to drop low-priority messages in favor of higher-priority ones when it is overwhelmed. I'd not be surprised if many of Toyota's systems shared the same message bus (at least, their accelerator and transmission control systems), and that the sudden acceleration issue is due to a software bug either taking down the message bus or flooding it with a super-high-priority message, causing it to discard lesser messages like transmission controls and power controls. I'm not speaking with any authority here, but if I was to engage in this challenge, that's the first place I'd look.
What would, in my opinion, be truly interesting is if this printer device can be used with beef cells to produce artificial steaks (etc.). This could potentially remove the agricultural overhead of growing the meat, while reducing prices, increasing availability, dissolving concerns of inhumanity, and (possibly) skittering past some of the vegetarian reservations. Furthermore, there's no integration issues trying to put the product back into a live and functioning body!
First of all, I find it hard to believe that it isn't already illegal to surreptitiously install software on someone's computer. And even more illegal to install software that steals data.
I think the issue here (and it's legit, in my opinion) is the deliberate conscious awareness of the types of data being made available. I'm sure somewhere in EULAs and/or liability waivers, most software is protected legally. The issue that needs addressing is the general ineffectiveness of EULA-style notification relative to user awareness. Just because the information is available doesn't mean that it is effectively disclosed.
Second, if that's not already illegal, why are they making a law that only targets one specific type of software?
Either the entire plan is utterly ignorant or this is a "foot in the door" to outlaw P2P.
It brings to mind exactly what they mean by "P2P". Do they mean decentralized autonomously-forming peer networks? Because surprisingly few pieces of software actually qualify for this. Or does this include networks that utilize central tracking services (like BitTorrent) or superhubs (like Limewire)? How about master servers that facilitate peer awareness and communication? Or just master servers in general that regard all clients as peers?
It seems like "P2P" is just a buzzword to these people, and that's likely to manifest in the court's interpretation of the laws (should any be passed). Likely, "P2P" will be legally interpreted as "file sharing", and include everything from Windows networking and FTP through BitTorrent.
Either way, I think our government has more important issues to deal with right now
I'm not as sure as you seem about this. Software that shares data without the user's explicit awareness could (minimally) introduce or expose vulnerabilities and (potentially) exploit them (given the general underground nature of some of this software). This results in users' systems being, in general, less locked down and less secure. For example, if a plain-text password file is shared, even the most secure user system could fall. Mandating user awareness and providing authorities with a legal avenue to pursue against more illicit software (like IE toolbar extensions) could certainly score a blow towards creating a more secure computing space.
With the US failing utterly in cyber defense, the legal ability to pursue this end may actually end up being pretty damned important.
Even if the control machines loose DNS resolution, might not the botnet be configured to fall back to connecting to well known IP addresses to accept commands? Seems like the logical thing to do if you are creating an illegal network...
Well, here are a few thoughts:
As others have pointed out, this teaches every other botnet author a lesson on what can be done. The problem ain't solved by a longshot, but maybe the Internet is safe for another night (cue Batman music).
It seems like a huge waste to lose a huge resilient code base like that to obscurity. Plus, Linux is definitely one of Oracle's strategic technologies.
The removal of the copyright and authorship data contained in the pirated code was a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, thus providing a basis for suit for that action in violation of the JMRI license.
A part of me is laughing that the deservedly-derided DMCA actually ended up being a legal foundation for the violation :)
The summary says that it's not merely age discrimination, then goes on to say that they hire younger workers because they are cheaper, without bothering to account for experience. That is age discrimination.
That is not age discrimination. Younger workers are hired because they are cheaper, not because they are younger. If two people cost the same and the older of the two was better-qualified, but the younger was hired anyway, that is age discrimination. I can see why you would be confused, since younger people tend to also cost less.
Unfortunately, programming experience doesn't linearly scale with code quality. Eventually, the gain in code quality tapers off, and the more-experienced higher-salaried employee is not worth paying extra for. There are exceptions ... some people are just phenomenal developers and are hard to replace ... but this article is not about them.
Why not? They have over 20 years of experience dealing with bugs. For years, Slashdot has called for Microsoft to be more proactive hunting down bugs ... and you complain when they are?
Also, flash is an additional layer for the processor to deal with beyond the browser engine itself, lending to extra exchanges of information between browser and flash plugin.
Um ... no. Just because Flash is invoked from the browser and rendering within the browser's page doesn't mean that Flash is one layer abstracted from the processor. In fact, browsers (at least Firefox and Chrome) run Flash as a separate process (at least on Linux, which is all I have available at the moment). What this means is that Flash runs as a peer process to the browser ... not an embedded runtime. Information exchanges are limited basically to user input (minimal) and graphical output (also pretty minimal relative to Flash's computation and rendering). Flash running within a browser should run roughly as well as Flash running outside of the browser.
Contrast this to Javascript; Javascript is run within an engine embedded in the browser, which means it shares it resources with the browser process. It is also linked intimately with the contents of the browser page, meaning that there's little purpose to outsource its work to another process when most of its work deals with the data stored in the browser. This is more what you are talking about.
