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Comment: Re:Tesla comment aside (Score 1) 141

by TemporalBeing (#48634007) Attached to: Who's To Blame For Rules That Block Tesla Sales In Most US States?

DOMA was passing a law to invalidate the Constitution's Full Faith and Credit clause. The pro-constitution small government Republicans passed more laws to cause more bureaucracy to invalidate the Constitution, doing the opposite of what they say they are. Yet again.

DOMA did not invalidate anything. It just said for the purposes of the Federal Government certain things would not be recognized.

If you read the history of marriage with respect to the Full Faith and Credit Clause, it has not been used for force States to recognize marriages from other States that the State does not wish to recognize - that does not invalidate the marriage license isssued in the other State in any way whatsoever which is what the Full Faith and Credit Clause requires. So it is completely in applicable here, especially as this is not an inter-State issue but an issue between State and Federal government.

In the case of DOMA the Federal Government was saying "yes, we recognize your marriage license and its validity with respect to the States; but with respect to the Federal Government it doesn't apply".

Comment: Re:Tesla comment aside (Score 1) 141

by TemporalBeing (#48629253) Attached to: Who's To Blame For Rules That Block Tesla Sales In Most US States?

The authoritarian Nazis are pushing for "states rights" unless the states decide something they don't like, in which case they introduce DOMA. They claim to be for states rights, until they aren't.

DOMA did not affect States and had nothing to do with States rights. It only had to do with the Federal Government, so that's not really a conflict like you make it out to be.

Federal Government can make decisions regarding itself and its own policies, as DOMA was, without affect the States whateversoever. The issue comes when the Federal Government tries to push its policies and agenda onto the States - e.g Welfare, DOE, Social Security, Health Care, etc - through means not really granted to it via the U.S Constitution - usually through over reach of the Commerce Clause which only regulates inter-state commerce.

Comment: Re:Political inertia (Score 1) 141

by TemporalBeing (#48627341) Attached to: Who's To Blame For Rules That Block Tesla Sales In Most US States?

First, let's remember that lawmaking politicians of influence of either party are typically what, 60+ years old? 70+? These guys still have their staff print their emails for them and are surprised when a someone says 'let's watch a movie' and it doesn't involve (at best) a VCR. Not super-quick at adapting to change.

While that may be true of some, it's certainly not true of them all - at any age. Many are very much use to using e-mail and computers.

Seriously, go meet your politicians. You'll quickly learn your assumptions above are wrong - very wrong.

Comment: Re:These laws are not anti-Tesla, most predate Tes (Score 1) 141

by TemporalBeing (#48627307) Attached to: Who's To Blame For Rules That Block Tesla Sales In Most US States?

You cannot simply point at today's lackey Republicans as the source for these laws, nor claim them to be "anti-Tesla" anymore than 50-year-old telecom laws are "anti-Google".

Very true. It has nothing to do with who is in office today - Republican or Democrat. You can only blame them for not trying to change it to be more friendly.

There's a lot of laws like these that really should be revisited to see if they are still relevant today, and if not update or remote them from the books accordingly.

Comment: Re:Tesla comment aside (Score 1) 141

by TemporalBeing (#48627245) Attached to: Who's To Blame For Rules That Block Tesla Sales In Most US States?

There's the conservative, state's rights, tea party wing that is in the minority.

Is that the "states rights" wing pushing to ban gay marriage on the national level to remove the rights for states?

No. It's the "states rights" wing that is pushing for that to be left to the states

Comment: Re:"Running arbitrary commands" is irrelevant (Score 1) 129

by TemporalBeing (#48610701) Attached to: Stealthy Linux Trojan May Have Infected Victims For Years

There are a number of tools that give non-root users root access. It might be "just" sudo, or it might be some GUI tool to allow graphical administration. All it takes is a program that can hijack one of those, or just passively wait until the user issued a sudo command (so their password and access is cached), then it could jump in, grab root, stuff a module in the kernel, and all bets are off from there.

