The problem with AA fonts in X, to me, is that they anti-alias all fonts, even the tiny ones that are hand-hinted to look good when pixels are scarce. Verdana 10 pt looks shitty when it is anti-aliased, for instance.
However, for large fonts, I don't think there is much question that anti-aliasing really helps. The X guys should do the same thing that Windows does and only anti-alias fonts after a certain size. (Or at least make it configurable on a font-by-font and size-by-size basis.)
(XP's cleartype on LCDs is a different story; I'm not sure how I feel about that at small sizes yet.)
Not really. Loki was a regular ol' closed-source non-free company that ported games from windows to linux, slowly.
If you don't have any problem using closed-source software, go ahead and install XP. It's closed-source, but it's also quite stable, pretty secure (just grab a personal firewall) and most importantly, it has the best software and hardware compatibility (esp. games) of any platform.
If you want free software, Loki is not the answer. Let's keep with the idea of freedom, it is a good one.
Some people are willing to create games for free. Let's instead make it easy for them to reach a wider audience (linux) by supplying them with good tools, like Windows compatibility layers or stuff like SDL. (There may even be some people willing to use something like the street performer protocol to get paid simply to make the games, not to make copies of them. But maybe the world is still not ready for that idea.)
> -MS have done a far better job with XP than any of us ever thought possible
This is definitely true. I am using XP now and I don't have any plans to change to linux for my desktop machine. The only reason I'd change to linux is if that's where all the applications move. (Or if MS has some pay-by-the-month scheme, which I think is unlikely but still possible.)
I am using linux on my desktop in my office (since I use that primarily for development), and it is usable but pretty crappy in comparison. Cut'n'paste doesn't even work right, you know?
However, linux rules on the server and for development. I don't think the idea of open source is dying here.
> and i worked hard and posted intelligently to get
> to 50
You'll find that now that you're at 50 it's essentially impossible to get modded down past the +1 bonus. All you have to do is spell correctly and be honest. So say what you mean and fuck the moderators!
> Ahh, yes. The findings of fact by the judge with a
> vendetta. Penfield Jackson. Part of the Clinton
> Administration If I remember correctly. The same
> administration that signed the DMCA. I have faith
> in those guys.
This is a ridiculous comment. Jackson has been district judge since 1982. Reagan was in office then. The DMCA is totally irrelevant; that was concocted by legislators and industry.
Those people know more about the facts of the case than you, are smarter than you, and know more about the law than you do. The findings of fact list all of the ways that they broke the law; it is not opinion, and it is far more than just gaining a huge market share because of developers. There are other ways to break the law than holding a gun to someone's head.
> How, exactly did Microsoft cheat to get where
> they are today? By following through on an offer
> to create an operating system some umpteen years
> ago? If that's cheating, then... well, I'm a
> cheater, too.
You should read the Findings of Fact from the trial (at http://news.cnet.com/News/Pages/Special/Microsoft/ findingoffacts.html). This details specifically how they broke the law in more than 300 bullet-points.
I agree, TFOA was a great game and could easily be a great Indy movie. (What other ultimate archaeological finds are left?) I guess the biggest problem is that Disney just did Atlantis...
This might be funny if XP or Anthrax were a virus, but neither is. Anthrax is a bacteria, and XP is actually a pretty good operating system. (I wouldn't run it as a server, but it sure is nice on the desktop..)
The DMCA is a bad law, but it does NOT prevent anyone from doing cryptography or breaking it. It ONLY applies to circumvention of access control to a COPYRIGHTED WORK. It is copyright law, not encryption law.
I think slashdot is perpetuating misunderstanding about this law, and I think that hurts our cause. Being informed is the first and most important step. Otherwise, we are just clueless zealots.
One of the tricks we used (at my school) was to look for trailing whitespace and the combination of leading tabs and spaces, since this kind of thing is preserved when copying, invisible, and unlikely to be the same across independent correct solutions. It's true though that this automatic testing can't do much for the really simple assignments (ie, write insertion sort).
Much better was simply (when possible) assigning the same person to grame the same piece of code across all assignments; certain bizarre idioms or mistakes really jump out at you and catching cheaters that way is much more effective.
2 Mbps is pretty sufficient bandwidth; does anyone know what typical latency is for a satellite link? If it's measured in seconds, that's pretty rough...
At SICO (the "Snoot Internet Chess Orgy") they've got anonymous chess for the truly paranoid. Take turns playing a single move in all sorts of crazy variatons. It's pretty weird but also quite addictive...
> If the export restriction had not been in place,
> certainly Microsoft would have put out the
> strongest encryption everywhere.
I don't agree with this. Do you remember the secret "NSAkey" found in some version of Windows a few years back? It seems quite likely that their encryption scheme has some back-doors that make it easier for the NSA (et al.) to crack.
Anyway, even if there were no law, it might be sensible policy for Microsoft to ship with default weaker encryption to the countries we don't like so much.
One-time pads really have to be one-time or else they are not very secure at all. If you're going to agree on some seed ("windows.exe 13200"), there are much better ways of producing pseudo-random streams (ie, RC4) than Microsoft's executables.
