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Sure, research from Enigmah-X, based in China, has been shut down, but we can purhcase these chips. I believe Liksang.com, located in Hong Kong, still sells these chips. If you ever make a trip to the Far East, be sure to check out China and Thailand. A popular Asian philosophy that implies that "knowledge is free" is a reason why local officials drag thier feet to shut down production operations or enforce intellectual property laws. Movies, software, video games, and a long list of other items are considered "knowledge" there, which explains the existence of their large "piracy" market. Mod chip development, which involves research and development, is also considered as something needed to attain what is considered "knowledge", for example video games. (However, China has begun a recent crackdown on software-related piracy in recent months, as it tries its hardest to enter the WTO).

In Thailand, you can obtain PS2 and Xbox games from 2.50-5 bucks a pop. Ps2 and Xbox mod chips in Hong Kong cost less than 110 of US currency in the local markets and stores, last time I checked. X-box Mod chip development will likely pop up in Asian countries, so be on the lookout if your interested in this subject.

The Asian mentality which states that "knowledge is free", which is Confucian in origin, is something a so-called "Westerner" may not understand, especially when that person lives in a country full of IP laws. This explains the seemingly endless battle of American companies, such as Microsoft, against the gargantuan "piracy" markets of Asia.

Also, this quote from a paper of a student of Rutgers University titled "Preliminary Analysis of Intellectual Property Protection and Economic Development in China" describes the situtation of IPR (Intellectual Protperty Rights) in China:

"Confucius's concept of the transmission of culture and Marx's views on the social nature of language and invention arose from very different ideological foundations. Nonetheless, because each school of thought in its own way saw intellectual creation as fundamentally a product of the larger society from which it emerged, neither elaborated a strong rationale for treating it as establishing private ownership interests.[15] Deeply influenced by these two ideologies, China falls behind all developed countries and many developing countries in the field of intellectual property protection. It is also not difficult to understand why most of Chinese did not know what were IPRs in 1980s."

As one can see, the IP battle between West and East began with ideas created in the West and East. Microsoft's successful attempt to shut down R&D on the Enigmah-X is part of it.

As one famous Chinese scholar once wrote:

"To steal a book is elegance."

More information on the reasons behind the East-West IP battle can be found in here:

"Preliminary Analysis of Intellectual Property Protection and Economic Development in China", an essay written by Sheng Ding


"To Steal A Book is an Elegant Offense: Intellectual Property Law in Chinese Civilization" by William P. Alford

As the only Mac user in a meeting of Linux users, I had a chance to talk to Raymond when he spoke at our school. I asked him what he thought about Darwin & OSX, and he kinda skirted the question - "Well, it sure looks pretty" was his response. My impression is that he didn't think that MacOSX/Darwin was relevant to his topic - Open Source advocacy. Grain of salt though, if this is what he means by keeping in contact with the Mac community, I would have appreciated a longer answer. Still, in general a nice guy.

Brian.

