I wanna know something. If someone (attempts to) breaks into your home (in the USA), you are allowed to shoot that person in self defense. Are you likewise allowed to take out anyone attacking your network?
You assume all people make rational choices. News flash - they don't. If the initial investment is lower, a lot of people will buy that version. Compare how much longer a computer with 1gb of RAM will last to a computer with one with 512mb of RAM. If you get a reasonably powerful computer with 1gb of RAM, I would guesstimate it would last at least 4 years without needing upgrades - unless you game, or Palladium becomes mandated by Gov't. If you get a low-end one at 2/3 the price, it will only last about 2 years before it gets really slow (given that you continue to upgrade your software in both cases). You do the math. However, most people don't. Why?
Yep. And that research should be supported by legislation. When new, energy efficient technology has matured, the old one should be barred from being sold. Say, you create a refridgerator that uses half the electrical power of the old technology. Since most of your cost with your fridge is in fact your electrical bill, it could cost 30% more, and still be a good investment. Then OUTLAW the old, wasteful technology. Stop selling them. The new fridge has a lower TCO, does the same job, and energy is a limited resource.
Rich folks who don't care about efficiency are in fact contributing to raising prices on limited resources, as if they didn't do enough less than compassionate things already.
PDF has been pretty well accepted since Adobe has been good at creating readers for all (reasonable) platforms. If WMP becomes the same thing, I wouldn't mind TOO much, except for the fact that I would have to run a hardened kernel because of MS security track record.
Don't be too certain. The higher courts might reject the appeal, since the argumentation in the ruling is supposed to be pretty decisive and solid. We'll see, though. There are powerful forces in motion, they might be able to somehow convince the court that the appeal should be accepted. Jon's lawyer did a good job, though. He was very low key and right on point, making it hard to argue that the judge was biased (like in the MS case).
They are not foolish. I belive they have the brains to look at the track record of Microsoft.
Once they are past the point of no return (in terms of practicality), I'll wager my balls that Microsoft will start squeezing more money out of the Indian market.
I beg to differ. Sometimes, you pay disproportionally more since the manufacturer has decided that by making a great market reputation for exclusiveness, they can skimp on quality. Look at Bang & Olufssen. Great looking product, possibly good lifetime (don't know), but the performance you are getting for your money is terrible.
The fundamental problem is actually that it is unprofitable to create high-quality products. That way, you would only sell new hardware when a new standard arises. By creating a lower quality product, they've ensured that some consumers are on their fifth cd player since they bought their first one in the late 80s.
Really. In statistics class, there was a lot of focus on tuning quality so that the products would be _just_ reliable enough. Being pseudo-buddhist, I prefer to think that things come back at you.
Yeh. Tell yourself that, when someone writes some "fancy pants programming" program that fundamentally breaks all current cryptography.
The interactive internet as of today could not exist without a proper sql database - or similar technlogy - that uses trees for indexing data. In an index, you'll access the tree five times before you reach the data, rather than traversing the file with 50 000 disk accesses. It's all about split seconds, rather than minutes.
The technology you're using to deride formal algorithm analysis and "fancy pants programming", would not be available without such tools.
Removing redundant functions and sharing memory are both strategies that Knuth would subscribe to, since they are in fact algorithm optimizations.
By sharing memory, you cut down the memory cost of the application.
By removing redundant functions (presumably be being smarter about how you do things), you are also improving the algorithms - though at a different level.
You simply cannot get away from the O(), and memory footprint.
I guess algorithm analysis will at some point become more mainstream again. I suppose application profiling will also become more popular.
Interestingly, the available memory will continue to grow, so we might end up structuring our data structures so that access time will be minimal. That is - our data structures will continue to change focus from compactness to raw speed. And big O analysis is part of that picture.
I think we'll see some interesting things happen with fiber technology, though. When those envisioned optimal silicone chips become commonplace and thus really cheap, all appliances might run on them, and thus make it feasible to distribute your processing between your computer, your fridge and your iron. We'll just interconnect everything - perhaps a new fibre connector in our electricity plugs.
