Slashdot Mirror

That article is very funny. First, it presents many alleged myths of OOP. Sure, these are very well myths from 70's, I guess there have once been people with such beliefs.

The author seems to confuse OO with some other programming techniques. What does OOP have to do with garbage collection, multimedia, OODBMS, visual programming, or even taxonomies or modelling the real world? These are all part of what programmers need to deal with, but none of them are OOP. So at minimum, blaming OOP for this is seriously misplaced.

The article also confuses and mixes object oriented _modelling_, object oriented _analysis_ and object oriented _programming_ with implementation mechanisms used commonly in major programming languages (e.g. C++). Look at some differently designed programming languages (e.g. Haskell), and you see that none of the assumptions made in that article are valid.

There is the concept of modelling the real world in object oriented _analysis_ (OOA), but even there, the article fails to reveal any insight on the problems people are having with modelling. In reality, no analysis method currently available does adequate job in modelling the real world. Nor are they intended to attain the impossible.

The concepts that programmers are modelling are more complex than many people think. However, mostly all the analysis machinery is exactly the same whether one uses OO methods or any other modelling technology. All analysis methods focus on finding the relevant pieces of information, and creating a simplified model that reflects it. Different modeling techniques make different simplifications. Then the software is written to assume this idealized reality.

The most common problem with modelling is that there are too many things that are simply *unknown*. Good software designers can identify concepts or constraints that are not well known, and reflect this uncertainty in the model by introducing flexibility. How this flexibility is provided is not important. Polymorphism (and not inheritance) is one tool provided by OO to doing this. Asking for user input for the unknown things is another (non-OO way).

In contrast, the article attacks inheritance because it uses a hierarchy. This is just silly. I was not surprised at the references to communism.

For *really* good information, see: Portland pattern repository, or any bibliography server (e.g. NEC Research index)

The fact remains that Linux and Gnome are based on a language and runtime that is processor and architecture dependent, provides no support for runtime safety and fault isolation, and provides no dynamic type information.

Bullshit. It sounds like your an advocate of Microsoft Internet Information Server 4.0. Open Source supports everything you claim it doesn't. Except your precious Visual Basic.

It's depressing to me to see how much projects like Mozilla, KDE, and Gnome have followed in the Microsoft footsteps and are repeating the same mistakes.

Again, subtle M$ bullshit propaganda. Mozilla 6 couldn't have been constructed any differently than IE, and Gnome has always been radically different than anything M$ has ever conceived. Gnome should be considered a raging success, especially considering it's young age.

Happy New Year q000921
Make it your new years resolution to leave the dark side!

Digital (Compaq) developed an x86 Dynamic Binary Translator running on Alpha called FX!32. FX!32 won Byte Magazine's "Best Technology" award at Fall Comdex '95.

Dynamic in this case means that some code is emulated on the fly, and some is translated. This approach was pioneered for bytecode systems in Smalltalk implementations in the 80's, and of course is now used in Sun's HotSpot and other dynamic adaptive JVMs.

Static binary translators have been around for even longer, and were used (among other things) for running VAX programs on Alpha. A useful overview of this sort of technology appeared in the Digital Technical Journal 4:4 (1992). HP also performed binary translation between the HP3000 and the Precision architecture, but I can't find on-line info on that, just a citation to a paper article (1987). There is also a useful survey article on static and dynamic binary translation.

What is presumably novel in Transmeta's approach is that their instruction set architecture (ISA) is tuned specifically for dynamic translation (see page 12ff of Transmeta's paper The Technology Behind Crusoe Processors . Some microcode architectures have been designed specifically for general emulation (most have been tuned for a particular macroinstruction ISA), e.g. the early Lisp Machines (1976-81).

Digital (Compaq) developed an x86 Dynamic Binary Translator running on Alpha called FX!32. FX!32 won Byte Magazine's "Best Technology" award at Fall Comdex '95.

Dynamic in this case means that some code is emulated on the fly, and some is translated. This approach was pioneered for bytecode systems in Smalltalk implementations in the 80's, and of course is now used in Sun's HotSpot and other dynamic adaptive JVMs.

Static binary translators have been around for even longer, and were used (among other things) for running VAX programs on Alpha. A useful overview of this sort of technology appeared in the Digital Technical Journal 4:4 (1992). HP also performed binary translation between the HP3000 and the Precision architecture, but I can't find on-line info on that, just a citation to a paper article (1987). There is also a useful survey article on static and dynamic binary translation.

What is presumably novel in Transmeta's approach is that their instruction set architecture (ISA) is tuned specifically for dynamic translation (see page 12ff of Transmeta's paper The Technology Behind Crusoe Processors . Some microcode architectures have been designed specifically for general emulation (most have been tuned for a particular macroinstruction ISA), e.g. the early Lisp Machines (1976-81).

NEC Develops 400Mbps Wireless IEEE1394 Home Networking

Transmission Distance of Up to 12 meters

TOKYO January 26th, 2000 - NEC Corporation (NEC) (NASDAQ: NIPNY) has developed the world's first wireless transmission technology based on the IEEE1394 high-speed serial bus capable of 400 megabits (Mbps), at transmission ranges of up to 7 meters through interior walls and up to 12 meters by line-of-sight, bringing next-generation multimedia home networking another step closer to reality.

IEEE1394 is well suited to multimedia networking in homes. With its Plug and Play capability, the absence of complicated ID settings and terminators, IEEE1394 offers ease of use, a key factor for home users. Moreover, its ability to connect up to 63 devices at a bandwidth of up to 400 Mbps, enables a variety of graphics, video, computer and other data to use the network simultaneously. By developing wireless IEEE1394 networking technology, such multimedia networks can now be created in the home without the need to install new wiring.

To do this, the new technology uses 60GHz millimeter wavelength transmissions, which does not require any kind of license, with the ASK (amplitude shift keying) modulation scheme and the development of a low cost transceiver. Another key development enabling this technology, is the incorporation of an echo detection function in NEC's PD72880 400Mbps long-distance transmission physical layer device, to prevent the influence of signal reflections, a significant obstacle to stable operation of IEEE1394 over a wireless connection.

As a result of these achievements, NEC believes wireless networking with the IEEE 1394 high-speed serial bus provides the ease of use, low cost and high performance that is required for effective multimedia home networking.

Background

The increasing use of combined audio-visual and computer data is leading to greater need for multimedia networking capabilities and already solutions are beginning to emerge. Standardization of multimedia networking in the home is already underway, and IEEE1394 is emerging as the leading contender, capable of interfacing with a number of AV, computer and other digital consumer electronics and providing transmission bandwidth of up to 400 Mbps.

