1. First, they come see companies, explaining that they need a patent war chest. Everybody is sincere and lawyers win.
2. Then they explain to some CEO/CFO/shareholders that they could use it to gain more money with it (or as a strategical weapon against small companies endangering their business). Lawyers win again and more other companies need to go to step 1.
You need a CEO with very strong feelings about patents to resist the temptation of using patents the wrong way.
I'm french, and of course I see as a joke the CNIL asking google to remove search result worldwide. But you should be aware that the world knows pretty well US laws for a simple reason : US laws tend to apply worldwide, in a large number of domains (not just technologies).
So, US people whining about losing "sovereignty" by having a french rule being applied worldwide is quite funny.
Back to the real subject of that ruling, what CNIL is trying to achieve here is the right to be forgotten. I know this can easily lead to censure, but with our privacy being invaded more and more every day, this may be an interesting point to address, worldwide.
Also, keep in mind that the CNIL is seen in France as the only pro-citizen entity against the companies which want to track you, spam you, and make your life a nightmare. They may have gone a wrong way here, but they're usually really helpful to protect citizens.
What often breaks are components on the power circuitry. Those components are large and easy to change. I recently had an ATX power supply fail ; all were normal components. Same for a microwave oven : a lot of good old big transistors/capacitors/resistors... and a microcontroller.
Just the opposite. Of course you won't fix a dead pixel. But very often, the failing part is a really dumb component.
In those frequent cases, it is very frustrating to throw away a wonderful piece of technology (the OLED screen) because a stupid capacitor or resistor that is broken somewhere (but you don't know which one, of course).
Well, it's not as if you could upgrade the software anyway. Hardware vendors are really to blame her. They do not provide software updates nor help you do a cyanogen build. I liked the android revolution at the beginning (and I really like my 2011 motorola flipout phone with a physical keyboard and android 2.1). But I quickly realized that those devices are getting harder to use in the long term than a PC with windows.
I'll likely buy a new android phone this year, but I hope the next one will be running a linux distro, because I really feel the need to re-take control on my devices. My 10+ years old Dell laptop (core 2 duo) with an SSD is running extremely fast even for today's usage. The plastic case is falling into pieces, the battery died years ago, but it is just an excellent laptop for web/e-mail/office usage (near a power plug).
Same here. really nice tablet, not that expensive (for the 8" version at least) and the screen is just incredible. And the galaxy tab S just got updated to android 5.
Beware : as for HD, you will get used to the screen sharpness very quickly and everything else you will see in the future will looks awful in comparison. And you'll have expensive tastes.
This whole systemd fiasco has caused a boatload of infighting, dissension among what should be cooperative members and teams, and it makes the process of administering Linux systems that much harder.
There is no need for a Microsoft conspirator to produce this outcome. The linux community, filled by zealots who *believe* in "Right Things" is completely responsible for its fate. Any change to core components will result in a mess.
Extremely good changes will cause little problems (only some whining) ; reasonably good changes with little drawbacks will cause havoc. And instead of working together with authors to improve shortcomings, they will just waste their time (as well as the time of the authors) to troll, because that's what they like : discussing about what is the Right Thing (that will get them go to Unix Paradise at the right of God RMS) instead of doing real stuff to move forward and improve the code base.
I'm no dev guru or Linux wizard, but even I know that swallowing stderr messages and mucking with long-time, well-established syslog formats is a Bad Thing.
Well, dev gurus and Linux wizard are not necessarily the persons to listen to when you want to make changes. They are guru of the *old* thing, so any change will lower their guruness (or need them some effort to keep them afloat).
All that said, I don't like Unity nor Gnome 3 and miss my old sawfish.
But back at the article, I love apt-get and dpkg. I like the fact that a.deb file can be done with simple tools like tar an ar. Apt-get has been the first system to manage dependencies and that was a huge thing. But I can understand when people complain that you need to type apt-get install and apt-cache search. And frankly, since snappy commands are pretty logical (install / search / update), we should adapt without any effort.
Snappy categorization in framework/apps/... is also interesting for security and for me, it really makes sense.
I bought a Motorola Flipout in early 2011 for about $200. I'm still using it. Ok, it's Android 2.1 and I don't have many new apps running on it (but the recent google photos works fine !)
