I hated school. The last thing that my schools seemed interested in was providing an education. I constantly pressed them for more information and better classes, but 95% of the time "advanced" classes meant that there were more opportunities to do busy work to try to make your college application look good.
There were days where I'd just skip school and instead hang out at the library all day.
In retrospect, I wish I had dropped out of school instead of graduating before I went to work (to hell with college, I wasn't going to start paying for "education"). Do you feel this way? And if not, why?
What you're describing sounds like basic public/secret key cryptography.
Player/recorder stores public keys from all compliant manufacturers. Disk has it's secret key.
The player/recorder wants to be sure that the drive is a friend. It computes a random value and sends it to the drive. The drive uses it's private key on the random value and sends the ciphertext back to the player/recorder. The player/recorder uses the corresponding public key to decrypt the ciphertext into plaintext, which should match it's random value. Secure communication/storage can now occur.
The first thing that comes to mind is MAN-IN-THE-MIDDLE-ATTACK!
To protect against MITMA, each device would need a recognized host key that is never revealed in the clear.
This will always be flawed though. You have full physical control over these devices when they're in your possession. You can layer encryption scheme upon encryption scheme, but it all has to start somewhere with a key stored in the clear -- and once you get at that, the entire system collapses.
Why don't they just rot13 all of their media? They can apply the same law (w/ DMCA) against someone cracking that as they can to people who can break their elaborate multi-million dollar encryption schemes.
I'm totally pro-blacklisting mail servers that are pro-spammer, but don't you think this is going a bit too far?
I certainly didn't think I'd be signing up for something of this magnitude by subscribing to these blacklists.
I'm sure Paul Vixie is a nice guy and all, but in my professional life as a sys admin, whenever I come across his name I know I'm in for trouble. cron and named holes? Vixie anyone? This just adds to his legacy, if you ask me.
This is just a little vigilante group that has become obsessed with the power they have. Maybe you've gone too far, guys? Spammers suck and deserve to die, but censorship really does more harm than good.
Oh no! You mean that my regular scheduled service interruptions and other assorted crappiness in Verizon's service will be interrupted by an outage or possible delay in service?!?! I am shocked and horrified. I have come to expect more from Verizon.
Oh please. They can drop T1's for weeks at a time with no valid explanation or reason (oops, we lost your circuit!)
We're trying to offer ADSL which Verizon also offers. Verizon provides us with ADSL as part of a deal with the FTC. Verizon sells ADSL to the userbase with free installation, free equipment, and a low rate (close to $50).
Verizon sells ADSL to us for almost that same rate when it comes down to each user. We in turn have to charge a higher rate and must also eat the costs of installation and setup to try to even come close to staying competitive.
In turn, Verizon fucks up billing constantly (bills us for people who aren't our own customers), provides a crappy as hell service (ie, goes out for days at a time with no warning -- we've resorted to making dialup accounts part of the package). When the service goes down, users call US. Our answer is always "Verizon has it's fingers stuck in it's ass and we have to wait for them to unfuck themselves. Sorry but there's nothing we can do at all."
Many DSL providers have folded in the NYC area. Verizon gives the illusion that they're letting competitors onto their network, but it's so expensive that we can't compete with what they are selling directly to the potential userbase.
I'm suprised it took them this long. The only way that they could provide dialup access was through Ziplink, a national ISP that allows you to outsource your dialups. At least, that's how they did it a year ago..
Ziplink went out of business about a week ago, and they sold their dialups off to seperate companies IIRC.
The real ticker is.. Ziplink dialups cost $8/mo per user. Altavista had it's users download some little ad spewing thingy. Could they really recoup the $8/mo Ziplink fee plus cost of radius servers/etc?
My boss (at New York Connect) just had a lengthy discussion with Cogent folks. Since I was performing an emergency system repair at our colocation facility (Telehouse NYC baby!) we invited them along since they were interested.
They mentioned something about building their own fibre network along with new technology that allows you to cram multiple waves over a single fibre. I really have no idea what this means, and they were sales guys, but their offer seemed worth listening to.
We're interested in their connection because it would allow us multiple internet uplinks (ie, redundancy) since Verizon has proven itself less than friendly/competent.
There was a catch though, and one that my boss was upset about. I haven't been given all of the details since I'm not in that office anymore.
ANYONE could have run on the Florida ballot and taken enough votes away from Gore to cost him the election. Check out the results for every single third party candidate. The lowest one was a 1000-something.
Blaming Nader for costing Gore the election is the same kind of reasoning you could use for blaming a local KKK leader for not running for President so that he could take enough votes away from Bush to cost him the election.
You can effectively make the internet unusable by attacking and taking down less than 0.01% of the machines on it, and you can do this with a shoe-string budget, and you only need a few months worth of time.
How to destroy the Internet:
Acquire dialup account. Stolen if possible so that they have less contact information for you on file. For best results, see if you can find an ISP that does not record remote calling IDs.