The main constraint on IEEE1394, however, has been its limitation to a transmission range over cable of 4.5 meters. NEC, soon began work on developing the IEEE1394 standard to enable transmissions over greater distances and announced its TERMBOY/MX-series of network adapters in June 1998 that are capable of distances over 50 meters using plastic optical fibre, aimed at installation of networks in newly constructed or refurbished homes. By additionally offering a wireless implementation of IEEE1394 that does not require any installation work, NEC has significantly expanded the marketability of the technology as the standard for home multimedia networks.

While there are already several efforts underway to introduce wireless networking into homes, these only offer low bandwidths of several Kbps (kilobits per second) or Mbps, making it very difficult for them to offer the full multimedia transmission capabilities of IEEE1394.

NEC's development is therefore highly significant in providing a new level of multimedia networking performance for the home, and researchers are working hard towards standardization of wireless IEEE1394. With this objective in mind, NEC expects products based on this new technology to be available by the end of 2000 and the company will continue to expand its research and development efforts in this field.


About NEC Corporation

NEC Corporation (NASDAQ: NIPNY) (FTSE: 6701q.l) pioneered the concept of C&C, the integration of Computers and Communications, and is the only company in the world to be counted among top ranking corporations spanning the wide range of fields essential for this vision of multimedia: computers, communications and electron devices. Employing in excess of 150,000 people around the world, NEC saw net sales in fiscal year 1998-99 amount to 4,759 billion yen (approx. US$40 billion). For further information, visit the NEC home page at: http://www.nec-global.com

Sigh.

Obdisclaimer: I work for VMware, I don't speak for them, believe what you want to believe, etc.

Kevin Lawton started those rumors, possibly accidentally. They are quite untrue, as Kevin himself probably realizes. If bochs is such a great starting place for making a virtual machine monitor, how come Kevin himself has had such trouble doing it?

The complete story, as I understand it: a few years ago, Mendel Rosenblum, a professor at Stanford, was looking for a platform to teach an operating systems course on. In order to evaluate Bochs, he asked Kevin for a free evaluation copy, which Kevin graciously supplied. Mendel ultimately decided against Bochs, in favor of SimOS.

A completely unrelated fact about Mendel Rosenblum is that he has been doing fundamental research on making virtual machine monitors for "unvirtualizable" platforms for years. See, for example, Disco, a VMM for the mips architecture. Rosenblum and some of his graduate students had an idea for making a VMM for i386, and VMware was born about two years ago.

Once VMware came out, Kevin was an enthusiastic user. You can still go onto our public NNTP server and see Kevin helping out other users of VMware. He eventually decided he wanted an open source VMware, and started recruiting folks on the VMware newsgroups. He then started telling stories of the form: "A couple years ago, I gave a source license for Bochs to Mendel; now he's formed VMware... Hmm, strange...", intending to leave the impression that VMware "stole" Bochs.

This is nonsense, and you don't have to take my word for it. It's nonsense for fundamental technical reasons. It's as if RMS said, "Hmm, a few years ago, I gave the source for a C compiler to Sun, and a few years later they come out with Solaris.... Hmm..." It's just a non-sequitur. CPU emulators and virtual machine monitors are different kinds of software. I realize that from the end-user perspective, VMware and Bochs appear similar: they both end up as PCs in a window. But they are unrelated in terms of fundamental technology. I'm sure at this point in developing plex86, Kevin probably realizes this, which is why he doesn't insinuate that VMware is somehow based on Bochs as often as he used to circa one year ago.

There are materials with an index of n = -1 in the visible: metals will have an index of -1 for a particular frequency (not a range, just one). For instance, silver has an index of -1 for a wavelength of 350 nm and that is precisely the case that is discussed at the end of the article in PRL. However, to get a perfect lens the author shows that you also need a magnetic constant mu of -1. This is not the case of silver but he shows that you can still get a perfect lens as long as you stay in the near field (i.e. very close to the lens). That's why the object is only a few nanometers away from the silver lens. For photolithograhy applications, this could actually be practical.

The GHz lens made of wires and loops would be a perfect lens because they could manage to get n = -1 as well as mu = -1. By the way, the negative index for the GHz wave is achieved by stacking wires in a certain structure that is the exact analog of photonic crystals. Those are also possible in the visible. Pendry studies those too...

I've been looking into watermarking a bit, and I'm less confident about such assertions than I was a few days ago.

In particular, there's this awesome paper online. (Click .pdf or .ps in the upper right corner of the page.) It's remarkable stuff, even if you just look at the pictures. For example, they show a photo before and after watermarking. As you flip back and forth, it's as if the shadows have somehow subtly changed. They do all sorts of crazy stuff like JPEG encode/decode, cutting off parts of the picture, adding noise, photocopying, multiple-watermarking. But none of that destroys the original mark.

Frankly, I'm QUITE surprised that anyone could break watermarks under the conditions of the hacksdmi contest. (Come to think of it, the proposed "technologies" were not all watermarks, right?) My feeling is that if SDMI keeps the watermark verifier in hardware, cracking their scheme could be a real bear.

At least, until some community-friendly engineer anonymously posts details of the verification process on USENET from a public-access terminal. :-)

Einstein has not left the building

I believe that link discusses the subject to which you are referring. This guy and his friend performed an experiment in which the group velocity exceeds the speed of light. As I understand it, group velocity is an idealization: it is the notion of the velocity of a pulse, not a photon. As the article explains, in some sense they've gotten the pulse to traverse a medium faster than c. But, "no object or information has been made to travel superluminally."

So, surprisingly enough, nearly seventy years' worth of physics has not been suddenly and summarily disproven.


If you're not wasted, the day is.

Einstein has not left the building

I believe that link discusses the subject to which you are referring. This guy and his friend performed an experiment in which the group velocity exceeds the speed of light. As I understand it, group velocity is an idealization: it is the notion of the velocity of a pulse, not a photon. As the article explains, in some sense they've gotten the pulse to traverse a medium faster than c. But, "no object or information has been made to travel superluminally."

So, surprisingly enough, nearly seventy years' worth of physics has not been suddenly and summarily disproven.


If you're not wasted, the day is.

Here are links to abstracts from two papers that detail the inner workings of Google. The links below lead to abstracts- from those pages you can view cached pdf and postscript copies of the papers. The first paper is a reasonably high-level overview, although it's a bit technical. The second paper is more in-depth and discusses pagerank in more detail than you most of you probably want. In any case this should give you a good idea about what goes on in a real search engine, and should clarify why it's hard to fool google.