True, but those tools also require the user to have permissions to use them. For instance, sudo requires the user to be part of a group - root, sudo, wheel - that group is configurable so you can call it whatever you want. Even then it usually requires the user's password (which is also required to change the password, so you can't just change the password to be able to use sudo in your script).

Long term, what Linux really should have is the ability to have either signed executables or a manifest list that can whitelist or blacklist. This could be something like Solaris's elfsign or AIX's trustchk, where an admin can make a self-signed key and sign all executables. With this in place, on a production system, if an executable, script, or library isn't signed, it doesn't run. Virtually every other OS has this functionality in place. This doesn't have to rely on an "official" signing key either, and could just be a manifest list generated after install, similar to tripwire's database, and if some executable's signature is different, it doesn't get to run until an admin updates the signature DB.

Check out AppArmor, SELinux, etc - they have the ability to do very fine grain management of the system that really controls every little thing a user or program could do.

So yes, the ability is there. However, it's so easy to screw it up that most don't use it unless they really need it. And honestly most don't need it; the standard permission set (which still runs through SELInux, btw, just being configured with a default that matches the historical permissions) is sufficient enough to deter most things.

Comment: Re:Would have stuck with VHS (Score 1) 129

by TemporalBeing (#48575961) Attached to: Economist: US Congress Should Hack Digital Millennium Copyright Act

And the correct market response to that would have been to call their bluff, and then enjoy the movies from those that survived. The idea that all the studios would have stopped releasing their content anywhere but in theatres is utterly implausible and was never a serious threat.

The idea is that studios would have ignored DVD and stuck to VHS and its generation loss, Rovi Macrovision analog copy protection, and NTSC/PAL/SECAM/MESECAM region lock until they could launch their own competing format with better DRM. Witness Video CD and SVCD never taking off in North America, and witness the industrywide switch from HD DVD to Blu-ray Disc when the latter offered region locking and stronger DRM (BD+, ROM Mark, and lack of rich menus on non-AACS discs).

Yes, HD-DVD did not have region lock where BD-DVD did not. However, that had nothing to do with why BD-DVD won out. IIRC, BD-DVD had a higher amount of data, and simply had a wider deployment since Sony put a BD-DVD player in every Playstation 3, so game makers and more were already pushing BD-DVD for that reason alone. There was no similar push for HD-DVD except the ill-fated Add-on for the XBox that Microsoft did. If Microsoft had made it built-in component, then there probably would have been a bigger battle between the two since the XBox sold nearly as well as the PS3 at the time.

Comment: Re:Would have stuck with VHS (Score 1) 129

by TemporalBeing (#48575907) Attached to: Economist: US Congress Should Hack Digital Millennium Copyright Act

I thought [Blu-ray] got lost in the negative gap between DVD and getting stuff over the internet.

On the contrary. I still use Blu-ray because after I've bought a disc it is mine, permanently and unambiguously, and with the full force of my country's consumer protection laws behind me if anyone tries to interfere with my use of it.

That's why I buy DVD. I don't buy BD-DVDs (aka Blu-Ray DVDs). The movie industry is still having a very hard time with people buying BD-DVDs.

Comment: Re:why would I write to that? (Score 1) 187

by TemporalBeing (#48567751) Attached to: Microsoft Introduces<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.NET Core

What's in it for you is C# is a very good language.

I wouldn't agree. There's a lot of things in the C# and C++/CLI (aka Managed C++) world that are just ass-backwards. If I wanted the advantage of what the .NET CLR gives me - supposed platform independences - then I'd write Java. As it is, I don't write Java b/c Java is a major PITA with no advantages over C++ or Python.

Only advantage of .NET CLR/C#/etc is that it is heavily optimized for the Windows environments so its gets a boost that other frameworks (e.g Java) cannot take advantage of. But that, again, goes against the whole platform independence.

