Domain: anu.edu.au
Stories and comments across the archive that link to anu.edu.au.
Comments · 382
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Re:Asimov, VerneRe: robot series from Asimov. One of the things Asimov constantly wrote/harped on about in his robot stories was the 3 fundamental laws of robotics:
- A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
- A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
- A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
The 0th law was added later, being that: A robot may not injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. Anyways, I believe that his laws of robotics have been widely adapted and followed by robotics and AI folk around the globe... Could start here: http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/SOS/Asim ov.html or here http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/robotics-faq/1.html
As well, Asimov is widely credited with being the first to coin the term "robotics". - A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
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Re:Communist ideal?
The ideal believed in by the vast majority of Communists is the Soviet/Chinese type.
No, most western commmunists will acknowledge that China/USSR had far to much oppression and not enough democratic-citizen involvment. Fascism != Communism. The "bad" things in China (cencorship/oppression/lack-of-justice) has nothing to do with Communism.
ot only that, but it would require severe oppression in order to enforce this uniform conformity of thinking.
Why is it necessary to have "conformity of thinking"? Maoists agree that it is necessary to have constant criticism and opposition to the government - it was an ideal that would facilitate 'continuous improvment' in making a better government. Who the fuck advocates 'Conformity of thinking"? Are you sure this isnt an invention of ignorant mccarthyism??
If it can't work in a small scale, it won't work anywhere. Can't you see the deception in the argument you make that "communism would be the best system only of other systems were obliterated"?
No, when OTHER countries are organized to allow non-democratic control, when OTHER countries are capable of using all their will to destroy something that challenges their supreme-position, a great deal of illogical and unhealthy decisions are made to further that goal. Evidence the absolute corruption of "american democracy", monopolistic economy, perversion of law and destruction of meaningfull democracy... lets not even mention the environment or mindless-propaganda(marketing)-driven-over-consump tion. You dont have to obliterate the other systems... unless you are convinced they may take your silver spoon away. American Plutocracy is an extension of British Feudal society - Communism is a furtherance of the democratic principle to include the economy. It has to do with controlling the economy for the benefit of all.
Which creators meant well?
These ones. -
Hogwash It.
All we need is to see it in action, and soon thereafter Snort will be able to detect it. Once there is a Snort rule to detect it, all you need is Hogwash and it won't be able to get anywhere near you. Or, at least past your firewall. I believe IPFilter is working on a similar feature to Hogwash, which can block packets based on Snort rules.
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Re:Excited for Gnome 2.0
Gdkxft provides AA fonts on a Gnome 1.2 or 1.4 system.
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rsync efficient secure file transfers
The rsync algorithm meets most of your requirements. rsync was proposed in 1998 by Andrew Tridgell for efficient secure file transfers. The main points are:
- For efficiency rsync skips any previously received parts of files, a process based on transmitting small checksums instead of large file chunks.
- For security you can tunnel rsync over any secure protocol such as ssh/openssh. If you don't want or need protocol-level security you can tunnel it over http.
The detailed description is here (http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/tech_report/), and open-source software is here (http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/download.html).
Overall rsync is often much (10x) faster than using compressed file transfers. It is most useful for users who frequently download new versions of packages with significant similarities between successive versions.
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rsync efficient secure file transfers
The rsync algorithm meets most of your requirements. rsync was proposed in 1998 by Andrew Tridgell for efficient secure file transfers. The main points are:
- For efficiency rsync skips any previously received parts of files, a process based on transmitting small checksums instead of large file chunks.
- For security you can tunnel rsync over any secure protocol such as ssh/openssh. If you don't want or need protocol-level security you can tunnel it over http.
The detailed description is here (http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/tech_report/), and open-source software is here (http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/download.html).
Overall rsync is often much (10x) faster than using compressed file transfers. It is most useful for users who frequently download new versions of packages with significant similarities between successive versions.
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The obligatory correction
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Re:Russia == EVIL!!!!Evil Socialism?
Does that even exist? --I would have said that when Socialism turns evil, (i.e., power to the few, misery to the many), it is by definition, no longer Socialism.
Anyway, I just read a brief but fascinating paper on the Chechnyan culture and history.
Wow! What a great culture! It appears that the Chechen's had a highly prosperous and happy society based on a patriarchial, partly Islamic system. (Though, one in which women had all the same rights and freedoms as men.) They had arts and intellectuals and many different languages and cultural aspects which had been completely unique to the region. They had also been self-sustaining for more than 6000 years. Sounds almost like a golden-age. It even sounds a little bit imaginary in the D&D sense. . .
And one of the coolest parts is that all of this existed very happily with no government in the current sense of the word until the Russians finally managed, after decades of bloody war, to conquer the Chechen territory in 1858 and impose a modern centralized government.
Up until that time, they had an interdependant cell-like system of clans, towns and villages which all supported one another in times of crisis.