Here are links to abstracts from two papers that detail the inner workings of Google. The links below lead to abstracts- from those pages you can view cached pdf and postscript copies of the papers. The first paper is a reasonably high-level overview, although it's a bit technical. The second paper is more in-depth and discusses pagerank in more detail than you most of you probably want. In any case this should give you a good idea about what goes on in a real search engine, and should clarify why it's hard to fool google.

Prepare to witness the most concerted and massive engineering effort -- both social and technical -- ever undertaken by mankind: The digital equivalent of damming the ocean.

I wrote about this on Slashdot almost a year ago, in the vague hope it might become a featured article: The music and movie industies are working very hard to prevent you from using your lawfully-obtained material in any way they don't want. To that end, they have formed the Copy Protection Technical Working Group (CPTWG), which is working hand-in-hand with a ton of high-tech companies to bring pervasive copy protection measures to your PC.

I saved my original screed on the subject, and it's reproduced below, with appropriate updates. Bottom Line: Do not let them sneak this garbage past you or your friends. If you find that a product contains copy protection, don't buy it, and encourage others to do likewise.

____________________

Recent stories on Slashdot have told of the ongoing "tennis match" between digital content providers versus consumers and technically skilled people. The recent cracking of DVD's Content Scrambling System (CSS) lent ammunition to the opinion held by computing professionals and users that copy protection systems are doomed to fail. The effort has been likened to building a dam against the ocean; a foolish and useless exercise. In Slashdot discussion fora, the point has often been raised, "If you can perceive it, you can copy it. What are they going to do, encrypt the bits all the way to the speaker/electron gun?" If the Copy Protection Technical Working Group gets its way, that is precisely what's going to happen.

I received a piece of email spam today, which actually turned out to be useful (probably the only time that's ever happened anywhere). It directed me to a flat panel display industry group. Among others, one of the links pointed to the California Display Network, which had a link pointing to technical info on flat panel technology. Since I currently earn my living writing graphics card and display drivers, I clicked through to see what I could learn.

I found an entry for an overview of digital visual interfaces, provided by Silicon Image. As I reviewed the headings of the slides, one entry stopped me cold: Conten t Protection Status. Content protection? In a flat panel?? Yup: "Implementation of DVI content protection is suitable for PCs and monitors." [emphasis mine]

Thus began an evening of link clicking and Google searches to find out what this off-handed remark could mean. The slide made mention of the 'CPTWG'. This is the Copy Protection Technical Working Group, a consortium of content providers (movie companies), consumer electronics manufacturers, and players in the IT industry. This is the same group that developed CSS for DVD players.

One paragraph from the above page is particularly disturbing:

CPTWG has focused until now only on "casual piracy [sic]", characterized as what a grandmother can do in her home with her DVD. Piracy [sic] requiring even the level of expertise (and equipment) of her grandson, who might be an EE student, has been excluded from consideration. There is a growing awareness that a broader content protection effort may be necessary.

The most recent meeting of the CPTWG was yesterday, 8 December, 1999. Their meeting announcements may be found here. It costs $100 to attend. According to the site, their last meeting was on 11 April 2000. It's not clear if additional meetings have been held at regular intervals.

The attendance roster from the April meeting (RTF file) lists a very interesting, and possibly worrying, mix of organizations. A partial list of representatives included:

• MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America),
• AFMA (American Film Marketing Association),
• Sony Pictures Entertainment,
• Universal Studios,
• Warner Bros.,
• Disney,
• Paramount,
• CEMA (Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association),
• MEI (parent company to Panasonic), makers of consumer electronics,
• Pioneer, makers of consumer electronics,
• JVC, makers of consumer electronics,
• Philips, makers of consumer electronics and VLSI components (including video encoders),
• Sony, makers of consumer electronics, computers, and displays,
• Toshiba, makers of consumer electronics, computers, flat panels, disk drives, digital cameras, copiers, and laser printers,
• NEC, makers of computers, displays, printers, and telecomm equipment,
• Hewlett Packard, makers of computers, printers, and testing/measuring equipment (oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, etc.),
• Quantum, makers of disk drives,
• IBM, makers of computers, disk drives, and bunches of other stuff,
• Compaq, makers of computers,
• Apple Computer, makers of computers,
• ATI Technologies, makers of PC graphics cards,
• Dolby Labs, creators and licensors of audio enhancement technologies,
• Intel, makers of microprocessors, motherboard controllers, and graphics and peripheral chips,
• Microsoft, software market monopolists,
• Dow Chemical (I have no idea why they're here),
• DVD-CCA, licensors of CSS, and currently in court trying to prevent the spread of DeCSS,
• A number of law firms.

If you download the roster and read closely, you'll see every major piece of your computer represented. There is no doubt that at least one part of your computer -- your CPU, your RAM, your disk drive, your graphics card, your monitor -- is manufactured by one of these companies.

If you look further still, you'll see there are no consumer advocacy groups listed.

What are they all working toward? Quite simply, to prevent you from using your lawfully obtained digital material in any way they don't want.

Here's one example of how they'll do it: If you've visited Fry's or CompUSA recently, you'll notice that full-size flat panel displays are starting to appear. Currently, most of these displays are based on the old VGA analog signals, which are converted into the digital signals needed by the panels. The Digital Display Working Group is working on a new connector and signalling standard called Digital Visual Interface (DVI) that will allow computer displays to go all-digital. You won't need a DAC on the video card; the digital signals will be fed straight through to the display. Image fidelity will be much higher, since there won't be any intervening DAC/ADC conversions. Version 1.0 of the standard has been published and is available for download (PDF format). The DVI spec currently does not stipulate copy protection measures. However, plans are in the works to incorporate it.

Intel is one of the primary contributors to this effort. On Intel's developer site, they have some papers on copy protection for IEEE 1394 (Firewire) digital streams. In two separate articles, 1394-based Digital Content Protection: an Intel Proposal, and Content Protection for IEEE 1394 Serial Buses (the latter being a Powerpoint presentation masquerading as a PDF file), Intel outlines its proposal for protecting digital content over Firewire. By using cryptographic authentication techniques, a device offering digital content will "handshake" with other devices on the bus to assure that digital data is only received by, "compliant devices." In a revised overview of the proposal, IDF Talk: Content Protection for the IEEE 1394 Bus, Intel offers concrete implementation details, including:

• DSS (Digital Signature Standard)
• Diffie-Hellman key exchange for device authentication,
• Blowfish cipher for content encryption, with a keylength of 32-128 bits,
• Digital watermarking techniques to declare "rights" (right to playback, right to copy, etc.) to the receiving device.

The full proposal (currently version 0.91), with lots of technical detail, is mirrored on CPTWG's site (the links to Intel's site don't work).