But that's not a surprise that they're slowly gaining market share : most media only talk about iPhones and similar Samsung devices, because that's what carriers and retailers only want to show (and usually hide real prices behind a monthly plan).
Cheap smartphones have literally boomed here in France since in 2012 a new carrier (Free) decided to offer very low cost plans with no phone, showing people that they were actually paying their $600 smartphone at least twice with their monthly plan with hidden costs.
Agreed. Still, the top 10 is not the "vast majority".
And I agree there should be some adjustment of H1-B rules to prevent consulting companies from using H1-B as cheap workers, e.g. sorting H1-B candidates by salary (maybe compared to local average).
The vast majority... you mean 50,000 out of 160,000 ?
Yes, indian companies abuse the H1-B system and it's in great part their fault if there is a debate on H1-B. But no, the majority of H1-B workers are not "slaves".
The "top" H1-B list says it all : a lot of indian companies with low average salaries, and a long tail of legitimate companies trying to hire foreign talent.
For small everyday transactions, cash is a real pain to use. You need to carry coins, pay the exact amount, get frequently cash at ATMs (because you may not want to carry a lot of money with you). When you get coins back, you need to put them back in your wallet, not let them fall on the ground,... 30 seconds instead of 3 with a phone.
Shopkeepers also don't like cash, since they need to frequently move large amounts of money to the bank -- or pay the bank to fetch it on a daily basis.
So, maybe, in countries where credit card fees are high and criminality is ultra-low, it won't work. But those systems intend to lower the transaction fees so that it is really more convenient for everybody to use your phone rather than get cash out of your wallet.
Re:"Edge" browser inside 10 reputed to be very goo
on
Windows 10 Launches
·
· Score: 1
... if Edge is really different from IE, not a marketing renaming/polishing.
Well, I'm expecting a lot from any new Windows version, not because I use it but because it could prevent people from my family to ask for help when everything got broken.
So, I have one question : does it enforce more control on installed software or is it still the jungle of spyware, adwares and viruses ?
When I saw they did a windows store, I thought that finally, I'd have a good way to tell people how to get their machine fast and virus-less : only install software from the store where software is controlled and coming from the original provider (like we do in linux : install everything from controlled repositories).
Unfortunately, the windows store is just a huge mess for metro apps, not a way to install software in a more secure way.
Windows will be a good OS the day it won't auto-destruct over time, won't require an antivirus to suck all performance out of your CPU and kill you hard drive within a month.
Yes, it definitely makes sense for government computers.
But the next question is : does it make sense for any personal computer ? Of course not. SIMD is largely based on puppet (who wants to be NSA's puppet ?:-)) which only makes sense for sysadmin to keep control over workstations.
Other governments or organization could have found find this project helpful, but the cost in reading every single line of code (because, you know, it's the NSA) completely kills the interest of reusing someone else' effort.
And yet, I find OPM pretty good in how they handle the situation. Full disclosure is not really a technique of the past and I'm quite surprised to see them contact every person who had data stolen and provide all details about what exactly was stolen.
I'm not sure all gov agencies in the world would act that way.
This guy is right explaining that dumb computation about password strength is stupid.
However, I disagree with the conclusion. Asking people to learn impossible to retain passwords is not the solution. Force them to choose a not-trivial but not hard password (entropy >10000) and apply well-balanced password trying policies (100 tries max per month). Everyone will be happy this way.
I agreed with the idea.
But in airports, many people don't speak english, which will makes them very uncomfortable with some TSA officer mumbling street-english. So, what will be their reaction ? Look nervous and be evasive.
I confirm that here in France, homeopathy is very common, and even MDs frequently use it.
But let's be serious. The placebo effect is one of the most effective thing in medical problems. The problem with it is that if you don't believe in it, it no longer works. Building false theories that makes sense for most people is therefore a skill that can be much more effective than finding real cures.
So, in a way, I can't blame people who use it just because, as an ultra-rational guy, I do not have the "chance" of being able to use those things with a positive effect. Maybe using astrology and homeopathy would indeed increase the efficiency of the health system. Not because it prevents illnesses, but just because we have to recognize that it really works by misleading people's brain.