Interesting that they have been targetted for eradication. --Cuz', you know, you can't have systems which promote health, peace and prosperity in this world. Humans living in healthy systems? Well now! That just doesn't serve the ends of the Evil Overlords, now does it?
Though, your comment about the strikes in Afghanistan really being aimed at the Chechens sounds kind of half-baked to me. I think it's entirely possible to have two unfair and stupid wars raging at the same time.
-Fantastic Lad -
Pre 9/11 events leading up to ...
Roomer Busting site
I leave it up to the reader to read the following articles and put the pieces together for themselves to see the action/reaction balance going on.
US Koran site
CIA report (note religion percentage)
Muslim culture (outside Afganistan):site 1
site 2
Trillion Dollar bet
Problems caused by trillion dollar bet:
abcnews may 98
cnn may 98
Bigger than the Trillion Dollar BET - x3?
Current 2 year US stock market link comparing the DOW with the S&P and most important the NASDAQ. You can tell where the money went and also know what the dot coms were all about.
finance.yahoo.com graph
National Security Agency total system crash finally reported August 29th 2001
Losing freedoms:SSSCA -
Re:bugzilla vs. debian bug tracking vs. sourceforgThere are not that many around. Before we submitted to Bugzilla, we looked at several systems (late last year), such as Mantis, GNATS, Jitterbug, and Keystone. I have nothing great to say about any of them.
They all lack many essential features. They all have web-based GUIs that are tighly coupled with the back-end logic; that is, they have no back ends. Thus the default GUI is the only GUI you can ever realistically put on top of it. A lot of people are missing out on the MVC model these days. What you need is a programmable back end accessible through a cross-platform API (based on CORBA, SOAP, XML-RPC, UNO, anything that strikes your fancy). Then you can leverage the back-end support for clients. One can be a powerful reporting tool with graphing capabilities. Another one can be a wxWindows-based portable GUI for modern desktops. Another one can be a common-denominator HTML-based GUI for browsers. Etc.
Current GUIs are all crude and cluttered and obviously designed by programmers with no interface design background (and by that I don't mean graphical design, but functional design). Many are ad-hoc systems thrown together using PHP. Presumably the poor devils think that by slapping it on SourceForge or Freshmeat it will magically bloom into a usable product. Nuh-uh.
Another common problem with these systems is that they're fundamentally bug-tracking systems. When you get to a certain point in development, you realize that a better all-embracing concept is the idea of issues -- a generalization of problems that aren't specifically related to code. There is a popular fork of Bugzilla, for example, called IssueZilla.
The only system that was mildly interesting was Keystone, which provides some interesting form-based extensibility -- basically, if I remember correctly, the schema is malleable, so you can add stuff like time estimation numbers, completion progress, or other metadata that would be useful in your project. Also Keystone supports the notion of subtasks: any bug "slip" can have another slip as its parent. This is more elegant than Bugzilla's dependency system. Unfortunately, Keystone sports a GUI from hell. (Applying CSS to it might sound fun, but it isn't; their HTML isn't very CSS-friendly, so to do anything radical you have to delve into their HTML generation code).
We currently use Bugzilla. It's currently the best system out there, but that doesn't say much. We are pretty excited about Scarab -- this is a project where the developers actually sat down and designed it beforehand (wowee).
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Communist revolution?
I recently read the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx.. Basicallt, he predicted that the workers would eventually become sick of the dictatoring rich and powerful, and would overthrow them by force.
Now, obviosuly this didnt happen. With the introduction of a descent democratic society in the world, their really wasnt any need for such a thing.
But, WHAT NOW? I dont know about you my friends, but THIS is NOT a democracy. If I was a United States Citizen, and this thing does get through, I would GET THE FUCK out of there.
Or, alternativly.. REVOLT.. If this thing does get through, dont stop with measly protest people.. GET OUT THERE AND FIGHT.. seriously, can you really live in a sociaty based on facism, one which the rich companies CONTROL the government? I KNOW I COULDNT!
THE GEEKS HAVE NOTHING TO LOOSE BUT THEIR CHAINS. THEY HAVE A WORLD TO WIN
GEEKS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE! -
Re:Computer AA vs. Hinting
bitmapped fonts are crappy since they are not scaleable.
Bitmapped fonts are crappy on a printer, but are the best on a screen. Having hand-tuned 10pt, 12pt, etc. fonts is all you need for this range of sizes, no need for a 11.293pt font.
There's quite a few things that help fonts become more readable.
Most of these things are already taken care of. I said "start with an ordinary copyright-free 12pt font".
Check out that page on Hinting referenced in parent.
Actually my comment was for those who have already (1) read that text, (2) digested it, and (3) started thinking about an easy hack that will look better than anti-aliased fonts for gnome. You're still at step 1. -
Re:What about the textile industry?
I think you have had enough time to read up on all of your revolutionary idea's because of not breaking your back all day plowing some little tract of land. You would be much better off focusing your energy on the more salient dangers of nanotechnology, namely the grey goo scenario where an uncontrolled nano-replication accidently turns all of the Earth into copies of itself.