Intel's proposal also recommends that the copy protection system be field-upgradeable to thwart ongoing attacks, and that it should be possible to revoke (read: disable) a device determined to be "compromised." (The tone of the proposals is also interesting. It's previously been thought that, because of USB, Intel is hostile to IEEE 1394. Yet these proposals suggest that Intel's quite enthusiastic about 1394... Once copy protection is incorporated.)

Intel's proposal mentions only IEEE 1394. However, it also mentions that there's nothing preventing the technique being applied generally to any bi-directional link. So for all occurrences of '1394', substitute 'DVI', and you've got an idea of what to look forward to in your new digital monitor. And your new DVD player. And your new HDTV set. And your new USB speakers.

Intel goes even further in their paper, A Framework for DVD-Audio Content Protection. In it, the author suggests that DVD-Audio recorders permanently remember the IRSC (International Standard Recording Code) of every song the device is asked to copy, so that it may only be copied once, period. They go on to suggest that the recorder could have a modem built-in to authorize (read: purchase) the ability to make additional copies.

In short, through this industry consortium, Hollywood proposes to exert control over every link in the digital chain, from the digital camera, to the disk drive, to the CPU, to the graphics card, to your display. They will decide what rights you have. Even if a court decides Fair Use includes multiple copies for personal use (such as assembling a video montage), it won't matter. Your computer will still refuse to make the copies (and probably fink on you, as well).

This coordinated effort is ostensibly to combat unsanctioned copying (which the industry chronically refers to incorrectly as 'theft' and 'piracy'). However, no one has ever been able to provably quantify the value of unrealized sales due to such copying. All dollar estimates that have been published are just that: estimates, based on idealized extrapolations of what-if scenarios. Moreover, although the industry claims to "lose" billions every year, they continue to post record profits. Finally, despite the proliferation of CDR drives and the Internet, most unrealized sales are the result of organized mass counterfeiting rings, not casual copying. None of the proposed methods I've seen appear to thwart mass counterfeiting at all. So clearly there's some other reason for all this.

The thing that puzzles me most is why the computer and consumer electronics industries haven't told Hollywood to take a hike. Intel's copy protection proposals state, in bold letters, "No content protection = No Hollywood content." This belief is taken as axiomatic by all the players, and appears to be the driving force behind the entire effort. This belief is also false.

Audio on CDs are recorded as plaintext, and the music industry continues to earn rapacious profits. Even the with the advent of CDRs, no music industry executive in his right mind would suggest dropping CD sales and going strictly with cassettes and vinyl. If nothing else, the manufacturing costs for CDs are lower than those for cassettes and vinyl. Likewise, DVDs are tremendously cheaper to produce than videotapes. Videotape duplication is a labor-intensive process; DVDs can be stamped out automatically. The savings in cost-of-goods alone would more than balance against any unrealized sales from casual copying. Corporate shareholders, always mindful of the bottom line, will also demand that the studios move to the cheaper, higher-quality process, copy protected or not.

The fact is that the computer and electronics firms are in the driver's seat, and are free to dictate how the new digital formats will work. Hollywood will use whatever format becomes popular, whether it has copy protection or not. They may grumble about it, but they'll use it. The economics afford them little choice.

We are only now beginning to explore the social and ethical consequences of a Star Trek-like universe where everything can be infinitely duplcated at zero cost. We have no idea where things will end up. But now is not the time to start erecting electronic walls and imposing artificial scarcity. The ignoble and richly-deserved death of DIVX showed -- fairly unequivocally, I thought -- that consumers want to make free, fair use of their digital media, without interference from outside. I believe its death reinforces the future toward which we've been pushing for centuries: Increased abundance at reduced cost. We can only hope that the lesson of DIVX will be repeated until it is learned.

Schwab

• MMM Group at University of Nijmegen [publications]
• Machine Listening @ MIT Media Lab
• Affective Computing @ MIT Media Lab
• Musclefish

• Music, Cognition, and Computerized Sound, Perry R. Cook
• Music, Mind and Machine, Peter Desain and Henkjan Honing
• The Scientist and Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing, Steven W. Smith
• Neural Networks for Pattern Recognition, Christopher M. Bishop

• Tracking Musical Beats in Real Time, Paul E. Allen and Roger B. Dannenberg
• A Model for Musical Rhythm, Jeff A. Bilmes
• Autocorrelation and the Study of Musical Expression, Peter Desain, Siebe de Vos
• A Beat Tracking System for Audio Signals, Simon Dixon
• Prediction-Driven Computational Auditory Scene Analysis for Dense Sound Mixtures, Daniel P. W. Ellis
• A Similarity Measure for Automatic Audio Classification, Jonathan Foote
• Representing Rhythmic Patterns in a Network of Oscillators, Michael Gasser and Douglas Eck
• Adaptive Signal Models: Theory, Algorithms, and Audio Applications, Michael Mark Goodwin
• Recognition of Music Types, Hagen Soltau, Tanja Schultz, Martin Westphal, Alex Waibel
• Irrelevant Features and the Subset Selection Problem, George H. John, Ron Kohavi, Karl Pfleger
• Beat tracking with a nonlinear oscilator, Edward W. Large
• Modeling beat perception with a nonlinear oscilator, Edward W. Large
• Automatic Transcription of Simple Polyphonic Music: Robust Front End Processing, Keith D. Martin
• Musical instrument identification: A pattern-recognition approach, Keith D. Martin and Youngmoo E. Kim
• Music Content Analysis through Models of Audition, Keith D. Martin, Eric D. Scheirer, Barry L. Vercoe
• Musical Sound Information: Musical gestures and embedding synthesis, Eric Metois
• A Machine Learning Approach to Musical Style Recognition, Roger B. Dannenberg, Belinda Thom, and David Watson
• Resonanc e and the perception of musical meter, Large, E. W., & Kolen, J. F.
• Music-Listening Systems, Eric D. Scheirer
• Tempo and beat analysis of acoustic musical signals, Eric D. Scheirer
• Content-Based Classification, Search, and Retrieval of Audio, Erling Wold, Thom Blum, Douglas Keislar, James Wheaton
• Classification, Search, and Retrieval of Audio, Erling Wold, Thom Blum, Douglas Keislar, James Wheaton

• MMM Group at University of Nijmegen [publications]
• Machine Listening @ MIT Media Lab
• Affective Computing @ MIT Media Lab
• Musclefish

• Music, Cognition, and Computerized Sound, Perry R. Cook
• Music, Mind and Machine, Peter Desain and Henkjan Honing
• The Scientist and Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing, Steven W. Smith
• Neural Networks for Pattern Recognition, Christopher M. Bishop

