dodedo

A salt only protects against pre-computed dictionary attacks (rainbow tables). It does not offer any additional protection in this scenario.

'My CS teacher also resolved many difficulties with the = sign by always reading code like "a = b" as "a gets b"'

This is one of the great things about Pascal. The := sign is used for assignment, and the equals sign alone is used for equality. It's very natural to call := 'gets' and keep a clear distinction between assertions and assignments.

If you're not selling it, not making it available yourself, you shouldn't be controlling it.

It'd be nice if copyright law were amended to properly capture its justification as a tool to promote the progress of science and useful arts -- it should be illegal to use copyright without attempting to reach those ends.

This is not a question of license, which a user may or may not have agreed to participate in. By simply purchasing media I obtain all fair use rights -- I can make a backup of it without ever engaging in a license agreement.

Leap years are defined by a known algorithm: If the year is evenly divisible by 4, then it's a leap year, unless it's divisible by 100, unless it's divisible by 400. This defines all future leap years. Because of this, we /do/ know how much time will be between two particular dates. Leap years can be calculated in advance as they represent a well-known, fixed skew between the gregorian calendar and the actual calendar.

Contrast this with leap seconds, which represent a variable skew and cannot be predicted by algorithm. Leap seconds are determined by measurement of the solar cycle and are merely announced at 6 month intervals. Because of this we cannot use solar time with seconds-granularity more than 6 months into the future, and a table of past leap-seconds is needed to accurately calculate time in the past. Worth noting: POSIX time functions do none of this for you.

There is another system of time, TAI, which is used for scientific measurements which rely on seconds-granularity at arbitrary intervals. TAI is skewed from solar time and will eventually not match the 24 hour solar cycle.

"But Britain, along with Canada and China, would like to keep the current keeping system, arguing that, in the 40 years that leap seconds have been gracefully inserted in our midst — most recently in 2008 — there have been no problems to speak of, and the worriers have greatly exaggerated the potential for havoc. Remember Y2K?"

No problems? He must not be aware of the 2008 adjtimex() bug in the linux kernel: https://lkml.org/lkml/2009/1/2/389

This bug brought down nearly 100k systems for my employer at midnight UTC, worldwide, in unison. It was not a fun evening.

Do you also believe that non-profits and churches should be able to freely lobby? Currently both are severely curtailed in their political speech, unlike for-profit corporations. This is why there are two ACLU organizations: http://www.aclu.org/american-civil-liberties-union-and-aclu-...

Those are not divisions, they are shares in entirely separate, publicly traded companies. The valuation is market valuation -- not a number made up by Yahoo.

Your statement about the law is for the most part not true. There's a much more in-depth discussion of this at this older HN posting: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3227980

I agree with you that yahoo should have sold to microsoft, by the way. But the legal duty to maximize value bit is just not accurate.

I think the point that it's more about the notions of the wealthy family than of the girl. Wealth allows families to transcend or disregard social norms. In this case it is clear that her family chose to raise her a particular way, and give her particular opportunities that, as you point out, would not be available to most Pakistani women.

This is precisely the point raised above, that this story is primarily about the opportunity provided by the family. But you are right, it's important to note that her family was evidently both wealthy and progressive.

I know several, in fact. It's fairly common result of rich parents spoiling their kids.

I believe he's pointing out, accurately, that wealthy families in Pakistan can be just as privileged as middle-class Americans. He's saying it's unfair to use this girl as an example of those actually living in under-privileged poverty conditions in Pakistan.

It's a fair objection, though rather emotionally contentious given the context.

If it were a serious enough threat to the public health we could always exterminate the armadillo species. Make an animal legal to hunt, add a bounty, and the population will be decimated in under a decade.

Some of those would be easier to exterminate than others. Many animals carry influenza or plague, but isn't leprosy limited to humans and armadillos?

To build on your last point, it's clear that we as a society desire the Google search product. It is necessary for legislation to be compatible with the Google use case -- not the other way around.

"the burden of proof is on the person who uploaded the content to prove they have the right"

It is impossible to prove that you have the right to content. There's just no reliable legal mechanism for this. Sometimes I can author an original work and have a copyright claim placed against it because it is similar to another. Sometimes I can outright copy someone else's work without a license and I retain rights to the content because it's a legally protected use (such as using Led Zeppelin's song in a form of satire).

In other words, to require proof is to prohibit all communication. Entirely! No exceptions!

This is a terribly misleading response. You might as well point out that we're not forced to use banks and therefore they shouldn't be regulated either. The logic simply does not follow.

