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Here is a brief bio on Edsger Dijkstra.

I find it hard to believe that Microsoft or Linux would not fall under the category of "enterprise" products here. Certainly, Microsoft and Linux develop enterprise products for enterprise computing systems on enterprise computing systems...

I'm sure the sources I checked are not the final authority on such things, but I only bring it up because I have never known any other definition of "enterprise" with regard to computing. Now, if you're just commenting that some enterprise products are far superior to others, I can agree with that.

webopedia.com
whatis.com

Wi-Fi stands for wireless fidelity. It's true. I don't know what the term "fidelity" means in this context, but the news media have latched onto it, and even the Wi-Fi Alliance has endorsed the term.

You are right, an A4 page is indeed smaller - this is what happens when you post after midnight :-). It is true that you theretically only need one bit per dot per color, but most laser printers have in fact a resolution enhancing mode, where the printer can not only control whenever a dot is present or absent, but also its size. This implies that you cannot store the dot size information with one bit.

All it takes is a red pill to escape the Matrix? Riight.

Has Neo figured that out? Wait for Revolutions to find out.

Being a hax0r does imbibe you with any knowledge of how to develop secure systems.

Saying something "imbibes you" is like saying something "learns you." See the dictionary. You can learn a bit of knowledge. Something doesn't learn you the knowledge. Likewise, you can imbibe knowledge, but something else can't imbibe you the knowledge.

which all non-security orientated developers know how to fix (and code against)

Ugh.

Knowing how to defeat a burglar alarm system is a far cry from knowing how to build one, just as knowing how to write microcode to exploit a buffer overflow is a far cry from knowing how to write and develop for a secure environment.

You wouldn't usually write microcode to exploit a buffer overflow. Microcode is a way to implement a given CPU/Instruction Set Architecture more easily by coding it in a specialized machine language. You might write some assembler or machine language (machine code) to exploit a buffer overflow. If you could insert microcode into a machine, then you've REALLY 0wn3d it big time! Webopedia

I wouldn't hire either of you to do security. Mr Morse, because he's probably trying to manipulate the media to break into business. You because you can "effectorively communorcate" about as well as George W. Bush.

Anybody remember Microsoft Windows DNA?

So what if the underlying code is malloc()? That's malloc() plus the constructor and possibly an exception. Sure, that's overhead that isn't necessary, but oftentime using C++ makes things much easier than C. That's when you use it--when the project would be made more easily maintainable by its use. Stuff where the C++ additions don't help, don't use it! Use the correct language for the job.

You forgot to mention that delete is pretty much free() with a call to the destructor.

If these were ideas that all C programmers hated, you wouldn't see so many "hacks" in C to give this behavior. Just the other day I was looking at C code where someone had made their own malloc(), realloc() and calloc() functions to act similarly to the C++ new. Not entirely, of course, but enough to draw more than a passing similarity.

To do anything really low leveled I have to use C++ like C? Well, some might say that, or some might say I'm using C++. Keep in mind, C++ came from C, so using C++ anyway is like using C++. Sure, the code might be the exact same as C, but so what? That makes C++ less powerful? To the contrary! It gives you the benefit of the truly low-level and the benefit of abstraction, encapsulation, protection, composition, etc.

A competent C programmer can make OO programs with C? Depends on your definition of object, but with my definition I'd say C can mimic it fairly well, but C++ clearly leverages OOP much better than C does, and it isn't awkward doing OOP in C++. One wonderful thing about OOP is that, serindiptiously, Event Driven Programming became popular around the same time OOP did.
This is a strict definition for Object-Oriented Programming. Some would argue this, as by your statement I would think you would argue. I, strictly speaking, believe this definition, but that's not to say you can't try to hack it in C to make it OO-like, but true OO it is not.

More powerful operators? What operators does Java have that are more powerful than C++?

Actually, C++ allows you to have array bounds checking...if you program it into your class. Obviously not being able to go out-of-bounds is nice, but take the necessary steps and it won't happen...besides, this is a weakness of C too, but C++ does give a mechanism to correct it. Don't make C++ out to be so awful if the same drawbacks in C are not worth mentioning.