Moreover, I find your idea of revolution to be a little outmoded, Trotsky's Theory of Permanent Revolution was written under a government that did not allow the right to demonstrate. To take the kernal of the idea into today's realities, consider it in idea space. Convince people it's a better way then vote for them. In old style revolutions things tend to get broken, and I for one do not want my things to get broken.
Go eat your cake. -
Re:Stop the ride! I want off!
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but can it fortell assasinations
If PI contains every concievable message, then do you suppose we could use to predict the future ? Not the normal boring stuff, like will my daughter run off with tall swarthy mediterranean, but important stuff, like assasinations ?
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A fair bit of background.
Firstly.... Australian Capital _Territory_.
:-)Secondly, and this one's good: The actual project site. GPL requirements mean code's open source. And it is!
Software Improvements is a key player in a very good spot here. One of the principals of SI, Clive Boughton, is an associate Lecturer (or visiting lecturer) at the ANU, where he currently convenes the Software Engineering course. Last year, as well as teaching Software Analysis and Design and Project Management to the 3rd year cohort, he was strongly connected with the 3rd year Software Engineering Group Project.
The group project was to produce an online, web-based voting system. The project was targeted at Federal elections, but apart from the preference counting system, the principle holds.
Out of the project (after 1 academic year) came 12 seperate online voting systems. One of these systems was apparently pitched to the ACT government in response to the Request For Tender they released near the end of the year, which looked an awful lot like the Request For Proposal the teams were given at the beginning of the year.
Amongst the requirements for the project, was that the system be utterly open source (except for the RDBMS) and be delivered as a set of RPMs and SRPMS against Redhat 6.1.
Another important requirement of both projects (and the Australian electoral system) is that a person be able to vote just once, and that once a vote is recorded, it must not be able to be linked to a specific person.
The group project had tougher requirements than the ACT's project, in that the group project was for use in Internet voting, not just computerising polling booths.
Software Improvements can (and in fact has, I am given to understand) draw upon this unique pool of experience to produce what I confidently expect will be a successful product which I look forward to using come the election.
Some trivia:
- Although the ANU group project required RedHat 6.1, the two spare machines in the room ran Debian Linux up until the last month or so of the project where they went from spare to testing-platform.
- The ANU's past lecturer list includes Andrew Tridgewell, Paul Mackerras and Paul "Rusty" Russell. If you don't recognise the names, think linux-pmac, Samba, Netfilter, rsync, Tivo ethernet card, Tivo in Pal, pppd, just to name a few.
How do I know all this?
I was one of the group leaders for the 3rd year group project. I hold the distinction of having the only RedHat 6.1 computer in the project room which the system testers could not break into without getting a screwdriver from upstairs to clear the bios.
Mind you, that wasn't part of the testing. They just wanted to see our developement machine and figured it would be easier than calling me. Fooled 'em good!
====================
Paul "TBBle" Hampson -
A fair bit of background.
Firstly.... Australian Capital _Territory_.
:-)Secondly, and this one's good: The actual project site. GPL requirements mean code's open source. And it is!
Software Improvements is a key player in a very good spot here. One of the principals of SI, Clive Boughton, is an associate Lecturer (or visiting lecturer) at the ANU, where he currently convenes the Software Engineering course. Last year, as well as teaching Software Analysis and Design and Project Management to the 3rd year cohort, he was strongly connected with the 3rd year Software Engineering Group Project.
The group project was to produce an online, web-based voting system. The project was targeted at Federal elections, but apart from the preference counting system, the principle holds.
Out of the project (after 1 academic year) came 12 seperate online voting systems. One of these systems was apparently pitched to the ACT government in response to the Request For Tender they released near the end of the year, which looked an awful lot like the Request For Proposal the teams were given at the beginning of the year.
Amongst the requirements for the project, was that the system be utterly open source (except for the RDBMS) and be delivered as a set of RPMs and SRPMS against Redhat 6.1.
Another important requirement of both projects (and the Australian electoral system) is that a person be able to vote just once, and that once a vote is recorded, it must not be able to be linked to a specific person.
The group project had tougher requirements than the ACT's project, in that the group project was for use in Internet voting, not just computerising polling booths.
Software Improvements can (and in fact has, I am given to understand) draw upon this unique pool of experience to produce what I confidently expect will be a successful product which I look forward to using come the election.
Some trivia:
- Although the ANU group project required RedHat 6.1, the two spare machines in the room ran Debian Linux up until the last month or so of the project where they went from spare to testing-platform.
- The ANU's past lecturer list includes Andrew Tridgewell, Paul Mackerras and Paul "Rusty" Russell. If you don't recognise the names, think linux-pmac, Samba, Netfilter, rsync, Tivo ethernet card, Tivo in Pal, pppd, just to name a few.
How do I know all this?
