Microsoft asks you to remove any references about Windows on referring to those holes in the walls of the buildings. Please start it by removing any reference of it from King Arthur's tales...
Now apart of jokes... In Russia, Microsoft can go fishing. While Windows is an english plural name, apart of the fact that we speak Russian (windows is okna or fortochki in Russian), Windows is still a common name. Under Copyright Law, common names cannot be covered in any way by copyright.
For those who don't know, North America was pretty well known to Europe before Colombo set foot there. I'll try up some of the data I knew a few years ago.
Well there are lot of stories floating around that America was known to other people before the XIth Century. There are some strange facts about architecture and customs that suggest that African/Mediterranean peoples were in contact with America in a very far past (>3000 years ago). There were some suggestions that Phoenicians and Romans knew soemthing laid in the west of the Atlantic. We had stories about legends from people now living in modern West Africa. We had the famous Irish monks. However the historical mist is pretty thick here. So we just ignore these things for now.
In the XIth century we have the first, 100% data that Europeans reached America. As many of you know, they were the Vikings. Classical History claims that this discovery was lost. Wrong, at least until the XIIIth century, many bigheads in Europe knew about this. However something happened during that time and this data was forgetten for nearly 100 years till Templars/Portuguese reached modern Boston somwhere in 1450s. There is a fact that confirms this, some "signed" rock, which its copies lays now in Lisbon. Note that Portuguese had such a tradition - apart of putting pilars in the seashore, they marked rocks to mention their presence to future expeditions. But that was not all. From that time and until the end of the 1480s Portuguese made several expeditions to North America, and probably sailed over the South. And according to certain stories, they did this taking together dannish and french (why ???) sailors. Besides there is a story that Portuguese possessed maps made in the XIIth century that clearly showed Labrador and regions down to modern New-York. Btw, it was in the middle of the XVth Century that portuguese got used to fish Codfish. Codfish does not live in Portuguese hotter waters. To catch it up, one has to get near Canada. Unfortunately, with the exception of two expeditions, every document concerning these travels probably was destryed during Inquisition times and Lisbon's Earthquake in 1755.
But this story is not the main thing. As you see, I speak about the Inquisition. Why? Because one of the main oppositors to all this was no one else than Roman Church. Fantasy? Absolutely not. Several years ago I got into my hands the story of a french archeologist that made a fantastic discovery. He studied the social-economical situation of Europe during the middle of Middle Ages. In one of his studies he met with people who talked about some wierd documents on Greenland dated to the XIIIth century. These documents were several bureaucratic papers concerning the relation between Greenland people and the Dannish Episcope. It occurs that somewhere after to colonization of Greenland, these lands were offered to the Church. The Dannish Episcopate, as representative of the Pope, ruled in fact these lands.On the papers it seems that there are references to the fact that Greenlanders knew about the existence of other lands in the West. However, somewhere in the middle of the XIIIth century, step-by-step contacts with Greenland started to fade. It is curious to mention that in some point of History, only Church boats had the right to sail to these lands. However in the XIIIth Century, contacts were reduced to only one sail a year. In the end the boat caught fire and no one replaced it. What happened to the remaining Greenlanders remains a mistery.
Frankly this story made me think A LOT. Right now, I don't remeber the name of the french archeologist. But I remember that this was once considered one of the biggest authorities in Middle Ages History. The fact that the Church didn't only knew but OWNED lands that later were considered pure fantasies, rises lots of questions about how and when America was in fact discovered. During the Middle Ages, people had lost of other problems rather to care about something that eroded all foundations of knowledge of those times. However, the Church was The European Center of Knowledge, and even in the most darkest times, they cared to be informed. The fact that they were so near of America, and restricted contacts with Greenland, suggests that they knew about it.
There is also one factor to add up to this story. Portuguese expeditions were directed from a center in South Europe. This center was known as Sagres, but the name of a village that lays nearby. There were stories that this center was a big building laying not far away from the sea. However, since the XVIth century, references to this building disappeared altogether. Today, in the supposed place where this center existed, there is NO OBJECT that would remind of its existence. Until the somehwere in the 1980s... Sagres is a good place for those who fly small motor planes, its windy like Hell. and one pilot noted drawings in the surface. Archeologists came in and discovered the biggest mistery of Portugal's History. The building was completely removed from that place, down to the foundations. A huge Rose of the Winds that layed nearby and was surely made of rocks, could only be seen from the air for the holes on the ground. All the Sagres center was completely wiped up. By who? Archeologists thought that nearby villagers may have used the rock for their houses. However in Sagres there are no clear signs that houses may carry those rocks. Besides some cannot understand why villagers would be so systematic to clean the place completely.
There is one interesting conspiration theory about this. One guy suggested that this was a last attempt to forget America and everything else. However it was too late. Europe went crazy about India. Spanish were making fortunes out of the stolen american gold. English, French and Dutch were already reaching America. the Church lost the battle...
Phoenix Technologies has every right to be unhappy about about the Phoenix browser
Well, sincerly I don't get with your idea... Phoenix Technologies do not make browsers. Besides, why they wouldn't be unhappy with the fact that Herodotus popularized the Phoenix legend, that there is a plant called Phoenix, that there is a bird commonly called "Phoenix" (the japanese Phoenix Fowl) and a city called Phoenix? That's too one-sided to be rightful. While I would agree that calling Microsoft something else rather than Redmond's crap is wrong (well their name is original right?), Phoenix is a well-known name used by tens of nations in their traditional languages. Besides, Phoenix is a very common name used in software. There is Phoenix Software GmbH. There is Phoenix Simulation Software. AFAIK, something in one of Apache's projects is named Phoenix.
Why they would be so nice to sting into this one only project?
Pick up an cockpit and convert every signal into numbers in displays. Less than five seconds the pilot will search for the parachute...
In fact we are some sort of weird generation. Some sort of generation X that forgot that there are other means of information rather than listings falling into syslogs, icons shinning and popup windows. Back in the early 70's, when I saw the first computer (a beast called IBM/360), computers had beeps, shinning buttons, switches that turned automatically. Most of it have gone. Only the irritating beep on Linux command line, when you make some mistake, reminds me that once that was one of the main warning signals. Today's audible signals turned into a misture of music or small sounds that follows GUI actions in many details. However, this signalling is by 80% superfluous. You don't get anything from listening *woops* and *pops* while you're working. As you hear it coutless times, you get so used to it, that you may ignore any serious warning sound. It's just entertainement, nothing else.
The case of creating a audible ping is something that depends on two factors. Is this signalling important? Probably yes. With this you may get a control of network problems that may happen when you're doing something else. But the second problem might kill it. Is this signalling discrete and unique? Probably no. On my experience, I have seen lots of networks where ping timings bounce like crazy, in one moment you get 200us and right after that 2000us, then you fall into 10us and jump up to 1000us. Now, pick up this "audio-ping" and listen for a while. What will you get? Yes, MacBrains with cheesy ears. No information, no usefulness.
