Hey, if he has a plausible reason, even if it doesn't put him in the best light, I'd love to hear it. But phony, PR fluff reasons are just insulting and go against the spirit of everything you just described. I mean, seriously, is "Matt" the only one in possession of the video? Is his ENTIRE path to Germany devoid of internet connections? Including the place he stayed until he leaves "the next day"?
Right, so let me get this straight, until I send a record-setting rocket into space, I can't criticize the claim that "some dude going to Germany" prevents the digitization of a video?
Neat, thanks for pointing that out. However, the acceleration is pitifully slow, even at the fastest setting, and holding ctrl makes the jumps too coarse.
What? Yes, they exist, so far not with much memory though. One was used in '04 to implement Shor's Algorithm to factor the integer 15 (or 2^4-1). I know, baby steps, but sometimes I forget the factors of 15:-/
Well, Penn and Teller make a point of avoiding calling people terms like "a fraud" specifically because it exposes them to (lame but costly) lawsuits. So, they call them "motherfuckers" and stuff instead.
Of course, this makes for an interesting paradox: right now, calling someone a "motherfucker" is fair game, even if the target does not infact fuck his or any mother. Why? Because people "know" that it's just an insult an not a factual claim. But if you make clear that EVERY time you call someone an asshole, you're saying it SPECIFICALLY as a substitute for the disallowed "fraud", why doesn't that count the same as if you specifically called them a fraud?
(Of course, in an ideal world, cases would be determined not by merit, but by the principle of "how can we punish the rich and powerful under the most believable pretense", right?)
What I care about is the thread-jacking. How should I put it... this is not an article about Linux, Ubuntu or GRUB.
Well, logically, "This isn't 'about' X, it's about Y" is an invalid argument, and in my experience, used exclusively by people who can't (or don't bother to) reconcile the contradictions in their beliefs. For example:
"You shouldn't shoot trespassers because that involves violence." "Fighting in a war involves violence too; should no one ever be a soldier?" "I'm not talking about soldiers, I'm talking about shooting trespassers."
Or, more Godwinesque (I forgot who said this):
"I won't let Jews in my university because a lot of them cheat." "A lot of non-Jews cheat too." "That's irrelevant. We're talking about Jews here."
When you appeal to a general principle as a justification, but selectively apply that principle (or not) only when it's convenient, those inconsistencies become relevant.
The OP was originally talking about how obvious, how common-sense it is to think "Okay, what's the severity of failure mode X? What can we do to mitigate X?" And how *stupid* it is not to consider such things. But then when a widely-lauded "user-friendly" Linux distro's programmers failed to do exactly this, well... then it's not so stupid of an oversight, now, is it?
Yes, it's a bit off-topic. But it's interesting to note how "obvious" it is to make these considerations for a database, and how they were completely overlooked on a distro that's supposed to be "easy" for newcomers. People gave me crap for criticizing the design of Ubuntu, and yet here this guy gets modded up for making my EXACT SAME CRITICISM, i.e., that no one sat down and said, "okay, if X goes wrong, how bad are the consequences? What can we do to minimize that?" The failure of GRUB locks you out of getting internet help or burning CDs with that computer, both of which are the main troubleshooting tools -- I'd say that's pretty severe. And yet it all could have been avoided if I had confined Ubuntu to a secondary hard drive, which I would have done had not GRUB been arrogantly "HIGHLY RECOMMENDED".
So, don't get upset when I say Ubuntu's designers didn't follow basic software design principles.
I'm not sure I understand what you're suggesting the NSA is doing. How would prediction markets allow you to have knowledge sooner than the stock market? Anyone that has an estimate of what will happen can *already* make money based on betting on this estimate, in the stock, option, and futures markets. The NSA would have no advantage over existing traders through use of prediction markets. Remember, the finacial markets are *already* prediciton markets in a sense.
Any Linux distro programmer that wants Linux to be more widely used should be asking "When bootloader has an error, what's the maximum damage that can occur? What can we do to minimize the impact?" Frankly, there is no reason at all that one "HIGHLY RECOMMENDED" option should be able to lock a user out of his box, including internet connection and CD burner (the tools he'll need to get help) when he burned all the recommended CDs already. That's an incredible disaster!