I was one of the group leaders for the 3rd year group project. I hold the distinction of having the only RedHat 6.1 computer in the project room which the system testers could not break into without getting a screwdriver from upstairs to clear the bios.
Mind you, that wasn't part of the testing. They just wanted to see our developement machine and figured it would be easier than calling me. Fooled 'em good!
====================
Paul "TBBle" Hampson -
A fair bit of background.
Firstly.... Australian Capital _Territory_.
:-)Secondly, and this one's good: The actual project site. GPL requirements mean code's open source. And it is!
Software Improvements is a key player in a very good spot here. One of the principals of SI, Clive Boughton, is an associate Lecturer (or visiting lecturer) at the ANU, where he currently convenes the Software Engineering course. Last year, as well as teaching Software Analysis and Design and Project Management to the 3rd year cohort, he was strongly connected with the 3rd year Software Engineering Group Project.
The group project was to produce an online, web-based voting system. The project was targeted at Federal elections, but apart from the preference counting system, the principle holds.
Out of the project (after 1 academic year) came 12 seperate online voting systems. One of these systems was apparently pitched to the ACT government in response to the Request For Tender they released near the end of the year, which looked an awful lot like the Request For Proposal the teams were given at the beginning of the year.
Amongst the requirements for the project, was that the system be utterly open source (except for the RDBMS) and be delivered as a set of RPMs and SRPMS against Redhat 6.1.
Another important requirement of both projects (and the Australian electoral system) is that a person be able to vote just once, and that once a vote is recorded, it must not be able to be linked to a specific person.
The group project had tougher requirements than the ACT's project, in that the group project was for use in Internet voting, not just computerising polling booths.
Software Improvements can (and in fact has, I am given to understand) draw upon this unique pool of experience to produce what I confidently expect will be a successful product which I look forward to using come the election.
Some trivia:
- Although the ANU group project required RedHat 6.1, the two spare machines in the room ran Debian Linux up until the last month or so of the project where they went from spare to testing-platform.
- The ANU's past lecturer list includes Andrew Tridgewell, Paul Mackerras and Paul "Rusty" Russell. If you don't recognise the names, think linux-pmac, Samba, Netfilter, rsync, Tivo ethernet card, Tivo in Pal, pppd, just to name a few.
How do I know all this?
I was one of the group leaders for the 3rd year group project. I hold the distinction of having the only RedHat 6.1 computer in the project room which the system testers could not break into without getting a screwdriver from upstairs to clear the bios.
Mind you, that wasn't part of the testing. They just wanted to see our developement machine and figured it would be easier than calling me. Fooled 'em good!
====================
Paul "TBBle" Hampson -
A fair bit of background.
Firstly.... Australian Capital _Territory_.
:-)Secondly, and this one's good: The actual project site. GPL requirements mean code's open source. And it is!
Software Improvements is a key player in a very good spot here. One of the principals of SI, Clive Boughton, is an associate Lecturer (or visiting lecturer) at the ANU, where he currently convenes the Software Engineering course. Last year, as well as teaching Software Analysis and Design and Project Management to the 3rd year cohort, he was strongly connected with the 3rd year Software Engineering Group Project.
The group project was to produce an online, web-based voting system. The project was targeted at Federal elections, but apart from the preference counting system, the principle holds.
Out of the project (after 1 academic year) came 12 seperate online voting systems. One of these systems was apparently pitched to the ACT government in response to the Request For Tender they released near the end of the year, which looked an awful lot like the Request For Proposal the teams were given at the beginning of the year.
Amongst the requirements for the project, was that the system be utterly open source (except for the RDBMS) and be delivered as a set of RPMs and SRPMS against Redhat 6.1.
Another important requirement of both projects (and the Australian electoral system) is that a person be able to vote just once, and that once a vote is recorded, it must not be able to be linked to a specific person.
The group project had tougher requirements than the ACT's project, in that the group project was for use in Internet voting, not just computerising polling booths.
Software Improvements can (and in fact has, I am given to understand) draw upon this unique pool of experience to produce what I confidently expect will be a successful product which I look forward to using come the election.
Some trivia:
- Although the ANU group project required RedHat 6.1, the two spare machines in the room ran Debian Linux up until the last month or so of the project where they went from spare to testing-platform.
- The ANU's past lecturer list includes Andrew Tridgewell, Paul Mackerras and Paul "Rusty" Russell. If you don't recognise the names, think linux-pmac, Samba, Netfilter, rsync, Tivo ethernet card, Tivo in Pal, pppd, just to name a few.
How do I know all this?
I was one of the group leaders for the 3rd year group project. I hold the distinction of having the only RedHat 6.1 computer in the project room which the system testers could not break into without getting a screwdriver from upstairs to clear the bios.
Mind you, that wasn't part of the testing. They just wanted to see our developement machine and figured it would be easier than calling me. Fooled 'em good!