However, there are lots of chances to create a useful ping. Note that audio is just an abstraction, something that compresses the real data into a more compact form of information that is more perceptive than the original (btw ping itself is quite an abstract entity to evaluate network status). So if one picks the right signalling with the right timings and the right transmission, such audio-ping may turn into something very useful. But, this can only be seen after someone cooks the thing. Until then we can only speculate.
Wrong pal. The correct article is http://ru.arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0210086. However the article you refer is directly related to this one. But all that cooking journalistic dumbiness in SA is related to this more recent stuff.
On the problem of observers. People don't get wrong with it. Note that the girl talks about two of the biggest problems of Physics - the relative observer that has to consider the restraints of his position and dynamics in the Universe, and the quantic observer that cannot make a deterministic prediction of all the physical conditions of one observation. Add these two things into one and try to guess what will happen to the observer.
And note that they are about Quantic, nearly aka the atomic world. And that the talk goes about abstract observers, not real ones, located at that level. Thanks God we are in a bigger dimension that overlaps all the crazynesses of the underworld...
Why not send also a crew of Federal Taxes Inspection auditors to the US? Sincerly I would be happy to see that. Note that ISS came up to Life when Russia was painfully trying to hold up Mir and making ISS's main module. All this when Russia's economy went nearly bankrupt. Yes, US helped financing part of the Russian segment so that they could hold up the timings. But, sincerly, there were lots of complaints on how these agreements were made into reality.
We can blame things on Russians, Canadians, US Feds or the aliens. The fact is people that we all screwed the thing up! ISS was and is the Space Titanic. It is a huge megaproject mainly based in the state of affairs we had in the 70s. Back then it could be possible that US only or USSR only could have made something similar (well if we ignore some technical difficulties of the time and consider the money factor only). However, today we all retreated from Space. The US keeps going up with some crappy shuttle that was wrong from start. Russia did one but sent it into the trashcan. Europe and Japan didn't rise theirs from the paper. We still are using rockets that are basically all the crap we had in the 60s, even those fresh new Titans. We stopped sending interplanetary probes, with some exception to Mars. The Moon is so far away that lots of people doubt we have been there.
That's the state of affairs people. Frankly this is not an auditors problem. It is a question much bigger and that calls some serious questions to the political elites that ruled us for the last 30 years: Who screwed up the Space Age and why?
Some may say that it's financial problems and that we should solve the famine in Ethiopia/Somalia/Sudan/Whatever and then go to Space. Sorry, the famine has been there always and screwing up the Space Age have not helped to solve it a bit. And frankly, USSR and America were not in a good financial position when the runup started in 1957. However we only didn't manage to reach Pluto/Charon... And just because someone scrapped up everything in the middle of the 70's. Back then there were no serious financial problems to keep up the run, even on a slower step.
Frankly if ISS shut up, then there will be only two escape hatches for Earth. One is to rethink everything and seriously consider how to return back to Space in solid foot. The other is to keep screwing up everything and wait that we make a second Mars out of the Earth... Me joking? Naaaa...
Re:That won't solve the problem, merely move it
on
BBC says "Avoid Explorer"
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· Score: 3, Redundant
Wrong pal... For true security pull the plug. Lynx had also a few bugs of its own... Telnet can be sniffed.
Besides, IE would got a less scandalous life if it didn't have the "Feature". And the "Feature" is embedding. a more modular and independent architecture would avoid many of the problems users face with this crap. IE could be, on the whole, as buggy as it is today. However the deadly effects of many exploits and cracks would be less noted as it would be easier to manage the thing. However, apart of bloatness and bugness, M$ opted to put everything in one bed. Well, what happens when one gets everyone and everything into one bed and close the door tight? Right - Vacchannalia. It's this permanent sex with the user's brain that gives IE and many other M$ products its bad name.
Reading this analysis, I would prefer to name this book as "Canned Internet Security". Maybe the book is good in its generic considerations about security. But I'm pretty sure that one cannot talk about Windows, Linux, Internet, Secure Programming and compress all of it into some 400 pages. Well, talking about Windows ACLs costs an expert nearly the same number of pages, you know? And that was a book for average to advanced experts. And, knowing the subtilities of both Windows and Linux, I am pretty sure that 1000 pages would not be enough to cover 10% of the problems. So ~400 pages?
Besides the fact that one chapter is about history leads me to think that this is quite a general thing. However, for people who may want a startup on security, considering the level of the authors, this book may be some good stuff for them.
Well this is not exactly about languages and libraries but more about experience and use.
Frankly the market looks big but it looks bad. Yes, there were tons of improvements for the last 30 years. I still remember as a kid how my father had to fight small bugs in code by looking at the holes in the punch cards. I remember how terrible it was to fight Xenix in a S/36 and learn my very few first steps in *NIX. I remember the horror I got when I saw one of the very first PCs in Europe. It was a terrible world where the only help was the guru and yourself.
When I met the new OSes, Object Oriented Programming, RAD and all that pretty stuff out there I thought we had the road ahead and, soon, the horrors of the past would be gone. However, looking behind I see that we have lost something valuable - creativity. Today we use nearly the same things that were created in the beginning of the 90's. With the exception of Java, we have not seen any major revolutions in computing. Linux is not a revolution per se, in fact it is the congregation of revolutionary steps that were breeding for the last 30 years before its creation. Apart of this, Linux is quite old and conservative.
When you look at old generations, you see that 90% of what they did is what you do today. The only difference is that you either reuse their work or invent the wheel again. Most of the market got reduced to a bunch of architectures and programming technologies. We no longer see computing rooms looking like zoos, with every kind of hardware and software. We don't see people fighting for every bit inside the memory and making marvels out of small chunks of code. We no longer have these weird 7bit, 8-bit or 12-bit computers laying around. And that's bad.
It's bad because we are going from an intensive revolution into an extensive evolution. And we forget that there are still tons of fields that are still unexplored or badly explored. AI looks standstill, Robotics is nearly forgotten, technologies beyond the microchip look more and more as SF, Quantum computing as far as Quantum theories, neuron networks look as cracks in a barren desert. These are areas that demand bleeding edge ideas and methods, those same methods that gave rise to our modern computer world. Btw, on our OSS world we have a good example of the lazyness of modern times - look at Hurd and where it stands now.
Besides, because we are loosing the bleeding edge in computing, it is probable that we do not see nothing beyond the present languages, architectures and technologies. It is very probable that we may had a whole New World behind the present Ocean of Information. But to cross it, one needs some will and courage.
Cool thinking. But there is some strange disproportion that your reasoning cannot explain. Most Mozilla users live in the *NIX world. Here hackers and crackers are 100 pound gorillas. They crack badly and deadly, even Mozilla (recently there was one such deadly crack). However I rarely have seen such sprees like those one sees in Windows world. Even slapper, which was at first considered as the *NIX CodeRed barely managed to create a scare. Today it is relatively difficult to catch him. ISS's` CodeRed, till now, beats the door in many of those servers I control.