• Tracking Musical Beats in Real Time, Paul E. Allen and Roger B. Dannenberg
• A Model for Musical Rhythm, Jeff A. Bilmes
• Autocorrelation and the Study of Musical Expression, Peter Desain, Siebe de Vos
• A Beat Tracking System for Audio Signals, Simon Dixon
• Prediction-Driven Computational Auditory Scene Analysis for Dense Sound Mixtures, Daniel P. W. Ellis
• A Similarity Measure for Automatic Audio Classification, Jonathan Foote
• Representing Rhythmic Patterns in a Network of Oscillators, Michael Gasser and Douglas Eck
• Adaptive Signal Models: Theory, Algorithms, and Audio Applications, Michael Mark Goodwin
• Recognition of Music Types, Hagen Soltau, Tanja Schultz, Martin Westphal, Alex Waibel
• Irrelevant Features and the Subset Selection Problem, George H. John, Ron Kohavi, Karl Pfleger
• Beat tracking with a nonlinear oscilator, Edward W. Large
• Modeling beat perception with a nonlinear oscilator, Edward W. Large
• Automatic Transcription of Simple Polyphonic Music: Robust Front End Processing, Keith D. Martin
• Musical instrument identification: A pattern-recognition approach, Keith D. Martin and Youngmoo E. Kim
• Music Content Analysis through Models of Audition, Keith D. Martin, Eric D. Scheirer, Barry L. Vercoe
• Musical Sound Information: Musical gestures and embedding synthesis, Eric Metois
• A Machine Learning Approach to Musical Style Recognition, Roger B. Dannenberg, Belinda Thom, and David Watson
• Resonanc e and the perception of musical meter, Large, E. W., & Kolen, J. F.
• Music-Listening Systems, Eric D. Scheirer
• Tempo and beat analysis of acoustic musical signals, Eric D. Scheirer
• Content-Based Classification, Search, and Retrieval of Audio, Erling Wold, Thom Blum, Douglas Keislar, James Wheaton
• Classification, Search, and Retrieval of Audio, Erling Wold, Thom Blum, Douglas Keislar, James Wheaton

• MMM Group at University of Nijmegen [publications]
• Machine Listening @ MIT Media Lab
• Affective Computing @ MIT Media Lab
• Musclefish

• Music, Cognition, and Computerized Sound, Perry R. Cook
• Music, Mind and Machine, Peter Desain and Henkjan Honing
• The Scientist and Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing, Steven W. Smith
• Neural Networks for Pattern Recognition, Christopher M. Bishop

• Tracking Musical Beats in Real Time, Paul E. Allen and Roger B. Dannenberg
• A Model for Musical Rhythm, Jeff A. Bilmes
• Autocorrelation and the Study of Musical Expression, Peter Desain, Siebe de Vos
• A Beat Tracking System for Audio Signals, Simon Dixon
• Prediction-Driven Computational Auditory Scene Analysis for Dense Sound Mixtures, Daniel P. W. Ellis
• A Similarity Measure for Automatic Audio Classification, Jonathan Foote
• Representing Rhythmic Patterns in a Network of Oscillators, Michael Gasser and Douglas Eck
• Adaptive Signal Models: Theory, Algorithms, and Audio Applications, Michael Mark Goodwin
• Recognition of Music Types, Hagen Soltau, Tanja Schultz, Martin Westphal, Alex Waibel
• Irrelevant Features and the Subset Selection Problem, George H. John, Ron Kohavi, Karl Pfleger
• Beat tracking with a nonlinear oscilator, Edward W. Large
• Modeling beat perception with a nonlinear oscilator, Edward W. Large
• Automatic Transcription of Simple Polyphonic Music: Robust Front End Processing, Keith D. Martin
• Musical instrument identification: A pattern-recognition approach, Keith D. Martin and Youngmoo E. Kim
• Music Content Analysis through Models of Audition, Keith D. Martin, Eric D. Scheirer, Barry L. Vercoe
• Musical Sound Information: Musical gestures and embedding synthesis, Eric Metois
• A Machine Learning Approach to Musical Style Recognition, Roger B. Dannenberg, Belinda Thom, and David Watson
• Resonanc e and the perception of musical meter, Large, E. W., & Kolen, J. F.
• Music-Listening Systems, Eric D. Scheirer
• Tempo and beat analysis of acoustic musical signals, Eric D. Scheirer
• Content-Based Classification, Search, and Retrieval of Audio, Erling Wold, Thom Blum, Douglas Keislar, James Wheaton
• Classification, Search, and Retrieval of Audio, Erling Wold, Thom Blum, Douglas Keislar, James Wheaton

• MMM Group at University of Nijmegen [publications]
• Machine Listening @ MIT Media Lab
• Affective Computing @ MIT Media Lab
• Musclefish

• Music, Cognition, and Computerized Sound, Perry R. Cook
• Music, Mind and Machine, Peter Desain and Henkjan Honing
• The Scientist and Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing, Steven W. Smith
• Neural Networks for Pattern Recognition, Christopher M. Bishop

• Tracking Musical Beats in Real Time, Paul E. Allen and Roger B. Dannenberg
• A Model for Musical Rhythm, Jeff A. Bilmes
• Autocorrelation and the Study of Musical Expression, Peter Desain, Siebe de Vos
• A Beat Tracking System for Audio Signals, Simon Dixon
• Prediction-Driven Computational Auditory Scene Analysis for Dense Sound Mixtures, Daniel P. W. Ellis
• A Similarity Measure for Automatic Audio Classification, Jonathan Foote
• Representing Rhythmic Patterns in a Network of Oscillators, Michael Gasser and Douglas Eck
• Adaptive Signal Models: Theory, Algorithms, and Audio Applications, Michael Mark Goodwin
• Recognition of Music Types, Hagen Soltau, Tanja Schultz, Martin Westphal, Alex Waibel
• Irrelevant Features and the Subset Selection Problem, George H. John, Ron Kohavi, Karl Pfleger
• Beat tracking with a nonlinear oscilator, Edward W. Large
• Modeling beat perception with a nonlinear oscilator, Edward W. Large
• Automatic Transcription of Simple Polyphonic Music: Robust Front End Processing, Keith D. Martin
• Musical instrument identification: A pattern-recognition approach, Keith D. Martin and Youngmoo E. Kim
• Music Content Analysis through Models of Audition, Keith D. Martin, Eric D. Scheirer, Barry L. Vercoe
• Musical Sound Information: Musical gestures and embedding synthesis, Eric Metois
• A Machine Learning Approach to Musical Style Recognition, Roger B. Dannenberg, Belinda Thom, and David Watson
• Resonanc e and the perception of musical meter, Large, E. W., & Kolen, J. F.
• Music-Listening Systems, Eric D. Scheirer
• Tempo and beat analysis of acoustic musical signals, Eric D. Scheirer
• Content-Based Classification, Search, and Retrieval of Audio, Erling Wold, Thom Blum, Douglas Keislar, James Wheaton
• Classification, Search, and Retrieval of Audio, Erling Wold, Thom Blum, Douglas Keislar, James Wheaton

• elegance. abandoning side-effects is a huge step towards understandable code, and it makes math-like operations (such as applying a function over an array - cf. map) clear and easy to write.
  