Flash does its own thing; Javascript and HTML5 operate within a runtime and are abstracted (at least, initially) from the processor. Optimizations made by Chrome's V8 and Firefox's Tracemonkey engines are intended to bring HTML5/Javascript closer in-line to Flash's domain through various optimizations, but Flash still has the advantage. It's nothing special about Flash; rather, Flash just has the privilege of being detached from the browser, whereas HTML5 and Javascript are intimately integrated with it.
Mozlla's concerns don't seem related at all to the implementation of the video. Rather, they're concerned about the licensing issues related to their usage of it. According to the article (and the summary, at that), the only reason H264 is even legally embeddable in current software is due to a free-to-viewer clause, and even that may permanently expire in 2010.
Currently, most of the web (Flash excluded) is free to generate. I can make an HTML document, or a tool to generate HTML documents, and render those HTML documents without paying or owing anybody anything. To legally generate H264 files, you must pay for a license. To build software that generates H264 files, the software company must pay for a license. And (possibly) after 2010, a viewer or viewer software may have to pay for a license to watch the content. These are some pretty huge issues to overcome.
It's like being only allowed to watch State-sponsored TV and government approved books in libraries, and then suddenly being allowed to experience the wealth of the world.
Yeah ... it's not just like that. It's exactly that :)
4chan and the dark underbelly of the internet aside, I hope this gives people a taste of culture/information other than what's force-fed down their throats and see what they're missing out on.
The Internet is about way more than culture. It provides individual access to the sum wealth of human information. Good, bad, underbelly, culture ... those are all subjective. That's the beauty of it. By providing the individual with the opportunity to access any information, but not requiring them to access any specific information, the Internet provides an individual with unprecedented potential. They can do exactly what they want with that potential, be it 4chan, China-like censorship, or full-fledged involvement in mainstream cultures.
Maybe many of the people in China love their country's protective hand. We'll never know until they can choose whether or not to have it.
When it as a nation performs attacks on Google's servers...
Due to the current suites of tools available, the cost-benefit is extremely low. This change increases the accuracy of the results and decreases the work necessary for existing sites to perform. They're already performing, mind you ... it's just less load on theirs and Blizzard's servers now.
I would wager that the largest impact this change has is:
From the user's point of view, things will likely remain relatively constant.
You are working as a network administrator. Like any field, network administration benefits from knowledge of other fields. In your case, you are using your knowledge and training in Computer Science, Mathematics, and (I'm sure) other fields to your current problem, and it's better off for it. You are practically applying scientific fields.
Most of the work I did while working on my Computer Science degree was on textbook and paper. Computers were occasionally used for mock-ups and proofs of concept, but most of the lessons that I learned were pure theory. Think about that ... you don't need computers to practice Computer Science (and, indeed, the early forefathers of the field didn't even have them).
Sadly, the majority of CS majors end up getting jobs in IT, network administration, etc. This because there are way more jobs building things than there are researching them. CS people are often sought out for those jobs because their CS training is very applicable to the work (as you so clearly demonstrated). However, don't fool yourself. Even if your job title reads "Computer Scientist", most corporations see that as analogous to "guy who knows how to use a computer". Computer Science is all about the theory.
If you're reading this as some sort of elitism, you're reading it incorrectly. It's an important technical distinction, and one that is becoming more apparent as the field matures and Computer Science ascends towards the HTW just as Information Technology drifts towards Engineering.
Personally, I think people should pay the artists for their work, they should pay the recording industry for their work, and if the music isn't worth 99 cents to them, they shouldn't get the music.
So let me begin with: Opinion Alert! The following post is pure speculation and opinion, but done with the utmost sincerity!
I agree with your point, but I'd like to note something that I believe to be true, namely that the only reason we can pay 99 cents for a movie is due to an industry adaptation that has been motivated in a large part by that very piracy. Prior to digital piracy pioneers like Napster, getting a single good song was not really an option. You had to buy an entire pricey CD. Downloading music legally also wasn't an option; you had to go to a store. The music industry created and funded the marketing, hype, publicity, content, and talent necessary to successfully Make Us Want Something, then failed to provide it at any reasonable price.
It is my belief that piracy is many things, among them a consumer movement in reaction to an unnaturally-imbalanced industry. Pirated music has, over the last fifteen years, frequently been a better product than that produced by the music industry. It was downloadable, accessible, and lacked both DRM and license management shenanigans. It was a pure and simple solution to an otherwise unsolvable problem: a consumer movement!
Now, that doesn't make it right or ethical, but it doesn't make it evil either. The recording industry dragged their heels and did their very best (as they still are) to hinder the simple and fair distribution of their product, when that was exactly what consumers wanted. In response, consumers resorted to illegal activity, and most are better off for it.
The Napster of the past is what recording industries should have established years prior. A very significant impetus behind the current state of consumer-oriented legal music sharing like iTunes was (and is) perceived losses due to the piracy front. And look what we have now ... split albums, downloadable content, DRM-free songs ... It's done its share of good and then some. Piracy is forcing a hand that is using its own entrenched power to remain still, and the world is better for it.