The problem is not only popularity and user's lameness. The problem is also developer education and concern. We well know that certain Explorer/Outlook problems are not due exclusively to user's behaviour but because someone is too lazy to care for its product. If M$ did care about security, BBC would not stamp out such news.
Anyway I agree with you that some education would give some benefit to people. However, how can they learn when M$'s present motto is "Where you should go today?"
None other than a public monopoly that perpetuates the production of inferior products, and binds developers to a social contract that prohibits them from choosing the way in which they monetize their work.
Go read the GNU licenses before stating such thing. The contract does not bind developers to anything but what they want to give for free. And gives a chance that no one will try to hijack their work for more egoistic purposes.
On what concerns BSD. That's a viable license for those who want to have a more flexible way of making money. And it is nonsense to put it as something opposite to GPL. However there is a risk that someone may use it for purposes that may hurt your interests. And that's a fact that has had some prettyclear historical examples.
On what concerns your second observation, I fully agree with you. There is no sense on making a one single computing world. That would kill creativity and business. The Bazaar is a market. And the market needs difference to survive. Because the world is not perfect and it is impossible to create an All Universal License that may overcome the positive and negative aspects of OSS licenses. Correct, this is Chaos, but Chaos is the Mother of Cosmos.
Among the first things he did was to put two people from his team on Linux forums.
I wonder how many such people are now in Linux forums... By the way the flame rose up in/. I guess that they are not a few... Apart of those who clearly and sincerly believe in Windows world, there are a few posters that are too M$ prone and too enthusiastic to be sincere. Just a note to a few of them who are too fanatic to flame everything and everyone. This site was always been an OSS site. And I believe that while OSDN will fund it, it will keep that way. Before FUDding here the community, name them mindless jerks and immature adolescents, note that crying here "you slashdotters" picks you outta the crowd. As here, for 4 years I never heard that people would say "you penguins", "the solarians", "evil BSDs" or "appleworms". Remember that you entered/. so it is quite silly to put yourself outta the group and crying "you slashdotters". And what concerns the yellow journalistics of some/. admins, well we are used to it and we have enough flame for them, apart of your cheap FUD.
And sincerly to all these Windows fans. Why do you don't take the guts and ask M$ to create a similar site? It would be much better than playing this stupid psychological war inside an OSS forum. I even may suggest a name for it - "Start Button"...
It is not a religion but it has ideologies and conceptions behind it. And not one but many. And it is good that people come out from using computers as commodities and start to use their brains. Computers are brain machines. Much like the hammer is a machine for the hand. While people will use a computer like a bottle of Coke, they only will be simple consumers of their own thinking.
(Almost) no one making money? What do you mean? That IBM & Brothers ain't making money? That thousands of ISPs and organisations ain't making money? That a few millions of developers and sysadmins ain't making money?
Let me tell you one thing. I and many sysadmins started to get real money when we went Linux/BSD/Solaris/AIX/Novell. Yes, some of these systems are commercial but you should note that 90% of the main apps used on them, are OSS certified. Anyway, I could see my salary going four times higher than before. And I had 13 years of DOS/Windows experience before kicking the whole crap outta my desk. And what I and many other of my colleagues do now is ten times more complex and subtile than what you could do under Windows crappyness. I should remark you that to find some stupid detail inside Windows code, that was causing critical problems, I had to dig up over tons of documentation for days or even weeks. That C2 certification whoopla on NT, took me one month to end up with the clear and straight fact that one cannot enforce the most basic of C2 specs inside that shitty NT 4, no matter the stupid hype and NSA's docs. Similar things never happened to me under OSS - to get a positive or negative answer, I get things straight in a matter of hours or a few days. And that's what people like on me, because time is damn bloody money no matter you do it in closed or open source.
Nope, they were not shadows. While shadows messed in some places, along with dark dunes, it was easy and clear where and how to track their effects on ground. Frankly I made a small mistake on my post. Dark dunes didn't hide completely and totally from light. They hided from the most intensive light. They were located in places were daylight would be less intensive during the course of the day.
Well this is not exactly about panspermias but it may be an interesting note about the possibility of life in outter Space.
I would risk to say that we may already have some evidence (not proof!) that something alive may thrive in Mars surface. Nearly two years ago I got hand in a frame where one could see both light and dark dunes among a rugged Mars landscape. It was interesting to note that dark dunes formed mostly opposite to the general pattern of winblow that could be inferred from light dunes and the erosive processes in mounds and cliffs. Besides, on several places, under certain mounds, one could see how "dark sands" covered one side in a weird manner. They would concentrate over the base of the mound's side and swiftly dissipate the farer they would be from the mound.
MSS scientist claimed that these pattern was the result of light dunes being "pertified" and that dark dunes being "active". However, in several places, one could be pretty sure that the light mounds were still very active, was they "cut" a dark dune with their edges. Moreover, in one section of this regon, dark dunes would always "hide" behind the bigger and larger light dunes.
In the whole, it seemed that dark dunes ran away from light and wind, what was quite weird. As the region presented lots of data on how wind acted, the pattern was clear and perfect.
On other section of Mars I saw an even more weird picture. There, dunes would have clear and well visible "bridges" between themselves - patches that united dunes well far away from each other. In one place, such "bridge" was rising over a mound, going down through a small cliff and uniting two dark dunes quite far apart from each other (maybe more than a few hundreds of meters).
These strange and weird dark dunes are a mistery in Mars, many of them are clear and pure dunes, only its dark pattern gets quite weird as they don't have a clear origin. However some places show dunes that are only slightly similar to natural dunes. They are more compact, smaller than light dunes, Besides they present a "water drop" pattern rather than presenting the usual crescent shape of most dunes.
This is not the only weird thing in Mars about "dark lands" There are many more. However this is the most widespread weird feature in the planet. One can see this from pole to pole. However they are not in every place. They are quite localized in certain regions, while others lack them completely.
Tell that to the US Congress... They will load you with a million reasons why they don't need this @#$&%$@# Moon... Besides, they will tell you a billion reasons why Mankind doesn't need this $#^$!@#!# Space Conquer... Except for a few thousands of miles around Earth, specially for military and, sometimes, civilian purposes.
So conspiracy theorists will have some food of thought for the next century...
"When the US went to the moon, the USSR would've been watching with EVERY intelligence instrument in their posession. Every radio receiver, every telescope, every single spy would've been trained on the mission."
Your statement is pretty cool. But you're wrong in your assumptions. Conspiracy theorists may tell you that US and USSR made a whole super-conspiracy outta the Space Conquer to convince their dumb citizens that they were pretty cool. They may say that they did this in accordance, no matter the divisions and disagreements. Or they may tell you that US sent retransmitters to Space so that everyone would think they were walking on the Moon.
