I haven't seen the pie chart (got a link? TFA didn't) but for the love of god, IE is #1 and FF is #2! Maybe he should have left out IE too, that would have made the pie chart a nice uniform one color for Safari.:-)
That this thing is actually completely terrifying? You don't even have to RTFA, just look at the damn picture. It's fucking demonic. Whoever designed it to look reassuring was probably raised by grues.
This is not insightful. Microsoft did not violate trademark law in choosing Vista, and would not have done even if they knew about Tele Vista. They aren't the same kind of product. They are not confusingly similar. Trademarks do not allow you to own a word for every use everywhere.
Microsoft has now shown their hand... its got claws in it. Do you want to trust it? The smiling face of someone anticipating getting you into their cat trap could turn into a gun pretty fast if it doesn't get its way.
Gmail's "conversations" concept is so far beyond the threading you get in a normal email client it's not even funny. It's hard to imagine the productivity improvement before you've tried it, but it's huge. A 50-long thread is just one item in your inbox. I don't even bother much with folders (tags, in gmail), because it's so easy to keep my inbox tidy. I do tag/"skip inbox" on mailing lists and email from my ISP, and that's about it.
Another huge boon: the Archive button. Gets crap out of your inbox fast, yet doesn't lose it. And it archives THE WHOLE CONVERSATION as a single item (which it is). Fiddling with selecting multiple messages is a freakin pain in the ass, but you don't even realize it until someone puts a feature in front of you that eliminates the need.
Another one (hand in hand with Archive): Search. "from:bill has:attachment" to search for that file bill sent you yesterday. Wow. So powerful.
And in a work environment, integration with Google calendar is invaluable, but that's orthogonal to the problem of dealing with the crap pile that is Internet email.
Summary: Gmail is teh rawk. It makes me not hate email.
You'll note that he said "at the risk of being modded". Clearly he's afraid of being modded *up*. He's not being heroic, he's being modest, trying to keep his posts down where nobody will make a big deal about them.
I have to agree, Obama's site isn't exactly purty. Nevertheless, as a Barack Obama supporter, I have to tell you, from experience: The usability is great! Once I found it through Google, it only took me about 10 seconds to find and start filling out the form for becoming a volunteer. Can't really beat that.
Proportionate response is a legal principle here in the states as well. But there are lots of good reasons for that law. It's absurd to state that emergency workers are the only reason for the law's existence, and I believe it could be applied to software booby traps by a smart lawyer and a thinking judge. Laws usually have more than one reason for existing, and they are always open to interpretation.
Although it occurs to me that they might be doing what NASCAR and some other sports (speed skating, I think? cycling will probably have it soon as well) is putting some kind of radio chip in the sports equipment (in this case, the pigskin) and just hitting "update" when a ref spots it. Then nobody has to tell the tech what the line is, because the ball will do that by itself.
That yellow line is frickin sweet. I want to know how they do it so accurately too. It's fairly easy to alter its location procedurally, but getting the accurate line of scrimmage and first down line (to a fraction of a yard!), and getting that information to the tech who's doing the graphics, all in a few seconds--that can't be easy.
The "computer generated" signs are just images greenscreened onto the backdrops, which are green for that reason.:-)
Being a worthless newbie makes it feel like the world is alive?
No, being a worthless newbie makes it feel like you're an infant, and the world is ridiculous. Look, here's the real world. A level 1 marine can take down Saddam in his hidey hole, as long as he looks in the right place. He doesn't have to level up first so Saddam doesn't take him out with one hit. Unpredictability is a feature of living worlds, and steady 1-70 level advancement takes away that unpredictability--that ability for just freakin ANYONE to do something important, given the right opportunity.
RPGs have been like this for so long that we've completely forgotten that there's any other basis for gameplay--but there is. Taking down the enemy leader is still fun! If you got to be there, what difference does it make whether you were level 2 or 70? It's still *hard*, which is why you get a sense of accomplishment.
The basis for gameplay is achieving a goal through luck or skill: your own skill, not your character's.
Whether American black people consider him one of them or not, his election would still be enormously positive for them--because American whites do consider him black. Therefore, if they vote for him anyway, an election of Barack Obama in 2008 would prove that blacks can win elections--however they choose to define that category.