====================
Paul "TBBle" Hampson -
Legal issues with the ACT e-voting systemSome of the main issues, from a legal point of view, surrounding this project are discussed in this paper which I wrote a couple of months back for a course given by the Law Faculty of the Australian National University.
There are some inherant difficulties in maintaining security, transparency and accoutability when moving to electronic voting and the problems in this case are compounded by the fact that the whole thing has been done in a rush. There are only about 11 months between the introduction of enabling legislation and the vote. The successful tenderer was only officially announced in April and polling day is in October. This does not leave much time for comprehensive external software testing.
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Legal issues with the ACT e-voting systemSome of the main issues, from a legal point of view, surrounding this project are discussed in this paper which I wrote a couple of months back for a course given by the Law Faculty of the Australian National University.
There are some inherant difficulties in maintaining security, transparency and accoutability when moving to electronic voting and the problems in this case are compounded by the fact that the whole thing has been done in a rush. There are only about 11 months between the introduction of enabling legislation and the vote. The successful tenderer was only officially announced in April and polling day is in October. This does not leave much time for comprehensive external software testing.
-
Legal issues with the ACT e-voting systemSome of the main issues, from a legal point of view, surrounding this project are discussed in this paper which I wrote a couple of months back for a course given by the Law Faculty of the Australian National University.
There are some inherant difficulties in maintaining security, transparency and accoutability when moving to electronic voting and the problems in this case are compounded by the fact that the whole thing has been done in a rush. There are only about 11 months between the introduction of enabling legislation and the vote. The successful tenderer was only officially announced in April and polling day is in October. This does not leave much time for comprehensive external software testing.
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Re:Laws of RoboticsSorry, a number of his stories were about robots following those "laws of robotics".
Heres something along those lines. If you fear its a link about goats then you don't know how to use a web browser.
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No you can't - at least without violating licenseJust because it not included in the distibution does not mean you cant use it. You can still download the package from http://coombs.anu.edu.au/~avalon/ and compile it yourself.
I think you missed a point...
The license (as "clarified") bans modified versions.
The version used with OpenBSD is modified.
So they had to take it down.
Now you have two choices:
Download and install a copy of the modified version. This violates the license.
Download and install a copy of the UNmodified version. This means you don't have the OpenBSD modifications.
Now since the whole POINT of OpenBSD is that it has been heavily vetted for security bugs, do you REALLY want to install the UNmodified version? Of the FIREWALL code? -
Re:Oh dear.
Just because it not included in the distibution does not mean you cant use it. You can still download the package from http://coombs.anu.edu.au/~avalon/ and compile it yourself.
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like the Torah codes...
Remember a few years ago when the "Torah Codes" (aka "Bible Codes") came out, where people ran the text of the Torah through a computer program and came up with intersecting words? This link critiques that... a very similar argument to what you were just saying.
-rt- -
Cracking the Kubrick "Code"Granted some of the Odysseus and Zarathustra symbols match up, and provide insight into this obtuse mesmerising film, Wheatley is looking just a little too hard.
Do you remember when that book Bible Code came out, and everyone thought for a moment that there were all these secret messages in the Bible... After a little analysis people applied those same techniques and found assassinations foretold in Moby Dick, prophecies in a MS access license, references to Bill Gates in Revelations (I'd believe that) and all kinds of stuff.
It's like crossing your eyes and looking at wall paper, amusing, but meaningless.
Thanks for the highlights of the book though Mr. Wheatley, now I really don't need to read it.
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Information wants to be free (etymology)Most people use the statement "information wants to free" as a straw man fallacy.
"How can information want anything? These [insert vaguely computer related demonic subspecies here] are nuts."
"Information wants to be free, so we must keep it locked up, and ban unauthorized use of the keys."
I've looked upon the statement as a rallying cry against censorship, and as a way of encouraging free-as-in-speech software. But it can also be applied to other bits of information. For instance, the Government publishes a lot of information-- regulations, court cases, etc. It used to be that private firms published a lot of this material for a select audience-- and the prices reflected both the enourmous cost of printing, but also the ability of their audience to pay through the nose for it.
But with the advent of the internet, a lot of those costs are substantially less. "Freeing" this information has important civic advantages.
I also found this page detailing some of the early usage of this adage here
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Re:Linux vs Solaris on SPARC
IP Filter is a great firewall and NAT package which runs on both SunOS and Solaris. Turns my old SPARCstation 5 into a nice router between my cable modem and network.
:) -
violent revolution is a basic tenent of Communism
Marx himself said it would never be necessary to force Communism in place of Capitalism, Capitalism would evolve into Communism naturally.
Go to your nearest Communist Manifesto and grep for revolution.
[rangek@pinot-noir rangek]$ grep --count revolution manifesto.txt
51
Now lets look for "evolve" and "evolution" (be careful, evolution is just revolution without the 'r'...)