However these things are just corn seeds in the field The true problem here is not if we have been or not in the Moon. The problem is that we have had a huge debacle from Space Conquer since the 70s. Today, things are so histoircally far from us that we start to doubt if they really have taken place. How many expeditions have happened since then? How many events related to the Moon have happened since the last man quitted it? When the last seismic station turned off in the Moon?
The Moon Conquer was for many people something very SF, even when it was really happening. Now, 30 years later, it goes more than SF. It's mythology, sometimes of the very worst taste. Appolo XIII Holywood mega-picture showed it in all colours. We see there a raw patriotism where astronauts are good husbands and fathers and take a walk to the Moon like into the countryside. The dramatism of the film is artificial and quite theatrical. The whole story goes around on "how good is Earth, home sweet, home and dear bloody family", and doesn't touch a little neither the technicities of the mission nor the real drama of bringing back the station. The film is pure BS. And this and other similar things about Space is what we feed to new generations. That's the Cosmos they see. No wonder that they start to doubt we have been there...
Once I managed to hear something that one guy told me was a fragment from a conversation inside Appolo XIII. It was noisy, scrapped but some moments were clear. It was a cold blooded voice. It was clear that the guy was under extreme stress but he was fighting every second and every detail. No cries, no yellings, no discussions in maximas of Life and Values. Just good English full of technical details and sending Gods and Devils to Hell. That guy knew that he went into a place were frequently one gets one-way tickets. And he was really good on fighting back his return ticket. However, many people don't ever will know what was the real Appolo XIII.
When it will be the time M$ reaches the top 500 on supercomputing? Linux has been for long there. And it is getting nearer and nearer the first places. However, till now, Redmond couldn't manage to gather even a humble supercomputer made of crappy Windows. What is strangeas there are libraries for parallel computing on Windows.
So it seems that Windows is not ready for the bleeding edge... And no one knows when it will be...
However I think this should be bound into a legal frame much like GPL/BSD/Apache/... are for Free Software/OSS. This would allow people to avoid loosing their heads in tons of legal embroglios for each product that might appear. Besides, it may ease the mechanism of turning closed source products into open source, by creating a generally accepted practice. Also, a well established financing mechanism would create more trust among the community and people would not fear so highly on loosing money. I think OSS-prone lawyers have something good to think about.
A commonly accepted type of agreement might avoid the dangers of vaporware and other problems that might arise. Besides it will allow such things to be more well received among the community.
Sincerly I think that such things are quite important has they may create a bridge on turning lots of old closed source software into community hands. Also this can be a viable mechanism to finance the development of very complex applications that otherwise would remain in the shadows, waiting for some well-hearted sponsor with big pockets.
And have you thought how evil are Microsofts, Nintendos and other large corporations before stating: "What happened to making an honest living?"
Your patriotism is raw as you didn't think about this...
As if you would take some care about how certain corporations came into these megapredatory enterprises, you would just put your patriotism in first place and ask when someone would be able to make an honest living again.
It is not necessary to leave the US to see what certain large corporations did to Amrican ingenuity and innovation. Where are all those small companies that rised the M$ DOS world into the main trend in computing? Where is the shareware world? Where is the chance to rise a profit from a brilliant idea? What happened to Stack, old Borland, Novell and other major palyers in the market? What happened to the ancient Evil Empire of Big Blue which was a menace but still was full of innovation?
There is one thing. Ten years ago we had lots of major players: Microsoft, IBM, AMD, Intel, Novell, Symantec, Oracle, Borland, Lotus and several others. Today we have two sides: the *NIX world vs Micro$oft domination. Some may say this is natural, that there should be some congragation. However it is well known that this was achieved not by natural events and free market but rather by predatory politics. And US courts showed that this was a fact, no matter the half agreements that, for more than 10 years, US governments had with Redmond.
Before looking at Asian expertises, look at your own country and your own countrymen who cannot no longer make an honest living as before. Because you have no worser experts on stealing, distributing and profiting from hard American's work.
Absolutely correct. It is amazing to see how people simply and roughly ignore warnings, rush to open letters with such amicable statements like "Love you", "You won!", "About our last discussion", "Concerning your message". Such mails are usually the basis for those huge burst of virus epidemics inside certain corporate networks. There are times when a new virus comes in and goes nearly unnoticed. However, when someone plays a little social engineering and sends some letter with a key phrase (cliche), one may see how panic rises inside the building in a matter of minutes. And it is curious to note that this really does not depend on the automatisms of the antivirus programs, the technicities of the admins or the experience of the users. It is a matter of network use and personal expectations. Some people overuse corporate systems for personal purposes, others use it for the majority of communications among colleagues and some see it as an escape hatch into a "virtual" world. Depending on the way such networks evolve, certain common cliches come up into frequent use. It is enough to send some E-Mail containing such cliche and a good exploit to see users storming the admins with complaints.
Personally, I have seen some interesting trojan epidemics on networks that are in no way connected to the Internet. There was a company that was terribly paranoid and allowed Internet use only and exclusively from a particular computer. This way they thought they could overcome problems with viruses they had in the past. There was a not so dumb admin that dealed with the E-mail, filtering it through antivirus tools, before copying it into a diskette and send it into the LAN. And you know? They kept having serious problems with viruses. Some deeper analysis showed that every trojaned E-Mail containing a corporate cliche inside the subject was always the cause for the next epidemics.
Who are the jerks that put this into Insightful??? While I may understand that this guy has an opinion that I may not like of, this is in no way "Insightful". Partially, this is Flamebait as it counts to the raw level of measuring what one of the/. admins has in his pants. Frankly there are here a few moderators that should start looking at the mirror before turning less appropriate opinions into highly-insightful crap. If this is a way to defend the opinion that/. is too penguinistic, you do not make your values richer by modding up cheap flamers and dumb trollers. You just side with them and show that you may go lower than the most stupid submitter in/. to defend your opinions.
It's an ethical problem. For very religious people such experiments would equal to the most arrogant attempt for humans recreating the Creation. Even if it is inside a lab, such event would leave a huge teological hole on one of the most canonical religious doctrines: that life is somehow "different" from other physical phenomena and could only be created in very exceptional circumstances by an omnipotent being.
Since the XIX century, we have seen how the crumbling of this "truth" is painfully received among several religions. Since Darwin and Pasteur, every step that closes nears the biotic and anabiotic world is not easy for believers. Many dogmas put living beings in a special place. Besides, humans are put in a more special place. However, the rising of Evolutionism blurred the human-living beings division. Meanwhile while we got closer and closer to the abiotic world, no one could ever mix up inorganic components and bring out an alien crawling outta the lab. So many creationists hang to this last frontier and consider it as "proof" that Life was created by someone. However the new experiments may blur this division to the impossible.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft asks you to remove any references about Windows on referring to those holes in the walls of the buildings. Please start it by removing any reference of it from King Arthur's tales...