• compilation. functional languages lend themselves to much better optimization than imperative languages (why? no side effects!), and it lets you do really powerful things, like full-code optimization (as opposed to standard block-based optimization). which leads us to...
  
• speed. granted, interpretation of functional languages can be pretty slow (then again, so it is with java :) ). but compilation is a different matter. ever tried to use the stalin scheme compiler? the damn thing compiles code that's faster than hand-written C!
  
• minimalism. while not necessarily a feature of all functional languages (say, lisp), minimalism is often a design goal in new fp's such as scheme. the single concept of continuations, for example, subsumes a large number of unrelated concepts from other languages, such as longjmps, try..catch loops, non-local exits, or gotos, and by doing that it makes explicit the similarities between them (and also leads to better optimizations, but i mentioned that already).
  
• expressiveness. and finally, the most visible aspect of fp - increased expressiveness. fp's make things like higher-order procedures suspiciously easy (and to think it took the whole hoopla over patterns to make the oo community realize the usefulness of higher-order procedures!). or take applications of functions over large sets of data - would you rather hand-craft loops upon loops, or just say (map fn data)?
  

This sounds to me something like when the hairs on the back of the neck stand up when sensing danger. Is this something mammals have as well, as dogs also have hair that stands up when they sense danger, but has been overshadowed by our other senses, or would that be a reaction rather than a stimulus as the article implies is the case for the cockroach?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~

A more recent paper by Fabian Monrose and Aviel Rubin with the title Authentication via Keystroke Dynamics might enlighten those interested in this, and I am sure that you'll find some interesting references on the above web page.

Scepticism is often healthy, but when it comes to new ideas, "new" being used in a very relative sense here since the idea is apparently "new" to Slashdot staff, one should be more keen to understand them before writing them off.

-Bjørn

So the Star's article is completely devoid of details - it's a newspaper ! I'll add a few more details so people can get as much information about this topic as they want. First and foremost the latest issue of Nature has an article entitled "Photonics: Opal appeal" specifically about this breakthrough (subscription required). The catch phrase used is a "three-dimensional photonic bandgap material". The team that's accomplished this is a bit more international then indicated so far, consisting of a Spanish team making the opal template, Geoff Ozin's group filling the lattices & then dissolving the template, Henry VanDriel's group performing the laser experiments, and Sajeev John's group providing the theory framework.

For those of you who just want pretty pictures, here are some images of the opals.

Here's the ultimate resource for photonic bandgap materials.

So that should give you more then enough to visit & read. Basically what these materials do is prevent propagation of light of a specific frequency in 3-dimensions. The 'bandgap' of the light can be controlled during the fabrication process allowing these things to block different frequencies. So you could imagine placing one of these materials into an optical fibre & selectively blocking one of the data streams but allowing all others to pass through unimpeded. The current breakthrough is twofold, first these aren't imaginary, they've been made & tested and they aren't decades removed from insertion into optical networks, they're months or years from it, second, this is the first example of a 3D PBG material, previous versions have generally been 2D. One of the neater experiments performed involved putting liquid crystals into the opal holes & then by putting an electric field across the liquid crystals, controlling the transmission through the crystal. A variable transmission photonic bandgap device. Light is fast, electrons are slow, an all optical network would be blazingly fast & these devices bring us a step closer to making that happen.

CJM

Anyways, you'll notice that the publications start back in the early 90's. The 'new' thing they've discovered together might be what is talked about here, and is more clearly described here and here (Sajeev John's page contained links to this stuff...).

It's just a new way of making something that's been researched for the past 10 years, photonic band gap materials.

I haven't seen anything yet to tell us if this is such a better way of making this class of material that it counts as a 'revolution'. We have to find someone who knows a lot more about the current state of the art in creating photonic band gap materials and get this person to analyze this new method and it's results, to tell us if it's a significant advance, or what it's advantages are.

AKA: More peer review please.

Dun dun dun. Crash course in Managing Software(and hardware) Development. There are millions of links out there. So here's an introduction so people know what to look for. Remember, there is no magical model that automatically works!
---
This is why you learn different management in software development models, because there is no one model that suits everyone. There are generally held principles that anyone can come to, but they aren't solutions that you can work out by common sense.

Here are some general statements:

"Software development is multi-dimensional."

OK, duh.

"Developers pay attention to what they are measured on"

OK, that makes sense. People _respect_ what management _inspects_.

"Some performance dimensions in software may be in conflict"

Makes sense, although a little more complex. (e.g., min memory, min SLOC vs. min effort and max user satisfaction vs max maintainability...)

Objectives in managing software development:

* define the process by which projects are conceived approved, and delivered
* define the guidelines and standards that are used by architects, developers and managers who will develop software
* define the mechanisms used to deliver the software to the marketplace
* general models to develop specific models in particular niche's such as "shrink wrapped" or "web based" or "b2b" or "b2c" or "OEM" etc
* define who is involved (e.g., product management, project management, development, technical writers, human factors/ui, localization etc) and their roles and their tasks.
* Specifications documents should follow these definitions and management models such as that for cost estimation (e.g., COCOMO, other models).
* once tasks are defined, you can help employees do what they are supposed to and evaluate them for future changes to development model

Interesting links:
a n article
The CMU software engineering institute
more
Defense system management college introduction to project management
wooha lots of links.
needed skepticism regarding empirical analysis with models!!!
"Commercial software models"

Example of cost estimation in use (findings from them at least):
http://www.ll.mit.edu/llrassp/jca/mcmb w.html

_Development models_ include (*== > in double sided->):

The incremental model;

AKA. The market model. Often dictated by management and generally follows QA builds.

(P.1)()()()()(1.0)()()()...(2.0)..

The evolutionary model;

AKA. The pseudo academic model

(Product Idea)*-*(Prototype)->(Clean Code)->(test and rinse)->(evolve)->(repeat)

The spiral model:

This model makes you ask the question as to the value of functionality and what process one would take in implementation.