[rangek@pinot-noir rangek]$ grep --count evolve manifesto.txt
0
[rangek@pinot-noir rangek]$ grep --count " evolution" manifesto.txt
4
It looks like Communists want revolution ~12 times more than evolution. As a matter of fact, violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat is a basic tenent of Communism. From The Communist Manifesto (emphasis is mine):
In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.
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TCO
Time and time again this debate has raged, and most actual metrics that measure the real cost of implementing various solutions have agreed that Windows NT/2000 has a significantly lower total cost of ownership than Linux, Solaris, etc. While it's easy to look at the prices of the software alone think they're expensive (though from a consumers perspective), those prices are often absolutely dwarfed by the cost of implementation, training, etc.
Does this mean that I wouldn't recommend that firms consider BSD, Linux, etc? Not even remotely. The problem is when you get Linux fanatics who want to push Linux for anything and everything at an organization, and it turns into one high risk experiment. However, moderately implementing "alternative" OS' can be very beneficial for organizations. For instance there's no way I'd pay thousands for a copy of 2000 & ISA Server. Instead I'd take an old PC, stick FreeBSD with IP Filter on it, and would have a fully functional firewall transparently a part of the organization with extremely little maintenance required : The TCO for that is very low. However I wouldn't consider replacing MS servers with Samba at this point because the many minor nuisances (non-updating directories, security issues, etc.) aren't worth the trouble. It's "less expensive" to just buy an 2000 + CAL license pack for SMB serving. It's less expensive to use SQL Server than it is to play with the experiments that are open source SQL solutions (I realize there would be disagreement to this, but that has been my experience). It's FAR less expensive to equip end users with 2000 desktops than it is trying to shoehorn Linux+TheCoolGUIOfTheDay.
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OT: HUGE CLUSTER
Check out this truly scheweeeeeeet cluster!
http://tux.anu.edu.au/Projects/Bunyip/Beo-017.jpg
http://tux.anu.edu.au/Projects/Bunyip/Beo-015.jpg
Now *THAT* would be the ultimate quake server or GIMP beast! But... who can afford the electricity?!?! -
OT: HUGE CLUSTER
Check out this truly scheweeeeeeet cluster!
http://tux.anu.edu.au/Projects/Bunyip/Beo-017.jpg
http://tux.anu.edu.au/Projects/Bunyip/Beo-015.jpg
Now *THAT* would be the ultimate quake server or GIMP beast! But... who can afford the electricity?!?! -
ESR++
I **LOVED** this interview
this guy may be an ego maniac
but he makes me feel like a genius
and its really great to see him move and wave and smile
as I read his comments.
and what he says about the student-teacher relationship is _spot on_...
And here is a chance to read and see a genuine article in action...
see how *physical* and excited he gets talking about this stuff
we are all involved with.
And what the hell is wrong with a bit of negative M$ talk????
Why are people defending M$ all of a sudden???
okay, enough of this, back to coding for me, yay!!!! -
Well, it's **ALMOST** that easy... (read on)
If I recall correctly, the Junkbuster proxy does not work as a transparent proxy but rather, requires that the users configure their browsers to use the Junkbuster proxy manually. I haven't installed Opera yet to verify this but I'm guessing that it pays no attention to the proxy server settings when fetching its banner ads.
This behaviour is similar to the popular windows bannerware program, Napigator. Napigator gives you no options to choose a proxy and thus, no way to disable the banner ads. However, there is a way around it. I installed AdZapper on my firewall box and configured ip-filter to send all outbound port 80 connections through the AdZapper proxy. This "transparency" required a patch to AdZapper, and the author (Adam Feuer) sent it to me. Now that I had a transparent banner ad filter running, it was time to figure out how to filter the banner ads out of the application. For this, I used tcpdump (see the manpage for the exact options) to snoop all outbound connections from the machine running Napigator. I logged all of the traffic to a file and was able to find an outbound connection to an http server that had something similar to this:
GET /bannerad.php?userid=AB34C2D7F HTTP/1.1
So, I wrote a quick Zaplet to block this banner ad fetch. Presto, no more ads in Napigator.
There are, of course, ethical obligations when using free software and you should certainly take these in mind before blocking Opera's ads. -
Bastille Linux vs. OpenBSD
I don't subscribe to the notion that these are in opposition to one another. That OpenBSD is not always the answer is very true. But all good things have their purposes. In fact, I use them both in my segmented, handy-man-special, home network:
OpenBSD for Mac68K (all these were bought for a pittance on eBay):
2 Quadra 700s: transparent firewall (ipf) and 3-legged NAT (ipnat)
Quadra 610: mail server (qmail)
Centris 610 (w/68040): dns server (djbdns)LinuxPPC: (Bastille'd by using the Sparc trick on the FAQ)
2 7300s: apache and MySQL (soon to be PostgreSQL?)
9500/G3: mol / streaming with videod, icecast (Better choices are welcome.)