Now apart of jokes... In Russia, Microsoft can go fishing. While Windows is an english plural name, apart of the fact that we speak Russian (windows is okna or fortochki in Russian), Windows is still a common name. Under Copyright Law, common names cannot be covered in any way by copyright.
And its name is... America...
For those who don't know, North America was pretty well known to Europe before Colombo set foot there. I'll try up some of the data I knew a few years ago.
Well there are lot of stories floating around that America was known to other people before the XIth Century. There are some strange facts about architecture and customs that suggest that African/Mediterranean peoples were in contact with America in a very far past (>3000 years ago). There were some suggestions that Phoenicians and Romans knew soemthing laid in the west of the Atlantic. We had stories about legends from people now living in modern West Africa. We had the famous Irish monks. However the historical mist is pretty thick here. So we just ignore these things for now.
In the XIth century we have the first, 100% data that Europeans reached America. As many of you know, they were the Vikings. Classical History claims that this discovery was lost. Wrong, at least until the XIIIth century, many bigheads in Europe knew about this. However something happened during that time and this data was forgetten for nearly 100 years till Templars/Portuguese reached modern Boston somwhere in 1450s. There is a fact that confirms this, some "signed" rock, which its copies lays now in Lisbon. Note that Portuguese had such a tradition - apart of putting pilars in the seashore, they marked rocks to mention their presence to future expeditions. But that was not all. From that time and until the end of the 1480s Portuguese made several expeditions to North America, and probably sailed over the South. And according to certain stories, they did this taking together dannish and french (why ???) sailors. Besides there is a story that Portuguese possessed maps made in the XIIth century that clearly showed Labrador and regions down to modern New-York. Btw, it was in the middle of the XVth Century that portuguese got used to fish Codfish. Codfish does not live in Portuguese hotter waters. To catch it up, one has to get near Canada. Unfortunately, with the exception of two expeditions, every document concerning these travels probably was destryed during Inquisition times and Lisbon's Earthquake in 1755.
But this story is not the main thing. As you see, I speak about the Inquisition. Why? Because one of the main oppositors to all this was no one else than Roman Church. Fantasy? Absolutely not. Several years ago I got into my hands the story of a french archeologist that made a fantastic discovery. He studied the social-economical situation of Europe during the middle of Middle Ages. In one of his studies he met with people who talked about some wierd documents on Greenland dated to the XIIIth century. These documents were several bureaucratic papers concerning the relation between Greenland people and the Dannish Episcope. It occurs that somewhere after to colonization of Greenland, these lands were offered to the Church. The Dannish Episcopate, as representative of the Pope, ruled in fact these lands.On the papers it seems that there are references to the fact that Greenlanders knew about the existence of other lands in the West. However, somewhere in the middle of the XIIIth century, step-by-step contacts with Greenland started to fade. It is curious to mention that in some point of History, only Church boats had the right to sail to these lands. However in the XIIIth Century, contacts were reduced to only one sail a year. In the end the boat caught fire and no one replaced it. What happened to the remaining Greenlanders remains a mistery.
Frankly this story made me think A LOT. Right now, I don't remeber the name of the french archeologist. But I remember that this was once considered one of the biggest authorities in Middle Ages History. The fact that the Church didn't only knew but OWNED lands that later were considered pure fantasies, rises lots of questions about how and when America was in fact discovered. During the Middle Ages, people had lost of other problems rather to care about something that eroded all foundations of knowledge of those times. However, the Church was The European Center of Knowledge, and even in the most darkest times, they cared to be informed. The fact that they were so near of America, and restricted contacts with Greenland, suggests that they knew about it.
There is also one factor to add up to this story. Portuguese expeditions were directed from a center in South Europe. This center was known as Sagres, but the name of a village that lays nearby. There were stories that this center was a big building laying not far away from the sea. However, since the XVIth century, references to this building disappeared altogether. Today, in the supposed place where this center existed, there is NO OBJECT that would remind of its existence. Until the somehwere in the 1980s... Sagres is a good place for those who fly small motor planes, its windy like Hell. and one pilot noted drawings in the surface. Archeologists came in and discovered the biggest mistery of Portugal's History. The building was completely removed from that place, down to the foundations. A huge Rose of the Winds that layed nearby and was surely made of rocks, could only be seen from the air for the holes on the ground. All the Sagres center was completely wiped up. By who? Archeologists thought that nearby villagers may have used the rock for their houses. However in Sagres there are no clear signs that houses may carry those rocks. Besides some cannot understand why villagers would be so systematic to clean the place completely.
There is one interesting conspiration theory about this. One guy suggested that this was a last attempt to forget America and everything else. However it was too late. Europe went crazy about India. Spanish were making fortunes out of the stolen american gold. English, French and Dutch were already reaching America. the Church lost the battle...
Phoenix Technologies has every right to be unhappy about about the Phoenix browser
Well, sincerly I don't get with your idea... Phoenix Technologies do not make browsers. Besides, why they wouldn't be unhappy with the fact that Herodotus popularized the Phoenix legend, that there is a plant called Phoenix, that there is a bird commonly called "Phoenix" (the japanese Phoenix Fowl) and a city called Phoenix? That's too one-sided to be rightful. While I would agree that calling Microsoft something else rather than Redmond's crap is wrong (well their name is original right?), Phoenix is a well-known name used by tens of nations in their traditional languages. Besides, Phoenix is a very common name used in software. There is Phoenix Software GmbH. There is Phoenix Simulation Software. AFAIK, something in one of Apache's projects is named Phoenix.
Why they would be so nice to sting into this one only project?
Also Phoinix, Finiks...
Originally Phoenix was also a meaning for "red" and it seems that Red-Bird was also a name used in the past.
In Russian it is also known as "zhar-ptitsa" (afaik Hot-Bird) and it is also a traditional myth, slightly similar to the greek one.
Pick up an cockpit and convert every signal into numbers in displays. Less than five seconds the pilot will search for the parachute...
In fact we are some sort of weird generation. Some sort of generation X that forgot that there are other means of information rather than listings falling into syslogs, icons shinning and popup windows. Back in the early 70's, when I saw the first computer (a beast called IBM/360), computers had beeps, shinning buttons, switches that turned automatically. Most of it have gone. Only the irritating beep on Linux command line, when you make some mistake, reminds me that once that was one of the main warning signals. Today's audible signals turned into a misture of music or small sounds that follows GUI actions in many details. However, this signalling is by 80% superfluous. You don't get anything from listening *woops* and *pops* while you're working. As you hear it coutless times, you get so used to it, that you may ignore any serious warning sound. It's just entertainement, nothing else.
The case of creating a audible ping is something that depends on two factors. Is this signalling important? Probably yes. With this you may get a control of network problems that may happen when you're doing something else. But the second problem might kill it. Is this signalling discrete and unique? Probably no. On my experience, I have seen lots of networks where ping timings bounce like crazy, in one moment you get 200us and right after that 2000us, then you fall into 10us and jump up to 1000us. Now, pick up this "audio-ping" and listen for a while. What will you get? Yes, MacBrains with cheesy ears. No information, no usefulness.