You're correct that C++ doesn't shield the programmer from making mistakes, but I don't know of any language that doesn't. I don't know Ada so I can't talk about that, but Java surely doesn't keep the programmer from making mistakes. Just because you cannot use pointers doesn't stop mistakes, and if that is what you're refering to, then that would apply to C too, so I hope that's not what you were talking about.

Doesn't have the power C does for tight code? Where do you get this from? First you gripe that you have to resort to coding like C to do the low level but now you can't make tight code like C? What? If I can code like C in one instance, I can code like it in both. Besides, coding in C does not make code tight by itself.

Check this out...
C++:
string x = "blah";
x += " this " + "is" + " fun";

C:
char* x;
x = malloc(strlen("blah") + strlen(" this ") + strlen("is") + strlen(" fun") + 1);
strcpy(x, "blah");
strcat(x, " this ");
strcat(x, "is");
strcat(x, " fun");

Does the same thing happen under the hood? Yep! The C++ string actually probably does a bit more, which makes the code generated probably slightly less efficient, but then I should have used strncpy() not strcpy() and strncat() not strcat() for the C code anyway.

But, to the person looking at the code, which is easier? Also, which is less likely to have a bug? The C way is more likely to have an "OH CRAP! I forgot to allocate enough memory! WOOPS!" moment than the C++ way. std::string has had millions of people program with it...it's pretty solid code, trusted like you trust your standard C libraries.

Obviously, though, this is not something you're likely to see in the real world, as anyone with common sense will just use:
x = malloc(strlen("blah this is fun") + 1);
strcpy(x, "blah this is fun");
But the point I was making is that if you keep appending/concatenating to the end of a string, you have to keep allocating more memory, or just allocate a gob of it upfront and still check to make sure you're not going to go over that limit...but that means possibly wasting memory, and still requires checks, which is cheaper than reallocation but still doesn't have to be something you think about.
When I hit the brakes on my truck I know what's happening, but I don't think about all of it.
That's not to say that it's unimportant...sure it is, but if you can protect yourself from possible errors, why not? because of a performance hit? Hey, I like performance as much as the next guy, but when you start coding C to be as safe as C++ can be in areas like buffer overruns then you're taking away that speed advantage anyway.
Not that every CPU cycle isn't important, but my time is important too. If I can develop something in 6 months as opposed to 9, then I feel the 5% slower performance is justified. If I want ultra raw speed, I'll write it in ASM.

Who cares if those high leveled fancy languages use C? This is about C++.

I don't know...the Hurd started off as a decent idea, but it's a pile of crap thus far.

Technology is useless in the hands of those that do not use it. The printing press would have been rather silly if it only ever produced letterhead.

Gee, way to show you don't know what you're talking about. Every compiled language turns the result into assembly language.

Java is not compiled into machine code, because there is no machine.

I've HEARD some java compilers actually can compile into ASM, but I haven't seen them, because everyone whinges and bitches about how this defeats java's imaginary "write once run everywhere".

According to Reuters, the FCC today decided to greatly curtail the laws that force incumbent phone companies to share their lines with their competition at cost.

ILECs have not been forced to share their lines at cost. That is a myth invented by the baby Bells to convince lawmakers that linesharing makes them lose money. Actually what the 1996 Telecom Act says is that they have to rent their lines to outside customers and they must charge everybody the same rate, including internal customers.

A popular stunt among the ILECs is to rent lines to their own internet divisions at way below cost, thus making their internet business seem more profitable than it is. The 1996 Telecom Act just evens the playing field in that respect and prevents the Bells from using their local loop monopoly to prop up other corporate divisions.

The new rules do force line sharing as long as companies are willing to offer voice service, but this essentially states that if you are not already a phone company, you cannot offer DSL.

This is actually not as bad as it sounds when you consider that FCC Chairman Michael Powell *spit* wanted to completely sweep away ALL the regulations that require the ILECs to share lines. His proposal was defeated with respect to local phone service because Republican commissioner Kevin J. Martin jumped the fence and sided with the Democrats. So while this may suck for Covad, Speakeasy, etc., at least it won't totally eliminate DSL competition for now.