Many people out there have pirated a significant share of music, and bought a significant amount as well. As legal avenues open (Amazon MP3 is great!), their usage of piracy has definitely declined. Nobody feels good about depriving someone of their just due, but it isn't always a bad thing to do so. Sometimes an illegal act is the only counterweight that one can provide.
Quick correction: "Published the leak" should be "Published the URL that was used" (oops)
Wouldn't this defeat the purpose of anonymization? I mean, the newspaper columnist would be the logical target for who to pursue after something finds its way through this channel. I guess the newspaper itself would have to print the article on the subject anonymously, which doesn't help it much more than printing the leak directly under the same conditions, because they could still be traced (after all, they wrote the article on it) by their subjects. I guess the real benefit would be making sure it's etched in stone, post-apocalypse.
It's a good question, and important that people understand it, so here goes. The scenario is as follows:
Now, specifically regarding your question ... it would not defeat the purpose of anonymous submission. The newspaper columnist knows nothing about the person who actually submitted the information. The columnist only knows the information through Wikileaks. The newspaper would print an article by a columnist attributing the information to an anonymous source. The columnist is not anonymous - but they're not the one who leaked the information, so it's all good.
It's actually a pretty cool idea, but I am worried about the fire it would draw from the Powers That Be regarding Wikileaks. Enough power (read: governments) can trace and stop it, and maybe de-anonymize the incoming stream with enough resources. Wikileaks must either become recognized as an asset or ride below that threshold.
For your boss to try to dictate how you work like this is a form of micromanagement which demonstrates distrust.
Exactly. I don't think it's unreasonable for the boss to trust his employees to know which type of person they are, and what type of environment is conducive to their performance.
Some of my best programming has been done "in the zone" with music playing over my headphones. Many factors contribute to which type of music I prefer on any given day, or whether I prefer any at all; it's very much subjective. What I can say is that it's very frustrating to be distracted, and it's very frustrating to write bad or sloppy code. My environmental choices are absolutely chosen specifically to do the best job that I can, and music is often an influential factor in this.
The entire mentality that:
I'll bet your boss was listening to music when he came up with that poor excuse for an idea.
What cannot be faked is what ones peers and friends agree upon regarding who an individual really is, and that the human in wuestion really is the person they agree it is. If all the friends and neighbors agree you really are Bob, then you're Bob regardless of what you do, or what data is stored in electronic systems. This is an unwieldy (nearly impossible) metric for access to a bar, authentication for into services, permission to drive, or asserting your ID at the bank to get your money. However, at its heart, community consistency could be the unalterable root from which all the other identification methods would rely upon. Basically one can create all kinds of electronic, physical, and technology based systems that will need to get reset when they are faked or forged or incorrect. To rely on other electronic systems for that reset is flawed and misses the essential nature of how people understand and use interpersonal identity.
I disagree. Community relationships can be forged just as easily (if not easier) than biometrics in every sense. ... those are a person's closest contacts giving their most sincere impressions of that person. Do you feel like you really know him after reading one? Is it really likely that they do?
... a complete rewiring! ... but it's still Bob, from society's (and the law's) point of view.
... it resides in a medium that is neither fully understood nor fully expressible. For all practical purposes, Bob will remain the sum of his parts, both socially and biometrically. Our ability to gauge Bob, like our ability to impersonate him, is based squarely on our perceptive capabilities and our time investment, and biometrics (especially retinal scans and DNA prototyping) are pretty damned capable.
First, you have to ask yourself "which community?" With modern transportation, Bob's community could easily span his state. With modern communication, Bob's community could span the entire world. Concepts of traditional associations and communities are in a state of constant flux. To Bob's closest friends, he may be a blob of text. It's entirely possible that Bob goes throughout life without anybody ever truly knowing him. And even if he develops close relationships, they may be difficult to extract and correlate enough to develop any serious sense of him. Just go read an obituary
Then, you have to ask yourself "what consistency?" To his World of Warcraft pals he may be a secret agent astronaut millionaire. To his Facebook friends, he may seem a fun, insightful guy who loves to play sports. To his parents, whom he visits on holidays, he might be a successful banker. To his landlord, he might be a deadbeat who lost his banking job in the recession. All of these personas are maintainable and verifiable in the context of his community relationships.
So bring forgery into account. Online, forgery is easy, as long as there's internal consistency with his community. In person is more difficult, but there are physical look-alikes and actors who could pull it off. Someone claiming to be Bob could completely redefine his community impression with enough determination. Point is, someone can easily pretend to be Bob, with or without his blessing, in any of his community relationships if they devote enough time and circumstance works in their favor.
So what really is a person's identity? It's not community relationships any more than it's biometrics. All of those are third-person impressions of an organism, and they only certify identity through temporal and physical correlation of their data. The only physical identity that is Bob is his brain, which (for now) cannot be duplicated and (spiritually) will never be (if that's the kind of thing you believe in). Even then, Bob can change in an instant with brain trauma
His identity is not absolutely verifiable for the same reason it's unique