However, there are lots of chances to create a useful ping. Note that audio is just an abstraction, something that compresses the real data into a more compact form of information that is more perceptive than the original (btw ping itself is quite an abstract entity to evaluate network status). So if one picks the right signalling with the right timings and the right transmission, such audio-ping may turn into something very useful. But, this can only be seen after someone cooks the thing. Until then we can only speculate.
Wrong pal. The correct article is http://ru.arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0210086. However the article you refer is directly related to this one. But all that cooking journalistic dumbiness in SA is related to this more recent stuff.
On the problem of observers. People don't get wrong with it. Note that the girl talks about two of the biggest problems of Physics - the relative observer that has to consider the restraints of his position and dynamics in the Universe, and the quantic observer that cannot make a deterministic prediction of all the physical conditions of one observation. Add these two things into one and try to guess what will happen to the observer.
And note that they are about Quantic, nearly aka the atomic world. And that the talk goes about abstract observers, not real ones, located at that level. Thanks God we are in a bigger dimension that overlaps all the crazynesses of the underworld...
Why not send also a crew of Federal Taxes Inspection auditors to the US? Sincerly I would be happy to see that. Note that ISS came up to Life when Russia was painfully trying to hold up Mir and making ISS's main module. All this when Russia's economy went nearly bankrupt. Yes, US helped financing part of the Russian segment so that they could hold up the timings. But, sincerly, there were lots of complaints on how these agreements were made into reality.
We can blame things on Russians, Canadians, US Feds or the aliens. The fact is people that we all screwed the thing up! ISS was and is the Space Titanic. It is a huge megaproject mainly based in the state of affairs we had in the 70s. Back then it could be possible that US only or USSR only could have made something similar (well if we ignore some technical difficulties of the time and consider the money factor only). However, today we all retreated from Space. The US keeps going up with some crappy shuttle that was wrong from start. Russia did one but sent it into the trashcan. Europe and Japan didn't rise theirs from the paper. We still are using rockets that are basically all the crap we had in the 60s, even those fresh new Titans. We stopped sending interplanetary probes, with some exception to Mars. The Moon is so far away that lots of people doubt we have been there.
That's the state of affairs people. Frankly this is not an auditors problem. It is a question much bigger and that calls some serious questions to the political elites that ruled us for the last 30 years: Who screwed up the Space Age and why?
Some may say that it's financial problems and that we should solve the famine in Ethiopia/Somalia/Sudan/Whatever and then go to Space. Sorry, the famine has been there always and screwing up the Space Age have not helped to solve it a bit. And frankly, USSR and America were not in a good financial position when the runup started in 1957. However we only didn't manage to reach Pluto/Charon... And just because someone scrapped up everything in the middle of the 70's. Back then there were no serious financial problems to keep up the run, even on a slower step.
Frankly if ISS shut up, then there will be only two escape hatches for Earth. One is to rethink everything and seriously consider how to return back to Space in solid foot. The other is to keep screwing up everything and wait that we make a second Mars out of the Earth... Me joking? Naaaa...
Wrong pal... For true security pull the plug. Lynx had also a few bugs of its own... Telnet can be sniffed.
Besides, IE would got a less scandalous life if it didn't have the "Feature". And the "Feature" is embedding. a more modular and independent architecture would avoid many of the problems users face with this crap. IE could be, on the whole, as buggy as it is today. However the deadly effects of many exploits and cracks would be less noted as it would be easier to manage the thing. However, apart of bloatness and bugness, M$ opted to put everything in one bed. Well, what happens when one gets everyone and everything into one bed and close the door tight? Right - Vacchannalia. It's this permanent sex with the user's brain that gives IE and many other M$ products its bad name.
Reading this analysis, I would prefer to name this book as "Canned Internet Security". Maybe the book is good in its generic considerations about security. But I'm pretty sure that one cannot talk about Windows, Linux, Internet, Secure Programming and compress all of it into some 400 pages. Well, talking about Windows ACLs costs an expert nearly the same number of pages, you know? And that was a book for average to advanced experts. And, knowing the subtilities of both Windows and Linux, I am pretty sure that 1000 pages would not be enough to cover 10% of the problems. So ~400 pages?
Besides the fact that one chapter is about history leads me to think that this is quite a general thing. However, for people who may want a startup on security, considering the level of the authors, this book may be some good stuff for them.
Well this is not exactly about languages and libraries but more about experience and use.
Frankly the market looks big but it looks bad. Yes, there were tons of improvements for the last 30 years. I still remember as a kid how my father had to fight small bugs in code by looking at the holes in the punch cards. I remember how terrible it was to fight Xenix in a S/36 and learn my very few first steps in *NIX. I remember the horror I got when I saw one of the very first PCs in Europe. It was a terrible world where the only help was the guru and yourself.
When I met the new OSes, Object Oriented Programming, RAD and all that pretty stuff out there I thought we had the road ahead and, soon, the horrors of the past would be gone. However, looking behind I see that we have lost something valuable - creativity. Today we use nearly the same things that were created in the beginning of the 90's. With the exception of Java, we have not seen any major revolutions in computing. Linux is not a revolution per se, in fact it is the congregation of revolutionary steps that were breeding for the last 30 years before its creation. Apart of this, Linux is quite old and conservative.
When you look at old generations, you see that 90% of what they did is what you do today. The only difference is that you either reuse their work or invent the wheel again. Most of the market got reduced to a bunch of architectures and programming technologies. We no longer see computing rooms looking like zoos, with every kind of hardware and software. We don't see people fighting for every bit inside the memory and making marvels out of small chunks of code. We no longer have these weird 7bit, 8-bit or 12-bit computers laying around. And that's bad.
It's bad because we are going from an intensive revolution into an extensive evolution. And we forget that there are still tons of fields that are still unexplored or badly explored. AI looks standstill, Robotics is nearly forgotten, technologies beyond the microchip look more and more as SF, Quantum computing as far as Quantum theories, neuron networks look as cracks in a barren desert. These are areas that demand bleeding edge ideas and methods, those same methods that gave rise to our modern computer world. Btw, on our OSS world we have a good example of the lazyness of modern times - look at Hurd and where it stands now.
Besides, because we are loosing the bleeding edge in computing, it is probable that we do not see nothing beyond the present languages, architectures and technologies. It is very probable that we may had a whole New World behind the present Ocean of Information. But to cross it, one needs some will and courage.
Cool thinking. But there is some strange disproportion that your reasoning cannot explain. Most Mozilla users live in the *NIX world. Here hackers and crackers are 100 pound gorillas. They crack badly and deadly, even Mozilla (recently there was one such deadly crack). However I rarely have seen such sprees like those one sees in Windows world. Even slapper, which was at first considered as the *NIX CodeRed barely managed to create a scare. Today it is relatively difficult to catch him. ISS's` CodeRed, till now, beats the door in many of those servers I control.