If I really wanted to kill as many people as possible, I'd be throwing molotov cocktails into crowded places. Some would burn to death, some would be scarred for life, and some would die in the resulting stampede.
I'm very disturbed I came up with that idea. Must be GTA Vice City kicking in.
During the closing argument, the defence should say something like "Linux is not a hacker tool. It is a new alternative, and it is becoming ever more popular in the business sphere. Most large databases support Linux, and IBM has invested one billion dollars in Linux. Is the prosecution arguing that IBM is a hacking company?".
I wouldn't be surprised if they do. When dealing with such a idiot prosecution, I wouldn't be surprised if it would be best to hold your hard punches until the closing round. That way, they'll keep digging their grave and all you've gotta do is give them a little nudge when they're done.
As a matter of fact, I believe old libc5 stuff and a.out binaries will still run on modern distributions. Given SOME effort, you can probably make old applications run on modern distributions every once in a while.
Of course, there will be breakage at some point. Red Hat 8 ships with a "beta" version of mod_perl 2 along with Apache 2, and breaks stuff that way. However, compiling the 1.x-series is still an option.
Not at all. The distributions typically come with pre-packaged moz in standardized locations. The default moz installer puts itself into/usr/local/mozilla. So - there would be no problem, but the user would be likely to find the old version of moz start up after clicking on the icon. (Since the moz installer by default doesn't tinker with that sorta thing).
Very well. Finally, it is becoming clearer to you that the terrorists are winning all the time. The war on terrorism is having an impact on you, since you are losing rights, freedom and possibly sleep, while the war on terror appears to be rather ineffective. Al Qaeda is still operational, Afghanistan is destabilizing, and the only bad guy you might be able to get is Saddam Hussein.
Yeh. Real successful. And like all proud men, Bush would rather try harder with the wrong approach, than back off and try something else.
I would scoff at say "too bad, buddy", except that you really didn't elect your president. He was assigned to you by Supreme Court.
I think Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is good. However, I don't think it is great. I don't recall it being sufficiently relevant to anything but my funny-bone that I would call it "great". So, it is a good funny-insights-and-zany-episodes book in a sci-fi setting, but I don't think it is fully sci-fi.
To me, "1984" and "A Brave New World" are masterpieces. They both outline technological scenarios, but they discuss the morals of these scenarios in good detail. Their basic insights into humanity also help me accept their scenarios as plausible.
People - if you are early, and manage to get the documents from the site before it falls apart, please share those documents using gnutella, fasttrack, freenet etc. P2P networks scale to much higher bandtwidths than even a massive server park.
Embedded Linux is ever growing. The Open Source platform provides something a corporation can build profit-generating applications software on top of.
Basically, I see Linux and OSS in general as a way to implement relatively solved problems : widget sets, ptp encrypted communications, operating system, playing back mp3s. We also have some interesting applications, but we are generally too fragmented to appeal to the end user.
However, Apple has proven that building consistency on top of open source (as in bsd) can reduce costs for a company, thus benefitting the end user by reducing cost of the product (given competition).
Besides, we'll never be able to play those kick-ass windoze-only attachments people keep sending each other.
Whoa. So someone was portscanning MS, and just bumped into a public server with secret files on it? I bet the person who discovered this server creamed his pants.
I wonder if there's not going to be another few bums in the streets of Redmond soon. No way anyone would hire someone who did something THIS idiotic.
The suggested payload should have been something that broke IE. Those vulnerable would have done themselves a favor, and the network admins would get a good excuse to spread an alternative like mozilla or opera.
Slashdot Mirror
I wanna know something. If someone (attempts to) breaks into your home (in the USA), you are allowed to shoot that person in self defense. Are you likewise allowed to take out anyone attacking your network?