Probably both sides are going to be unhappy about this. Expect this battle to go to the courts next.

This article has more good info.

technically, it is reverse engineering.

Is it as complicated as using a hexadecimal dumper ? He never said so.
Its a good hack given that it works on any platform.

Short for Non-Uniform Memory Access, a type of parallel processing architecture in which each processor has its own local memory but can also access memory owned by other processors. It's called non-uniform because the memory access times are faster when a processor accesses its own memory than when it borrows memory from another processor.

NUMA computers offer the scalability of MPP and the programming ease of SMP.

Here are
some links
that say
I'm right
Here's one that says we're both right

I don't work in the industry so if you do, I'll assume that we're both correct. Perhaps black is the most common key color so that's what everyone defaults it to? Or is "key color" just printing/publishing lingo for black?

You don't RC. Moore's Law is solely about logic circuit density.

-Ted

Today's CPU: 3 GHz
2012's CPU: 192 GHz

Today's RAM: 512 MB
2012's RAM: 32 GB

Today's hard disks: 200 GB
2012's hard disks: 12.5 TB

And just for fun...

Today's Quake III fps: 120 fps
2012's Quake III fps: 7,680 fps

Exactly. They couldn't take control of OpenDoc so after decent time after its funeral they now feel free to try and reinvent it in their typical MS-proprietary style. Sorry, I meant "innovate".

PS. This "longdick" (by "microsoft"? LOL) stuff is very unlikely to come out until 2006, or 2005 at earliest. By then their usual bullying tactics may not be as effective as in the last decade. Goodluckium, Obladidium... You'll be born Obsoletium!

And if you did want to download something large, a mild processor would then become your issue. Not just for the download, but to handle all the other things going on at the same time. Unpacking the last file...running that network backup...rotating that image in PhotoShop...burning your latest DVD.

I just moved from ADSL to VDSL, and now my processor is the bottleneck. It's like some many other things, were the cycle moves the slowdown from one component in need of an upgrade to another. Fix one, and the next in line is now a liability, where it wasn't before. Get a legitimately big jump in your internet connectivity and see what happens to your system needs.

IPsec here.
And here.
And you can even check out the sexy girl in the ad for SSH here.

So while you can putz around and try to integrate a bunch of differently-timed old memory cards onto a single mobo, or you can just go spend $50 on a new stick for the same benefit. The choice is pretty clear.

Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase

In Vernor Vinges sci-fi novel A fire upon the deep, he presents the idea of software archeology. Vinges future has software engineers spending large amounts of time digging through layers of decades-old code in a computer system like layers of dirt and rubbish in real-world archeology to find out how, or why, something works.

So far, in 2002, this problem isnt so bad. We call such electronic garbage cruft, and promise to get rid of it someday. But its not really important right now, we tell ourselves, because computers keep getting faster, and we havent quite got to the point where single programs are too large for highly coordinated teams to understand.

But what if cruft makes its way into the human-computer interface? Then you have problems, because human brains arent getting noticably faster. (At least, not in the time period were concerned with here.) So the more cruft there is in an interface, the more difficult it will be to use.

Unfortunately, over the past 20 years, Ive noticed that cruft has been appearing in computer interfaces. And few people are trying to fix it. I see two main reasons for this.

1. Microsoft and Apple dont want to make their users go through any retraining, at all, for fear of losing market share. So rather than make their interfaces less crufty, they concentrate on making everything look pretty.

2. Free Software developers have the ability to start from a relatively cruft-free base, but (as a gratuitously broad generalization) they have no imagination whatsoever. So rather than making their interfaces more usable, they concentrate on copying whatever Microsoft and Apple are doing, cruft and all.

Here are a few examples of interface cruft.

1. In the 1970s and early 80s, transferring documents from a computers memory to permanent storage (such as a floppy disk) was slow. It took many seconds, and you had to wait for the transfer to finish before you could continue your work. So, to avoid disrupting typists, software designers made this transfer a manual task. Every few minutes, you would save your work to permanent storage by entering a particular command.