The problem is not only popularity and user's lameness. The problem is also developer education and concern. We well know that certain Explorer/Outlook problems are not due exclusively to user's behaviour but because someone is too lazy to care for its product. If M$ did care about security, BBC would not stamp out such news.
Anyway I agree with you that some education would give some benefit to people. However, how can they learn when M$'s present motto is "Where you should go today?"
None other than a public monopoly that perpetuates the production of inferior products, and binds developers to a social contract that prohibits them from choosing the way in which they monetize their work.
Go read the GNU licenses before stating such thing. The contract does not bind developers to anything but what they want to give for free. And gives a chance that no one will try to hijack their work for more egoistic purposes.
On what concerns BSD. That's a viable license for those who want to have a more flexible way of making money. And it is nonsense to put it as something opposite to GPL. However there is a risk that someone may use it for purposes that may hurt your interests. And that's a fact that has had some prettyclear historical examples.
On what concerns your second observation, I fully agree with you. There is no sense on making a one single computing world. That would kill creativity and business. The Bazaar is a market. And the market needs difference to survive. Because the world is not perfect and it is impossible to create an All Universal License that may overcome the positive and negative aspects of OSS licenses. Correct, this is Chaos, but Chaos is the Mother of Cosmos.
Among the first things he did was to put two people from his team on Linux forums.
/. I guess that they are not a few... Apart of those who clearly and sincerly believe in Windows world, there are a few posters that are too M$ prone and too enthusiastic to be sincere. Just a note to a few of them who are too fanatic to flame everything and everyone. This site was always been an OSS site. And I believe that while OSDN will fund it, it will keep that way. Before FUDding here the community, name them mindless jerks and immature adolescents, note that crying here "you slashdotters" picks you outta the crowd. As here, for 4 years I never heard that people would say "you penguins", "the solarians", "evil BSDs" or "appleworms". Remember that you entered /. so it is quite silly to put yourself outta the group and crying "you slashdotters". And what concerns the yellow journalistics of some /. admins, well we are used to it and we have enough flame for them, apart of your cheap FUD.
I wonder how many such people are now in Linux forums... By the way the flame rose up in
And sincerly to all these Windows fans. Why do you don't take the guts and ask M$ to create a similar site? It would be much better than playing this stupid psychological war inside an OSS forum. I even may suggest a name for it - "Start Button"...
It is not a religion but it has ideologies and conceptions behind it. And not one but many. And it is good that people come out from using computers as commodities and start to use their brains. Computers are brain machines. Much like the hammer is a machine for the hand. While people will use a computer like a bottle of Coke, they only will be simple consumers of their own thinking.
(Almost) no one making money? What do you mean? That IBM & Brothers ain't making money? That thousands of ISPs and organisations ain't making money? That a few millions of developers and sysadmins ain't making money?
Let me tell you one thing. I and many sysadmins started to get real money when we went Linux/BSD/Solaris/AIX/Novell. Yes, some of these systems are commercial but you should note that 90% of the main apps used on them, are OSS certified. Anyway, I could see my salary going four times higher than before. And I had 13 years of DOS/Windows experience before kicking the whole crap outta my desk. And what I and many other of my colleagues do now is ten times more complex and subtile than what you could do under Windows crappyness. I should remark you that to find some stupid detail inside Windows code, that was causing critical problems, I had to dig up over tons of documentation for days or even weeks. That C2 certification whoopla on NT, took me one month to end up with the clear and straight fact that one cannot enforce the most basic of C2 specs inside that shitty NT 4, no matter the stupid hype and NSA's docs. Similar things never happened to me under OSS - to get a positive or negative answer, I get things straight in a matter of hours or a few days. And that's what people like on me, because time is damn bloody money no matter you do it in closed or open source.
And that's my ego gratification.
Nope, they were not shadows. While shadows messed in some places, along with dark dunes, it was easy and clear where and how to track their effects on ground. Frankly I made a small mistake on my post. Dark dunes didn't hide completely and totally from light. They hided from the most intensive light. They were located in places were daylight would be less intensive during the course of the day.
Well this is not exactly about panspermias but it may be an interesting note about the possibility of life in outter Space.
I would risk to say that we may already have some evidence (not proof!) that something alive may thrive in Mars surface. Nearly two years ago I got hand in a frame where one could see both light and dark dunes among a rugged Mars landscape. It was interesting to note that dark dunes formed mostly opposite to the general pattern of winblow that could be inferred from light dunes and the erosive processes in mounds and cliffs. Besides, on several places, under certain mounds, one could see how "dark sands" covered one side in a weird manner. They would concentrate over the base of the mound's side and swiftly dissipate the farer they would be from the mound.
MSS scientist claimed that these pattern was the result of light dunes being "pertified" and that dark dunes being "active". However, in several places, one could be pretty sure that the light mounds were still very active, was they "cut" a dark dune with their edges. Moreover, in one section of this regon, dark dunes would always "hide" behind the bigger and larger light dunes.
In the whole, it seemed that dark dunes ran away from light and wind, what was quite weird. As the region presented lots of data on how wind acted, the pattern was clear and perfect.
On other section of Mars I saw an even more weird picture. There, dunes would have clear and well visible "bridges" between themselves - patches that united dunes well far away from each other. In one place, such "bridge" was rising over a mound, going down through a small cliff and uniting two dark dunes quite far apart from each other (maybe more than a few hundreds of meters).
These strange and weird dark dunes are a mistery in Mars, many of them are clear and pure dunes, only its dark pattern gets quite weird as they don't have a clear origin. However some places show dunes that are only slightly similar to natural dunes. They are more compact, smaller than light dunes, Besides they present a "water drop" pattern rather than presenting the usual crescent shape of most dunes.
This is not the only weird thing in Mars about "dark lands" There are many more. However this is the most widespread weird feature in the planet. One can see this from pole to pole. However they are not in every place. They are quite localized in certain regions, while others lack them completely.
Tell that to the US Congress... They will load you with a million reasons why they don't need this @#$&%$@# Moon... Besides, they will tell you a billion reasons why Mankind doesn't need this $#^$!@#!# Space Conquer... Except for a few thousands of miles around Earth, specially for military and, sometimes, civilian purposes.
So conspiracy theorists will have some food of thought for the next century...
"When the US went to the moon, the USSR would've been watching with EVERY intelligence instrument in their posession. Every radio receiver, every telescope, every single spy would've been trained on the mission."
Your statement is pretty cool. But you're wrong in your assumptions. Conspiracy theorists may tell you that US and USSR made a whole super-conspiracy outta the Space Conquer to convince their dumb citizens that they were pretty cool. They may say that they did this in accordance, no matter the divisions and disagreements. Or they may tell you that US sent retransmitters to Space so that everyone would think they were walking on the Moon.