I can see their point, however. American Black is a distinct and strong culture, and he's not from there. (He's not from Africa either, in any real sense. Born in Hawaii, educated in Jakarta and Hawaii. His dad being Kenyan does not make him "from Africa".) And most of all, he's been in a well-to-do family his whole life. Like it or not, the American Black culture is strongly linked to the poverty faced by a disproportionate number of blacks in this country, and he ain't poor.
However, his wife is from south-side, working-class Chicago so he has a strong touchstone to that culture (again, however you choose to define it). His kids and his wife have faced and will face racism in our culture, and so has he. The very debate about whether Barack Obama is black enough represents a fight he's facing against racism. The debate about whether a black man can become president represents a fight he's facing against racism!
I hope he wins. My wife and I have already volunteered for his campaign.
The ability to use sudo su does not undermine the purpose of eliminating the root password in the first place: to make it inconvenient to operate as root all the time. As long as it is inconvenient to operate as root all the time, the elimination of the root password has its desired effect: keeping you from accidentally screwing up your damn computer, and keeping malicious attackers from accidentally screwing up your damn computer because you took a shortcut.
People will naturally do whatever's easier. Ubuntu and OS X made it easier to operate as non-root than to operate as root; Windows (at least as of XP) makes it easier to operate as root than to operate as non-root. Not surprisingly, people run as root on Windows, as non-root on the other two. Not surprisingly, they don't screw up those systems as often and they aren't as vulnerable to attack.
It doesn't matter if what you see is a C file or a binary blob, if it isn't the plainly readable source code. The most agreed-upon standard for what open source is can be found here:
The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed.
- Section 2 of OSI's Open Source Definition
That said, an NDA still may not make it impossible to write a driver. If the specs are under NDA, that means nobody else can see the specs. It doesn't *necessarily* mean that nobody can write a driver that interfaces with those specs. This depends a great deal on the wording and intent of the NDA itself. Naturally, some people will consider a driver to be a description of the spec, and hence not allowed under the NDA. Some people will not. Specs often contain a lot of things that aren't strictly required to make a device go; it may be these parts, the implementation details, that the NDA is intended to protect. The best thing to do would be to separate an interface specification from the implementation specification, and release the former NDA-free. The next best thing would be to invite a developer to sign an NDA and develop an Open Source driver.
Not possible for every piece of hardware out there, but possible for many.
What I want to know is, who are the people selling DRM technology to the MPAA? Somebody has to be *developing* this stuff, somebody with a fairly decent understanding of crypto to know about revocation, n-way decryption keys, and so on. This tech isn't being developed by the lawyers and the other suits. Are these programmers a bunch of idiots?
But this algorithm doesn't know whether you can do the job--the end result. The algorithm only knows that you said you wear a hat on Sundays. The fact that that means you're probably over 50, and therefore less likely to be suitable for the job, makes this strongly tend toward illegality.
In other words, the algorithm won't find that one guy and hire him, it'll just reject him for having the characteristics (over-50ness) that predict a bad fit for the job.
The point the GP is making: All of these questions, taken together in some black box computation, may be able to answer the *other* questions which are illegal to ask individually. To grossly oversimplify: If I ask you the last digit of your age, and then I ask you who was president when you were born, I know your exact age. Nobody would argue that these two questions asked together should be legal.
The GP is probably right that this survey and algorithm could, with the correct calibration, figure out someone's age, hence the debate, here and perhaps in the courts, over legality.
So, what if the computer is *actually* using a neural net that automatically selects young candidates? No human would necessarily know this. Such algorithms aren't really inspected by humans, they're more or less grown in a vat. Is it illegal to use a piece of software that, internally, figures out someone's age and then hires or rejects them with age as the primary factor? Sure. Is it still illegal if neither the people who wrote the software nor the people who use the software know it does this? Well, there's your lawsuit waiting to happen.
I don't need allies like you on the side of the American legal system. There is no Western nation except the United States that still has the death penalty. It is barbaric and ineffective, and--provably--is frequently used on the innocent in this country.
Harsh punishments do not make a good legal system, they just make good headlines for bloodthirsty assholes like you.
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't seen the pie chart (got a link? TFA didn't) but for the love of god, IE is #1 and FF is #2! Maybe he should have left out IE too, that would have made the pie chart a nice uniform one color for Safari. :-)
That this thing is actually completely terrifying? You don't even have to RTFA, just look at the damn picture. It's fucking demonic. Whoever designed it to look reassuring was probably raised by grues.
