Re: Eclipse bug?

Oliver Wong wrote:
I'm using Callisto M20060629-1905

What's that?

That's a version identifier for Eclipse.

Hrm. Mine says M20050929-0840 and claims to have no updates available
(as of yesterday). If I am not mistaken that first part is a date, and
an older date to boot.

Maybe it's a bug that was fixed, and there's a second bug in the
find-updates UI in the older version.

It's not a big issue if you write down all your passwords.
(http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/06/write_down_your.html)

You're missing the point. Software companies pushing users to register
with each one individually for the privilege of reporting bugs is a
general trend, and it's a bad one for a lot of reasons that go far, far
beyond merely making users jump through more hoops and juggle more
passwords. For one thing, they are implicitly encouraging use of one
password everywhere, which is a risk, and trying to create a problem
for which a universal Web logon will be proffered as a "solution",
which will become a privacy rights/personal safety nightmare when
combined with hackers, flamers, spammers, stalkers, pedophiles and
other pervs, and who knows what other bad elements of society. Just
look at how big a mess an MS "passport" already is -- more
questionnaires to fill out than for homeowner's insurance plus medical,
for Christ's sake. And all that data no doubt shared with all parner
sites that use that as a logon. Multiply the privacy
invasion/ChoicePoint-like leak risk by a factor of a few thousand for a
true universal logon.

All when they could just (set up and) periodically google a newsgroup.
Why don't they? Because this way the marketing department is satisfied,
and so are the longer-term thinkers pushing for a universal Web logon
so that they can proceed to massively abuse it.

Not only the vendor, but all the other users of the site can see the
e-mails as well. That being said, it's hard to image how much worse it is
compared to posting your e-mail on usenet (which both you and I have done).

At least on usenet we have the choice, and can mung to defeat bots or
not give a valid one at all, and still get replies and make replies to
the replies (as followups). Also, in unmoderated groups, it's much
harder to censor us than on some totalitarian Web forum with
centralized everything.

I only get something like 100-120 spams a day, and as far as I can see
they're correctly categorized by my filter. Zero false positives, and maybe
3 false negatives.

That's completely beside the point. Registering everywhere that wants
us to (and eventually, when they learn they can bully us into it and
we'll just meekly roll over and comply, everywhere *else*) would make
it massively worse, and that's only the tip of the iceberg of problems
it would create.

Who cares about fairness? It's more about self-utility.

It's more about selfishness, you mean -- that any one software author
wants users to jump through extra hoops for *their* software.

There's three possibilities for a software author:
1. Expects users to not jump through hoops. Knows how to use Google.
2. Expects users to jump through hoops just for their software.
Arrogant prick!
3. Expects users to jump through hoops for software, period. Multiply
the hoops by all the software a typical person uses nowadays and it
rapidly becomes apparent that this is patently unreasonable.

Note that only item 1 has no objection.

.

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