Acquire a shell account or preferably run Linux (free) on your own computer.
Read bugtraq. Learn the skills of the skr1pt k1dd1e. IRC can help too.
Start 0wning servers. Preferably servers with foreign domains. The language barrier helps and less mainstream countries have a much harder time dealing with internet problems. Also, it helps to own one server and then own other servers from that owned server. If a sharp admin tracks you down, you simply need rm -rf / the owner server to cut off all associations with you.
Start sweeping for broadcast addresses. netscan.org also publishes a handy list.
Take advantage of all of the distributed denial of service tools out there. Start outfitting your shell accounts with said tools.
Set up for the big day. Also have a backup plan ready and tell no one about what you're going to do. Your friends will easily betray you for the glory of bringing the internet killer to justice. The thrill may be overwhelming but a lot of people will be mad at you if they find out. If you can't keep a secret, don't do this.
Pick the big day. New Years Eve would be conveniant because people will be drunk and confused and think of the Millenium Bug.
When the big day arrives, your goal is to hit the root servers. Hit them with everything you possibly can. X.root-servers.net. Preferably send a barrage of spoofed, fake DNS requests. Spoofed so that they have no hope of hunting down the machines you're doing it from (or at least all of them, in any timely fashion) and fake DNS requests because they cannot function if they filter DNS.
Never connect to these machines again. Destroy your own machine with fire.
The internet should now be unusable to about 99.99% of it's users.
My research is just as valid as theirs, and mine is much more plausible. So pfft.
Ok, maybe Microsoft looks at Linux and says "hey, that's a neat feature. let's put it in Windows".
They probably even look at the source code and say "Hey, that's neat too. I'll remember that."
But claiming that they can just drop Linux's code right into Windows, in turn improving the overall stability of 30 million lines of code is insane.
Microsoft employs a lot of people, some of them are even talented. They are probably capable of producing a stable product. It was just never a priority for their company. People would buy their crap because they really have no choice. People are still buying their crap because they have no choice, but a lot of people are seeking alternatives. That is why the company has suddenly decided that maybe it's time to work on stability. They're probably not going to win any awards for stability, but they're definitely making improvements relative to Microsoft's standards.
If stability was the primary goal for a company that makes billions of dollars a year, they would certainly dedicate vast resources towards meeting it. It's obviously not their primary goal (I guess "GREAT SOFTWARE!" doesn't mean stable software), so it'll suck a big one. Stability is now more important to them than it used to be, but it'll probably never be the number one priority.
This is a good idea if it can be done without bias. It would certainly erase any doubts as to whether or not an application has been tampered with by a virus (the code anyway) and it'd be
neat if they extended it to Outlook, which could
eliminate those stupid script "viruses" that seem to be causing so much chaos.
The scary disaster scenario is that you cannot run code that is not signed by Microsoft. It's optional right now, but I would imagine that Microsoft's competitors or competing standards would have a very difficult time running on Windows once Microsoft got their customers used to the idea of trusted code.
Imagine Microsoft refusing to certify an OpenGL driver provided by a vendor because they want to push their Direct3D agenda. Imagine them refusing to sign AOL software because they want to promote MSN.
Also, what do you do if "trusted" Microsoft code is found to have a vulnerability or a trojan? That's a PR blunder waiting to happen.
This could work really well if the vendor does not have biased commercial interests.. which they always will. *shrug*.
In an ideal society, our motive for advancing society would be pride. Money is what makes us compete against one another. The effort to raise our quality of life. Intellectual property is really what makes this competition possible. To successfully do away with IP, we must first refocus our efforts.
In other words, this isn't going to happen overnight. People are starvingly poor and others are gluttonously rich. Those caught in the middle have a decent quality of life but don't want to work for the rest of their lives for an asshole (boss). IP is what empowers those in any one of these groups to just come up with an idea and "own" it. In owning such an idea, they can have financial freedom. Get out of poverty. Stop working for someone else. Make yourselves richer, whatever. The chances of this actually happening are quite slim, but the fact that it's possible will make many unwilling to give it up.
I wouldn't be surpised if people who contribute to open source are people who are either financially secure (ie, don't have to work anymore), or people who like their jobs enough that they don't feel that they need to spend their efforts making themselves financially secure (since their job might guarantee it). There are of course exceptions, but if we were all poor and miserable, open source would largely not exist.
This isn't just source code. Artists who are financially secure have so much less of a problem with Napster than those who are trying to make their living with their music. There are exceptions like Metallica, but you really don't care about trying to enrich society with your music if you need to eat.
