Fair enough. Mostly, I hate seeing +5 comments that start or end with, "there goes my karma...", because it just seems pretentious. I suppose sometimes you just don't know, though.
I have a policy of never modding anybody up that says "here goes my karma", but I appreciated that post. (And I use linux for programming/fun, and it is quite ready for my purposes.)
linux just sucks at burning dvds. they use a retarded program called 'growisofs' that only makes coasters, because it's memory footprint is so big that the hd gets taxed out trying to add swapspaces, when you really only need the next 16 MB of the burn data cached to avoid buffer under-runs...
well, every linux dvd burning app uses the retarded growisofs that is clearly broken, and nobody cares because they only burn cds anyways.. You're full of shit. You may have had this experience, but you frame this as though it were a ubiquitous problem that everybody has seen. I won't tell you to go file a bug report, or that you're wrong to be annoyed, but you make it sound like DVD burning on linux is impossible. However, I have never heard this problem mentioned before (and I have read about CD/DVD burning in linux), so I'm going to assume that I'm not the only person who has never had problems burning DVDs.
Hmm. The time I tried to install FreeBSD, the installer choked on my hardware. I tried two different dell desktops. Part of the problem was an inability to deal with a USB keyboard. I hope that has been fixed, and I plan to try FreeBSD again, some day. I'll stick with a more common OS, for now.
Like it or not, utilities to break encryption are illegal in the USA
Like hell it is. Breaking encryption is fine. You only run into legal issues when you try to circumvent copy protection measures on copyrighted media (which is still bad) Aren't copyright measures always at odds with interoperability, and doesn't the DMCA allow for reverse engineering for interoperability? I don't quite get where the legal line is drawn. Can't we break the encryption on documents to view/listen to them in different software or hardware?
Yeah, but you can accomplish the same things with a Java applet or using flash. Sometimes, ActiveX is used when intimate interaction with the user's computer is necessary. I have seen a consulting firm use ActiveX to start a VNC connection for support purposes. Telling the user to go to a URL and click "yes" is a lot easier than telling them to find and run an executable (that may not even be installed).
The human brain and consciousness are complex. We don't know that they are non-deterministic. And furthermore, even if it's fundamentally random on some level, can't that still be approximated with a random (on some level) algorithm? There may be other arguments as to why the brain can't be modeled ("maybe if the brain were modeled as an algorithm, it would have to be *infinitely long*"), but I don't know many / I'm not sure how I feel about them.
Consciousness is also a strange beast. What is consciousness? Why does consciousness feel continuous, when we know it isn't? (Some people even regain consciousness after they have been pronounced dead.) Why do I still think I am the same being that I was 10 years ago, when my brain was made of completely different cells? Because of the uncertainty of these questions, I think that *what consciousness is* really doesn't matter.
Consciousness may just be part of the noise that results when a thinking being becomes self aware. But no matter what it is, I think it developed as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. If this is so, when we create computers that can parse written information and communicate effectively, it won't really matter whether they are "conscious", and it won't matter what it would mean for such a machine to be conscious.
User friendliness (aka usable by idiots) is a GOOD thing because it allows us to do what needs to be done, faster. I don't want to take 5 minutes to do something that could be made in 30 seconds, and I guess other people think the same way, geeks or not. I think that when people raise objections to the user friendly stuff, we really don't know why we don't like it (so we make up bullshit, as humans are prone to do). I don't actually object to things that are easy to use, but I hate ubuntu. Why? I'm not entirely sure, but I suspect it actually has to do with these "easy" systems having more complexity than I can understand. I don't like it. I prefer package management systems for "power users", because I can understand them. I like config files for the same reason. For somebody who likes to tinker, debian/ubuntu is positively *daunting*, compared to arch linux or gentoo.
I would imagine so - even if somehow you were able to "smell" a complete vacuum, your own body (including the nasal passages themselves) will be giving off odors. If they are so subtle as to normally be overwhelmed by the usual natural background, that may be your first chance to detect them. Well, we get used to whatever's around. When I went backpacking for a few weeks in the desert of Utah, I stopped smelling my own B.O., but I gained the ability to smell peanut butter through two plastic bags, ten feet away. It was pretty sweet. I'm sure the same increasing sensitivity happens to astronauts who live in a mostly sterile, boring, environment.
I don't think the parent should be modded troll, though the comment seems to be sarcastic.
But in any case, what can we say about a company that makes its living by finding security vulnerabilities and offering to sell their findings to interested parties?
1) If they sell their findings to people who want to exploit them (rather than fix them), they are scum. 2) If they do not do (1), these companies are useful, as they do make it easier for flaws to be fixed, even if they do charge money (and won't help if you don't pay them). 3) It's *mean*. It's not nice to solicit someone and say "I could fix your problems (and it wouldn't even take me any work!), but you have to pay me a lot."
Point 3 does not change the fact that this company's existence is useful. Further, it's a necessity if they want to continue to exist. They need to be paid somehow. (I haven't read the article, and I will eat my shoe if they actually are selling exploits to third parties.)