   Trouble is, since the earliest days of personal computers, people have been forgetting to do this, because its not natural. They dont have to save when using a pencil, or a pen, or a paintbrush, or a typewriter, so they forget to save when theyre using a computer. So, when something bad happens, theyve often gone too long without saving, and they lose their work.

   Fortunately, technology has improved since the 1970s. We have the power, in todays computers, to pick a sensible name for a document, and to save it to a persons desktop as soon as she begins typing, just like a piece of paper in real life. We also have the ability to save changes to that document every couple of minutes (or, perhaps, every paragraph) without any user intervention.

   We have the technology. So why do we still make people save each of their documents, at least once, manually? Cruft.

2. The original Macintosh, which introduced graphical interfaces to the general public, could only run one program at a time. If you wanted to use a second program, or even return to the file manager, the first program needed to be unloaded first. To make things worse, launching programs was slow, often taking tens of seconds.

   This presented a problem. What if you had one document open in a program, and you closed that document before opening another one? If the program unloaded itself as soon as the first document was closed, the program would need to be loaded again to open the second document, and that would take too long. But if the program didnt unload itself, you couldnt launch any other program.

   So, the Macs designers made unloading a program a manual operation. If you wanted to load a second program, or go back to the file manager, you first chose a menu item called Quit to unload the first program. And if you closed all the windows in a program, it didnt unload by itself it stayed running, usually displaying nothing more than a menu bar, just in case you wanted to open another document in the same program.

   Trouble is, the Quit command has always been annoying and confusing people, because its exposing an implementation detail the lack of multitasking in the operating system. It annoys people, because occasionally they choose Quit by accident, losing their careful arrangement of windows, documents, toolboxes, and the like with an instantaneity which is totally disproportionate to how difficult it was to open and arrange them all in the first place. And it confuses people, because a program can be running without any windows being open, so while all open windows may belong to the file manager, which is now always running in the background menus and keyboard shortcuts get sent to the invisible program instead, producing unexpected behavior.

   Fortunately, technology has improved since 1984. We have the power, in todays computers, to run more than one program at once, and to load programs in less than five seconds.

   We have the technology. So why do we still punish people by including Quit or Exit menu items in programs? Cruft.

3. As I said, the original Macintosh could only run one program at a time. If you wanted to use a second program, or even return to the file manager, the first program needed to be unloaded first.

   This presented a problem when opening or saving files. The obvious way to open a document is to launch it (or drag it) from the file manager. And the obvious way to save a document in a particular folder is to drag it to that folder in the file manager. But on the Mac, if another program was already running, you couldnt get to the file manager. What to do? What to do?

   So, the Macs designers invented something called a file selection dialog, or filepicker a lobotomized file manager, for opening and saving documents when the main file manager wasnt running. If you wanted to open a document, you chose an Open menu item, and navigated your way through the filepicker to the document you wanted. Similarly, if you wanted to save a document, you chose a Save menu item, entered a name for the document, and navigated your way through the filepicker to the folder you wanted.

   Trouble is, this interface has always been awkward to use, because its not consistent with the file manager. If youre in the file manager and you want to make a new folder, you do it one way; if youre in a filepicker and you want to make a new folder, you do it another way. In the file manager, opening two folders in separate windows is easy; in a filepicker, it cant be done.

   Fortunately, technology has improved since 1984. We have the power, in todays computers, to run more than one program at once, and to run the file manager all the time. We can open documents from the file manager without quitting all other programs first, and we can save copies of documents (if necessary) by dragging them into folders in the file manager.

   We have the technology. So why do we still make people use filepickers at all? Cruft.

4. This last example is particularly nasty, because it shows how interface cruft can be piled up, layer upon layer.

   1. In Microsofts MS-DOS operating system, the canonical way of identifying a file was by its pathname: the concatenation of the drive name, the hierarchy of directories, and the filename, something like C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\CTL3DV2.DLL. If a program wanted to keep track of a file in a menu of recently-opened documents, for example it used the files pathname. For backward compatibility with MS-DOS, all Microsofts later operating systems, right up to Windows XP, do the same thing.