This is not insightful. Microsoft did not violate trademark law in choosing Vista, and would not have done even if they knew about Tele Vista. They aren't the same kind of product. They are not confusingly similar. Trademarks do not allow you to own a word for every use everywhere.
Microsoft has now shown their hand... its got claws in it. Do you want to trust it? The smiling face of someone anticipating getting you into their cat trap could turn into a gun pretty fast if it doesn't get its way.
I think that metaphor was the octopus of death.
Gmail's "conversations" concept is so far beyond the threading you get in a normal email client it's not even funny. It's hard to imagine the productivity improvement before you've tried it, but it's huge. A 50-long thread is just one item in your inbox. I don't even bother much with folders (tags, in gmail), because it's so easy to keep my inbox tidy. I do tag/"skip inbox" on mailing lists and email from my ISP, and that's about it.
Another huge boon: the Archive button. Gets crap out of your inbox fast, yet doesn't lose it. And it archives THE WHOLE CONVERSATION as a single item (which it is). Fiddling with selecting multiple messages is a freakin pain in the ass, but you don't even realize it until someone puts a feature in front of you that eliminates the need.
Another one (hand in hand with Archive): Search. "from:bill has:attachment" to search for that file bill sent you yesterday. Wow. So powerful.
And in a work environment, integration with Google calendar is invaluable, but that's orthogonal to the problem of dealing with the crap pile that is Internet email.
Summary: Gmail is teh rawk. It makes me not hate email.
You'll note that he said "at the risk of being modded". Clearly he's afraid of being modded *up*. He's not being heroic, he's being modest, trying to keep his posts down where nobody will make a big deal about them.
> look dennis
> get jimberjam
*spit take*
I have to agree, Obama's site isn't exactly purty. Nevertheless, as a Barack Obama supporter, I have to tell you, from experience: The usability is great! Once I found it through Google, it only took me about 10 seconds to find and start filling out the form for becoming a volunteer. Can't really beat that.
Proportionate response is a legal principle here in the states as well. But there are lots of good reasons for that law. It's absurd to state that emergency workers are the only reason for the law's existence, and I believe it could be applied to software booby traps by a smart lawyer and a thinking judge. Laws usually have more than one reason for existing, and they are always open to interpretation.
Although it occurs to me that they might be doing what NASCAR and some other sports (speed skating, I think? cycling will probably have it soon as well) is putting some kind of radio chip in the sports equipment (in this case, the pigskin) and just hitting "update" when a ref spots it. Then nobody has to tell the tech what the line is, because the ball will do that by itself.
That yellow line is frickin sweet. I want to know how they do it so accurately too. It's fairly easy to alter its location procedurally, but getting the accurate line of scrimmage and first down line (to a fraction of a yard!), and getting that information to the tech who's doing the graphics, all in a few seconds--that can't be easy.
:-)
The "computer generated" signs are just images greenscreened onto the backdrops, which are green for that reason.
Yeah. The day after the merger, I expect to see thousands of angry customers immediately switching to the competition.
Upgrade Versions of Vista are Poison.
Of course, this has always been true of Windows Upgrade versions, but not to the extent of Vista.
I've never seen the mods, so maybe I misunderstood the gp's intention.
Being a worthless newbie makes it feel like the world is alive?
No, being a worthless newbie makes it feel like you're an infant, and the world is ridiculous. Look, here's the real world. A level 1 marine can take down Saddam in his hidey hole, as long as he looks in the right place. He doesn't have to level up first so Saddam doesn't take him out with one hit. Unpredictability is a feature of living worlds, and steady 1-70 level advancement takes away that unpredictability--that ability for just freakin ANYONE to do something important, given the right opportunity.
RPGs have been like this for so long that we've completely forgotten that there's any other basis for gameplay--but there is. Taking down the enemy leader is still fun! If you got to be there, what difference does it make whether you were level 2 or 70? It's still *hard*, which is why you get a sense of accomplishment.
The basis for gameplay is achieving a goal through luck or skill: your own skill, not your character's.
Whether American black people consider him one of them or not, his election would still be enormously positive for them--because American whites do consider him black. Therefore, if they vote for him anyway, an election of Barack Obama in 2008 would prove that blacks can win elections--however they choose to define that category.