Well, after reading the article again, indeed that could work on Linux. I thought there were windows vulnerabilities in the mix, but it turns out I read that wrong.
That said, I think that malware/adware is a major attack vector. And Linux/Android/iOS do not fear adware because applications are reviewed and controlled. Of course, you can always have a vulnerability in the Linux packages / Android Apps, but it makes things much harder and especially for the average guy's PC.
But true, for that special case, linux could as well be a target.
Using windows is currently a real nightmare for the average guy. Most of the computers of un-computer-educated people I know are full of malware and adware.
At some point it was seen as a fatality. iOS and Android just showed people that it was not. That's why Microsoft Windows is (finally) dying. Ransomware may be the thing that will decide people to finally switch to something else.
And maybe 2015 will be the year of linux on the desktop:-)
Full HD was nice when it was on 24 inches screen. When you see a Full HD picture on a big screen, the pixels are so big that you may wonder "is this high def ? The pixels are bigger than my old 1990 TV !".
That 8k monitor only has 160 dot per inch. That's not impressive at all.
For a monitor of that size (55"), having an 8k panel is nothing but hard to do. The difficulty resides in the production of the video (computer images are easy to render, but having a CCD captor at 8k is a different story) and the broadcast of the video (bandwidth, CPU, and HDMI cable at that frequency).
I have to disagree. It really depends what you are doing. I love C and I believe that C will not be replaced for certain pieces of low-level software (kernel, libraries,...).
However, when you need to write a script or a dynamic web page, using C is painful and actually not a good idea. Python and PHP are much better for that. I'm not a language fetishist, I'm just an average lazy programmer. When I need to do some work, I choose the most efficient tool to do it. I won't try use a new language because the grammar is kewl. Usually, I switch to other languages when I feel it is much more appropriate to my current task.
If a language survives (after the initial hype), it is for a good reason. Shell script, Javascript, Python, PHP,... will also be there for a long time.
Slashdot Mirror
Lawyers galore, again.
1. First, they come see companies, explaining that they need a patent war chest. Everybody is sincere and lawyers win.
2. Then they explain to some CEO/CFO/shareholders that they could use it to gain more money with it (or as a strategical weapon against small companies endangering their business). Lawyers win again and more other companies need to go to step 1.
You need a CEO with very strong feelings about patents to resist the temptation of using patents the wrong way.
Mod parent up.
I'm french, and of course I see as a joke the CNIL asking google to remove search result worldwide. But you should be aware that the world knows pretty well US laws for a simple reason : US laws tend to apply worldwide, in a large number of domains (not just technologies).
So, US people whining about losing "sovereignty" by having a french rule being applied worldwide is quite funny.
Back to the real subject of that ruling, what CNIL is trying to achieve here is the right to be forgotten. I know this can easily lead to censure, but with our privacy being invaded more and more every day, this may be an interesting point to address, worldwide.
Also, keep in mind that the CNIL is seen in France as the only pro-citizen entity against the companies which want to track you, spam you, and make your life a nightmare. They may have gone a wrong way here, but they're usually really helpful to protect citizens.
What often breaks are components on the power circuitry. Those components are large and easy to change. I recently had an ATX power supply fail ; all were normal components. Same for a microwave oven : a lot of good old big transistors/capacitors/resistors ... and a microcontroller.
Just the opposite. Of course you won't fix a dead pixel. But very often, the failing part is a really dumb component.
In those frequent cases, it is very frustrating to throw away a wonderful piece of technology (the OLED screen) because a stupid capacitor or resistor that is broken somewhere (but you don't know which one, of course).
Well, it's not as if you could upgrade the software anyway. Hardware vendors are really to blame her. They do not provide software updates nor help you do a cyanogen build. I liked the android revolution at the beginning (and I really like my 2011 motorola flipout phone with a physical keyboard and android 2.1). But I quickly realized that those devices are getting harder to use in the long term than a PC with windows.
I'll likely buy a new android phone this year, but I hope the next one will be running a linux distro, because I really feel the need to re-take control on my devices. My 10+ years old Dell laptop (core 2 duo) with an SSD is running extremely fast even for today's usage. The plastic case is falling into pieces, the battery died years ago, but it is just an excellent laptop for web/e-mail/office usage (near a power plug).