      Trouble is, this system causes a plethora of usability problems in Windows, because filenames are used by humans.

   2. What if a human renames a document in the file manager, and later on tries to open it from that menu of recently-opened documents? He gets an error message complaining that the file could not be found.

   3. What if he makes a shortcut to a file, moves the original file, and then tries to open the shortcut? He gets an error message, as Windows scurries to find a file which looks vaguely similar to the one the shortcut was supposed to be pointing at.

   4. What happens if he opens a file in a word processor, then renames it to a more sensible name in the file manager, and then saves it (automatically or otherwise) in the word processor? He gets another copy of the file with the old name, which he didnt want.

   5. What happens if a program installs itself in the wrong place, and our fearless human moves it to the right place? If hes lucky, the program will still work but hell get a steady trickle of error messages, the next time he launches each of the shortcuts to that program, and the next time he opens any document associated with the program.

   6. Fortunately, technology has improved since 1981. We have the power, in todays computers, to use filesystems which store a unique identifier for every file, separate from the pathname such as the file ID in the HFS and HFS+ filesystems, or the inode in most filesystems used with Linux and Unix. In these filesystems, shortcuts and other references to particular files can keep track of these unchanging identifiers, rather than the pathname, so none of those errors will ever happen.

      We have the technology. So why does Windows still suffer from all these problems? Cruft.

      Lest it seem like Im picking on Microsoft, Windows is not the worst offender here. GNU/Linux applications are arguably worse, because they could be avoiding all these problems (by using inodes), but their programmers so far have been too lazy. At least Windows programmers have an excuse.

   7. To see how the next bit of cruft follows from the previous one, we need to look at the mechanics of dragging and dropping. On the Macintosh, when you drag a file from one folder to another, what happens is fairly predictable.

   8. If the source and the destination are on different storage devices, the item will be copied.
   9. If the source and destination are on the same storage device, the item will be moved.
   10. If you want the item to be copied rather than moved in the latter case, you hold down the Option key.

   11. Windows has a similar scheme, for most kinds of files. But as Ive just explained, if you move a program in Windows, every shortcut to that program (and perhaps the program itself) will stop working. So as a workaround for that problem, when you drag a program from one place to another in Windows, Windows makes a shortcut to it instead of moving it and lands in the Interface Hall of Shame as a result.

       Naturally, this inconsistency makes people rather confused about exactly what will happen when they drag an item from one place to another. So, rather than fixing the root problem which led to the workaround, Microsoft invented a workaround to the workaround. If you drag an item with the right mouse button, when you drop it youll get a menu of possible actions: move, copy, make a shortcut, or cancel. That way, by spending a couple of extra seconds choosing a menu item, you can be sure of what is going to happen. Unfortunately this earns Microsoft another citation in the Interface Hall of Shame for inventing the right-click-drag, perhaps the least intuitive operation ever conceived in interface design. Say it with me: Cruft.

   12. It gets worse. Dragging a file with the right mouse button does that fancy what-do-you-want-to-do-now-menu thing. But normally, when you click the right mouse button on something, you want a shortcut menu a menu of common actions to perform on that item. But if pressing the right mouse button might mean the user is dragging a file, it might not mean you want a shortcut menu. What to do, what to do?

       So, Windows designers made a slight tweak to the way shortcut menus work. Instead of making them open when the right mouse button goes down, they made them open when the right mouse button comes up. That way, they can tell the difference between a right-click-drag (where the mouse moves) and a right-click-I-want-a-shortcut-menu (where it doesnt).

       Trouble is, that makes the behavior of shortcut menus so much worse that they end up being pretty useless as an alternative to the main menus.

   13. They take nearly twice as long to use, since you need to release the mouse button before you can see the menu, and click and release a second time to select an item.

   14. Theyre inconsistent with every other kind of menu in Windows, which opens as soon as you push down on the mouse button.