dominik@schnitzer.at, mozparty-at-subscribe@relax.ath.cx, dominik@schnitzer.at, david_markvica@web.de, johannes_richter@gmx.net, kairo@kairo.at, rossi@chello.at, markush@world-direct.com, cbiesinger@web.de, jenskager@gmx.net, jo-at-mt@gmx.net, johann.petrak@gmx.at, dviper01@gmx.net, simon@simonschwaighofer.net, dreckskerl@glump.at, wt-lists@trexler.at, dusty@strike.wu-wien.ac.at, kasparhauserjr@hotmail.com, b.schallar@gmx.net, mutato@libero.it, phil@goli.at, diddalick@gmx.net, studio@paw8.com, croco@utanet.at, petru@paler.net, jlemmerer@node.at, bigkub@time2change.at, patrick@seher-it.at, ronald@hartwig.at, mozilla_party@webterminate.com, stefan@kleinhans.it, horst.jens@gmx.at, jjan@gibts.net, mjahn@agency.at, gpoul@gnu.org, green@eggs.ham, gerhard.hipfinger@openforce.at, mailto:moz@moz.org>, florianweinwurm@yahoo.com, christian@precht-jensen.dk, Bill_Gates@microsoft.com, Tux_the_penguin@linux.rules.microsoft.sux.open.sou rce.is.the.way.to.go.net, domi@schnitzer.at, 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charshman@divus.org, mozparty@shadowlurker.net, john@marinapacific.com, ilanterrell@yahoo.com, aafes@psu.edu, bustamam98@yahoo.com, mozparty@myunixbox.com, yaten@sbcglobal.net, joelinux@pacificnet.net, dgc@penguino.net, poserskater69@yahoo.com, lheartb@hotmail.com, ncmother@zimage.com, daniel@likeicare.com, digital.evil@lycos.com, cjeburke@yahoo.com, jblow@hotmail.com, zachary.anthony@verizon.net, boogah@23.org, mebelost@yahoo.com, nickkricheff@netscape.net, mikemcg@ucla.edu, gogomozilla@denofslack.net, mike@mm1.com, seanmcoleman@attbi.com, jsm@bigfoot.com, hoarycripple@crippl3.net, mozparty@nslu.x.myxomop.com, mozparty@camworld.com, mozpartyNYC@isoga.net, ccarlen@netscape.com, h@rediffmail.com, lefever@rcn.com, tedjackson@accounting.org, darren@ny.com, marlon@nyc.com, plui@hyperreal.org, dzeluff@zeluff.com, joel@natividads.com, ken@bigbadapple.com, treebeard@treebeard.net, florent@nyc.com, chad@macristy.com, spud@montelshow.com, gbman_of_gvill@yahoo.com, eam-mozparty@learningpatterns.com, pkrause@primavera.com, tossoffus@yahoo.com, ryan@pantz.com, nichomof@eecs.tulane.edu, billg@microsoft.com, DevilsRejection@msn.com, petergunn@hotmail.com, bagerj@sullcrom.com, isaac@structuredsystems.net, bobk@panix.com, ngellner@hotmail.com, luke@sigterm.org, vivake@yahoo.com, jon@mediavortex.com, groovefx@yahoo.com, brendan@sighup.net, jds@panix.com, bluerose@bluerose.com, chris@allermann.net, dimkal@yahoo.com, preppyl@yahoo.com, blujoker@blujoker.net, nowell_h@hotmail.com, aragorn@cs.stanford.edu, treed@cpr.com, brt204@nyu.edu, andreas@antonopoulos.com, dj@randomwalks.com, lists@pote.com, mike@mhudack.com, reliable57@yahoo.com, jared@geek-boy.com, ondadl@mac.com, floss@myrealbox.com, xod@thestonecutters.net, mozilla@sectae.net, tywonm@screamingmedia.com, Odin_NT@hotmail.com, crooney@panix.com, bg25222@binghamton.edu, eugenem@brainlink.com, dave@downneck.net, romspace@mac.com, sdaejo@yahoo.com, masseo1@yahoo.com, jim@fearandloathing.net, mike@mjoy.us, miles@openly.com, LuciferSD@hotmail.com, nsdilwor@intertechmedia.com, chrisdowden@yahoo.com, pgs10@columbia.edu, sbrennan@ovid.com, lthomiso@rcn.com, paralox@paralox.ath.cx, Jester_458@yahoo.com, jsadove@beltion.net, stuehmke@yahoo.com, mike@realfx.com, alex@risky-roosky.com, shava@efn.org, kra10@columbia.edu, saihung@ix.netcom.com, gropo@mac.com, scottnym@yahoo.com, shaas@vibe.com, roon_toon@hotmail.com, ajaygautam@yahoo.com, jhdaly@mindspring.com, manuel@sphinx.ms, very_itchy_rash@yahoo.com, emeldrum@drew.edu, jeld@mindless.com, as867@columbia.edu, slams@penguin.rutgers.edu, wassa@columbia.edu, tony@vegan.net, zilla@bibliotrack.com, zeno_lee@hotmail.com, fosh@fishnet.cx, linux@gpl.us, jblow@hotmail.com, dkrook@hotmail.com, ivesti@yahoo.com, arek@arekwyderka.com, bljoechang@yahoo.com, brian@tribrothers.com, sparky@marklife.org, charles@softwareprototypes.com, scottkundla@hotmail.com, ccharabaruk@meldstar.com, ian@pottinger.ca, netdemonz@yahoo.com, diatribe@mailcity.com, nick@tomkinet.com, shawnlin@yahoo.com, sculley@pathcom.com, herd.killing@rogers.com, dave@renouf.com, aliyamin@hotmail.com, aswitzer@ispgn.com, netm0nkey@ispgn.com, hyakugei@hotmail.com, geduggan.mozparty@peri.csclub.uwaterloo.ca, lwhite@darkfires.ca, jorel@the-wire.com, js@tap.net, davew@tap.net, tmh@whitefang.com, vid_mozillaparty@zooid.org, anon@foolswisdom.org, morris_mk@yahoo.ca, colinmc@idirect.com, marcus.brubaker@utoronto.ca, akish@kishcom.com, nconway@klamath.dyndns.org, jason@thegeekcave.com, rampaging_simian@hotmail.com, garret@sirsonic.com, piowie@myrealbox.com, m5m5m@yahoo.com, ivan.brovko@net-sweeper.com, returnofthedorks@hotmail.com, axxackall@yahoo.com, tednye@sympatico.ca, darren.fuller@bell.ca, jbailey@nisa.net, swangeo@yahoo.ca, Hercynium@yahoo.com, cinetron@passport.ca, jotaroh@hotmail.com, aghajani@principle.com, fzv@yahoo.com, rocketmail_com@rocketmail.com, foo@bar.com, wolfe@alt.net, drew@xyzzy.dhs.org, jimmiejaz@nixhelp.net, bofh@swma.net, nilesh_mehta@email.com, mslack@rogers.com, m-cahill@rogers.com, tworkowski@sympatico.ca, george@openlight.com, irina@openlight.com, ilia@lobsanov.com, rjs@tao.ca, paul-mp@it.ca, alvarolists@aycuens.com, xan@dimensis.com, ike@lab.org, miguel@asiinfo.net, marevalo@marevalo.net, iolalla@yahoo.com, peluz0n@justice.com, weeddeveloper@yahoo.com, alfonsobugs@terra.es, sgala@apache.org, z_gringo@hotmail.com, santiz@madritel.es, murphy@litio.net, fox@mozilla.gr.jp, party@mozilla.org.uk, danj@fledgeling.com, fun@thingy.apana.org.au, moz@the-allens.net, onelists@hotmail.com, joel@fysh.org, simon.mozilla-party-if-its-in-central-london@rumbl e.net, bigboyjim@excite.com, andrew.and.friends.iff.central.london@sent.freeser