The bill, sponsored by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California), sets a 90-day "problem-solving" period during which companies can fix problems before lawsuits can be filed; encourages mediation; caps punitive damages at $250,000; puts some restrictions on class-action lawsuits; makes it easier for judges to dismiss Y2K lawsuits by setting higher standards for claims; and limits the personal liability of corporate officers and directors to $100,000 in many cases.
OK, so let me get this straight...
Let's suppose that a bank, for whatever stupid reason, is using WinNT to handle their systems. Y2k comes and the bank's systems crash. Microsoft now has a 90 day period to come up with a bug fix. Meanwhile the bank is still up the creek, as are the bank's customers, and the businesses that depend on those customers, and so on. In the space of 90 days a whole town can go bankrupt. The town residents file a class action lawsuit, they recover actual damages plus a maximum of $250k?? What's wrong here? Who the hell are these politicians listening to?
You are a bit behind the times there at Un-named, huh ? We have already been developing chaotic computer for quite a few years now and they are already showing signs of evilness when we abuse them by installing certain un-named operating systems on them.
I am now pleased to announce that we at Un-Named University have gone one step beyond Chaotic Evil computing and have built computers dedicated solely to the purpose of bringing forth the rise of Our Master Who Sleeps Under The Sea, Cthulhu The Dreamer. You have only a few days left to live. Thank you.
For crying out loud...this website advocates nuclear civil war to stop abortion. I'll fight for his right to say whatever he wants about abortion, homosexuals, whatever, no matter how vile he gets..but advocating nuclear civil war to get his way just takes the cake for me.
It seems to me that Intel's ID number scheme would be a great way to sell Linux. "We disable the Intel PID automatically!"
The idea is to write a kernel module that you can compile to disable the PID at boot. Or, perhaps with compile option -D__PIDSPOOF__, have it substitute a random PID for the original PID. If even a small fraction of users do this, it would make collecting PID data absolutely useless.
In theory it's pretty simple...if you had a system with two strange attractors you could generate a sequence of eight bits just by plugging the right constant in the right place. Each time it goes around strange attractor A, that's a zero; each time it goes around strange attractor B, that's a one. Lorenz's equasions for modeling the weather could do it pretty simply.
You could double your output with a more complicated five-variable system with four strange attractors; but it's not very far scalable after that.
The geek who thought up this scheme is Rajarshi Roy, chair of Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. You'll be seeing more chaotic computing coming out in the near future.
Computers based on chaos theory will become practical long before computers based on quantum theory.
Here at the Un-named East Coast School, a model of a chaotic computer has been shown to reproduce the effects of a NOR gate; we're working on showing that it can reproduce the effects of most two-bit sequential components.
I hear the Pentium III being mentioned; anyone know about lower-generation chips like the Pentium II? Furthermore, does anyone know whether AMD or IBM will include this "feature" in their chips?
I used to work for a utility. Without going into details, they use much the same kind of information in their marketing plans. Of course they wouldn't cut off your power if you were a bad customer...they'd just offer you different services depending on whether they thought you were a conservationist or not, for example...
Does it suck? Maybe. Consider that if some redneck came into power and started enforcing, say, anti-sodomy laws in certain states, such information could help him track down likely suspects and start making arrests...in an age where it's pretty easy to get enough information on someone to make a 95% match for a particular demographic group, the cops could get a search warrant just based on stuff they pull off of marketing databases.
Prosecutor: "Your honor, our computer says that it's 98% likely that this man owns at least one sexual toy, and that makes him 99.7% likely to engage in oral sex with his wife." Judge: "I don't know my statistics kid but that's enough to convince me. Go ahead and arrest, we'll get that sodomite on a felony."
Of course, that's assuming the redneck in question is balsy enough to ignore certain Supreme Court rulings on privacy.
You'd think the straight media would be blaring this out, since it's a BIG story that the secret codes that banks and such rely upon are essentially worthless. Wouldn't you? But no... instead we get (on ABCNews) stories like "Which airline did consumers like best," and "Are you a Type A Driver?"
Well folks, maybe it's time for cyberdemocracy in action. Here's a list of emails where you can tell the government and the media about this story. I would ask that you please, please, pretty please be courteous and informative and to the point when you email these sites. Maybe this time we can get the message to people that our e-commerce infrastructure is lacking because of government boneheadedness.