   15. Once youve pushed the right mouse button down on something which has a menu, there is no way you can get rid of the menu without releasing, clicking the other mouse button, and releasing again. This breaks the basic GUI rule that you can cancel out of something youve pushed down on by dragging away from it, and it slows you down still further.

   16. In short, Windows native shortcut menus are so horrible to use that application developers would be best advised to implement their own shortcut menus which can be used with a single click, and avoid the native shortcut menus completely. Once more, with feeling: Cruft.

   17. Meanwhile, we still have the problem that programs on Windows cant be moved around after installation, otherwise things are likely to break. Trouble is, this makes it rather difficult for people to find the programs they want. In theory you can find programs by drilling down into the Program Files folder, but theyre arranged rather uselessly (by vendor, rather than by subject) and if you try to rearrange them for quick access, stuff will break.

       So, Windows designers invented something called the Start menu, which contained a Programs submenu for providing access to programs. Instead of containing a few frequently-used programs (like Mac OSs Apple menu did, before OS X), this Programs submenu has the weighty responsibility of providing access to all the useful programs present on the computer.

       Naturally, the only practical way of doing this is by using multiple levels of submenus thereby breaking Microsofts own guidelines about how deep submenus should be.

       And naturally, rearranging items in this menu is a little bit less obvious than moving around the programs themselves. So, in Windows 98 and later, Microsoft lets you drag and drop items in the menu itself thereby again breaking the general guideline about being able to cancel a click action by dragging away from it.

       This Programs menu is the ultimate in cruft. It is an entire system for categorizing programs, on top of a Windows filesystem hierarchy which theoretically exists for exactly the same purpose. Gnome and KDE, on top of a Unix filesystem hierarchy which is even more obtuse than that of Windows, naturally copy this cruft with with great enthusiasm.

Following those examples, its necessary to make two disclaimers.

Firstly, if youve used computers for more than six months, and become dulled to the pain, you may well be objecting to one or another of the examples. Hey!, youre saying. Thats not cruft, its useful! And, no doubt, for you that is true. In human-computer interfaces, as in real life, horrible things often have minor benefits to some people. These people manage to avoid, work around, or blame on user stupidity, the large inconvenience which the cruft imposes on the majority of people.

Secondly, there are some software designers who have waged war against cruft. Word Places Yeah Write word processor abolished the need for saving documents. Microsofts Internet Explorer for Windows, while having many interface flaws, sensibly abolished the Exit menu item. The Acorns RISC OS abolished filepickers. The Mac OS uses file IDs to refer to files, avoiding all the problems I described with moving or renaming. And the ROX Desktop eschews the idea of a Start menu, in favor of using the filesystem itself to categorize programs.

However, for the most part, this effort has been piecemeal and on the fringe. So far, there has not been a mainstream computing platform which has seriously attacked the cruft that graphical interfaces have been dragging around since the early 1980s.

So far.

Discuss

If you need to ask "how is php lacking in encapsulation" then you do not know what the term encapsulation means.

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/E/encapsulation.html

In programming, the process of combining elements to create a new entity. For example, a procedure (a.k.a. function) is a type of encapsulation because it combines a series of computer instructions. Likewise, a complex data type, such as a record or class, relies on encapsulation. Object-oriented programming languages rely heavily on encapsulation to create high-level objects. Encapsulation is closely related to abstraction and information hiding.

"but it does not support multiple inheritance, virtual classes, or encapsulation. If you need to ask "how is php lacking in encapsulation" then you either A) know dick all about PHP, or B) do not know what the term encapsulation means."

A lot of OO languages don't support multiple inheritance including java, ruby, and C#.

PHP does not support virtual classes (nor interfaces) but then again it does not really need them because it has mix-in type facilities.

As for encapsulation I say that it does support encapsulation as defined here so once again tell me how php does not support encapsulation.

According to Webopedia, its the text book definition of a worm. Granted, it only replicates itself by permission, but it still replicates itself.