Same here. really nice tablet, not that expensive (for the 8" version at least) and the screen is just incredible. And the galaxy tab S just got updated to android 5.
Beware : as for HD, you will get used to the screen sharpness very quickly and everything else you will see in the future will looks awful in comparison. And you'll have expensive tastes.
This whole systemd fiasco has caused a boatload of infighting, dissension among what should be cooperative members and teams, and it makes the process of administering Linux systems that much harder.
There is no need for a Microsoft conspirator to produce this outcome. The linux community, filled by zealots who *believe* in "Right Things" is completely responsible for its fate. Any change to core components will result in a mess.
Extremely good changes will cause little problems (only some whining) ; reasonably good changes with little drawbacks will cause havoc. And instead of working together with authors to improve shortcomings, they will just waste their time (as well as the time of the authors) to troll, because that's what they like : discussing about what is the Right Thing (that will get them go to Unix Paradise at the right of God RMS) instead of doing real stuff to move forward and improve the code base.
I'm no dev guru or Linux wizard, but even I know that swallowing stderr messages and mucking with long-time, well-established syslog formats is a Bad Thing.
Well, dev gurus and Linux wizard are not necessarily the persons to listen to when you want to make changes. They are guru of the *old* thing, so any change will lower their guruness (or need them some effort to keep them afloat).
All that said, I don't like Unity nor Gnome 3 and miss my old sawfish.
But back at the article, I love apt-get and dpkg. I like the fact that a .deb file can be done with simple tools like tar an ar. Apt-get has been the first system to manage dependencies and that was a huge thing. But I can understand when people complain that you need to type apt-get install and apt-cache search. And frankly, since snappy commands are pretty logical (install / search / update), we should adapt without any effort.
Snappy categorization in framework/apps/... is also interesting for security and for me, it really makes sense.
I bought a Motorola Flipout in early 2011 for about $200. I'm still using it. Ok, it's Android 2.1 and I don't have many new apps running on it (but the recent google photos works fine !)
But that's not a surprise that they're slowly gaining market share : most media only talk about iPhones and similar Samsung devices, because that's what carriers and retailers only want to show (and usually hide real prices behind a monthly plan).
Cheap smartphones have literally boomed here in France since in 2012 a new carrier (Free) decided to offer very low cost plans with no phone, showing people that they were actually paying their $600 smartphone at least twice with their monthly plan with hidden costs.
Agreed. Still, the top 10 is not the "vast majority".
And I agree there should be some adjustment of H1-B rules to prevent consulting companies from using H1-B as cheap workers, e.g. sorting H1-B candidates by salary (maybe compared to local average).
The vast majority ... you mean 50,000 out of 160,000 ?
Yes, indian companies abuse the H1-B system and it's in great part their fault if there is a debate on H1-B. But no, the majority of H1-B workers are not "slaves".
The "top" H1-B list says it all : a lot of indian companies with low average salaries, and a long tail of legitimate companies trying to hire foreign talent.
Disclaimer : H1-B here.
That's completely untrue in many countries now.
For small everyday transactions, cash is a real pain to use. You need to carry coins, pay the exact amount, get frequently cash at ATMs (because you may not want to carry a lot of money with you). When you get coins back, you need to put them back in your wallet, not let them fall on the ground, ... 30 seconds instead of 3 with a phone.
Shopkeepers also don't like cash, since they need to frequently move large amounts of money to the bank -- or pay the bank to fetch it on a daily basis.
So, maybe, in countries where credit card fees are high and criminality is ultra-low, it won't work. But those systems intend to lower the transaction fees so that it is really more convenient for everybody to use your phone rather than get cash out of your wallet.
... if Edge is really different from IE, not a marketing renaming/polishing.
Well, I'm expecting a lot from any new Windows version, not because I use it but because it could prevent people from my family to ask for help when everything got broken.
So, I have one question : does it enforce more control on installed software or is it still the jungle of spyware, adwares and viruses ?
When I saw they did a windows store, I thought that finally, I'd have a good way to tell people how to get their machine fast and virus-less : only install software from the store where software is controlled and coming from the original provider (like we do in linux : install everything from controlled repositories).