> The problem with that is that your implementation
> may be flawed - this accounts for the bulk of the
> cracked encryption. That's why it's best to use
> known good encryption.
I don't think this is very likely. While it's easy to write buggy C code, most complete descriptions of an encryption algorithm come with test input and output. If your implementation of the block cipher works on these, it's pretty damn unlikely that it is wrong in general.
Others are so easy to implement (RC4) that bugs are pretty far-fetched.
> Maybe you are missing a point or two? There is no
> such thing as US Free Software. Either it's Free
> Software or it's not.
I don't understand what you mean. The GPL, for instance, works based on the Copyright law in the United States. Other countries have similar laws, but not all do. Software written in or exported from particular countries is also subject to other restrictions, such as cryptography once was in the US. In this sense, the development of free software in the USA could be hurt by cryptography (or similar) export laws.
> But he didn't find it. Therefore the export
> restriction worked in this case. Does it have to
> work every time in order to be useful?
What worked is that Microsoft ships with weak encryption by default. This is (perhaps) a smart policy. But I definitely think the law is ineffective and in fact stifles the US security industry.
Yes, it is a grey area, but I say that it is actually very easy for anyone with an internet connection to get strong encryption.
Encryption laws are ineffective. The only thing they prevent is American security businesses from being able to compete with foreign ones. It might, however, be responsible of Microsoft to ship with 40 bits by default for exactly the reason you mention.
It is extremely easy for anyone with a computer and internet connection to get their hands on strong encryption. Just because one person chose to use weaker encryption and had his files broken by our government, it does NOT mean that he could not have found PGP on the internet and used that instead. Crypto export regulations are worthless and hurt US business (and even US Free Software).
If you want to play your own game of chess against people all over the internet, check out SICO. People take turns playing a single move in all sorts of wacky variations. It's weird but addicting...
I don't think it is very hard. Game tree search is inherently parallel, you just need to be able to balance the assignment of subtrees so that you utilize processors well without too much overhead.
Check out Cilk and Cilk NOW for instance:
http://supertech.lcs.mit.edu/cilk/home/intro.htm l
Slashdot Mirror
> (Geforce 3 ti's and upper class Radeon's)
The apostrophe is never for pluralizing words. What is wrong with "Geforce 3 TIs and upper class Radeons"?
The problem with AA fonts in X, to me, is that they anti-alias all fonts, even the tiny ones that are hand-hinted to look good when pixels are scarce. Verdana 10 pt looks shitty when it is anti-aliased, for instance.
However, for large fonts, I don't think there is much question that anti-aliasing really helps. The X guys should do the same thing that Windows does and only anti-alias fonts after a certain size. (Or at least make it configurable on a font-by-font and size-by-size basis.)
(XP's cleartype on LCDs is a different story; I'm not sure how I feel about that at small sizes yet.)
Not really. Loki was a regular ol' closed-source non-free company that ported games from windows to linux, slowly.
If you don't have any problem using closed-source software, go ahead and install XP. It's closed-source, but it's also quite stable, pretty secure (just grab a personal firewall) and most importantly, it has the best software and hardware compatibility (esp. games) of any platform.
If you want free software, Loki is not the answer. Let's keep with the idea of freedom, it is a good one.
Some people are willing to create games for free. Let's instead make it easy for them to reach a wider audience (linux) by supplying them with good tools, like Windows compatibility layers or stuff like SDL. (There may even be some people willing to use something like the street performer protocol to get paid simply to make the games, not to make copies of them. But maybe the world is still not ready for that idea.)
> -MS have done a far better job with XP than any of us ever thought possible
This is definitely true. I am using XP now and I don't have any plans to change to linux for my desktop machine. The only reason I'd change to linux is if that's where all the applications move. (Or if MS has some pay-by-the-month scheme, which I think is unlikely but still possible.)
I am using linux on my desktop in my office (since I use that primarily for development), and it is usable but pretty crappy in comparison. Cut'n'paste doesn't even work right, you know?
However, linux rules on the server and for development. I don't think the idea of open source is dying here.
> and i worked hard and posted intelligently to get
> to 50
You'll find that now that you're at 50 it's essentially impossible to get modded down past the +1 bonus. All you have to do is spell correctly and be honest. So say what you mean and fuck the moderators!
> Ahh, yes. The findings of fact by the judge with a
> vendetta. Penfield Jackson. Part of the Clinton
> Administration If I remember correctly. The same
> administration that signed the DMCA. I have faith
> in those guys.
This is a ridiculous comment. Jackson has been district judge since 1982. Reagan was in office then. The DMCA is totally irrelevant; that was concocted by legislators and industry.
Those people know more about the facts of the case than you, are smarter than you, and know more about the law than you do. The findings of fact list all of the ways that they broke the law; it is not opinion, and it is far more than just gaining a huge market share because of developers. There are other ways to break the law than holding a gun to someone's head.
(Yes, legal documents tend to be verbose.)
> How, exactly did Microsoft cheat to get where > they are today? By following through on an offer > to create an operating system some umpteen years > ago? If that's cheating, then... well, I'm a > cheater, too. You should read the Findings of Fact from the trial (at http://news.cnet.com/News/Pages/Special/Microsoft/ findingoffacts.html). This details specifically how they broke the law in more than 300 bullet-points.