Regarding Mono, it's not worth the bytes that make up the source. Apart from the potential legal issues (patents MS holds wrt to Mono were only licensed to Novell/SuSE users for a 5 year period, which has since expired), the APIs are highly tied to Windows. Yes, Mono has made some Gtk equivalents, but then why use it? Why not just use Gtk/C/C++ to start with?

And .net is a fairly well designed framework/libraries for getting stuff done.

Qt is by far better designed. WxWidgets and Gtk are probably better designed too.

I've said this before Microsoft has never ever acted in a predatory manner towards people using their tools. What I mean by that is they want some nominal amount of money, but they don't want to drink your milkshake. Example game companies have used VC++ and other tools to develop games that have sold hundreds of thousands of copies running on windows and does Microsoft ever demand a cut? No.

MS doesn't take a cut because you're giving it to them by using their Platform - Windows. VC++ is a write off in that manner. They invest highly in it to get Developers to write for their platform and products and write it off as part of the marketing/promotion/etc of the various products and company as a whole. If they didn't have Visual Studios then there would be a lot fewer developers developing specifically for Windows, and thus a lot less incentive for people to use Windows.

It's all nice to bitch about Microsoft but a lot of their competitors are far worse, Apple, Google, Oracle. Ever try and develop a console game? Had your app not approved by Apple, of pulled by Google. Found yourself paying license fees through the nose for Enterprise software with no good options to escape, ALA Oracle. Or try and deal with network products ala Cisco?


Microsoft does the same thing. For instance, one company I know of bought a product. They thought they had all the licensing taken care of, only to later discover that they needed another $500m in Terminal Services licenses. Sure, MS might not have taken a cut from the product developers, but they sure did get a big cut of the sales (possibly more than what the product developers originally got).

Or for instance if you develop using SQL Server Express (or whatever it is called now) and they outgrow what that will do; the choice? You build support for another database (e.g MySQL, MariaDB, PostgresSQL, Oracle, DB2, etc) or you help them upgrade SQLServer Express to SQL Server - which of course carries a lot of licensing and hardware requirements with it. Again, a big cut for Microsoft and one that the customer might not have anticipated.

Comment: Re:Looks like you have been in jail before... (Score 1) 218

by TemporalBeing (#48524705) Attached to: 'Moneyball' Approach Reduces Crime In New York City

The DA's job is to get re-elected.

That depends on where you live. The elected DA is only the one at the top of the DA's office. There are many attorney's under them that also receive the monitor "DA" whom are not elected; they do have to balance out cases against how the elected DA sets priorities, but they are more or less just regular attorney's working as prosecuters.

Again, it's all a matter of where you live. Not all areas even allow the top DA to be elected; while other areas have more of the chain in the election routine.

Comment: Re:Mobile police stations (Score 1) 218

by TemporalBeing (#48524677) Attached to: 'Moneyball' Approach Reduces Crime In New York City

I would guess there's relatively little crime within a block of the police station. Police should create a mobile platform and move the police stations to where the crime happens every few weeks or months.

Well, you'd be wrong.

My mom once tested out how fast the car could go (when she was a teen) nearby a police station because she figured they wouldn't be looking there. Things have changed a little since, but most likely it's still the case that they tend to turn a blind eye around the station because of the (incorrect) bias that "no would be dumb enough to commit crimes near the station".

Comment: Re:5th Admendment? (Score 1) 446

by TemporalBeing (#48522097) Attached to: 18th Century Law Dredged Up To Force Decryption of Devices

The Fourth Amendment doesn't require a warrant. It forbids unreasonable searches and seizures, and lays down some conditions for a valid warrant. There are warrantless searches that are considered reasonable by the court system (such as a check for weapons when arresting somebody).

You example is allowed for the safety of the officer and others (thus you are not allowed to refuse), and is already after probable cause having been established (on account of the grounds for arrest being present); however, in most cases you can refuse unless they have a warrant - even if the court would consider it a valid case of a valid warrantless search.

Memory fault -- brain fried