Unfortunately, the windows store is just a huge mess for metro apps, not a way to install software in a more secure way.
Windows will be a good OS the day it won't auto-destruct over time, won't require an antivirus to suck all performance out of your CPU and kill you hard drive within a month.
Yes, it definitely makes sense for government computers.
But the next question is : does it make sense for any personal computer ? Of course not. SIMD is largely based on puppet (who wants to be NSA's puppet ? :-)) which only makes sense for sysadmin to keep control over workstations.
Other governments or organization could have found find this project helpful, but the cost in reading every single line of code (because, you know, it's the NSA) completely kills the interest of reusing someone else' effort.
And yet, I find OPM pretty good in how they handle the situation. Full disclosure is not really a technique of the past and I'm quite surprised to see them contact every person who had data stolen and provide all details about what exactly was stolen.
I'm not sure all gov agencies in the world would act that way.
This guy is right explaining that dumb computation about password strength is stupid.
However, I disagree with the conclusion. Asking people to learn impossible to retain passwords is not the solution. Force them to choose a not-trivial but not hard password (entropy >10000) and apply well-balanced password trying policies (100 tries max per month). Everyone will be happy this way.
So true. Air gapped PCs will now require to be separated by 5 feets. Just because, you know, more security is always better.
I agreed with the idea. But in airports, many people don't speak english, which will makes them very uncomfortable with some TSA officer mumbling street-english. So, what will be their reaction ? Look nervous and be evasive.
I confirm that here in France, homeopathy is very common, and even MDs frequently use it.
But let's be serious. The placebo effect is one of the most effective thing in medical problems. The problem with it is that if you don't believe in it, it no longer works. Building false theories that makes sense for most people is therefore a skill that can be much more effective than finding real cures.
So, in a way, I can't blame people who use it just because, as an ultra-rational guy, I do not have the "chance" of being able to use those things with a positive effect. Maybe using astrology and homeopathy would indeed increase the efficiency of the health system. Not because it prevents illnesses, but just because we have to recognize that it really works by misleading people's brain.
+5 Funny, +5 Insightful.
Mod parent up.
Finally a post which get the point right. The title is horribly misleading. Microsoft didn't end win7 support, only new features. That's about time.
Well, after reading the article again, indeed that could work on Linux. I thought there were windows vulnerabilities in the mix, but it turns out I read that wrong.
That said, I think that malware/adware is a major attack vector. And Linux/Android/iOS do not fear adware because applications are reviewed and controlled. Of course, you can always have a vulnerability in the Linux packages / Android Apps, but it makes things much harder and especially for the average guy's PC.
But true, for that special case, linux could as well be a target.
Using windows is currently a real nightmare for the average guy. Most of the computers of un-computer-educated people I know are full of malware and adware.
At some point it was seen as a fatality. iOS and Android just showed people that it was not. That's why Microsoft Windows is (finally) dying. Ransomware may be the thing that will decide people to finally switch to something else.
And maybe 2015 will be the year of linux on the desktop :-)
Full HD was nice when it was on 24 inches screen. When you see a Full HD picture on a big screen, the pixels are so big that you may wonder "is this high def ? The pixels are bigger than my old 1990 TV !".
That 8k monitor only has 160 dot per inch. That's not impressive at all.
For a monitor of that size (55"), having an 8k panel is nothing but hard to do. The difficulty resides in the production of the video (computer images are easy to render, but having a CCD captor at 8k is a different story) and the broadcast of the video (bandwidth, CPU, and HDMI cable at that frequency).
I have to disagree. It really depends what you are doing. I love C and I believe that C will not be replaced for certain pieces of low-level software (kernel, libraries, ...).
However, when you need to write a script or a dynamic web page, using C is painful and actually not a good idea. Python and PHP are much better for that. I'm not a language fetishist, I'm just an average lazy programmer. When I need to do some work, I choose the most efficient tool to do it. I won't try use a new language because the grammar is kewl. Usually, I switch to other languages when I feel it is much more appropriate to my current task.
If a language survives (after the initial hype), it is for a good reason. Shell script, Javascript, Python, PHP, ... will also be there for a long time.