ve.co.uk, itwillbecentrallondon@mozilla.org.uk, noahsark2x2@tiscali.co.uk, mmm-central-london@smileyben.com, jonathan-for-central-london@peepo.com, dave-Party-in-Central-London@dgta.co.uk, DJGMOL@netscape.net, srick@europe.yahoo-inc.com, moz-party@zpok.demon.co.uk, moz-party-central-london@trickofthelight.org, marc@brosystems.com, party@budge.net, rillian@telus.net, uphillsurfer@hotmail.com, edward@debian.org, mozilla@robertbrook.com, reagan@technomoose.com, lew@saltbeefsandwich.co.uk, osama@afghanistan.com, barking@insaneworld.org.uk, john@billabong-media.com, leith@cs.bu.edu, mozparty@noseynick.org, jonasj@jonasj.dk, bugzilla@kenneth.dk, chr_damsgaard@hotmail.com, alring@email.com, hp.grondal@get2net.dk, martin@marquentein.dk, Lovechild@foolclan.com, Kim@schulz.dk, kl@vsen.dk, mbendix@dunghill.dk, schnitzer.at@tange.dk, tommy@svindel.net, moz10@pbb.dk, dezral@despammed.com, nick@tioka.com, ask@fujang.dk, gecko@c.dk, spam@deck.dk, bugzilla@gemal.dk, b@bogdan.dk, kenneth@gnu.org, jee@email.dk, daniel@rtfm.dk, umfalvo@yahoo.com, christian@ostenfeld.dk, xor@ivwnet.com, Jason@screaminweb.com, alex@spamcop.net, dustym@riseup.net, rmcgee1@earthlink.net, dr_zeus@hotmail.com, chris.lozano@myrealbox.com, looney_binn@yahoo(dot)com, apendell@attbi.com, dantrevino@wrevolution.org, fireball1244@mac.com, tommyo@hargray.com, natas@redtailboa.net, emmett_in_dallas@yahoo.com, razzbuten@yahoo.com, igdavis@truculent-telephone.org, foobar@null.net, bob@kludgebox.com, cgrimland@yahoo.com, ghamlett@swbell.net, bgood@inceptual.com, slot0k@pogox.org, kwhudson@netin.com, jimjamjoh@softhome.net, jimmys@utdallas.edu, charlesv@mfos.org chris@focus2.com jest6r@hotmail.com steve@ncc.com, usrg@mail.utexas.edu, steve@deltos.com, alex@avengergear.com, mkoenecke@alum.haverford.edu langley@hex.net mordred@inaugust.com swapan@yahoo.com drosoph@hotmail.com, goulash1@mac.com, ean@brainfood.com, vj@vj.com lpret42@hotmail.com bugoff@hotmail.com chad@digitaltriage.net, stewart@digitaltriage.net scottvr01@yahoo.com adam@dfwuptime.com dsaint@gnumatt.org naltrexone42@yahoo.com, webmaster@bast.net, tommyo@hargray.com, ladd@kryp.to, jtaylor5@bayou.uh.edu, jgschmitz@linuxmail.org, enslaver@enslaver.com edfierro@yahoo.com, moz@photonsphere.com, rayw@fuckmicrosoft.com, rfmobile@swbell.net, kevin@unif.com trident5@bigfoot.com Erik_Osterholm@ieee.org, tmunson@houston.rr.com, alessi_brand@hotmail.com, rballa1@lsu.edu, wasted@kewlhair.com, jofficer@martinapparatus.com, idiot@mylinuxisp.com, j0sh01@ev1.net faust@wintermarket.org bouncer@hotmonkeyporn.com tk-mozparty_@perljam.net janisch@students.zcu.cz, aha@pinknet.cz kuzi@atlas.cz scat@reboot.cz, petr@dousa.cz, ruzicka@core.cz, roman@management.cz, hojan@students.zcu.cz, tille@soti.org, cas.tuyn@hetnet.nl, aeon@pandora.be, sensi_millia2000@yahoo.com, crypto@shiftat.com, jan.fabry@vsknet.be, monkeyboy@fruru.com, adulau@foo.be, johan@linux.be, karu@pobox.com, soggie@soti.org nick@tomkinet.com, why_are_you_too_lazy_to_drive_1_hour_to_toronto@yo u_lazy.com try_grammer_class_a_while@get_a_life.com john@interlynx.ca asharp@axo.cc, unionstation@ryder.ca, prade@hotmail.com, 2600@hamilton2600.ca, chris.lozano@myrealbox.com, dantrevino@wrevolution.org, jksteinhauer@netscape.net, i_love_junk_email@yahoo.com, cmiller@surfsouth.com, jan@bestbytes.de, me@phillipoertel.com, sebastian@pixelsalon.de, ccozan@andtek.com, ben@itlib.de, martin.ament@gmx.de, pulsar@highteq.net, muid@gmx.de, cedi@zooomclan.org, soapy@soapy.ch, deep_blue_ocean@gmx.ch, stamp@zooomclan.org, hans@switzerland.com, milamber@zooomclan.org, mtettea@switzerland.com, cylander@zooomclan.org, duke@zooomclan.org, pegirun@gmx.ch, pilif@pilif.ch, mlati@yahoo.com, Mozillzooom@holophrastic.com, erichiseli@yahoo.com, la_burdet@yahoo.com, rkoerber@gmx.de, dotzmasta@hotmail.com, B.Eckstein@cli.de, rtfm@linux.de, info@phosmo.de, gz@disintegrated.de, byronbay@gmx.de, stiwi@mac.com, mage@koeln.netsurf.de, mozilla@portfolio16.de, wrede@fh-aachen.de, ilikemozilla@html.de, cloud@final-fantasy.de, sfricke@sfricke.de, info@flossbau.de, no@dom.de, julian.suschlik@gmx.net, omero@m4d.sm, lapo@lapo.it, alcor78@email.it, info@fuelcat.it, mutato@libero.it, ildella@inwind.it, a.marabini@spinthehumanfactor.com, uomoman@criticalbit.com, thefl74@netscape.net, elbardo@libero.it, clem131@libero.it, t-i-e@bigfoot.com, gng74@libero.it, moz.party.20.gnes@spamgourmet.com, ema.cerqui@libero.it, ubertob@tin.it, mozparty.20.anagoor@spamgourmet.com, gianpaolo@preciso.net, ian@deepsky.com, marco@porciletto.org, planetx2100@hotmail.com, billabong@tiscalinet.it, piofree@libero.it, skunkyboy@tiscalinet.it, vincenzo@mondopiccolo.net, macmatteo@interfree.it, contreras@jce.it, hereandnow@libero.it, pza@students.cs.mu.oz.au, caedwa@students.cs.mu.oz.au, mgi@students.cs.mu.oz.au, bah@humbug.net, mfp@cs.mu.oz.au, nospamplease@indevelopment.org, peter@simplyit.screaming,net, pmj@users.sf.net, xanni@sericyb.com.au, agh@kalcium-is.com, felicityconsult@ozemail.com.au, lucas@lucaschan.com, andrewg@nopninjas.com, andym@abnormal.com, ts@meme.com.au, jasonpell@hotmail.com, syngin@gimp.org, mhammond@skippinet.com.au, szutshi@devraj.org, rmoonen@bigpond.net.au, fawad@fawad.net, ufs@softhome.net, kotrade@yahoo.com, ben@benscorp.com, stevesmith@columbus.rr.com, kkimmelosu@yahoo.com, neal.lindsay@peaofohio.com, pat@linuxcolumbus.com, chrisbaker@iname.com, hiroki2c@yahoo.com, seth@remor.com, jsohn@columbus.rr.com, ross@nanonet.net, mark@cushman.net, swinghammer.2@osu.edu, roberto.12@osu.edu, farhat@hotmail.com, pgunn@dachte.org, jwagner@gcfn.org, bp@osc.edu, joepletch@postmark.net, dsherman@iwaynet.net, glenn@uniqsys.com, bernstein.46@osu.edu, trent_reznor@nothing.com, erikniklas@bobanddoug.com, walters@gnu.org, timo@bolverk.net, annek25@aol.com, jlamb@leader.com, bart@osc.edu, jason@mcvetta.org