I'm shocked to think Ubuntu's designers HIGHLY RECOMMEND you to overwrite the MBR when it's not even necessary. I don't know how many test installs they did, but I'm thinking closer to "1" than "100".
The military people can already make predictions. They need others to make predictions too.
Exactly. Coincidentally, this was the reasoning behind DARPA's proposed prediction market, which would harness the "wisdom of crowds" to quantify probabilities of events. It got canceled, like all good ideas, because it offended the wrong people.
No, censorship is when any person with any kind of authority modifies a work for ethical, moral, or political reasons. Wal-mart has authority over what they sell and the music produces have authority over what they sell, so edited copies of records are censored. Therefore, the music companies and the retailer are in the practice of censorship.
Even by that (contrived) definition, this isn't censorship. They're doing it for business reasons: to keep people coming to the store. They (in their estimation) gain more $ by keeping the shelves "clean" than they lose.
Business reasons are distinct from political, moral, and ethical reasons.
My proposal referred to *all* blue prints and documentation. That doesn't just mean "how nuclear power plants work". It means all entrances and exit, floor layouts, fences, delivery points, supply arrival times, etc.
Actually, I'm interested in hearing from the IT security experts here. (Which is, what, 30% of/.ers?;-] )
Based on the same idea about rejecting "security by obscurity", would you advocate publishing on the internet, the complete blueprints and documentation of every nuclear plant in the US, hiding only private keys and passwords for access? Why or why not? How much should be freely available?
But his excuse that "All I did was erase files or registry keys." sounds like a false pretense.
Yeah, why don't we try this with encryption?
"Hey, *I* didn't encrypt my data. I just performed a reversible transformation on it. It's not *my* fault if you're a fuckin' slowpoke at factoring semiprimes."
Thank you again for your reply, which was helpful in discussing the issues I brought up.
I think the parallel between spamming and romantic advances carries over in other ways: there are men who get dates despite acting in contravention of your rules. They do so, because it's successful often enough. It's successful often enough, because enough women are not operating under the opt-in/opt-out understanding that you are. Why not? Why can't we all come to an understanding for clearer "rules of engagement"?
And,
(And probably because I want to avoid it, due to anxiety.)
I would say more than "probably". Not to insult you -- I'm the same way. That was how I came to the realization that my mentalities on dating and spam were connected.
Thanks for your reply, but you anticipated the wrong trap.
What do you think about dating? Should guys only ask out/hit on those girls who have explicitly announced that they're "opting in" to such requests? Should girls who accept dates despite not having made such an announcement, be punished somehow, just as people propose punishments for those who buy things advertised in spam, or feed animals? (cue joke about "feeding the trolls")
Should there be a "do not hit on" list, such that anyone else is fair game?
Lest you think I'm giving a contrived analogy, I really do think that one's mentality about one of the cases affects the other.
It is still unsolicited e-mail. You may think that there's something I really, really want.
Do you believe that in general (going beyond email here) it is wrong to solicit a non-free good or service to someone who has not explicitly invited that kind of offer?
And is there any clear way to ask that question with only one negative?
Well, can you explain how Coca-Cola isolates the effect of any one campaign (billboards, one specific slogan, sponsorship of a racetrack, etc.) on their sales and brand recognition?
Or were you saying that you understand how quantitative marketing is, after most of the 20th century?
What's going on? My theory is that both sides (that means the consumer too) have gotten better lawyers to find some loophole that lets them weasel out of an agreement. So now, the only way anyone will offer a services is if they have a fallback of "oh, it means whatever we want". They might as well, because it will mean whatever a court says it means.
The old joke about Russia was "we pretend to work, they pretend to pay us". Here, it's, "we pretend to agree to it, they pretend it will be enforced."
I first wanted to blame lack of competition, but you have to realize, the overly-broad, extremely-detailed contract persists even in areas where there is more than enough competition, like internet portal registration.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, if he has a plausible reason, even if it doesn't put him in the best light, I'd love to hear it. But phony, PR fluff reasons are just insulting and go against the spirit of everything you just described. I mean, seriously, is "Matt" the only one in possession of the video? Is his ENTIRE path to Germany devoid of internet connections? Including the place he stayed until he leaves "the next day"?
Right, so let me get this straight, until I send a record-setting rocket into space, I can't criticize the claim that "some dude going to Germany" prevents the digitization of a video?
You can't make this stuff up, folks.
