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Slashback: Centrinissimo, Damages, Software
Formalization schmormalization. kaisyain's review today of Software Craftsmanship raised a spirited conversation about the nature of software, software engineering, and related disciplines. cconnell conveniently submits a great companion piece: "I wrote this article a couple years ago but it has continued to get good readership within the software engineering community. Should provoke some interesting discussion..."
The bleeding edge costs money. JeffyVernon writes with an followup to CNET's early review of Centrino laptops: "AnandTech published two articles on Centrino today, an overview of the CPU architecture (including some interesting history behind the chip) and a roundup of four notebooks including the new Dell that wasn't in CNet's roundup. It looks like the 4.9lbs IBM T40p ended up winning the roundup, it lasted over 6 hours on battery!"
What scarcity was this exactly? RadBlock writes "Lawrence Lessig is addressing the issue of radio spectrum on CIO Insight... something that was talked about on Slashdot the other day. Lessig states that the spectrum has been defined too generally as if there can only be one message per frequency, when better equipment will vastly increase the amount of 'spectrum' that is usable."
I like that phrase "general welfare." We've mentioned eGovOS several times before -- now, here's a last-minute announcement that may be of interest: free registration is still open for next week's (March 17-19) eGovOS conference in Washington D.C., "Open Standards/Open Source for National and Local eGovernment Programs in the U.S. and EU." Perhaps some folks there ought to consider the question eugene ts wong raised the other day, namely, Which North American government offices won't move to Linux? Someone needs to set up a big map with different colored countries and states!
Who's laughing and where is his bank? deelowe writes "From ars. Back in September we reported on a class action suit leveled at a number of Music industry players that accused them of anti-competitive price-fixing. Back in January, we reported that victims of said price fixing could hit this website and sign up (too late now), and eventually receive up to $20 in the settlement, provided of course that you had actually purchased a CD between January 1 1995 and December 22, 2000. 3.5 million Americans made their way to the on-line form, and it appears that victims will receive $12.60 apiece, should a judge approve it."
They still have a while to go ... sp1nl0ck writes CNet News.com.com.com are reporting that The Neo Project guys have restarted the attempt to crack the 2048-bit XBox key following advice from their lawyers. CNet are citing a link to Operation Project X, but it was a bit temperamental in loading earlier. Maybe it's been CNetted..."
I'll still think of it as the GIMP for a few years ;) Agermain writes "CinePaint has just released its first Windows build. From their website: "CinePaint is an open source painting program used by motion picture studios to retouch images in 35mm films. It was formerly called Film Gimp. It has been used in a dozen feature films including Harry Potter, Scooby-Doo, and the Fast & the Furious... This first Windows beta release is mainly intended for developers and testers.""
If you paid the $12.60 towards the principle of a 30 year 7% mortgage, you would save almost $100 in interest.
The guy that runs Kazaa Lite is a hypocrite. Here he is building an unofficial client that lets you use Kazaa without looking at their ads and yet when I try to go to his site I get blocked by Anti-Leech for not allowing popups. He is a true and royal asshole and I hope he dies. Well not really but kind of.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
This has been going on, there is just room for improvement. Back in the late '70's, my father was into radio-controlled airplanes and had a nice set-up. He got out of that hobby after a few years and the plane and controller went up in the attic. Ten years later, I thought I might try my hand at it, and he gave me his old stuff. I found out that while I could still use the model plane, I had to replace the controller and servos. They were too old and used to much of the spectrum. In the intervening years, more efficient equipment replaced the stuff my dad used. The old stuff used too much of the spectrum and interfered with other planes and other RF uses.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
With all the, ahem, interesting stuff I have downloaded off P2P, I think it's best to keep my mouth shut.
Sure they have been price fixing, but I haven't been playing fair either. I call it even.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Project founder Mike Curry said in an e-mail interview (...) "We will not actually break any laws until we crack the code," he said.
(rofl)
I hope these were not his exact words, because it's an "intention" of breaking the law, plain and simple.