working on his own, and used his great idea to build a company around it, (Edison Electric Lights)

(His 1875 deal with Jay Gould, $30,000, would be worth roughly $4.5 million today.)

What about PC's that don't have any content delivery systems in them.

The original wording of the SSSCA would have applied not only to all computers, but to calulators, digital watches, microwave ovens, and tinkertoys.

The more recent language of the CBDTPA appears to narrow the restrictions to just devices that display "media" - sound and/or video - and probably also anything connected to the internet. I can't imagine any functional computer could avoid these restrictions.

US and the EU ... only a portion of the world

The US and the EU are the current battlefields, but don't imagine for a second that this isn't a global war. I'm not sure what became of it, but the US recently threatened Ukraine with 100% tarriffs if they did not comply - the economic equivalent of war. What prompted this drastic threat? The US wanted the Ukraine to pass a law forcing CD manufacturers to put serial numbers on all blank CDs. Why? Blank CD's *might* be used by EVIL PIRATES.

One part of the proposed law makes it illegal to connect a non-crippled computer to the internet. Don't be supprized if this is used to justify cutting the internet connections of any non-compliant country - in addition to economic warfare.

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Did anyone notice the use of the deus ex machina regarding Jar Jar Binks? You almost have to admire Lucas for having enough gall to pull *that* one off.

then perhaps Nietzsche was right after all, as I've said infinitely many times before.

Companies have had to please stakeholders since at least the seventeenth century. Where do you think the Jamestown Colony got its funding from?

So he had a bunch of researchers amassed in a big thinktank operation. This is similar to the decentralized Internet exactly how?

Unlike the Internet, Edison spawned entire useful industries. Unless you call revolutionizing the distribution of pornography a spectacular human achievement, there's nothing approaching what Edison accomplished here. Comparing the two is just silly.

Just about the only similarity I can see is in the realm of disputed patents, namely Edison's quadruplex telegraph, which A&PTC and Western Union bitterly squabbled about. But then again, disputed patents are nothing new either.

Like, um, say, the hardest to read Hello, World! program ever written?