Pismo PowerBook: dual bootI haven't had as many years using Linux (only 2) as you have. And aside from that my computer experience amounts to a few mid-'80s semesters of VAXen and the entire life of the Mac platform -- and around 4 months of NetBSD and OpenBSD. But I have to say it (adding BSD to the mix) hasn't been that hard at all. There are many similarities with Linux. Much of your current knowledge will transfer. For anyone who has learned guitar and then tried bass, or ukulele, you've experienced this before.
But I still hope they get OS X (my future home?) right. Must ... have ... all. -
Bastille Linux vs. OpenBSD
I don't subscribe to the notion that these are in opposition to one another. That OpenBSD is not always the answer is very true. But all good things have their purposes. In fact, I use them both in my segmented, handy-man-special, home network:
OpenBSD for Mac68K (all these were bought for a pittance on eBay):
2 Quadra 700s: transparent firewall (ipf) and 3-legged NAT (ipnat)
Quadra 610: mail server (qmail)
Centris 610 (w/68040): dns server (djbdns)LinuxPPC: (Bastille'd by using the Sparc trick on the FAQ)
2 7300s: apache and MySQL (soon to be PostgreSQL?)
9500/G3: mol / streaming with videod, icecast (Better choices are welcome.)
Pismo PowerBook: dual bootI haven't had as many years using Linux (only 2) as you have. And aside from that my computer experience amounts to a few mid-'80s semesters of VAXen and the entire life of the Mac platform -- and around 4 months of NetBSD and OpenBSD. But I have to say it (adding BSD to the mix) hasn't been that hard at all. There are many similarities with Linux. Much of your current knowledge will transfer. For anyone who has learned guitar and then tried bass, or ukulele, you've experienced this before.
But I still hope they get OS X (my future home?) right. Must ... have ... all. -
Re:GPL is evilActually, I would prefer fuck you posts to your style of posts. An accurate "GPL is bad, because... example 1...example 2..." would contribute to the discussions.
Those two examples are reality.
Here's Apple's statement to Number 1.
And the GPL prevented me to program an ICQ client for MacOS X, this one you have to believe me. -
Re:Industrial espionage and "unknown"
yeah getting closer, but it is much wider spread than just US/UK. You are forgetting about all the pacific nations, including Australia. The countries involved are the UKUSA alliance nations. Read about it in a writeup about a tv docco that was shown here in Aus
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Re:Oh no, not again!Well the Australian National University certainly didn't consider it.
In June they launched bunyip, a beowulf cluster using 192 processors and running Linux. It was the worlds first sub US$1000 / Gflop performance machine.
I don't think using NT even occured to them. I wonder why?
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Re:Oh no, not again!Well the Australian National University certainly didn't consider it.
In June they launched bunyip, a beowulf cluster using 192 processors and running Linux. It was the worlds first sub US$1000 / Gflop performance machine.
I don't think using NT even occured to them. I wonder why?
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Re:a little blurb I foundHmmm... Quite interesting. The main meat of the process:
According to quantum theory, the state of a particle is described as its wave function. The probability that the particle will be found in any position is proportional to the square of the wave function at that point in space. Maris' theory considers what happens to electrons when they are immersed in liquid helium at a temperature of one degree above absolute zero. Previous experiments have shown that an electron in helium becomes trapped in a bubble approximately 100-billionths of an inch in diameter. The bubble drifts through the liquid with the wave function of the electron confined inside it.
I think that the important thing to realize here is that they are talking about the wave function of the electron being inside the bubble and splitting in two, not the actual electron. IANATP (Theoretical Physicist), but if I recall correctly (especially since the quote above agrees...), the wave function of a particle is actually a measure of the probability that that particle will be found in a particular place when you look for it. This press release seems to be nothing more that Schrodin ger 's Cat, but with an electron instead of a cat (the SPCA is happy about that). I suspect that if you check in the bubbles for electrons, one would have an electron, and the other would not. It is the act of observing that causes the wave function to collapse into an actual physical property. So, I don't think that we're actually talking about electron fission here, but electron wave function fission.Maris shows that when the bubble is illuminated with infrared light, the bubble can divide into two smaller bubbles each containing a part of the wave function of the electron. These two bubbles can then move independently through the liquid and become separated from each other.
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Re:Fosters...If you want to drink good Australian Beer, drink Coopers. Bottle conditioned and with a bit of flavour, not like VB, XXXX or (heaven forbid) Fosters. If you can't get Coopers then Toohey's Old is another good option.
Since this is an article about Canberra, I should also point out that for REALLY good Australian beer one need go no further than the the Wig and Pen in the city. They brew their own beer in a variety of styles and have a wall full of prizes for it. As a bonus, the Wig and Pen is around the corner from LinuxCare's Australian office and just off the campus of The Australian National University so it's perfectly placed for the geek about town in Canberra.
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Re:Changing EULAEven if the licence states that the company may change it unilaterally, and even if the licence is made enforceable by some dodgy piece of legislation then the relevant clause is still void for uncertainty. You have to specify contractural terms in a pretty concrete manner. Just because UCITA plugs the acceptance hole in EULAs doesn't mean it fixes all the other problems.
\begin{disclaimer}
I passed contracts at the ANU but I believe US common law is pretty similar to ours.