• Moore's Law: "The observation made in 1965 by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year since the integrated circuit was invented. Moore predicted that this trend would continue for the foreseeable future. In subsequent years, the pace slowed down a bit, but data density has doubled approximately every 18 months, and this is the current definition of Moore's Law, which Moore himself has blessed. Most experts, including Moore himself, expect Moore's Law to hold for at least another two decades." (read source)
  
  
• Metcalfe's Law: "A theory argued by Robert Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet, which states that the power of a network increases by the square of the number of nodes connected to it. For example, where X is the number of nodes, the power of the network is X squared. Metcalfe observed that new technologies are valuable only when large numbers of people use them -- consider how less valuable the telephone would be if only two people in the world used them. The network becomes more valuable the more nodes that are connected to it." (source)

• Moore's Law: "The observation made in 1965 by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year since the integrated circuit was invented. Moore predicted that this trend would continue for the foreseeable future. In subsequent years, the pace slowed down a bit, but data density has doubled approximately every 18 months, and this is the current definition of Moore's Law, which Moore himself has blessed. Most experts, including Moore himself, expect Moore's Law to hold for at least another two decades." (read source)
  
  
• Metcalfe's Law: "A theory argued by Robert Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet, which states that the power of a network increases by the square of the number of nodes connected to it. For example, where X is the number of nodes, the power of the network is X squared. Metcalfe observed that new technologies are valuable only when large numbers of people use them -- consider how less valuable the telephone would be if only two people in the world used them. The network becomes more valuable the more nodes that are connected to it." (source)

DSSS (discrete sequence spread spectrum) was originally developed for military usage.

For anyone who doesnt know: http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/S/SSID.html

You still need a secure authentication b/c the ssid can be sniffed. What solutions are there for this prob?

Check out the Amazon reviews

They are based on the H.324 standard

Moore's Law is about the density of transistors in integrated circuits, not their speed or cost.

What?

The government set up honeypots to observe and catch hackers fishing for benign data? Yes. And FTec found one? POSSIBLY. The FBI would have raided the company regardless in due time, because the company might have likely been in a MONITORED government honeypot.

Yes, even real users have easy to guess passwords. But if it was too easy, like the FTEC company states, it could have definitely been a honey pot they accessed.

Definition
honeypot n. 1. An Internet-attached server that acts as a decoy, luring in potential hackers in order to study their activities and monitor how they are able to break into a system. Honeypots are designed to mimic systems that an intruder would like to break into but limit the intruder from having access to an entire network. If a honeypot is successful, the intruder will have no idea that s/he is being tricked and monitored. Most honeypots are installed inside firewalls so that they can better be controlled, though it is possible to install them outside of firewalls. A firewall in a honeypot works in the opposite way that a normal firewall works: instead of restricting what comes into a system from the Internet, the honeypot firewall allows all traffic to come in from the Internet and restricts what the system sends back out.

By luring a hacker into a system, a honeypot serves several purposes: The administrator can watch the hacker exploit the vulnerabilities of the system, thereby learning where the system has weaknesses that need to be redesigned. The hacker can be caught and stopped while trying to obtain root access to the system. By studying the activities of hackers, designers can better create more secure systems that are potentially invulnerable to future hackers.)
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/H/honeypot.html

It's remarkable that a graphics card with a video input and video recorder software can record TV-quality images to the PC HD in real-time, yet the same card can't even record it's own renderings at 1/10th this speed.

Hmm. Way back in the early 80s we had a nifty device known as a "genlock" that converted PC video card output back to NTSC-compliant signals for viewing on a standard TV. These have gotten much better, and I've seen projectors that can handle 1200x1600 or better in true color. I'm just surprised that enthusiasts haven't devised some sort of "loopback" device utilizing one of these. It could theoretically get the data back to the CPU, but it wouldn't help in the way of increasing performance if in fact it is the problem of bad drivers, as the article suggests...

Of course, I suspect it's not entirely the fault of the drivers; more than likely, there would have to be some near-redundant circuitry to help prevent lagging on the video card.

Home Phone Networking. A boon to people with too many phone lines, and not enough ethernet drops.

I can't wait for the Yattabyte to come into common usage..

Just think of all the stuff I could put on one of those discs!