However these things are just corn seeds in the field The true problem here is not if we have been or not in the Moon. The problem is that we have had a huge debacle from Space Conquer since the 70s. Today, things are so histoircally far from us that we start to doubt if they really have taken place. How many expeditions have happened since then? How many events related to the Moon have happened since the last man quitted it? When the last seismic station turned off in the Moon?
The Moon Conquer was for many people something very SF, even when it was really happening. Now, 30 years later, it goes more than SF. It's mythology, sometimes of the very worst taste. Appolo XIII Holywood mega-picture showed it in all colours. We see there a raw patriotism where astronauts are good husbands and fathers and take a walk to the Moon like into the countryside. The dramatism of the film is artificial and quite theatrical. The whole story goes around on "how good is Earth, home sweet, home and dear bloody family", and doesn't touch a little neither the technicities of the mission nor the real drama of bringing back the station. The film is pure BS. And this and other similar things about Space is what we feed to new generations. That's the Cosmos they see. No wonder that they start to doubt we have been there...
Once I managed to hear something that one guy told me was a fragment from a conversation inside Appolo XIII. It was noisy, scrapped but some moments were clear. It was a cold blooded voice. It was clear that the guy was under extreme stress but he was fighting every second and every detail. No cries, no yellings, no discussions in maximas of Life and Values. Just good English full of technical details and sending Gods and Devils to Hell. That guy knew that he went into a place were frequently one gets one-way tickets. And he was really good on fighting back his return ticket. However, many people don't ever will know what was the real Appolo XIII.
So let's have some flame here...
When it will be the time M$ reaches the top 500 on supercomputing? Linux has been for long there. And it is getting nearer and nearer the first places. However, till now, Redmond couldn't manage to gather even a humble supercomputer made of crappy Windows. What is strangeas there are libraries for parallel computing on Windows.
So it seems that Windows is not ready for the bleeding edge... And no one knows when it will be...
However I think this should be bound into a legal frame much like GPL/BSD/Apache/... are for Free Software/OSS. This would allow people to avoid loosing their heads in tons of legal embroglios for each product that might appear. Besides, it may ease the mechanism of turning closed source products into open source, by creating a generally accepted practice. Also, a well established financing mechanism would create more trust among the community and people would not fear so highly on loosing money. I think OSS-prone lawyers have something good to think about.
A commonly accepted type of agreement might avoid the dangers of vaporware and other problems that might arise. Besides it will allow such things to be more well received among the community.
Sincerly I think that such things are quite important has they may create a bridge on turning lots of old closed source software into community hands. Also this can be a viable mechanism to finance the development of very complex applications that otherwise would remain in the shadows, waiting for some well-hearted sponsor with big pockets.
And have you thought how evil are Microsofts, Nintendos and other large corporations before stating: "What happened to making an honest living?"
Your patriotism is raw as you didn't think about this...
As if you would take some care about how certain corporations came into these megapredatory enterprises, you would just put your patriotism in first place and ask when someone would be able to make an honest living again.
It is not necessary to leave the US to see what certain large corporations did to Amrican ingenuity and innovation. Where are all those small companies that rised the M$ DOS world into the main trend in computing? Where is the shareware world? Where is the chance to rise a profit from a brilliant idea? What happened to Stack, old Borland, Novell and other major palyers in the market? What happened to the ancient Evil Empire of Big Blue which was a menace but still was full of innovation?
There is one thing. Ten years ago we had lots of major players: Microsoft, IBM, AMD, Intel, Novell, Symantec, Oracle, Borland, Lotus and several others. Today we have two sides: the *NIX world vs Micro$oft domination. Some may say this is natural, that there should be some congragation. However it is well known that this was achieved not by natural events and free market but rather by predatory politics. And US courts showed that this was a fact, no matter the half agreements that, for more than 10 years, US governments had with Redmond.
Before looking at Asian expertises, look at your own country and your own countrymen who cannot no longer make an honest living as before. Because you have no worser experts on stealing, distributing and profiting from hard American's work.
Absolutely correct. It is amazing to see how people simply and roughly ignore warnings, rush to open letters with such amicable statements like "Love you", "You won!", "About our last discussion", "Concerning your message". Such mails are usually the basis for those huge burst of virus epidemics inside certain corporate networks. There are times when a new virus comes in and goes nearly unnoticed. However, when someone plays a little social engineering and sends some letter with a key phrase (cliche), one may see how panic rises inside the building in a matter of minutes. And it is curious to note that this really does not depend on the automatisms of the antivirus programs, the technicities of the admins or the experience of the users. It is a matter of network use and personal expectations. Some people overuse corporate systems for personal purposes, others use it for the majority of communications among colleagues and some see it as an escape hatch into a "virtual" world. Depending on the way such networks evolve, certain common cliches come up into frequent use. It is enough to send some E-Mail containing such cliche and a good exploit to see users storming the admins with complaints.
Personally, I have seen some interesting trojan epidemics on networks that are in no way connected to the Internet. There was a company that was terribly paranoid and allowed Internet use only and exclusively from a particular computer. This way they thought they could overcome problems with viruses they had in the past. There was a not so dumb admin that dealed with the E-mail, filtering it through antivirus tools, before copying it into a diskette and send it into the LAN. And you know? They kept having serious problems with viruses. Some deeper analysis showed that every trojaned E-Mail containing a corporate cliche inside the subject was always the cause for the next epidemics.
Who are the jerks that put this into Insightful??? While I may understand that this guy has an opinion that I may not like of, this is in no way "Insightful". Partially, this is Flamebait as it counts to the raw level of measuring what one of the /. admins has in his pants. Frankly there are here a few moderators that should start looking at the mirror before turning less appropriate opinions into highly-insightful crap. If this is a way to defend the opinion that /. is too penguinistic, you do not make your values richer by modding up cheap flamers and dumb trollers. You just side with them and show that you may go lower than the most stupid submitter in /. to defend your opinions.
It's an ethical problem. For very religious people such experiments would equal to the most arrogant attempt for humans recreating the Creation. Even if it is inside a lab, such event would leave a huge teological hole on one of the most canonical religious doctrines: that life is somehow "different" from other physical phenomena and could only be created in very exceptional circumstances by an omnipotent being.
Since the XIX century, we have seen how the crumbling of this "truth" is painfully received among several religions. Since Darwin and Pasteur, every step that closes nears the biotic and anabiotic world is not easy for believers. Many dogmas put living beings in a special place. Besides, humans are put in a more special place. However, the rising of Evolutionism blurred the human-living beings division. Meanwhile while we got closer and closer to the abiotic world, no one could ever mix up inorganic components and bring out an alien crawling outta the lab. So many creationists hang to this last frontier and consider it as "proof" that Life was created by someone. However the new experiments may blur this division to the impossible.