\end{disclaimer} -
Re:W Windows?Oops. The "W" link I gave isn't to the Real W, but to a different project. Here's some other links:
- X howto -- mentions W
/. post Turns out "W" was the successor to "V". So, the successor to "X" should by "Y", which makes perfect sense on several levels (unfortunately, there's no letter that's pronounced "please god let it die").- "Kay" has some W links.
- here is an interesting story about IBM, W, X, CMU and AFS.
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Information Wants to be Free AND EXPENSIVE!Every time I see people mindlessly parrot that trite saying, I cringe. It's a meme that's gotten distributed far enough and used as a battlecry for so many causes, both crackpot and legitimate, that people have lost track of what it was originally supposed to mean. "Information wants to be free" is only half of the original meme!
As recounted in this website, the phrase "information wants to be free" has a little-known counterpart: "information wants to be expensive." It was first uttered back in 1984 (now there's an ironic year for information wanting to be free!) by Stewart Brand:
"In fall 1984, at the first Hackers' Conference, I said in one discussion session: "On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other." That was printed in a report/transcript from the conference in the May 1985 *Whole Earth Review*, p. 49.
(emphases mine)So, people, next time you use the phrase, please take a moment to reflect on what it really means?
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Read the Communist Manifesto
Take an hour or two to read the Communist Manifesto. It is interesting, Marx and Engels argue that the bourgeois are (or were) constantly trying to improve technology to increase the efficiency of their production and reduce the effort and input needed by man in the production queue. Such a movement, the Manifesto argues, pushes those lower middle class individuals into the proletariat. In any case, it's interesting, because it seems the opposite of what the big corporations are doing today. Rather than embracing the new technologies like the bourgeois described by Marx and Engels, the bourgeois of today are trying to keep the status quo. Interesting....
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Solution to Hacking? Asimov's Laws of RoboticsA lot of people have raised the concerns of these Internet controlled guard robots being hacked and or turning against their human masters, and I would have to agree. However, another major problem comes to mind when I consider the problem with these robots - Artificial Intelligence. How would these robots judge the intentions of a potential intruder, and say a maintenance worker? The field of AI in computing is not even close enough to be as advanced as to predict a person's actions by judging from their emotional expression (facial, body language, voice).
Until AI in robotics are advanced enough to comprehend the author Isaac Asimov's Laws of Robotics from 1940, independent robots should not be placed in positions where their actions could jeopardise the lives of other human beings. Even if hacked, a robot hardwired to follow the three rules below would be severely limited from injuring innocent people. The three rules are:First Law:
And of course, there is a fourth rule that Asimov brings up in Prelude to Foundation, in which the robot Daniel is programmed to over the first three laws in order to ensure the survival of the human race, but that law in itself is a little too far for a guard robot! For an interesting look into the implications that Asimov's laws introduce into artificial intelligence in computing and robotics, then you look at this article by Roger Clarke at the Australian National University.
A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.Second Law:
A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.Third Law:
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
MashPotato - Mobile Array of Support Helpers for Potato
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Re:Amazing
Thanks a bunch for the information. I have no intention of selling it.
As for the e-mail on mailing lists, I have been active in a few FreeBSD and Linux mailing lists as well as IP Filter's list since I got the domain three years ago.
And now I shall go off and read about zero.com. It is nice to know about precedents in a person's favor. :) -
Re:[OT]Not all information is in the net, you know, there's those pesky little things, whatchamacallem, ah, books.
- The one book I've read on this, Rachel Nordlinger's Ph.D. dissertation, Constructive Case: Evidence from Australian Languages, is available in Amazon, and luckily in a friendly university library. Also, her M.A. thesis is a description of the language Wambaya.
- Ken Hale has done *tons* of research in Australian languages, especially in Warlpiri.
- Jane Simpson is also an important scholar in these languages.
Off the top of my head, I can't get you any more references, but these should be enough for you to find the relevant literature.
Of course, this is all academic linguistics work, so if you haven't done linguistics at all, you may simply not understand a thing...
Anyway, the main idea is that languages can identify grammatical relations (subject, object) in two main ways: configurationally, or by the arrangement of words and phrases, or nonconfigurationally, by using inflective morphemes. Nearly all european languages rely heavily on configuration to this effect, though they may use morphology a bit. A large number of Australian languages, however, rely mostly on morphology. This requires them to have a more complicated morphology, since the syntax is no help in deciding what word modifies what, or what is the subject, and such.
For example, in languages like this, a noun and its modifier do not have to be adjacent. A sentence like "The rabid dog has bitten the children" could be said something like "Rabid-1 has bitten children-2 dog-1", where 1 and 2 are different case morphemes; by the case you know that "rabid" goes with "dog". In that sentence, as long as "has" is the second word, any word order is ok.