I think Ximian's Mono project may do something unintentially pro-Microsoft: it could turn the entire Microsoft .NET initiative into a de facto standard before Sun figures out what hit them.

A format, language, or protocol that has become a standard not because it has been approved by a standards organization but because it is widely used and recognized by the industry as being standard.

Actually, the conversion for data storage is 1024 bits per kilobit, but generally speaking 1000 bits per kilobit is used for data transmission.

So, a refinement is in order... 3 Megabits = 3000 kilobits

3000 kilobits / (8 bits/1 byte) = 375 kiloBytes

So, you are getting an additional 375 kiloBytes per second extra. NOT, 3000 kiloBytes per second extra...

Now, diverting a bit...

According to IEEE (38.5K .doc), (if you really want your mind blown) our term for a kilobyte on a disk, should really be kibibyte (kih-bee). We have megabytes (10^6) and then there are mebibytes(2^20)... Wierd, considering I've never heard those terms... And of course there are more...

Phil

Actually, its the subliminal messages embedded in the movie that tell you to go to the lobby and buy yourself an overpriced drink and popcorn, and to anxiously await the next Star Wars release.

noda132 said:

.mp3 stands for MPEG-3...

Uh, no. It's short for MPEG1 Layer 3. Honest! Truly!

:-)

You didn't even try to find the answer for your self, did you.

See the webopedia entry.

In the beginning there were daisy-wheel printers. They were basically computer controlled typewriters. The print quality was very good, but a given printer was limited to one point size and the print head (the actual "daisy wheel") had to be replaced to change the face. If you have ever seen a printout with "large type" that is made up of smaller characters it was probably made on a daisy wheel printer (or with software that was made to use one).

Dot-matrix printers were a major innovation. They used a column of 9 (and later 24) pins to print part of a character at a time from left to right. This allowed printing in any point size and face, and even . . . graphics. They were noisy and still relied on track feed paper for the most part.

Sometime before your awareness of computers, someone figured they could use the technology of a photo-copier to make printouts by using a laser instead of reflected light to charge the drum.

Finally, ink-jets (and variants like "bubble-jets") were introduced as an alternative to dot-matrix printers for people who couldn't afford laser printers.

-Peter

my old Pentium 90 that sits in the closet and from which I pulled the CPU out to make it a key chain.

It is quite amazing to see that even the view of daily activities, like listening to music, improve following Moore's law.

If you use a IDE controller with a I2O processor, this issue is eliminated. Most modern IDE RAID controllers have this feature.

I didn't recognize the acronym, so here's a link for others who might not: HPNA

Learn the basics of ACPI, and some more, at acpi.info, webopedia, and Microsoft

I just can't believe people would want MORE government in an area where the lack of government has propelled all of our lives to higher standards.

I just can't believe people would want MORE government in an area where the lack of government has propelled all of our lives to higher standards.

Packet switching refers to protocols in which messages are divided into packets before they are sent. Each packet is then transmitted individually and can even follow different routes to its destination. Once all the packets forming a message arrive at the destination, they are recompiled into the original message.

Most modern Wide Area Network (WAN) protocols, including TCP/IP, X.25, and Frame Relay, are based on packet-switching technologies. In contrast, normal telephone service is based on a circuit-switching technology, in which a dedicated line is allocated for transmission between two parties. Circuit-switching is ideal when data must be transmitted quickly and must arrive in the same order in which it's sent. This is the case with most real-time data, such as live audio and video. Packet switching is more efficient and robust for data that can withstand some delays in transmission, such as e-mail messages and Web pages.

A new technology, ATM, attempts to combine the best of both worlds -- the guaranteed delivery of circuit-switched networks and the robustness and efficiency of packet-switching networks.
...courtesy of Webopedia

Looks like Moore's Law is right again.

Of course, considering the exponential advancement of processor speed, you'd expect processor-taxing software to develop at the same rate. I suppose I'm a power user (*humbled*) but I have yet to see any significant reason to upgrade my P3-550 Mhz machine; it takes just about everything I throw at it. Except calculating pi, of course :D

Then get a trackball.