The problem with this distributed project is that both Microsoft and Mod Chips manufacturers/resellers are going to be against them. And that was not the case for SETI.
(oh.. wait.. yes it was... (insert link to favorite alien race that does not want to be discovered))
Nouvelles de jeux et technologies en français. TC
The source code for the 'Operation Project Xbox' cruncher app is in VB!
Donate it to the EFF.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
OTOH, 1 second of thought could also make them sure the search would fail. Seriously, if you think they actually have a chance of finding the key, you might as well assume they're accidentally gonna send the same key out to two people, or (as grandfather post said) cosmic rays will change the result.
Failure is guaranteed, you're more likely to survive jumping off the Empire State building (might be an updraft, might spontaneously grow wings, etc).
This chip should be used in blade servers. Better performance at 1.6Ghz then the desktop 2.66Ghz P4 and thermal energy output of only 24.5W. It's a natural for blade servers. Compared to the Pentium 3 cpu's commonly found in blade servers today it's fast and produces less heat, so the only barrier would be cost, but whole laptops built around this don't cost much more than a blade server so it should be doable.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
The day it was announced, I gave $20 to SomaFM. Hopefully not all of it will go to pay RIAA extortion.
sulli
RTFJ.
You criticize the language used to write the code, but you don't examine the source code.
If you examined the code, you'd find that the project is attempting to factor a 2048-bit number through the process of trial division.
Not Dixon's method. Not the Quadratic Sieve. Not the General Number Field Sieve. Not even Pollard's rho method.
Trial divison.
Operation Project X is doomed to failure, regardless of the language.
This is my bone to pick:
As a student of mechanical engineering, I understand that engineering is the *physical* application of physics and real science to a particular problem. This is true of any engineering discipline, be it mechanical, electrical, chemical, civil, hydraulic, whatever. Computer engineering is considered a EE discipline since its focuses on hardware, not software, engineering.
Professional engineers (PE's) must be licensed in their respective states to practice, similiar to a lawyer or doctor having a license to practice. Having a BSxE degree simply won't allow you to sign off and carry the professional liability that goes with building a very expensive highway, electrical subsystem, or water dam. I've never seen a programmer routinely/successfully sued for developing bad code that crashes a lot, but I've seen plenty of engineers lose their practices when structures they've designed collapse. Go read your state's PE licensing requirements and you'll see for yourself.
Are programmers smart? Yes. Do they routinely make use of advanced math, physics, and logic? Yes. Do they put in late hours like a lot of engineers do? Yes. Do that make them an engineer? NO!
Calling oneself a software engineer is simply a fraud and a way to trump up ones own self-importance by riding the coattails of others. Its like "sales engineers"...what the hell is that? That's a way to make a job sound more important than it really is.
BTW, I'm much more the computer programmer type than I will ever be a mechanical engineer. But I will NEVER call myself a "software engineer". There's just no engineering in anything I do.
the name is offensive to some people.
I use the GIMP all the time. I have my own copy of Grokking the GIMP. It is a great tool and I think it is an easy way to show people the power of Open Source programming.
However, no matter who I mention it too (outside of people who use Open Source), they always take issue with the name in some way.
Either they are crude: "Cool, they named that program after a sex slave|cripple|etc." Which I don't want to associate with Open Source.
or, they are shocked and outraged: "Nice program, but I would never use it. The name is offensive to the disabled community."
Some people look past the name and I explain that it is an acronym. Still, and a good point, they mention that any acronym could have been made up. "Whoever did it thought they were being clever."
What do other people think of the name? This may be off-topic, but I am interested to find out. Could project names stop the widespread adoption of Open Source?
Case in point. The Bootable Linux Forensic CD distro biatchux recently changed its name to F.I.R.E or (Forensic and Incident Response Environment). I am not sure why, but my guess is to aid its adoption rate among the group (mostly security and law enforcement) that needs it most. The name biatchux may be off-putting in the company report after all.
I put it to the /. community. What do you think about some of the project names out there? What are some of the quote-unquote worst and best? Have any others changed names for similar reasons?
I am not passing judgement, mind you. I am just asking.