Translation: Let's see if we can stall on releasing the video long enough for the bad publicity to blow over and everyone forgets about it.
Neat, thanks for pointing that out. However, the acceleration is pitifully slow, even at the fastest setting, and holding ctrl makes the jumps too coarse.
What? Yes, they exist, so far not with much memory though. One was used in '04 to implement Shor's Algorithm to factor the integer 15 (or 2^4-1). I know, baby steps, but sometimes I forget the factors of 15 :-/
Well, Penn and Teller make a point of avoiding calling people terms like "a fraud" specifically because it exposes them to (lame but costly) lawsuits. So, they call them "motherfuckers" and stuff instead.
Of course, this makes for an interesting paradox: right now, calling someone a "motherfucker" is fair game, even if the target does not infact fuck his or any mother. Why? Because people "know" that it's just an insult an not a factual claim. But if you make clear that EVERY time you call someone an asshole, you're saying it SPECIFICALLY as a substitute for the disallowed "fraud", why doesn't that count the same as if you specifically called them a fraud?
(Of course, in an ideal world, cases would be determined not by merit, but by the principle of "how can we punish the rich and powerful under the most believable pretense", right?)
What I care about is the thread-jacking. How should I put it... this is not an article about Linux, Ubuntu or GRUB.
... then it's not so stupid of an oversight, now, is it?
Well, logically, "This isn't 'about' X, it's about Y" is an invalid argument, and in my experience, used exclusively by people who can't (or don't bother to) reconcile the contradictions in their beliefs. For example:
"You shouldn't shoot trespassers because that involves violence."
"Fighting in a war involves violence too; should no one ever be a soldier?"
"I'm not talking about soldiers, I'm talking about shooting trespassers."
Or, more Godwinesque (I forgot who said this):
"I won't let Jews in my university because a lot of them cheat."
"A lot of non-Jews cheat too."
"That's irrelevant. We're talking about Jews here."
When you appeal to a general principle as a justification, but selectively apply that principle (or not) only when it's convenient, those inconsistencies become relevant.
The OP was originally talking about how obvious, how common-sense it is to think "Okay, what's the severity of failure mode X? What can we do to mitigate X?" And how *stupid* it is not to consider such things. But then when a widely-lauded "user-friendly" Linux distro's programmers failed to do exactly this, well
Yes, it's a bit off-topic. But it's interesting to note how "obvious" it is to make these considerations for a database, and how they were completely overlooked on a distro that's supposed to be "easy" for newcomers. People gave me crap for criticizing the design of Ubuntu, and yet here this guy gets modded up for making my EXACT SAME CRITICISM, i.e., that no one sat down and said, "okay, if X goes wrong, how bad are the consequences? What can we do to minimize that?" The failure of GRUB locks you out of getting internet help or burning CDs with that computer, both of which are the main troubleshooting tools -- I'd say that's pretty severe. And yet it all could have been avoided if I had confined Ubuntu to a secondary hard drive, which I would have done had not GRUB been arrogantly "HIGHLY RECOMMENDED".
So, don't get upset when I say Ubuntu's designers didn't follow basic software design principles.
I'm not sure I understand what you're suggesting the NSA is doing. How would prediction markets allow you to have knowledge sooner than the stock market? Anyone that has an estimate of what will happen can *already* make money based on betting on this estimate, in the stock, option, and futures markets. The NSA would have no advantage over existing traders through use of prediction markets. Remember, the finacial markets are *already* prediciton markets in a sense.
Any Linux distro programmer that wants Linux to be more widely used should be asking "When bootloader has an error, what's the maximum damage that can occur? What can we do to minimize the impact?" Frankly, there is no reason at all that one "HIGHLY RECOMMENDED" option should be able to lock a user out of his box, including internet connection and CD burner (the tools he'll need to get help) when he burned all the recommended CDs already. That's an incredible disaster!
I'm shocked to think Ubuntu's designers HIGHLY RECOMMEND you to overwrite the MBR when it's not even necessary. I don't know how many test installs they did, but I'm thinking closer to "1" than "100".
The military people can already make predictions. They need others to make predictions too.
Exactly. Coincidentally, this was the reasoning behind DARPA's proposed prediction market, which would harness the "wisdom of crowds" to quantify probabilities of events. It got canceled, like all good ideas, because it offended the wrong people.