(Kernel)->(Kernel+key or riskiest functionality)->(kernel+key+less troublesome components)->(K.+key+LTC+Less troublesome functionality)

Waterfall Model:

Intent:

(Product Idea)->(Analysis)->(Design)->(Implementation)->(te sting)->(Product life)

Reality:

(PI)*-*(Analsysis)->(design)*-*(implementation)* -*(testing)->(product life)*[arrows back to design and analysis]

Rapid Prototype model:

(product idea)->(prototype & analysis & design)->(implementation)->(testing)->(product life)

Common misuse:

(Product Idea)->(Prototype)->(More Code)->(Test)->(release)

etc, and hybrids like the "extreme programming" model, which seems to be a more detailed rapid prototype model

_Requirements methodologies_:

* generally: Requirements are what. Specifications are how (although they mix).

Incorrect requirements = no product, or bogus development plan

The method from which we develop requirements is:

discovery
refinement
modeling
specifications

requirements elicitation(href="http://www.se i.cmu.edu/pub/documents/92.reports/pdf/tr12.92.pdf ) -- more detail (http://www.incose.org/rwg/97panel/97 panel.html) - etc - (http://www.kingst on.ac.uk/~ma_s435/personal/work/CO1032B/tools_5/)

How to defend against requirements crep:

* use formal methods !
* use customer requirements formats such as manuals or other docs !
* your answer must not always be yes !
* proposed changes must be evaluated and rational !
* there is always nearly a version 2.0 !
* the customer almost always values quality over a short delay !
* remain flexible enough to react to the work-place !

"without a manual, we don't have a product".

sometimes napster doesn't like some free socks servers; in this case, use the socks5 wrapper you can get at nec or something similar.

Henry Massalin tried this about a decade ago in his Synthesis kernel for 68k; it was much faster than SunOS and Mach on the same hardware. (But then Linux is probably faster also, so it's hard to get a good comparison.)

http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/mass alin92synthesis.html

yep, they were definately using laserdisc then. I think these things must have some particular importance or something - check out this picture on NEC's Annual Report which is proud of the electric fish!.

yep, they were definately using laserdisc then. I think these things must have some particular importance or something - check out this picture on NEC's Annual Report which is proud of the electric fish!.

This post clarifies what I was saying. To summarize: 1. By "modern processor" I mean a processor that allows a compiler to perform good optimizations. The X86 instruction set is not very good for this. I don't believe the 486 even performed any parallel execution. Specifically, I have experience with the Alpha. 2. You are talking about a specific algorithm. As I said, 99% of the time the compiler will beat you. I didn't say assembly was dead or not useful sometimes. Just that most of the time the compiler will generate faster code overall than a human. 3. Facinatingly enough there are cases where your assembly optimization will actually hinder the compiler from doing a better optimization. Specifically, some paralellizing compilers I think.

Check out this link for a plethora of information on compiler optimizations.


--GnrcMan--

I submitted this to Slashdot's Your Rights Online section some weeks ago, but it was rejected. I think the article is pertinent here.

Recent stories on Slashdot have told of the ongoing "tennis match" between digital content providers versus consumers and technically skilled people. The recent cracking of DVD's Content Scrambling System (CSS) lent ammunition to the opinion held by computing professionals and users that copy protection systems are doomed to fail. The effort has been likened to building a dam against the ocean; a foolish and useless exercise. In Slashdot discussion fora, the point has often been raised, "If you can perceive it, you can copy it. What are they going to do, encrypt the bits all the way to the speaker/electron gun?" If the Copy Protection Technical Working Group gets its way, that is precisely what's going to happen.

I received a piece of email spam today, which actually turned out to be useful (probably the only time that's ever happened anywhere). It directed me to a flat panel display industry group. Among others, one of the links pointed to the California Display Network, which had a link pointing to technical info on flat panel technology. Since I currently earn my living writing graphics card and display drivers, I clicked through to see what I could learn.

I found an entry for an overview of digital visual interfaces, provided by Silicon Image. As I reviewed the headings of the slides, one entry stopped me cold: Conten t Protection Status. Content protection? In a flat panel?? Yup: "Implementation of DVI content protection is suitable for PCs and monitors." [emphasis mine]

Thus began an evening of link clicking and Google searches to find out what this off-handed remark could mean. The slide made mention of the 'CPTWG'. This is the Copy Protection Technical Working Group, a consortium of content providers (movie companies), consumer electronics manufacturers, and players in the IT industry. This is the same group that developed CSS for DVD players.

One paragraph from the above page is particularly disturbing:

CPTWG has focused until now only on "casual piracy [sic]", characterized as what a grandmother can do in her home with her DVD. Piracy [sic] requiring even the level of expertise (and equipment) of her grandson, who might be an EE student, has been excluded from consideration. There is a growing awareness that a broader content protection effort may be necessary.

The most recent meeting of the CPTWG was yesterday, 8 December, 1999. Their meeting announcements may be found here. According to the December meeting announcement, the next meetings will occur on 11 January, 2000, and 9 February, 2000. It costs $100 to attend.

The attendance roster from the November meeting (PDF file, sorry) lists a very interesting, and possibly worrying, mix of organizations. A partial list of representatives included:

• MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America),
• AFMA (American Film Marketing Association),
• Sony Pictures Entertainment,
• Universal Studios,
• Warner Bros.,
• Disney,
• Paramount,
• CEMA (Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association),
• MEI (parent company to Panasonic), makers of consumer electronics,
• Pioneer, makers of consumer electronics,
• JVC, makers of consumer electronics,
• Philips, makers of consumer electronics and VLSI components (including video encoders),
• Sony, makers of consumer electronics, computers, and displays,
• Toshiba, makers of consumer electronics, computers, flat panels, disk drives, digital cameras, copiers, and laser printers,
• NEC, makers of computers, displays, printers, and telecomm equipment,
• Hewlett Packard, makers of computers, printers, and testing/measuring equipment (oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, etc.),
• Quantum, makers of disk drives,
• IBM, makers of computers, disk drives, and bunches of other stuff,
• Compaq, makers of computers,
• Apple Computer, makers of computers,
• ATI Technologies, makers of PC graphics cards,
• Dolby Labs, creators and licensors of audio enhancement technologies,
• Intel, makers of microprocessors, motherboard controllers, and graphics and peripheral chips,
• Microsoft, software market monopolists,
• Dow Chemical (I have no idea why they're here),
• A number of law firms.

If you download the roster and read closely, you'll see every major piece of your computer represented. There is no doubt that at least one part of your computer -- your CPU, your RAM, your disk drive, your graphics card, your monitor -- is manufactured by one of these companies.

If you look further still, you'll see there are no consumer advocacy groups listed.

What are they all working toward? Quite simply, to prevent you from using your lawfully obtained digital material in any way they don't want.

