
Re: Re: Re: Linux is just a kernel
> I would not let him provide a fix to "Hallo World".
OK, I will then. It's "Hello World".
2726 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Apr 2007
I understand your point. From a legal point of view there is no difficulty. I would, however, suggest that there is another way to look at it as well.
Can you ignore the reality that people will tick tick boxes without knowing what they are agreeing to? Ask some Facebook users what they think the user agreement looks like, or what it might mean to them. I honestly don't think that many people are very cognisant of what they are agreeing to on-line. This is a similar situation to getting consent from children who are under age - they don't understand the ramifications and hence are incapable of giving consent. When it comes to on-line activity,I think many people are co-opted by social pressures into agreeing to documents which they have not read and may in fact be unable to understand. Is that really consent?
"Using deception to obtain personal information or selling it on without permission are serious offences ..."
I'm a little confused about what constitutes "deception" here, and how do you get permission from users who are not knowledgeable enough to even give consent? Oh well, I guess there's some phrase in there that excludes Google and Facebook.
"My thoughts exactly, anyone who thinks we live in a capitalist society any more isn't worth listening too. I guess they just haven't thought of a name for this new society we belong to. Corrupt gets my vote."
I think "corrupt" fits everywhere. However, pretty much anything that works does so because it benefits society in general. So, as long as we have public roads and schools, pay taxes and vote, I'd have to call it socialism.
There's always someone that isn't happy for some reason. However, I don't doubt that ElReg and others here have had good service. I think it is the nature of competition. Unlike some other internet services, server space is a global market where there are lots of choices.
I use a company called Superb Internet Corp. and I get a response in minutes and resolution shortly after that. There's certainly no staffing shortages there. If it wasn't that way I'd leave.
"Not turning up implies either guilt or total disregard for the legal system, neither of which is going to win you any brownie points with the judge or the jury."
A little imagination and one could come up with a few more reasons. For instance, one could imagine someone being sick. Perhaps even suffering from an illness that effects the mind. I have a feeling that people who commit suicide at such a young age are not mentally and emotionally well - perhaps you disagree.
I am questioning the application of the law in this matter. I agree that it is a complex matter, but to me the laws seem to be applied differently in various situations. Is Face book above the law, or is this some special case?
There is such a thing as "age of consent". In England it is 16, but it varies by country. There is also the "age of majority" which is typically 18. Facebook explicitly prohibiting unsupervised children does not change that. I certainly hope that no one would argue that prohibiting children would make it less enticing to them. The numbers would seem to speak for themselves in that case. Is Facebook then not complicit?
The age of consent is 16 in these parts. In any relationship between a child and an adult it is the adult who is responsible. So, when Facebook entices some little girl to put her personal information into their database are they not responsible in some way? I note that in other situations involving danger to children (perceived or otherwise), one is expected to refrain from creating that situation.
> The rankings are from the report's "Networked Readiness Index" (NRI), which is defined as "the capacity of countries to fully benefit from new technologies in their competitiveness strategies and their citizens’ daily lives."
I live in Canada and we're certainly "ready" for a modern internet experience. Unfortunately, due to the lack of competitiveness here, it doesn't look like it's going to happen for a long time. How we made it to number 8 is beyond me. Either the numbers are all wrong, or there's a lot of other countries that lack the will to develop this, so called, "new technology". I think it's both.
I have a car that runs on both gas and gasoline. Propane and natural gas conversions are as easy as taking your car in to get a tank and modified carburettor. After that you will be able to fill up at one of the stations where they sell your fuel of choice. That's Canada, where do you live?
I'm just thinking of the pallets and it seems to me that if there is ownership attached, then there actually can be privacy issues. For example if I was shipping pallets of stolen goods then I might not want anybody to know it was me. Ok, maybe that wasn't the best example ....
Sorry, I was referring to the personal attack by the AC following your post. However, now that I got you on the line I'll comment on what you said. :)
Of course one can download untrusted *nix programs from all kinds of places but my point is that the people who know how to install (and often compile locally) from outside the repositories are not the people that Google is trying to protect here. In fact, most Linux users stick with the provided package management system so they will never see any benefit from this code.
Regarding your earlier comment about me perhaps thinking that helpful solutions shouldn't be provided by others. Of course not! I'm glad Google is doing this. Many people will benefit. I'm just suggesting that it is a bit of a free patch for Microsoft who seems to be slacking a bit on the issue of permissions. IOW, Google is not just doing their users a favour but helping Microsoft along too. I hope Microsoft appreciates it.
FYI, Linux program files are not downloaded from various sites, but from trusted repositories. BSD uses the ports collection. Of course malicious code could find it's way into those, but this Chrome addition will not be able to flag that. I don't know how Mac people do it. Perhaps they are more promiscuous.
The article refers to Windows "executables" and those will not run on other OSs. Besides, you can't execute any file on *nix systems without the appropriate permissions and I don't think the people that this is aimed at are likely to be using chmod very much.
In short, this development is specifically aimed at Windows operating systems. Others are unlikely to get any benefit regardless of their inherent security.
I can't see how the overhead can be all that high, but whatever. I'd rather see Canonical concentrate their efforts where it counts the most. There's plenty of us out here who promote open source. I don't think I'm the only one who will do an installation for someone or burn a disk and send it to them.
Even though startup time is irrelevant to me because I leave everything running, after reading this article I decided to try disabling Firebug just in case. What a difference! Like mk1992 says, "it does slow down page load times". I'm an amateur and can do without Firebug and find Webdeveloper to be adequate for me anyway.
Soon after I wrote that I discovered that the phones are actually being used. SMS is turned off which makes it a little more difficult for people to organize, but I have been following a twitter feed of up to date reports from various places there. You can find it here: http://twitter.com/#!/Jan25voices
This is a very narrow channel, but there are pictures being posted on web pages and blogs too. Of course not a lot of pictures are being sent, but many people there have video and still images on their phone and when the net opens up again we will, no doubt, see an unprecedented deluge of material.
The Egypt communications wiki is here:
http://werebuild.eu/wiki/Egypt/Main_Page
There is a worldwide BBS network still available (yes in 2011) for those with a modem and a working telephone line. This also offers a bridge to the internet outside of Egypt. I don't know about the ability to make long distance telephone calls from there, but at least the technology is in place for a non-internet digital connection in and out of the country. A dialup line can also connect to an ISP in another country. In addition there is packet radio. Hopefully there are some computer hobbyists and ham operators over there who will rise to the occasion.