From the Jack Lynch Guide to Grammar and Style:

A fun experiment is to take some great work of literature and feed it to a grammar checker, and then to see what mincemeat it makes of it. Here are some mindless tips on the first sentence of Milton's Paradise Lost: "Consider revising. Very long sentences can be difficult to understand." Avoid contractions like "flow'd" in formal writing ("consider 'flow had'"). Avoid the use of "Man" ("Try 'he or she'"). "One greater Man restore" has subject-verb agreement problems. "In the Beginning" should be "at first." "Or if Sion" should be "also if Sion."

Milton's style is judged appropriate for a 98th-grade reading level. (Well, okay, that seems about right. But the rest is silly.)

According to the SSSCA, a PC is an interactive digital device, and as such, it must be neutered according to government-created specifications.

According to the SSSCA, your microwave oven is an interactive digital device. So is your digital alarm clock. And your Furby. And so is a god damn TINKER TOY!

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Use "for example," or "e.g.," (which stands for Latin exempli gratia). "for eg," just looks illiterate.

this sort of misguided nonsense happening over here?

You're off to a good start already. I've been seeing too many foreigners sitting back and laughing at the US's DMCA situation, oblivious to the fact that the EU has passed almost the identical law - EUCA. The EU is about 2-3 years behind the US + an extra 2 year deadline for member nations to implement the EU directive.

Unfortunately this has become an export. Any "rouge nations" that don't buy in will come under pressure.

Get the word out about this stupidity, and make it crystal clear that other countries - YOUR COUNTRY - is blindly following. Look at the EUCA, find out what laws your government has passed, and what is planned. When this all started we had no clue what was going on, and where it was headed. Tell people what's going on and where it leads.

They think if they can just lock down consumer electonics they've solved the problem. They haven't realized yet that it includes calculators, Tinkertoys, and crayons/paper. Pretty soon they are going to realize it HAS to be global - computing is global.

Any non-compliance / resisitance from other governments will help. If you can get this crap thrown out in your country it gives us more ammunition here. These laws orginally failed to pass in the US. They went to international non-governmental bodies and got them into 'treaties' and came back to the US and said we needed to comply with international policy. A foreign government rejecting this crap *will* help here.

Make it clear you have no intrest in buying crippled products or spyware products.

Refuse to give up your rights - the rights to fair use, the right to do research, the right to communicate, the right to learn, the right to do what you please with your property in the privacy of your own home.

The issues are often too technical and complicated to explain easily, try this simplification: "Imagine you buy a new VCR. You get home and discover it has no record button. What the hell? So you go back to the store to get it exchanged. Except none of the models have record buttons anymore. The salesman explains that these are the new legal Copyright-Compliant-VCR's."

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Jesus H. Christ. So any pocket calculator with a M+ key on it is going to be illegal? What a bunch of assholes.

Jeez, even the geeks still don't get it. Read the definition of interactive digital device more closely. It not only applies to all calculators, it applies to your digital watch. It applies to your microwave oven. It applies to your digital alarm clock. It applies to your Furby.

IT APPLIES TO A GOD DAMN TINKERTOY!

There is nothing an "interactive digital device" can do that you can't do with crayons on the livingroom wall.

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Here is the Scientific American article on MIT's Tinkertoy Computer. Pictures and schematics included. Build your own!!!

Can't wait to get one of these players, to go with my DCC deck, and my eight-track ;-)

--

Perhaps we are all attempting to look too deep into the software archives to find the solution here...maybe we should look a bit more towards the obvious!!!

My vote is for Word Perfect 6.0!!! It occupies minimal disk space, requires very few resources, and is well documented!!! :-)

Just a thought...I mean it worked great back in the day!!!

DISCLAIMER: If you think I am serious, YOU are the idiot - not me!!! :-)

This was probably quite deliberate on Tolkiens part. He was religous, Catholic, and because of his language knowledge was involved in the translation of The Jerusalem Bible a modern Catholic translation of the Bible
He was a friend of C.S. Lewis who included a lot of religous themes in his fantasy literature.
There is an article on Tolkien, religion and Lewis here

If you look at the article closely, it says it uses CIF format video, which can be used interchangeably with VHS in their implementation. This allows you to use the device as a VCR, but not as a DiVX player. However, since CIF is not a corporate proprietary format, most professional video editing software packages will allow conversion of standard MPEG video to CIF.

Galileo was jailed despite his 'strong evidence' ..what was his evidence just not strong enough ?

No, he called the pope an idiot in a book he published. Bad move

Also, please refer to this style guide for help on 1st grade punctuation and capitalization, fuckwit.

Imagine the consernation of your grandchilder opening a chest and finding a silvery metal disk - would they know what to do with it? We have the same problem in our generation - there are thousands of audio recordings that were recoreded on wire http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~dmorton/wire_recorders .htm
- many of theses spools get trown out when the childeren of the recoreded don't know what they are.

We do have a solution - we can keep the data files in an active file system. As technology progresses, we just copy from the old method of storage to the new.

Picture Mirrored on a good server

It looks pretty cool - cant think of what use this would be though. This guys website has no text about it at all. It goes something like:

Dayam I love Mac OSX - look what I did.

No lie thats all it says.

My favourite obfuscation is this pi-program.

The only thing in main() is large drawing of a filled circle. And then it says

"If you want better accuracy, make a bigger drawing"!