Here's one example of how they'll do it: If you've visited Fry's or CompUSA recently, you'll notice that full-size flat panel displays are starting to appear. Currently, most of these displays are based on the old VGA analog signals, which are converted into the digital signals needed by the panels. The Digital Display Working Group is working on a new connector and signalling standard called Digital Visual Interface (DVI) that will allow computer displays to go all-digital. You won't need a DAC on the video card; the digital signals will be fed straight through to the display. Image fidelity will be much higher, since there won't be any intervening DAC/ADC conversions. Version 1.0 of the standard has been published and is available for download (PDF format). The DVI spec currently does not stipulate copy protection measures. However, plans are in the works to incorporate it.

Intel is one of the primary contributors to this effort. On Intel's developer site, they have some papers on copy protection for IEEE 1394 (Firewire) digital streams. In two separate articles, 1394-based Digital Content Protection: an Intel Proposal, and Content Protection for IEEE 1394 Serial Buses (the latter being a Powerpoint presentation masquerading as a PDF file), Intel outlines its proposal for protecting digital content over Firewire. By using cryptographic authentication techniques, a device offering digital content will "handshake" with other devices on the bus to assure that digital data is only received by, "compliant devices." In a revised overview of the proposal, IDF Talk: Content Protection for the IEEE 1394 Bus, Intel offers concrete implementation details, including:

• DSS (Digital Signature Standard)
• Diffie-Hellman key exchange for device authentication,
• Blowfish cipher for content encryption, with a keylength of 32-128 bits,
• Digital watermarking techniques to declare "rights" (right to playback, right to copy, etc.) to the receiving device.

The full proposal (currently version 0.91), with lots of technical detail, is mirrored on CPTWG's site (the links to Intel's site don't work).

Intel's proposal also recommends that the copy protection system be field-upgradeable to thwart ongoing attacks, and that it should be possible to revoke (read: disable) a device determined to be "compromised." (The tone of the proposals is also interesting. It's previously been thought that, because of USB, Intel is hostile to IEEE 1394. Yet these proposals suggest that Intel's quite enthusiastic about 1394... Once copy protection is incorporated.)

Intel's proposal mentions only IEEE 1394. However, it also mentions that there's nothing preventing the technique being applied generally to any bi-directional link. So for all occurrences of '1394', substitute 'DVI', and you've got an idea of what to look forward to in your new digital monitor. And your new DVD player. And your new HDTV set. And your new USB speakers.

Intel goes even further in their paper, A Framework for DVD-Audio Content Protection. In it, the author suggests that DVD-Audio recorders permanently remember the IRSC (International Standard Recording Code) of every song the device is asked to copy, so that it may only be copied once, period. They go on to suggest that the recorder could have a modem built-in to authorize (read: purchase) the ability to make additional copies.

In short, through this industry consortium, Hollywood proposes to exert control over every link in the digital chain, from the digital camera, to the disk drive, to the CPU, to the graphics card, to your display. They will decide what rights you have. Even if a court decides Fair Use includes multiple copies for personal use (such as assembling a video montage), it won't matter. Your computer will still refuse to make the copies (and probably fink on you, as well).

This coordinated effort is ostensibly to combat unsanctioned copying (which the industry chronically refers to incorrectly as 'theft' and 'piracy'). However, no one has ever been able to provably quantify the value of unrealized sales due to such copying. All dollar estimates that have been published are just that: estimates, based on idealized extrapolations of what-if scenarios. Moreover, although the industry claims to "lose" billions every year, they continue to post record profits. Finally, despite the proliferation of CDR drives and the Internet, most unrealized sales are the result of organized mass counterfeiting rings, not casual copying. None of the proposed methods I've seen appear to thwart mass counterfeiting at all. So clearly there's some other reason for all this.

The thing that puzzles me most is why the computer and consumer electronics industries haven't told Hollywood to take a hike. Intel's copy protection proposals state, in bold letters, "No content protection = No Hollywood content." This belief is taken as axiomatic by all the players, and appears to be the driving force behind the entire effort. This belief is also false.

Audio on CDs are recorded as plaintext, and the music industry continues to earn rapacious profits. Even the with the advent of CDRs, no music industry executive in his right mind would suggest dropping CD sales and going strictly with cassettes and vinyl. If nothing else, the manufacturing costs for CDs are lower than those for cassettes and vinyl. Likewise, DVDs are tremendously cheaper to produce than videotapes. Videotape duplication is a labor-intensive process; DVDs can be stamped out automatically. The savings in cost-of-goods alone would more than balance against any unrealized sales from casual copying. Corporate shareholders, always mindful of the bottom line, will also demand that the studios move to the cheaper, higher-quality process, copy protected or not.

The fact is that the computer and electronics firms are in the driver's seat, and are free to dictate how the new digital formats will work. Hollywood will use whatever format becomes popular, whether it has copy protection or not. They may grumble about it, but they'll use it. The economics afford them little choice.

We are only now beginning to explore the social and ethical consequences of a Star Trek-like universe where everything can be infinitely duplcated at zero cost. We have no idea where things will end up. But now is not the time to start erecting electronic walls and imposing artificial scarcity. The ignoble and richly-deserved death of DIVX showed -- fairly unequivocally, I thought -- that consumers want to make free, fair use of their digital media, without interference from outside. I believe its death reinforces the future toward which we've been pushing for centuries: Increased abundance at reduced cost.

Nevertheless, the CPTWG and the organizations supporting it are blindly moving forward. It may turn out it's impossible to dam the ocean, but they're gearing up to give it one hell of a try. We can only hope that the lesson of DIVX will be repeated until it is learned.

Schwab

I would suggest actuallty trying to write some code in raw Scheme, not emacs LISP, that does some sort of interesting data structure manipulation, preferably recursively. Maybe pick up a copy of SICP, The Little Schemer or The Seasoned Schemer.

Here is a list I found with references to the fundamental limits on information storage and retrieval. The limits discussed in these references are thermodynamic limits imposed on the system. I'm pretty sure Feynman also discussed this (I found this list by searching on: Feynman computing theoretical maximum.

These are the currently understood maximums for info storage and retrieval, whether these will ever be attainable is a different question but this is what your question 1 asked.

I remember being in the library where a guy was trying to download IDE cd-rom drivers for his laptop. Typing in "CD-Rom Drivers" sent him to one of those aforementioned pr0n sites. I recommended that he try the manufacturer's web site at http://www.nec.com.

turn it into a proxy server like me. you'll never buy another modem again.

Commercial sites will run into licensing issues, too.

http://www.socks.nec.com

FreeBSD users see /usr/ports/net/socks5/

98 Results

99 IEEE Paper

98 Results

99 IEEE Paper

(Note to Rob: I submitted this same story to /. yesterday afternoon, with links and proper attribution to NECRI and Nature, but I guess accuracy doesn't count as much as timing.)