Yesterday we found out that WinNT 4.0 failed to meet basic security testing required for the US to purchase the product. Maybe India has taken this as a big warning sign that US products are inferior? Either that or they're getting smart and working to develop their own software industry.
...considering that Microsoft specialized in vaporware in the first place. It would make perfect sense, given their history of obfuscation towards customers and technicians, that they'd be pulling a fast one on their shareholders too... Bill Gates has to be frightened out of his wits now that it's possible that stock prices might deflate and that he may lose his place as the world's richest man...
...and code Visual Basic for the rest of your life. Having done my undergrad work while working a coding job (okay, it was for the government, but it was still coding), I know that experience can teach you a lot. But here's the difference:
Experience will teach you that mergesort is sometimes better than quicksort. College will tell you why mergesort is sometimes better than quicksort.
You don't need to know calculus, differential equasions, and linear algebra to write a compiler. It would help if you're writing a database, though, and it's invaluable if you're writing graphics or a lot of kinds of AI. Advanced mathematics is irreplaceable if you're doing compression, encryption or verification, and it's a lot easier to learn that stuff in college than through experience.
A fuzzier argument: experience tells you how technology is evolving now; but college can teach you history, sociology, and other not-so-technical disciplines that can give you a better feel for why technology is evolving the way it is and where it could go next.
There's just something really cool about reading Shakespere, Kant or Hegel, and talking about it with a guy who did his PhD on the subject. You can't often get that experience working in the computer field.
Slashdot Mirror
And let us not forget Microsoft's stellar record
on privacy, including recent revelations that private information was stored on Microsoft databases.
Only speaking for myself, I don't think Microsoft
is going to purge jack from their databases, despite promises to do so.
The only Microsoft product I want is Age of Empires.
I'm not even sure that Age of Empires is worth it.
Quoting CNN directly:
The bill, sponsored by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California), sets a 90-day "problem-solving" period during which companies can fix problems before lawsuits can be filed; encourages mediation; caps punitive damages at $250,000; puts some restrictions on class-action lawsuits; makes it easier for judges to dismiss Y2K lawsuits by setting higher standards for claims; and limits the personal liability of corporate officers and directors to $100,000 in many cases.
OK, so let me get this straight...
Let's suppose that a bank, for whatever stupid reason, is using WinNT to handle their systems. Y2k comes and the bank's systems crash. Microsoft now has a 90 day period to come up with a bug fix. Meanwhile the bank is still up the creek, as are the bank's customers, and the businesses that depend on those customers, and so on. In the space of 90 days a whole town can go bankrupt. The town residents file a class action lawsuit, they recover actual damages plus a maximum of $250k?? What's wrong here? Who the hell are these politicians listening to?
Wow...I found out about this story first by going directly to the ABC News site. They've put this
right in their headlines!
...Because if not, I know whom I'm buying my
next processor from...
If we want to fight this, we have to go after both the PC maker and the OS maker. They're shifting the responsability to each other.
You are a bit behind the times there at Un-named, huh ? We have already been developing chaotic computer for quite a few years now and they are already showing signs of evilness when we abuse them by installing certain un-named operating systems on them.
I am now pleased to announce that we at Un-Named University have gone one step beyond Chaotic Evil computing and have built computers dedicated solely to the purpose of bringing forth the rise of Our Master Who Sleeps Under The Sea, Cthulhu The Dreamer. You have only a few days left to live. Thank you.
Forget Pi, how could you miss Sneakers? If the main players in that movie aren't a bunch of geeks, what could they possibily be?
Of course, the ultimate geek movie in my mind is still Revenge of the Nerds.
All I can say is, thank God more OEMs are giving us the option of using Linux instead, without the Microsoft Tax.
The title says it all...the site looks like it's been slashdotted...loading rate was down to 80 bits per second when I tried to load it..
As stated above.
No, I'm not Christian. I just know a lot of Jesuits.
For crying out loud...this website advocates nuclear civil war to stop abortion. I'll fight for his right to say whatever he wants about abortion, homosexuals, whatever, no matter how vile he gets..but advocating nuclear civil war to get his way just takes the cake for me.