You're certainly not implying that just because the FBI doesn't arrest citizens of other countries in their own countries that the U.S. would never do such a thing... right?

Somehow I think that some of the nerds over at Microsoft's R&D have been watching Serial Experiements: Lain a bit too much. ;-)

Lain: Navi, connect to the Wired.

(scratch that...)

Joe User: PC, connect to the MS.

This just aired on FOX news here - Of special importance to the /. crowd. Check out the grayed out logo on top of the cab.

BTW its been over 30 hours since the attack and from my dorm at Rutgers I can still see the enormous grey haze when looking eastward.

In his 1977 Turing Lecture, John Backus challenged computists to break free of what he called "the von Neumann bottleneck". One of the offshoots of that challenge was work on massive parallelism based on combinator calculus, a branch of mathematics that is far closer to Forth's formalism than parameter list systems (which are more or less lambda calculus derivatives). The prolific Forth afficionado Philip Koopman did some work on combinator reduction related to Forth but seems not to have followed through with implementations that realize the potential for massive parallelism that were pursued in the early 1980s by adherents of Backus's Formal Functional Programming paradigm. Given recent advances in hierarchical grammar compression algorithms, such as SEQUITUR, that are one step away from producing combinator programs as their output, and your own statements that Forth programming consists largely of compressing idiomatic sequences, it seems Backus's original challenge to create massively parallel Formal Functional Programming machines in hardware are near realization with your new chips -- lacking only some mapping of the early work on combinator reduction machines. It is almost certainly the case you are aware of the relationship between combinator reduction machines and Forth machines -- and of Backus's challenge. What have you been doing toward the end of unifying these two branches of endeavor so that the software engineering advantages sought by Backus are actualized by Forth machines of your recent designs?

I liked your link on Correctly using who/whom, but I quickly noticed that there was no similar help for then/than. So, the site not so good for the slashdot crowd after all.

A cookie goes to whomever manages to implement this first! :-D"

I don't have a cookie to give to him, but I'd like to grant an honorary cookie to Logic Bomb for correctly using who/whom :-). (I thought I'd never see the day when I'd come across "whom" on Slashdot)

PS Through researching the link for who/whom, I came across this surprisingly interesting discussion on teaching non-native English speakers the finer points of how to use the phrase "the hell!".

I found the KDE Mandrake 8.0 RPMs here with a date of 8/11/01. The announcement wasn't on the KDE site until 8/15/01.

I'm campus contact for College Ave campus of Rutgers U. We've had pretty massive host growth. User education is the KEY to reducing workload on your techs and admin. Three words will set you free:

LITERATURE LITERATURE LITERATURE. Make up pamphlets about the following subjects, distribute them to EVERY ROOM and email them to students and parents over the summer preceeding the semester on the following subjects:

-How to get and install a network card

-How to register for an IP address online

-How to set up IP in various OS's (Win9x, win2k, Mac OS 7, Mac OS X, command line linux)

-What rules you'll have to abide by concerning bandwidth caps, providing access and illegal activities

After you get everyone online youll have users screaming about configuring stupid crap like outlook and AOL. Create online documentation about these and make people aware of them.

Mind you Rutgers doesn't use DHCP, so that registering stuff might sound a little non-kosher to you small network DHCP guys :). We've tried, DHCP just isnt an option across ATM, more than two dozen routers and a few hundred VLANs.

I learned from that and it served me well, but you're only going to get so far with just one book.

see my reading list for a bunch of good titles on C++.

I wanted to pick up tihngs on my own, but I don't know where to go from. I'd love to learn to program with sockets, even maybe some X apps or somtehing of the similar, but I don't see that much documentation

Then perhaps you are not looking at the right documentation. Let me explain -- the C++ programming language does not support sockets or X or Qt or anything else. These are third party libraries. In particular, books about C++ don't explain how to do GUI or systems programming.

What you possibly need is not more books on the C++ programming language, but rather, books on UNIX programming. For example, one of my favourites here is "beginning Linux programming" by Stones/Matthew.

I'm also going to plug my webpage which has some interesting bits and pieces.

HTH

...the task of proving optimality seems impossible. No, I take that back, it is impossible

Actually, you're wrong. It is possible to prove in some cases that a given algorithm is optimal, and that a given implementation is optimal. You can discover this from a mathematically-based analysis of optimality, so that you can't use better hardware or loop unrolling, etc., to get a better solution.

Optimality is multi-faceted, since optimal solutions may exist for time constraints, space constraints, or both. Optimality is tied to computational complexity theory, since for some problem domains you can show that any solution must have a given complexity bounds, especially a theta-bound since that is the tightest bounds of a problem. Then you can show for a given machine set (abstracted assembly), with certain types of operations, that an implementation of the algorithm is in some sense optimal.

For some examples of proven optimal solutions to computational problems, see the following: static dictionary membership queries; generating minimal perfect hash functions; monte carlo estimation; scanning spanning trees of undirected graphs; hyperplane depth; simultaneous buffer and wire sizing (with implementation); maximum independent set of a circular-arc graph. The list could go on, but this gives you some idea of the breadth of solutions available. Sometimes, as with the halting problem, you can show that no solution exists, optimal or not.