I can see their point, however. American Black is a distinct and strong culture, and he's not from there. (He's not from Africa either, in any real sense. Born in Hawaii, educated in Jakarta and Hawaii. His dad being Kenyan does not make him "from Africa".) And most of all, he's been in a well-to-do family his whole life. Like it or not, the American Black culture is strongly linked to the poverty faced by a disproportionate number of blacks in this country, and he ain't poor.
However, his wife is from south-side, working-class Chicago so he has a strong touchstone to that culture (again, however you choose to define it). His kids and his wife have faced and will face racism in our culture, and so has he. The very debate about whether Barack Obama is black enough represents a fight he's facing against racism. The debate about whether a black man can become president represents a fight he's facing against racism!
I hope he wins. My wife and I have already volunteered for his campaign.
The ability to use sudo su does not undermine the purpose of eliminating the root password in the first place: to make it inconvenient to operate as root all the time. As long as it is inconvenient to operate as root all the time, the elimination of the root password has its desired effect: keeping you from accidentally screwing up your damn computer, and keeping malicious attackers from accidentally screwing up your damn computer because you took a shortcut.
People will naturally do whatever's easier. Ubuntu and OS X made it easier to operate as non-root than to operate as root; Windows (at least as of XP) makes it easier to operate as root than to operate as non-root. Not surprisingly, people run as root on Windows, as non-root on the other two. Not surprisingly, they don't screw up those systems as often and they aren't as vulnerable to attack.
http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php - Section 2 of OSI's Open Source Definition
That said, an NDA still may not make it impossible to write a driver. If the specs are under NDA, that means nobody else can see the specs. It doesn't *necessarily* mean that nobody can write a driver that interfaces with those specs. This depends a great deal on the wording and intent of the NDA itself. Naturally, some people will consider a driver to be a description of the spec, and hence not allowed under the NDA. Some people will not. Specs often contain a lot of things that aren't strictly required to make a device go; it may be these parts, the implementation details, that the NDA is intended to protect. The best thing to do would be to separate an interface specification from the implementation specification, and release the former NDA-free. The next best thing would be to invite a developer to sign an NDA and develop an Open Source driver.
Not possible for every piece of hardware out there, but possible for many.
What I want to know is, who are the people selling DRM technology to the MPAA? Somebody has to be *developing* this stuff, somebody with a fairly decent understanding of crypto to know about revocation, n-way decryption keys, and so on. This tech isn't being developed by the lawyers and the other suits. Are these programmers a bunch of idiots?
Or are they in fact geniuses?
Eh, I'm not even gonna say it. You saw the movie.
But this algorithm doesn't know whether you can do the job--the end result. The algorithm only knows that you said you wear a hat on Sundays. The fact that that means you're probably over 50, and therefore less likely to be suitable for the job, makes this strongly tend toward illegality.
In other words, the algorithm won't find that one guy and hire him, it'll just reject him for having the characteristics (over-50ness) that predict a bad fit for the job.
The point the GP is making: All of these questions, taken together in some black box computation, may be able to answer the *other* questions which are illegal to ask individually. To grossly oversimplify: If I ask you the last digit of your age, and then I ask you who was president when you were born, I know your exact age. Nobody would argue that these two questions asked together should be legal.
The GP is probably right that this survey and algorithm could, with the correct calibration, figure out someone's age, hence the debate, here and perhaps in the courts, over legality.
So, what if the computer is *actually* using a neural net that automatically selects young candidates? No human would necessarily know this. Such algorithms aren't really inspected by humans, they're more or less grown in a vat. Is it illegal to use a piece of software that, internally, figures out someone's age and then hires or rejects them with age as the primary factor? Sure. Is it still illegal if neither the people who wrote the software nor the people who use the software know it does this? Well, there's your lawsuit waiting to happen.
The second "S" in OSS stands for software. It's not OSS software, it's OSS.
Oh god, what have I become? *pulls the trigger*
I don't need allies like you on the side of the American legal system. There is no Western nation except the United States that still has the death penalty. It is barbaric and ineffective, and--provably--is frequently used on the innocent in this country.
Harsh punishments do not make a good legal system, they just make good headlines for bloodthirsty assholes like you.