No, censorship is when any person with any kind of authority modifies a work for ethical, moral, or political reasons. Wal-mart has authority over what they sell and the music produces have authority over what they sell, so edited copies of records are censored. Therefore, the music companies and the retailer are in the practice of censorship.
Even by that (contrived) definition, this isn't censorship. They're doing it for business reasons: to keep people coming to the store. They (in their estimation) gain more $ by keeping the shelves "clean" than they lose.
Business reasons are distinct from political, moral, and ethical reasons.
My proposal referred to *all* blue prints and documentation. That doesn't just mean "how nuclear power plants work". It means all entrances and exit, floor layouts, fences, delivery points, supply arrival times, etc.
So where I can I download that?
Actually, I'm interested in hearing from the IT security experts here. (Which is, what, 30% of /.ers? ;-] )
Based on the same idea about rejecting "security by obscurity", would you advocate publishing on the internet, the complete blueprints and documentation of every nuclear plant in the US, hiding only private keys and passwords for access? Why or why not? How much should be freely available?
Don't mind if I do!
Transfer -> $10 -> From -> Savings -> To Checking
*Processing*
FLUSH!
Current balance: $10,842,239.12
"Holy #$*#($@! Withdraw! Withdraw!"
So what's the real-world analog of "WTF? This sucks, I'm canceling my subscription."
But his excuse that "All I did was erase files or registry keys." sounds like a false pretense.
Yeah, why don't we try this with encryption?
"Hey, *I* didn't encrypt my data. I just performed a reversible transformation on it. It's not *my* fault if you're a fuckin' slowpoke at factoring semiprimes."
(Yay! I got it right this time!)
Thank you again for your reply, which was helpful in discussing the issues I brought up.
I think the parallel between spamming and romantic advances carries over in other ways: there are men who get dates despite acting in contravention of your rules. They do so, because it's successful often enough. It's successful often enough, because enough women are not operating under the opt-in/opt-out understanding that you are. Why not? Why can't we all come to an understanding for clearer "rules of engagement"?
And,
(And probably because I want to avoid it, due to anxiety.)
I would say more than "probably". Not to insult you -- I'm the same way. That was how I came to the realization that my mentalities on dating and spam were connected.
Thanks for your reply, but you anticipated the wrong trap.
What do you think about dating? Should guys only ask out/hit on those girls who have explicitly announced that they're "opting in" to such requests? Should girls who accept dates despite not having made such an announcement, be punished somehow, just as people propose punishments for those who buy things advertised in spam, or feed animals? (cue joke about "feeding the trolls")
Should there be a "do not hit on" list, such that anyone else is fair game?
Lest you think I'm giving a contrived analogy, I really do think that one's mentality about one of the cases affects the other.
Here are mine:
:-/
1) Heart disease: You can't fit your lardass into an airplane seat.
2) Alzheimer's: Grandma asks the name of the TV show three times within ten minutes.
3) Arthritis: You're better at DDR than Guitar Hero.
It is still unsolicited e-mail. You may think that there's something I really, really want.
Do you believe that in general (going beyond email here) it is wrong to solicit a non-free good or service to someone who has not explicitly invited that kind of offer?
And is there any clear way to ask that question with only one negative?
Well, can you explain how Coca-Cola isolates the effect of any one campaign (billboards, one specific slogan, sponsorship of a racetrack, etc.) on their sales and brand recognition?
Or were you saying that you understand how quantitative marketing is, after most of the 20th century?
What's going on? My theory is that both sides (that means the consumer too) have gotten better lawyers to find some loophole that lets them weasel out of an agreement. So now, the only way anyone will offer a services is if they have a fallback of "oh, it means whatever we want". They might as well, because it will mean whatever a court says it means.
The old joke about Russia was "we pretend to work, they pretend to pay us". Here, it's, "we pretend to agree to it, they pretend it will be enforced."
I first wanted to blame lack of competition, but you have to realize, the overly-broad, extremely-detailed contract persists even in areas where there is more than enough competition, like internet portal registration.
Does anyone know if Europe has this problem?
Too bad we don't have uncorrupted, uncronyed leadership in the US with the courage and vision to diversify the energy portfolio
What do you call the energy futures market?
Well, from what I understand, people in Spain speak Spanish with a lithp. Hope that helps.