You assume all people make rational choices. News flash - they don't. If the initial investment is lower, a lot of people will buy that version. Compare how much longer a computer with 1gb of RAM will last to a computer with one with 512mb of RAM. If you get a reasonably powerful computer with 1gb of RAM, I would guesstimate it would last at least 4 years without needing upgrades - unless you game, or Palladium becomes mandated by Gov't. If you get a low-end one at 2/3 the price, it will only last about 2 years before it gets really slow (given that you continue to upgrade your software in both cases). You do the math. However, most people don't. Why?
Yep. And that research should be supported by legislation. When new, energy efficient technology has matured, the old one should be barred from being sold. Say, you create a refridgerator that uses half the electrical power of the old technology. Since most of your cost with your fridge is in fact your electrical bill, it could cost 30% more, and still be a good investment. Then OUTLAW the old, wasteful technology. Stop selling them. The new fridge has a lower TCO, does the same job, and energy is a limited resource.
Rich folks who don't care about efficiency are in fact contributing to raising prices on limited resources, as if they didn't do enough less than compassionate things already.
PDF has been pretty well accepted since Adobe has been good at creating readers for all (reasonable) platforms. If WMP becomes the same thing, I wouldn't mind TOO much, except for the fact that I would have to run a hardened kernel because of MS security track record.
You're probably right. Sadly, INFOSOC will make this ruling one last hurrah for consumer rights. I'm almost becoming anti-EU over that single issue...
Don't be too certain. The higher courts might reject the appeal, since the argumentation in the ruling is supposed to be pretty decisive and solid. We'll see, though. There are powerful forces in motion, they might be able to somehow convince the court that the appeal should be accepted. Jon's lawyer did a good job, though. He was very low key and right on point, making it hard to argue that the judge was biased (like in the MS case).
They are not foolish. I belive they have the brains to look at the track record of Microsoft.
Once they are past the point of no return (in terms of practicality), I'll wager my balls that Microsoft will start squeezing more money out of the Indian market.
I beg to differ. Sometimes, you pay disproportionally more since the manufacturer has decided that by making a great market reputation for exclusiveness, they can skimp on quality. Look at Bang & Olufssen. Great looking product, possibly good lifetime (don't know), but the performance you are getting for your money is terrible.
The fundamental problem is actually that it is unprofitable to create high-quality products. That way, you would only sell new hardware when a new standard arises. By creating a lower quality product, they've ensured that some consumers are on their fifth cd player since they bought their first one in the late 80s.
Really. In statistics class, there was a lot of focus on tuning quality so that the products would be _just_ reliable enough. Being pseudo-buddhist, I prefer to think that things come back at you.
Yeh. Tell yourself that, when someone writes some "fancy pants programming" program that fundamentally breaks all current cryptography.
The interactive internet as of today could not exist without a proper sql database - or similar technlogy - that uses trees for indexing data. In an index, you'll access the tree five times before you reach the data, rather than traversing the file with 50 000 disk accesses. It's all about split seconds, rather than minutes.
The technology you're using to deride formal algorithm analysis and "fancy pants programming", would not be available without such tools.
Removing redundant functions and sharing memory are both strategies that Knuth would subscribe to, since they are in fact algorithm optimizations.
By sharing memory, you cut down the memory cost of the application.
By removing redundant functions (presumably be being smarter about how you do things), you are also improving the algorithms - though at a different level.
You simply cannot get away from the O(), and memory footprint.
I guess algorithm analysis will at some point become more mainstream again. I suppose application profiling will also become more popular.
Interestingly, the available memory will continue to grow, so we might end up structuring our data structures so that access time will be minimal. That is - our data structures will continue to change focus from compactness to raw speed. And big O analysis is part of that picture.
I think we'll see some interesting things happen with fiber technology, though. When those envisioned optimal silicone chips become commonplace and thus really cheap, all appliances might run on them, and thus make it feasible to distribute your processing between your computer, your fridge and your iron. We'll just interconnect everything - perhaps a new fibre connector in our electricity plugs.
If I really wanted to kill as many people as possible, I'd be throwing molotov cocktails into crowded places. Some would burn to death, some would be scarred for life, and some would die in the resulting stampede.