Mine came from http://templates.arcsin.se/ , but I'd look at any result for a search for "css templates" (without the quotes). Some sites are definitely better than others--if you notice that 99% of a site's listed templates are garbage, you might as not look through all N pages of templates that they have. Similarly, many sites only have blog-related templates, but that should be okay, supposing you don't mind removing unnecessary divs and re-centering things.
Personally, I think it's nicer to search for a nice CSS/site template. I found one that I really liked for my home page. They are very easy to adapt, and you know what you are doing is legal. (I looked for ones that didn't require me to write anything really tacky at the bottom of the page. "design by [author]" is fine, "design by Free CSS Templates" is not.)
I think we agree that the modern term "operating system" can be thought of a continuum from the kernel to [whenever we draw the line]. (I tend to think of "Linux" as meaning the operating environment of my computer and most of its software, but I refuse to say GNU/Linux.) But you used the phrase "core OS". I'm sorry to pick nits, but that "core OS" says, "the minimal, essential parts of the system."
After all, in Unix, terminals and other IO devices are a part of the core OS. Why should a GUI be any different? It's kind of retarded not to be. I must be retarded, but terminals and IO drivers are essential for the system to perform any useful function, and further, they require an intimate connection to the kernel. Additionally, GUIs and GUI applications are large, slow, and prone to crashing, and optional. Yes, my web host runs linux with no GUI. Does this mean it doesn't have a complete OS? Sure, I can't game on it, but it's a development / hosting box!
The RIAA represents the big four and many smaller record companies. Just so you know, that list includes record companies that are not part of the RIAA. For example, Fat Wreck Chords (hates the RIAA) is on the list because one of their distributors is part of the RIAA, but that is quite different from being a member themselves.
I eagerly await the insightful words of Lars Ulrich, Dr. Dre, et al to explain to me why pissing off the people who were perfectly willing to pony up good money for concerts, T-shirts and, yes, full retail priced CDs was worth it in the end. I know I'm being sort of anal, but this article isn't about the RIAA pissing off customers, it's about the RIAA pissing on artists. (Noth that I read the article...)
Also, [BSD] has a formal foundation and governance which effectively ensures it's survival. One would think so, but it doesn't seem to be helping Gentoo...
Do people sue because the judicial system allows them to, or does the judicial system exist because "we the people" demanded it to exist in it's current state? (not a troll, an honest question) I've never sued anybody, but here's how I think about it: let's say you manufacture a stupid product (say, a kid's toy that's poisonous, or a device cylindrical device that when one flips a switch, it will immediately burn the person holding it, then cause a fire).
If you, the manufacturer, did something wrong, whatever happens is N% your fault. And you should be sued for N% of the damage caused. Selling a product that is dangerous, but not obviously so, is wrong. A warning label is perfect, so that 1) a careless customer is warned, and 2) a picky customer can remove the label.
In short, we demand this system. I'm not in favor of bad lawsuits, but it's not always clear what is a bad lawsuit. People disagree.
If CS departments can weed out potential programmers by making their curricula tougher, they should really do it. This would ensure that CS people were actually talented and devoted to the trade and that compensation in the future would remain commensurate with training, unlike in the situation in the biomedical sciences. Why? You haven't even claimed that there is a glut in the CS job market. The students of medium talent that get turned away would not be well served by your policy, while they might perhaps find happy jobs if they are allowed to study programming.
Thanks again Slashdot for proving the Linux camp really are full of a bunch of anti-Microsoft loonies who read only what they want to read. Your allegation does not follow.
My (perhaps flawed) understanding is that some music downloads are okay. They still violate the copyright act, but so does all fair use. That doesn't make them "not okay" or "not fair use", but it means that anybody that sued you over these violations would probably lose.
I want those with legitimate reasons to be able to get content (I know these reasons may be uncommon, but I don't really care. We may need to find a different way to stop piracy than to prevent everyone from sharing.)
Slashdot Mirror
Fair enough. Mostly, I hate seeing +5 comments that start or end with, "there goes my karma...", because it just seems pretentious. I suppose sometimes you just don't know, though.
I have a policy of never modding anybody up that says "here goes my karma", but I appreciated that post. (And I use linux for programming/fun, and it is quite ready for my purposes.)
well, every linux dvd burning app uses the retarded growisofs that is clearly broken, and nobody cares because they only burn cds anyways.. You're full of shit. You may have had this experience, but you frame this as though it were a ubiquitous problem that everybody has seen. I won't tell you to go file a bug report, or that you're wrong to be annoyed, but you make it sound like DVD burning on linux is impossible. However, I have never heard this problem mentioned before (and I have read about CD/DVD burning in linux), so I'm going to assume that I'm not the only person who has never had problems burning DVDs.
Hmm. The time I tried to install FreeBSD, the installer choked on my hardware. I tried two different dell desktops. Part of the problem was an inability to deal with a USB keyboard. I hope that has been fixed, and I plan to try FreeBSD again, some day. I'll stick with a more common OS, for now.
You just vouched for someone. You can't do that anonymously, it makes no sense and has no credibility.
