Posts by Ole Juul 2726 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Apr 2007
And free of formatting would be even better. It seems that the formatting takes considerable precedence over content. Once upon a time government documents were judged on their content, now it seems that is less the case, and I for one would like to see text files mandated for all government use. Yes, I'm serious. It's time to get rid of all those amateur typesetter wannabes.
They will need to find a way to avoid viruses, Trojans, keyloggers, and other malware. So far government agencies haven't been very willing to do that. In fact they haven't even been willing to adopt secure operating systems - despite there being numerous choices.
Lots of people trying to make lots of money, and lots of competition - doesn't sound like the spirit of communism to me. Regardless, in this case it is malware called Americanism which is causing users to use a virus prone operating system. And yes, it is extremely difficult to remove.
Over the course of three months, attackers installed 45 pieces of custom malware. The Times — which uses antivirus products made by Symantec — found only one instance
I'm no fan of Symantec, and don't use antivirus products myself, but with such a poor performance, I wouldn't be so fast to blame Symantec. There is something else wrong here. Someone dropped the ball and is trying to blame someone else.
I personally think that immigrants will find out by themselves how to read a water meter or similar things which they need to know in their everyday lives. It is the more underlying parts of the culture which one needs to work on. The history forms a basic framework for understanding the culture, and so does the basic workings of government and law. As a non English speaking immigrant myself (to Canada) I came at an early enough age to get this information as part of my schooling, but my parents made a point of studying the local history in order to understand their new culture. Were I to move to China I would do the same. Actually, even if I went as a tourist to England, I would read enough about it to know about Nelson and the battle of Trafalgar.
Security researchers who have worked with the Pentagon have complained that all too often the government wants to know their security tricks, but isn't willing to share its knowledge or pay the kind of rates that researchers can make in private industry.
The demographic from which the military is hiring is going to have to change. Will they rise to the occasion and pay professional salaries, or will they just make up a second-rate market of their own? It will be interesting to watch.
There's also the fact that other government agencies are increasingly targeting the security community for special investigation over the last few years, since WikiLeaks started releasing US State Department cables.
This is not creating a good environment for soliciting any kind of loyalty - or even sympathy.
he is a businessman hoping to make a few more dollars.
That is incorrect. He is hoping to make a lot of dollars.
This is not quite the same fight as the none-profit making entities.
I agree with you there. The whole Dotcom story carries this duality. He is a greedy businessman with a sometimes distasteful image who is making money by leverageing this fight. It's a funny kind of win-win situation that makes some people uncomfortable. I've decided I can live with it because I'm less concerned about him than I am about the bigger effect of what he is doing.
without copyright protection artists would no longer produce and our arts & culture would stagnate
In fact I would argue that copyright protection is what is causing our arts and culture to stagnate. And yes, it is stagnating. I base that idea on the observation that people are starting to confuse a post card of the Eiffel tower with a visit to Paris. Listening to a recording is fine, but you're not going to fool me. It's not real. Not any more than a turnip pill is a turnip - although there are obviously some (poor souls) who are not clear on that.
I don't see anything worth reporting about the site "not working". Right off the bat they were (supposedly) handling 2K signups per minute, and my guess is many times that in requests. I got timeouts in the first hour, and then I was able to sign up. However, I was not able to upload files until some hours later. How a site works under it's initial barrage of requests isn't really any indication of how it will be running after that.
The study suggests that emissions reduction efforts focusing on diesel and some types of household wood and coal burners would have an immediate cooling impact.
I doubt we'll see the major users of diesel, such as mining, forestry, and other resource based industries, playing along with this. They're too strong a lobby, because they feed the economy. Household wood burners are already much cleaner with their catalytic converters (I've got one), and the few who use the old inefficient stoves are poor people who will be hurt by stronger regulation. Coal burners probably have their own differentiator, which might be particularly useful for climate politics. The burners in developed countries are very clean, and the ones in third world, or developing countries will be the ones to blame. In the end we will (as Bill Catringer points out above) just get nuisance laws. Apart from that, it'll be some unenforceable global policy which will give the West a bargaining chip to justify doing nothing.
A couple of quotes from the article:
we have taken our collective creativity and placed it in a lockbox, where the main benefactors are lawyers and profiteers
The legal profession will not give up this cash cow too easily.
The cost of a typical patent suit for us is about two-and-a-half million dollars
That's a lot of money, and it is effectively siphoned out of the productive economy. I wonder what would happen if all that money was used to develop new ideas instead squashing existing ones.
Agreed. I bet it doesn't work on the WAN side. All my Linksys routers have Tomato now, but I'm pretty sure that the stock firmware has remote management (under admin) disabled by default. I suspect this vulnerability is insignificant in the real world.
I've always built my own system choosing components . . . I understand that the market would look very different if we all did this.
I suspect we'll see prices go up as those of us who want discreet components become fewer and willing to pay for what will likely become speciality products. We've already seen a change in some markets that reflect this. I'm sure there are many examples, but Linksys discovered they could charge double for consumer routers that facilitated hacking. How long until we see motherboards with only one available slot?
Oh, motherboards? We haven't stocked those for years. I suggest you contact our industrial branch who do still sell those - in minimum lots of 1000.
Seeds don't contain much water because they have evolved to survive in a dormant state. I recommend you do a bit of testing with microwaves on seeds to compare their resistance referenced to seedlings. While you're at it, do a cost estimate for raising worms on a scale suitable for a thousand acres (or even just a few hundred), then add the fuel cost of running a tractor for the amount of time that would take. Don't forget the salary for the guy who tends the worms and distributes them. Oh, and what building that isn't already in use do we use for the worms?
What you have said is like suggesting you run a computer on a higher voltage to get more power out of it. BTW: have you spent much time in agriculture?
They've been using flames commercially to weed between rows in fields on large farms for years now. The trick is to get the timing and duration just right. The actual crops are bigger and absorb less heat, and the weeds are only allowed to grow to a small size, and are thus tender and immature, and very vulnerable. It is this mass and hardness differentiation that allows the heat to only kill weeds and not crops. I don't see the use of microwaves to be materially different. As for the power requirements, the flame technique is used on equipment attached to a tractor. Getting a few extra kilowatts from an 80hp (possibly much more) tractor is not a big deal.
It was very popular at a time when it was difficult to achieve "high fidelity". What I find interesting is that even now when it is relatively easy and cheap to achieve even higher levels of fidelity - nobody cares any more. The quality of professional audio that I hear is often dismal and wouldn't have passed muster 30 years ago. Sometimes that's because producers are indeed amateurs (and don't even know they are), and sometimes it's because fidelity isn't a very marketable quality in a world where individual sound preferences are more fashionable.
Support groups and political parties have gathered around the now well-known banner of The Pirate Bay. Together they stand in the center of a cultural revolution. A revolution that begun (sic) in a dark grey metal box under a bed.
I think this revolution began with TCP, but whatever. Perhaps it even began with the development of mass media. In any case, I can see this box as a good icon for those who don't envision history as going back very far. It is certainly a significant marker and will be even more so as time goes by.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