Cool, that makes it much easier to put some decent storage on my wearables! Look at the specs on this...17 grams! And PCMCIA compatible. Now if I could just get some decent information on how much current it uses, and how much this is going to cost, I'll be raring to go!
It seems to me that Intel's ID number scheme would be a great way to sell Linux. "We disable the Intel PID automatically!"
The idea is to write a kernel module that you can compile to disable the PID at boot. Or, perhaps with compile option -D__PIDSPOOF__, have it substitute a random PID for the original PID. If even a small fraction of users do this, it would make collecting PID data absolutely useless.
In theory it's pretty simple...if you had a system with two strange attractors you could generate a sequence of eight bits just by plugging the right constant in the right place. Each time it goes around strange attractor A, that's a zero; each time it goes around strange attractor B, that's a one. Lorenz's equasions for modeling the weather could do it pretty simply.
You could double your output with a more complicated five-variable system with four strange attractors; but it's not very far scalable after that.
The geek who thought up this scheme is Rajarshi Roy, chair of Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. You'll be seeing more chaotic computing coming out in the near future.
....didn't these legislators hear that Intel plans to drop the PID "feature" from their Pentium III design?
Computers based on chaos theory will become practical long before computers based on quantum theory.
Here at the Un-named East Coast School, a model of a chaotic computer has been shown to reproduce the effects of a NOR gate; we're working on showing that it can reproduce the effects of most two-bit sequential components.
I hear the Pentium III being mentioned; anyone know about lower-generation chips like the Pentium II? Furthermore, does anyone know whether AMD or IBM will include this "feature" in their chips?
I used to work for a utility. Without going into details, they use much the same kind of information in their marketing plans. Of course they wouldn't cut off your power if you were a bad customer...they'd just offer you different services depending on whether they thought you were a conservationist or not, for example...
Does it suck? Maybe. Consider that if some redneck came into power and started enforcing, say, anti-sodomy laws in certain states, such information could help him track down likely suspects and start making arrests...in an age where it's pretty easy to get enough information on someone to make a 95% match for a particular demographic group, the cops could get a search warrant just based on stuff they pull off of marketing databases.
Prosecutor: "Your honor, our computer says that it's 98% likely that this man owns at least one sexual toy, and that makes him 99.7% likely to engage in oral sex with his wife."
Judge: "I don't know my statistics kid but that's enough to convince me. Go ahead and arrest, we'll get that sodomite on a felony."
Of course, that's assuming the redneck in question is balsy enough to ignore certain Supreme Court rulings on privacy.
You'd think the straight media would be blaring this out, since it's a BIG story that the secret codes that banks and such rely upon are essentially worthless. Wouldn't you? But no ... instead we get (on ABCNews) stories like "Which airline did consumers like best," and "Are you a Type A Driver?"
Well folks, maybe it's time for cyberdemocracy in action. Here's a list of emails where you can tell the government and the media about this story. I would ask that you please, please, pretty please be courteous and informative and to the point when you email these sites. Maybe this time we can get the message to people that our e-commerce infrastructure is lacking because of government boneheadedness.
The President
The Vice-President
The ABC News comments page
The CNN Feedback Page
The CBS News Feedback Page
The MSNBC Feedback Page.
As my favorite rock star once put it, "Don't just criticize the media...become the media."
Poor suckers never knew what hit 'em :)
So can anyone who knows the details post them here?
Yesterday we found out that WinNT 4.0 failed to meet basic security testing required for the US to purchase the product. Maybe India has taken this as a big warning sign that US products are inferior? Either that or they're getting smart and working to develop their own software industry.
...considering that Microsoft specialized in vaporware in the first place. It would make perfect sense, given their history of obfuscation towards customers and technicians, that they'd be pulling a fast one on their shareholders too...
Bill Gates has to be frightened out of his wits now that it's possible that stock prices might deflate and that he may lose his place as the world's richest man...
There's a theory that what a lot of college students consider "theory" is actually just what they can't think of applying right now. :)
Having done my undergrad work while working a coding job (okay, it was for the government, but it was still coding), I know that experience can teach you a lot. But here's the difference: