Why do these things continue to go out to bid instead of being handled in academia where they should be?
You know, computer scientists aren't necessarily good programmers. In fact, most computer scientists are incredibly bad programmers -- they may know all the algorithms, but actually being able to produce working code is a completely different matter.
You might be surprised. My entirely unoptimized RSA code (using the FFT) is 1/3 the speed of openssl for 2048 bit moduli, and it doesn't use the CRT trick, nor does it do the exponentiation intelligently (it uses an FFT to multiply by 1 if the relevant bit is zero -- I was more concerned about timing attacks than performance).
If someone optimized my code, I'm pretty sure you'd see performance exceeding that of openssl.
Not to mention, the volume levels are usually jacked up so if I'm using headphones, I'll get my eardrums popped.
On the topic of sound and things which annoy us... why isn't there (in any OS I'm aware of) OS-based per-application volume control -- ie, something which sits between the application and the sound card, and adjusts that application's sound output based on that application's volume setting.
Playboy & playmate are famous trademarks, even though they have independent English-language meanings. If I do a search for "playmate," and a banner ad pops up for a non-Playboy adult-oriented site, how is that not trademark infringement?
Well, one has to question the strength of these trademarks. The English-language words "playboy" and "playmate" have changed very significantly over the past 50 years -- moving to parallel the trademarks -- so it could be argued that the situation is similar to "Hoover [vacuum cleaners]", or "Kleenex [tissues]".
Personally, I'd say that if people search for "playmate" without intending to find Playboy's web site, the trademark has lost its value.
But IANAL -- I'd be interested to hear the parent's view.
. In one case, a company (in Germany) came back stating that they happen to have the 5 same exact function names in their application, and byte-for-byte identical perror() strings to our application, but they insist they're not using any of our code, but claim that they did use it "for documentation purposes" when writing their application. That one is still open and pending, and we'll be doing protocol sniffs to see if theirs match ours. We have certain "fingerprints" in our protocol, which can only be done by using the source directly.
Ok, so they looked at your code, and wrote their code to be functionally equivalent. Where's the problem?
If you want to say that hard drives don't count, then you need to explain-away the fact that hard drives DID come in multiples of 1024 bytes up until about the 4GByte days.
My first hard drive was marketed as 40MB, and it held somewhere around 40,500,000 bytes. I was quite happy at the time about getting an extra half-megabyte for free.
If everyone had been using powers of two back then, it would have been a 41.9 MB drive.
Handling math isn't too far off from compiler design, you are just interpreting syntax and semantics and manipulating symbols in an intelligent manner.
Numerical math, yes. Symbolic math is far more complicated. Integration, for example, requires the Risch integration algorithm, which is quite non-trivial; computing polynomial GCDs has been the subject of dozens and dozens of papers.
I would recommend configuring a DHCP client (with DHCP assigned hostname.)
That's a great idea. Install your machines from a CD automatically, have them boot, connect to the network via DHCP, and get rooted before anyone even logs in.
Wouldn't it be nice to work in a field where nobody can say you're wrong?
That's why I like mathematics. Theorem, (optionally, lemmas), proof. End of story. The only way you can disagree is if you throw out the entire concept of logic or the axioms upon which it is based -- and if you do that, we'll usually throw *you* out.:)
The part which I find the most scary about this hasn't been mentioned yet: The US Postal Service counts as a "financial institution" for the purpose of this act.
As a result, an FBI agent can walk into the USPS, without a warrant, and demand a detailed listing of all the mail you receive.
Slashdot Mirror
There is a [...] utility to perform binary security updates, but it does not yet work with 5.2-RELEASE.
FreeBSD Update works with i386 FreeBSD 5.2-RELEASE. There haven't been any security fixes yet, so it doesn't do very much, but it does work.
This was on a PPro. On a vanilla Pentium the FFT wins at much lower lengths.
Why do these things continue to go out to bid instead of being handled in academia where they should be?
You know, computer scientists aren't necessarily good programmers. In fact, most computer scientists are incredibly bad programmers -- they may know all the algorithms, but actually being able to produce working code is a completely different matter.
You might be surprised. My entirely unoptimized RSA code (using the FFT) is 1/3 the speed of openssl for 2048 bit moduli, and it doesn't use the CRT trick, nor does it do the exponentiation intelligently (it uses an FFT to multiply by 1 if the relevant bit is zero -- I was more concerned about timing attacks than performance).
If someone optimized my code, I'm pretty sure you'd see performance exceeding that of openssl.
If anything multiplication is O(n^1.58)
:)
Well, that is true... it's also O(n^(1+epsilon)). If you're going to throw asymptotics around, you might as well throw in the FFT.
If you want real, well-tested AMD64 support, try NetBSD or FreeBSD.
Not to mention, the volume levels are usually jacked up so if I'm using headphones, I'll get my eardrums popped.
On the topic of sound and things which annoy us... why isn't there (in any OS I'm aware of) OS-based per-application volume control -- ie, something which sits between the application and the sound card, and adjusts that application's sound output based on that application's volume setting.
IIRC, haiku are supposed to have a joke in the last line -- this one satisfies that requirement as well.
Playboy & playmate are famous trademarks, even though they have independent English-language meanings. If I do a search for "playmate," and a banner ad pops up for a non-Playboy adult-oriented site, how is that not trademark infringement?
Well, one has to question the strength of these trademarks. The English-language words "playboy" and "playmate" have changed very significantly over the past 50 years -- moving to parallel the trademarks -- so it could be argued that the situation is similar to "Hoover [vacuum cleaners]", or "Kleenex [tissues]".
Personally, I'd say that if people search for "playmate" without intending to find Playboy's web site, the trademark has lost its value.
But IANAL -- I'd be interested to hear the parent's view.
1. Remove the illegal code.
2. Fire the person who introduced it.
3. Pretend the entire event never happened.
Oh, you're talking about someone else violating the copyright on *your* code...
. In one case, a company (in Germany) came back stating that they happen to have the 5 same exact function names in their application, and byte-for-byte identical perror() strings to our application, but they insist they're not using any of our code, but claim that they did use it "for documentation purposes" when writing their application. That one is still open and pending, and we'll be doing protocol sniffs to see if theirs match ours. We have certain "fingerprints" in our protocol, which can only be done by using the source directly.
Ok, so they looked at your code, and wrote their code to be functionally equivalent. Where's the problem?
If you want to say that hard drives don't count, then you need to explain-away the fact that hard drives DID come in multiples of 1024 bytes up until about the 4GByte days.
My first hard drive was marketed as 40MB, and it held somewhere around 40,500,000 bytes. I was quite happy at the time about getting an extra half-megabyte for free.
If everyone had been using powers of two back then, it would have been a 41.9 MB drive.
In fact, 1 TB = 1024 bytes ^ 4 = 1099511627776 bytes
Do you expect Gbps ethernet to run at 1024^3 bps?
Do you expect a 2GHz CPU to run at 2*1024^3 Hz?
Do you crash space probes into the surface of Mars because you assume that 1 km = 1024 m?
The only thing which has ever been measured in powers-of-two is memory sizes.
POSIX environment... C compiler... you know, it should be possible to get my depenguinator to work here.
I'm not sure about being able to write the filesystem image to disk, Windows might not allow that.
Do not look at cheese slicer with remaining eye!
Handling math isn't too far off from compiler design, you are just interpreting syntax and semantics and manipulating symbols in an intelligent manner.
Numerical math, yes. Symbolic math is far more complicated. Integration, for example, requires the Risch integration algorithm, which is quite non-trivial; computing polynomial GCDs has been the subject of dozens and dozens of papers.
I would recommend configuring a DHCP client (with DHCP assigned hostname.)
That's a great idea. Install your machines from a CD automatically, have them boot, connect to the network via DHCP, and get rooted before anyone even logs in.
Wouldn't it be nice to work in a field where nobody can say you're wrong?
:)
That's why I like mathematics. Theorem, (optionally, lemmas), proof. End of story. The only way you can disagree is if you throw out the entire concept of logic or the axioms upon which it is based -- and if you do that, we'll usually throw *you* out.
The part which I find the most scary about this hasn't been mentioned yet: The US Postal Service counts as a "financial institution" for the purpose of this act.
As a result, an FBI agent can walk into the USPS, without a warrant, and demand a detailed listing of all the mail you receive.
Now that you mention it, there have been a few more downloads of that package than usual today...
It looks like the colour calibration is a bit lacking in those images.
Where did that Marsdial go, again?
Today a comet, tomorrow Mars!
Today, a space probe ran into a comet.
NASA has been sending space probes *into* Mars for quite a long time...
Hmm, spam as sperm?
Well, it does tend to contain the same content many times over... but it isn't necessarily unsolicited.
Perhaps we should reclassify rapists as spammers, and treat them accordingly?
I think you're a bit confused here. This story is about India, not the USA.
vint cerf isn't commercially linked to the internet in the same way that gates is to windows
Err.. Vint Cerf is a senior VP at WorldCom.