As a final note, however, optimal solutions exist in algorithmics for well-defined computational problems. It is an entirely different thing to solve most real-world problems, where many non-theoretical issues enter the fray, such as how quickly can the code be written, is the design easily understood, how well can your code be maintained, does it do what the user or customer wants, does it have a good human interface, etc. These issues, rather than theoretics, dominate most of the actually programming that goes on in the world (despite what your professors may have taught you! ;-). In that sense, the language/optimality/editor/UI/paradigm flame wars will still go on for as long as people are using computers.

But it is still fun, on the rare occasion, to point out to your boss that your implementation of merging accounting transactions is theoretically optimal. Not that they really care, they just want it done by Friday. ;-)

The difference between NT Workstation and Server is in 2 registry settings.

While I agree NT was created to make money and Unix to do a job, I don't think those goals are mutually exclusive. If NT does the job, as well as make money, it's a win for people. As Linux matures and can continue to establish that it can do the job, there's no reason it shouldn't be allowed fair compensation for that service.

Keep in mind, there are other free OSes that do an extremely similar job to Caldera, equally effectively. If your game is service, you can easily use one of those distributions, or put together one of your own and save the money on licensing to contribute to your services draw on those services.

Bottom line: it's all up to you what you wish to do with all the free software that makes up a distribution. If you prefer one that charges licensing fees, it's your prerogative to use one that does not.

Linux rocks!!! www.dedserius.com

How incompetent are the IT losers working at the school district that they've been hacked several times?

I've never seen a proof, but I suspect the perfect optimizing compiler is a travelling salesman-class problem. Does anyone have any proofs of my suspicions?

I'm not sure what you mean by "the perfect optimizing compiler". There are many things that a compiler can optimize, and some of them are at odds with each other. For example, an optimal register allocation will likely not coincide with the optimal instruction scheduling.

Perhaps you just mean, "whatever makes it fastest", but of course that's undecidable.

If by "travelling salesman-class problem" you mean that some of the optimization problems for compilers are NP-hard, then you are right. Register allocation (minimizing the spill cost), for example, is NP-hard. Here's a paper on a really nice register allocation algormithm, along with a proof that register allocation is NP-hard. He also presents a non-exponential time approximation algorithm that performs very well (heads up compiler writers!).


Of course, compilers still don't produce code as good as hand-coded assembly language and please don't quote me the "myth of the magic compiler" that is supposed to produce code better than humans

As hardware get more and more complex, don't you believe that the number of things that a assembly writer needs to be concerned with increases to the point that it will be unreasonible? For most programmers, has that point not already been reached?

And even if a human can write assembly better than a compiler, is it worth the cost? For the majority of us, the answer is clearly no. What percentage of the develpers you know actually even know the assembly language for just one architecture, let alone know how to code it really well?

My colleagues routinely solve hard max-clique instances involving several hundred vertices on PCs. See, for example, the now 8-year-old 2nd DIMACS Challenge for more details including performance on specific instances.

It's odd that this just made it into the media, as this project (known as SUO SAS) has been around for the better part of 2 years now--not counting the previous phases of development, which go back several more years.

While the article got a lot of things right, it was also a good portion of hype. I worked on the networking software for this (which is built on top of the TAO CORBA ORB, btw), and while it is conceivable that it might scale up to 10,000 nodes, it is unlikely to do so in it's current form (well, as of a few months ago, anyway). In fact, we faced more or less the same scalability problems that any ad-hoc wireless network system faces, plus the added complexities of having to guarantee consistent tactical picture maintenance (how do you keep a consistent data 'picture' of an entire battlefied among 10,000 separated nodes, with no guarantees on connectivity, or even addressing between any two particular nodes? Now, how do you tackle message-based quality-of-service on top of this mess?). So, for those of you wondering, the problem tackled by this system is a lot bigger and more complicated that than faced by peer-to-peer filesharing systems (think superset of the gnutella problem), and the algorithms we were developing weren't perfect--or even good, necessarily. The problems facing ad-hoc networking are certainly as unsolved and difficult as they were before.

Another important note is that while we ultimately got our way and were able to use Linux for development (partly because we absolutely refused to work with a platform where we didn't have access to the network stack code), it was kind of an uphill battle with DARPA to do so. Linux still isn't qualified to be running on any type of deployed military system, and believe me, we heard about it constantly (I still shudder at the thought of trying to do our development in Windows...)

All that said, the concept of the project was/is pretty cool, but, as always, reality is less dramatic than its press release. If you want more info on the project and related research, here are some links:

Info on geo-routing algorithms (directly relevant to the SUO SAS problem)

A blurb on SUO SAS by SRI

The DARPA ATO web page describing SUO SAS

This smells a little like a troll, but I'll bite.

Isn't it time we figure out a different economic system that is sustainable, and less violent?

No, it isn't. You're right, in general; capitalism is a horrible, kludgey way to distribute resources. I like your Bill Hicks quote, so here's another one, from Iain M. Banks:

The market, for all its (profoundly inelegant) complexities, remains a crude and essentially blind system, and is - without the sort of drastic amendments liable to cripple the economic efficacy which is its greatest claimed asset - intrinsically incapable of distinguishing between simple non-use of matter resulting from processal superfluity and the acute, prolonged and wide-spread suffering of conscious beings.
(Not that Banks is an expert on these things, and not that he was necesssarily even serious when he wrote that [it's from an essay on his fiction], but I think he's right.)