I agree, TFOA was a great game and could easily be a great Indy movie. (What other ultimate archaeological finds are left?) I guess the biggest problem is that Disney just did Atlantis...
This might be funny if XP or Anthrax were a virus, but neither is. Anthrax is a bacteria, and XP is actually a pretty good operating system. (I wouldn't run it as a server, but it sure is nice on the desktop..)
The DMCA is a bad law, but it does NOT prevent anyone from doing cryptography or breaking it. It ONLY applies to circumvention of access control to a COPYRIGHTED WORK. It is copyright law, not encryption law.
I think slashdot is perpetuating misunderstanding about this law, and I think that hurts our cause. Being informed is the first and most important step. Otherwise, we are just clueless zealots.
Rocky & Bullwinkle is my all-time favorite!
Seriously.
Well, decoding an MP3 takes less than .05% of my CPU on my Athlon, so I am not too worried about the decoding efficiency...!
One of the tricks we used (at my school) was to look for trailing whitespace and the combination of leading tabs and spaces, since this kind of thing is preserved when copying, invisible, and unlikely to be the same across independent correct solutions. It's true though that this automatic testing can't do much for the really simple assignments (ie, write insertion sort).
Much better was simply (when possible) assigning the same person to grame the same piece of code across all assignments; certain bizarre idioms or mistakes really jump out at you and catching cheaters that way is much more effective.
This thing is neat!
2 Mbps is pretty sufficient bandwidth; does anyone know what typical latency is for a satellite link? If it's measured in seconds, that's pretty rough...
At SICO (the "Snoot Internet Chess Orgy") they've got anonymous chess for the truly paranoid. Take turns playing a single move in all sorts of crazy variatons. It's pretty weird but also quite addictive...
> That is simply not true. Game tree search is
> inherently serial.
No, optimizations on game tree search (ie, alpha-beta pruning and hashing) may be serial, but regular game tree search is totally parallel.
The trick of course is to find a balance between these two, which the Cilk folks did.
> If the export restriction had not been in place,
> certainly Microsoft would have put out the
> strongest encryption everywhere.
I don't agree with this. Do you remember the secret "NSAkey" found in some version of Windows a few years back? It seems quite likely that their encryption scheme has some back-doors that make it easier for the NSA (et al.) to crack.
Anyway, even if there were no law, it might be sensible policy for Microsoft to ship with default weaker encryption to the countries we don't like so much.
One-time pads really have to be one-time or else they are not very secure at all. If you're going to agree on some seed ("windows.exe 13200"), there are much better ways of producing pseudo-random streams (ie, RC4) than Microsoft's executables.
> That is as long as you don't use a Euro coin. This
> is becuase most denominations of Euro coins are
> weighted to come down heads.
Ha, neat. Is that even possible?
I also hear that spinning a quarter on its side has a much higher probability of resulting in heads. Experimental evidence seems to confirm this...
> The problem with that is that your implementation
> may be flawed - this accounts for the bulk of the
> cracked encryption. That's why it's best to use
> known good encryption.
I don't think this is very likely. While it's easy to write buggy C code, most complete descriptions of an encryption algorithm come with test input and output. If your implementation of the block cipher works on these, it's pretty damn unlikely that it is wrong in general.
Others are so easy to implement (RC4) that bugs are pretty far-fetched.
> Maybe you are missing a point or two? There is no
> such thing as US Free Software. Either it's Free
> Software or it's not.
I don't understand what you mean. The GPL, for instance, works based on the Copyright law in the United States. Other countries have similar laws, but not all do. Software written in or exported from particular countries is also subject to other restrictions, such as cryptography once was in the US. In this sense, the development of free software in the USA could be hurt by cryptography (or similar) export laws.
> But he didn't find it. Therefore the export
> restriction worked in this case. Does it have to
> work every time in order to be useful?
What worked is that Microsoft ships with weak encryption by default. This is (perhaps) a smart policy. But I definitely think the law is ineffective and in fact stifles the US security industry.
Yes, it is a grey area, but I say that it is actually very easy for anyone with an internet connection to get strong encryption.
Encryption laws are ineffective. The only thing they prevent is American security businesses from being able to compete with foreign ones. It might, however, be responsible of Microsoft to ship with 40 bits by default for exactly the reason you mention.
It is extremely easy for anyone with a computer and internet connection to get their hands on strong encryption. Just because one person chose to use weaker encryption and had his files broken by our government, it does NOT mean that he could not have found PGP on the internet and used that instead. Crypto export regulations are worthless and hurt US business (and even US Free Software).
If you want to play your own game of chess against people all over the internet, check out SICO . People take turns playing a single move in all sorts of wacky variations. It's weird but addicting...
I don't think it is very hard. Game tree search is inherently parallel, you just need to be able to balance the assignment of subtrees so that you utilize processors well without too much overhead.
Check out Cilk and Cilk NOW for instance:
http://supertech.lcs.mit.edu/cilk/home/intro.ht
They have a parallel chess implementation.