In fact, he is not wrong to expect that reasonable regulation be imposed on a company which borrows and handles funds. Paypal's system is highly unusual in comparison to other comparable banking services and is predictably often the target of these types of complaints.

Florian says the law is wrong, that paypal should be regulated as a bank. In response, you reject regulation in general. His position makes a lot more sense than your own.

Seems like he would be holding the buyer liable in small claims, not paypal.

I think the point is not so much that he was prescient, rather that he drew attention to these issues early on, well before they began to threaten the free exchange of information and ideas.

One could say RMS is simply pointing out the obvious, the already demonstrated. Especially technical people like you and I. But remember, RMS has been ridiculed for these positions, by folks much like the author of this article who admits to dismissing RMS as a paranoid fanatic.

The salient message in this story is that the author's opinion has changed. The world has progressed further along this path and it is now quite obvious that the scenario RMS depicts is not only possible, but in some degree has already taken place.

"So the 'dystopia' is the artificial disability to lend books?"

It is the inability to communicate freely.

Why? Because IP laws are incredibly unjust, that's why.

He was already the twentieth+ artist to do this. Many artists before him have been releasing content successfully and many more will continue to. As I said, it is interest in compelling content which generates buzz. Your assertion that it was "the model and not the product" is unfounded.

He's suggesting that because Radiohead eventually took down the page, the experiment was a failure. He's conveniently ignoring the fact that their online opt-in pay system generated more revenue than their last published album before they dismantled it, demonstrating that demand/revenue in the new model exceeded the old.

I do have a link to cite: http://www.nme.com/news/radiohead/40444

That's a nice story about Radiohead but it isn't true. In fact, Radiohead's online release of In Rainbows was a smashing success and generated more money in opt-in online sales than their entire previous album. Cite:

http://www.nme.com/news/radiohead/40444

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Rainbows#Sales_and_chart_pla...

What you are claiming is not true. Here are some sources that refute your claim:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Rainbows#Sales_and_chart_pla...

In October 2008, a report from Warner Chappell revealed that although most people paid nothing for the download, pre-release sales were more profitable than the total money from sales of Hail to the Thief. The report also stated that the discbox sold 100,000 copies.

This guy doesn't get it. Here are his two main misunderstandings:

1) Every artist who's made an online release of their content in a desirable format (without DRM, etc) has seen sales in proportion to their general popularity. Every single one, without even one exception. The author claims Louis got an "inordinate" amount of attention, but I'm not sure this is the case. I suspect the same level of buzz would have been generated had he somehow managed to produce a DVD at the $5 price point with identical content.

2) Popularity is derived from interesting media products. There's no mumbo-jumbo about old media/new media. If you've produced something interesting and compelling, people will want to talk about it. Attributing the acquisition of fame to "traditional media" is brainless. Old media is no different than so called new media -- they both carry stories of interest relative to the level of interest.

And there are countless examples of folks who've generated their own buzz by producing a compelling product, as folks on HN should know better than anyone. You can buy a bit of publicity, but it's compelling, interesting and memorable content that creates a true monetizable spot in the public's consciousness. This is very repeatable and it is done daily.

"It does not carry over to any other release, and says absolutely nothing about DRM or atypical release plans"

This is demonstrably false. In fact, every artist who's ever done an online release of their content without DRM has seen sales in proportion to their general popularity. We've seen this with Radiohead, with NIN, and with many other lesser artists.

In every case, the profits were roughly in line with the general popularity of the artist's content.

"Lots of people sell videos online without the middle man. Most see no sales."

And most content distributed through the various middle-man networks likewise is a failure. Most OSS software is a flop. Most commercial software is also a flop. This statement is neither surprising nor relevant.

That's an interesting theory but I'm not convinced it has a factual basis. Maybe readers decided that King's book just sucked and were waiting for it to improve? Neither you nor I can draw a meaningful conclusion on that point.

What can be demonstrated, empirically, is that money can be made without imposing draconian controls.

I remember The Plant. Stephen King made over $700,000 writing a partial novel which he declined to finish not because it didn't turn a profit, but because his download statistics didn't show the opt-in payment ratios he wanted.

It's an instructive example of hubris and mis-aligned goals. Stephen wasn't interested in generating a profit. Had he raised the same revenue with half as many readers paying twice as often he would have continued the project.

I deleted a snarky reply about gcc -m32 and cross-compilation when I read the underlying bug [1] and saw that this was an issue only on Windows. I don't know a thing about Windows -- does MSVC not support cross-compilation?

[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=709193

edit: Oh wow, this comment indicates that Microsoft doesn't provide a 64bit buildchain at all. Is that true? https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.platform/wLHTg_m...