More like:
Dear Jeffrey A. Kimmel,
My organization paid for this domain, and we will do whatever we please with it, unless you can show that we transferred ownership to your clients.
Regards,
$Project
(Of course, I don't know the details, and this may not be applicable.)
Like hell it is. Breaking encryption is fine. You only run into legal issues when you try to circumvent copy protection measures on copyrighted media (which is still bad) Aren't copyright measures always at odds with interoperability, and doesn't the DMCA allow for reverse engineering for interoperability? I don't quite get where the legal line is drawn. Can't we break the encryption on documents to view/listen to them in different software or hardware?
I'm with you. And to think I got really excited at the title of this story.
The human brain and consciousness are complex. We don't know that they are non-deterministic. And furthermore, even if it's fundamentally random on some level, can't that still be approximated with a random (on some level) algorithm? There may be other arguments as to why the brain can't be modeled ("maybe if the brain were modeled as an algorithm, it would have to be *infinitely long*"), but I don't know many / I'm not sure how I feel about them.
Consciousness is also a strange beast. What is consciousness? Why does consciousness feel continuous, when we know it isn't? (Some people even regain consciousness after they have been pronounced dead.) Why do I still think I am the same being that I was 10 years ago, when my brain was made of completely different cells? Because of the uncertainty of these questions, I think that *what consciousness is* really doesn't matter.
Consciousness may just be part of the noise that results when a thinking being becomes self aware. But no matter what it is, I think it developed as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. If this is so, when we create computers that can parse written information and communicate effectively, it won't really matter whether they are "conscious", and it won't matter what it would mean for such a machine to be conscious.
I would imagine so - even if somehow you were able to "smell" a complete vacuum, your own body (including the nasal passages themselves) will be giving off odors. If they are so subtle as to normally be overwhelmed by the usual natural background, that may be your first chance to detect them. Well, we get used to whatever's around. When I went backpacking for a few weeks in the desert of Utah, I stopped smelling my own B.O., but I gained the ability to smell peanut butter through two plastic bags, ten feet away. It was pretty sweet. I'm sure the same increasing sensitivity happens to astronauts who live in a mostly sterile, boring, environment.
Okay, it's very simple.
/some/path myhost.com:my/directory
/some/path rsync://myhost.com/my/directory OR /some/path myhost.com::my/directory
Encrypted and tunneled over SSH, rsync is spawned by a login shell at the other side:
rsync
Not encrypted, rsyncs daemon must be running at other end:
rsync
rsync
I don't think the parent should be modded troll, though the comment seems to be sarcastic.
But in any case, what can we say about a company that makes its living by finding security vulnerabilities and offering to sell their findings to interested parties?
1) If they sell their findings to people who want to exploit them (rather than fix them), they are scum.
2) If they do not do (1), these companies are useful, as they do make it easier for flaws to be fixed, even if they do charge money (and won't help if you don't pay them).
3) It's *mean*. It's not nice to solicit someone and say "I could fix your problems (and it wouldn't even take me any work!), but you have to pay me a lot."
Point 3 does not change the fact that this company's existence is useful. Further, it's a necessity if they want to continue to exist. They need to be paid somehow. (I haven't read the article, and I will eat my shoe if they actually are selling exploits to third parties.)
Mine came from http://templates.arcsin.se/ , but I'd look at any result for a search for "css templates" (without the quotes). Some sites are definitely better than others--if you notice that 99% of a site's listed templates are garbage, you might as not look through all N pages of templates that they have. Similarly, many sites only have blog-related templates, but that should be okay, supposing you don't mind removing unnecessary divs and re-centering things.Any URLs to recommend?
Personally, I think it's nicer to search for a nice CSS/site template. I found one that I really liked for my home page. They are very easy to adapt, and you know what you are doing is legal. (I looked for ones that didn't require me to write anything really tacky at the bottom of the page. "design by [author]" is fine, "design by Free CSS Templates" is not.)
I think we agree that the modern term "operating system" can be thought of a continuum from the kernel to [whenever we draw the line]. (I tend to think of "Linux" as meaning the operating environment of my computer and most of its software, but I refuse to say GNU/Linux.) But you used the phrase "core OS". I'm sorry to pick nits, but that "core OS" says, "the minimal, essential parts of the system."
If you, the manufacturer, did something wrong, whatever happens is N% your fault. And you should be sued for N% of the damage caused. Selling a product that is dangerous, but not obviously so, is wrong. A warning label is perfect, so that 1) a careless customer is warned, and 2) a picky customer can remove the label.
In short, we demand this system. I'm not in favor of bad lawsuits, but it's not always clear what is a bad lawsuit. People disagree.
My (perhaps flawed) understanding is that some music downloads are okay. They still violate the copyright act, but so does all fair use. That doesn't make them "not okay" or "not fair use", but it means that anybody that sued you over these violations would probably lose.
I want those with legitimate reasons to be able to get content (I know these reasons may be uncommon, but I don't really care. We may need to find a different way to stop piracy than to prevent everyone from sharing.)