Anyway, capitalism will dissapear eventually, if we don't nuke ourselves to nothingness first (in which case capitalism will dissapear in a rather differnt sense), but it won't be until we, the whole of humanity, become much more enlightened; really, it probably won't dissapear until we essentially bring an end to material scarcity. I'll leave it to you to speculate on when that will happen.

In the meantime, why don't you try doing something more immediately useful, like trying to develop better energy sources than fossil fuels or bringing an end to organized religion?

I'm not too terribly sure how shadow is extrapolated into a racist subtext. I mean, if he had called it The Hegemon's Slice of Watermelon or That Nappy Hegemon (see the Nappy Hair argument for more info), I'd understand it. But as far as I can tell, the use of the word shadow indicates an absence of light. I suppose the fact that OSC is a member of LDS puts him under greater scrutiny for being a racist, homophobic, baby-killing, styrofoam using, non-recycling jerk, but jeez, calm down.
Allegorical shadows have been a fixture of Card's Enders Game series. Ender was constantly under the shadow of Peter, his older brother; Bean was under Ender's shadow; the Piggies were under the shadow of the big trees (don't recollect what they were called); and there are probably more, but I'm too lazy to find them. While Card's obsession with shadows may be a failing of his as a writer, much like John Irving's constant references to incest, they don't make him a racist.
--Brant

To be truthful, it's a little bit of both. There are some genes which are common across life, including humans, so we have a general idea of what they do already. Even if we don't know the exact function of the gene, if we know it's similar enough to another gene, it's a decent start.

For example, I just did a project for a class where I had to analyze all of these different gene sequences. Though the exact product of one of the genes was not known, it was easy to deduce from other data. Therefore, in a weird way, if you have a vague idea of what a gene does, you can design experiments to find exact what it does. Also, this capability extends across organisms. If I know a gene in humans is similar to a gene of a known function in A. thaliana, I could design an experiment to find out more specifically what it might do in humans. I hope this clarifies stuff.

Simply put, with finding out what whole genomes do, you get a pretty precise roadmap of what's going on. Not only that, if you can't zoom in too much on one part of the map, you can go find another map that has a similar part and zoom in on that. Got it?

Oh, and please feel free to trash my gene analysis program code. http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~tbghtown/code :)

here's a conference paper that has some of the ideas of the study...it is not merely limited to programmers though, but it is relevant and written by one of the authors.

Sorry I can't offer much insight, since I haven't read the book, but IIRC another review pegged this as David Bohm's story in disguise.

Bohm was a Princeton prof who revived de Broglie's Pilot Wave formulation, showed that it made sense, and then at some point was McCarthyized and ended up in Britain, blacklisted from US universities.

In any case, I like Bohm. He stacks up as follows:

Reality is:
deterministic, nonlocal, nonjumpy: Bohm, de Broglie
nondeterministic, local but jumpy: Bohr, Heisenberg, most basic physics books
deterministic, local: Einstein, Simpson (Homer)
nondeterministic, nonlocal, solipsistic: New Age physics-interpretation gurus
(sorry, it's Friday, hard to dredge this stuff up off the cuff)

Another random note: Most people don't know that de Broglie actually came up with his wave theory of matter to reconcile special relativity and the primitive quantum ideas of the time. The waves were a compensating factor for the slowdown of "internal vibrations" due to SR as v approaches c. So, in effect, QM is already a reconciliation with SR. However he eventually discarded his "pilot wave" theory, not because it didn't work, but because it didn't fit his assumptions about reality.

For more info on Bohmian Mechanics, here is a link to some current research.

I happen to know for a fact that if I GPL my homework and put it up on-line here at Rutgers University, I am liable to be prosecuted for cheating. That sure isn't Open Source. I wonder how they'll handle that sort of thing at NCSU?

I took an encryption class last semester, and it was good, but this grad student came in to talk to us one time, and she said she worked for Counterpane and she was working on Twofish. She had really pale skin and big black hair and she dressed all in black, so she looked like Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. She laughed a lot, really loudly, at times when it didn't make sense to laugh. I'm scared of Twofish.

I took an encryption class last semester, and it was good, but this grad student came in to talk to us one time, and she said she worked for Counterpane and she was working on Twofish. She had really pale skin and big black hair and she dressed all in black, so she looked like Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. She laughed a lot, really loudly, at times when it didn't make sense to laugh. I'm scared of Twofish.

and it is still an early port, from Mac & WinAPRS

But... X APRS

n2kra

Hey, as far as I'm concerned, anything that reminds us of our roots -- computing or otherwise -- is great. An "easy-to-use" OS is a fine solution to a real-world problem, but imagine the ideal: everyone is able to use a real OS because everyone has a grounding in computers and how they work. At the very least, entertaining and interesting histories such as this are a step in the right direction.

Here are a couple other histories of Unix; check 'em out. Learn something. Return to your roots.

http://crackmonkey.org/unix.html
http://www.uwsg.iu.ed u/usail/external/recommended/unixhx.html
http://www.hsrl.rutgers.edu/ug/uni x_history.html

A quick final note, but if there's one thing I love about Unix histories, it's the explanation factor. I mean, every time I run across something completely inexplicable (to me, anyway) it's always nice to eventually discovered exactly why its implementation was so inscrutable. At least there was a method to the madness. Usually. :)

yours,
john