I'm very disturbed I came up with that idea. Must be GTA Vice City kicking in.
During the closing argument, the defence should say something like "Linux is not a hacker tool. It is a new alternative, and it is becoming ever more popular in the business sphere. Most large databases support Linux, and IBM has invested one billion dollars in Linux. Is the prosecution arguing that IBM is a hacking company?".
I wouldn't be surprised if they do. When dealing with such a idiot prosecution, I wouldn't be surprised if it would be best to hold your hard punches until the closing round. That way, they'll keep digging their grave and all you've gotta do is give them a little nudge when they're done.
As a matter of fact, Norway has an agreement with the EU in order to gain access to EUs markets that forces Norway to accept EU legislation.
As a matter of fact, I believe old libc5 stuff and a.out binaries will still run on modern distributions. Given SOME effort, you can probably make old applications run on modern distributions every once in a while.
Of course, there will be breakage at some point. Red Hat 8 ships with a "beta" version of mod_perl 2 along with Apache 2, and breaks stuff that way. However, compiling the 1.x-series is still an option.
Not at all. The distributions typically come with pre-packaged moz in standardized locations. The default moz installer puts itself into /usr/local/mozilla. So - there would be no problem, but the user would be likely to find the old version of moz start up after clicking on the icon. (Since the moz installer by default doesn't tinker with that sorta thing).
Very well. Finally, it is becoming clearer to you that the terrorists are winning all the time. The war on terrorism is having an impact on you, since you are losing rights, freedom and possibly sleep, while the war on terror appears to be rather ineffective. Al Qaeda is still operational, Afghanistan is destabilizing, and the only bad guy you might be able to get is Saddam Hussein.
Yeh. Real successful. And like all proud men, Bush would rather try harder with the wrong approach, than back off and try something else.
I would scoff at say "too bad, buddy", except that you really didn't elect your president. He was assigned to you by Supreme Court.
It's really starting to add up.
I think Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is good. However, I don't think it is great. I don't recall it being sufficiently relevant to anything but my funny-bone that I would call it "great". So, it is a good funny-insights-and-zany-episodes book in a sci-fi setting, but I don't think it is fully sci-fi.
To me, "1984" and "A Brave New World" are masterpieces. They both outline technological scenarios, but they discuss the morals of these scenarios in good detail. Their basic insights into humanity also help me accept their scenarios as plausible.
I quite enjoyed "Contact" as well.
People - if you are early, and manage to get the documents from the site before it falls apart, please share those documents using gnutella, fasttrack, freenet etc. P2P networks scale to much higher bandtwidths than even a massive server park.
- Organized Crime (mafia et al)
- Terrorists
- Secret Services
I would even guess some of these have already performed this sort of operation at some point, in order to go underground.Embedded Linux is ever growing. The Open Source platform provides something a corporation can build profit-generating applications software on top of.
Basically, I see Linux and OSS in general as a way to implement relatively solved problems : widget sets, ptp encrypted communications, operating system, playing back mp3s. We also have some interesting applications, but we are generally too fragmented to appeal to the end user.
However, Apple has proven that building consistency on top of open source (as in bsd) can reduce costs for a company, thus benefitting the end user by reducing cost of the product (given competition).
Besides, we'll never be able to play those kick-ass windoze-only attachments people keep sending each other.
I use recursive grep to identify where I call a certain function. I get a few false positives, but usually, it's not too bad.
Whoa. So someone was portscanning MS, and just bumped into a public server with secret files on it? I bet the person who discovered this server creamed his pants.
I wonder if there's not going to be another few bums in the streets of Redmond soon. No way anyone would hire someone who did something THIS idiotic.
I think they constructed a working Polio virus. They didn't design the thing - if they did, they would be mass killers and way ahead of their time.
The scientists in the article are trying to design and construct a new organism, if I understand correctly.
The suggested payload should have been something that broke IE. Those vulnerable would have done themselves a favor, and the network admins would get a good excuse to spread an alternative like mozilla or opera.