So, this finally brings me to the stated point: Intellectual property won't go away unless we significantly improve the quality of life. Like on Star Trek.:)
I've always had a hatred for Dr. Dobbs. In the olden days, it was small, but as time went on, I found more and more of their articles irritating. This article wasn't nearly as irritating at most. My biggest problem with their magazine is that they target the magazine at programmers who work in bullshit fields, ie, programmers who really don't care all that much about what they do. They assume professional == know what they're doing == care about their profession. If Dr. Dobbs was a real programmer magazine, their articles would NOT be predominantly Windows oriented. No respectable programmer prefers to work with, or enjoys working with Windows. Neal Stephenson said it best: (paraphased) The day Microsoft makes a product that interests me is the day that I short their stock, because I am a market of one.
The Hurd was an interesting project that I tried pursuing but I only found myself abandoning. I had a running Hurd system for awhile and even wrote a few utilities (this is what mount might look like: http://nyct.net/~mbac/_mount.c), it really leaves a lot to be desired. The "micro"-kernel is about as big as the Linux kernel. The ext2fs driver is userspace and (last I checked), can only mount 1 GB filesystems because it mmap()s the partition. It's a clever idea, but the end result is not usable and I'm worried that they'll layer hack upon hack to try to maintain the clever idea and still keep it useful. Every basic system interaction involves a server and a translator. All servers must be explicitly multi-threaded and a running system can only go a few days before you've leaked all of your memory. This system is obviously still very beta, but these bugs are already plaguing the system.
The programmers that work on the Hurd are very talented and for the system to have as many problems as it does, I worry about how less talented people are going to deal with it. That article and this comment should not be an alternative to actually playing with the system. Give it a try. The experience is worthwhile even if you end up deleting the system 2 hours later. Hey, you might like it and think I'm an idiot and make it badass enough to smash Linux. That'll show us.:)
Also, the article mentions that the only way to add a new network protocol to Linux is by adding it to the kernel. This is untrue as the raw sockets interface allows you to develop your own protocols. This is how routed, gated, and dhcpd function without requiring explicit kernel support.
While the DC has 8MB of VRAM, the PS2 has only 4MB of VRAM. The main problem arises because a polygon takes up roughly 40 bytes of RAM. When you have 5 million of them in a given second, this amounts to 5 million/60fps = 83,333 polygons in a given frame of animation. If each of these polygons uses 40 bytes of VRAM, you will use 3.33 MB displaying these 5 million PPS.
The math seems right, but why must polygons be stored and manipulated within 4 megs of VRAM? I would think that the Playstation 2 would have seperate vector processors that could operate on the data set in main memory (of which it has 32MB).
I would guess that from there, you would perform functions that convert these coordinates from 3d worldspace to 2d visual/screen space, and that is what gets drawn into the 4 megs of VRAM, which is probably actually a framebuffer.
This doesn't leave the PS2 much room for its framebuffer which uses around 1.2MB just to display the end data, not to mention that you still need to leave room for textures to put on those polygons.
Again, I would not expect a console to have layouts similar to PC memory. There's no reason to design the PS2 so that you cannot perform hardware tranformations/manipulations on data sitting in main memory. On something like the PC, VRAM is the only domain for this because only the video adapter is really good at these operations. I would wager much differently for the PS2.
There are exceptions to this of course, such as media extensions to the main processor (MMX, 3DNow!) and video adapter DMA to main memory, but a dedicated game system has room to do so much more.
A hacker by the name of Coolio defaced D.A.R.E's web page http://www.dare.org/ in protest of their efforts and programs.
The defacement can be viewed at http://www.attrition.org/mirror/attrition/1999/11/ 14/www.dare.com/
He admitted to it a few weeks later after the FBI raided his house and confiscated his computers. They're charging the (then 17) teen as an adult who can face up to 30 years imprisonment (15 years per 2 counts, which is what he's actually being charged with) and $18,000 in fines. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/9701. html
Now, I don't use drugs. I don't care about using drugs. But I know what fucked up is. This is going too far. Legislation is being pushed to make it illegal to even write about illegal drug use.
Usually, when money gets tight (as often happens in these startups), it's in my experience that most companies will lay off almost all of the people that actually make the company function and leave just the managers.
Managers have extremely inflated salaries, artificial authority, and usually know far less about the work they're managing than the employees in that department.
Why do companies do this? If you're losing a lot of your staff, you would need LESS managers since the displacement from the president should logically decrease as people leave.
CSS does not directly make copying DVDs impossible. CSS just encrypts data on the DVD so
that it can only be played by certain DVD players.
There is nothing stopping you from taking a DVD and recording it onto another DVD, encrypted bits and all. The copy will work and appear exactly as the original. This can, and already is being done. Just like it can be done for any other media you probably own or use.
The purpose of CSS is to code DVDs for a specific country. Movies sold on DVD in Japan can only be played on DVD players sold in Japan. Basically, if you travel the world and buy DVDs, you'll only be able to play them if you buy a DVD player from each region. While this is highly immoral, this isn't even what we're (I've contributed money to this, http://www.eff.org/) fighting for.
Apparantly, CSS is a weak algorithm. In fact, it's so weak that it can be cracked brute force in a very short time on a PC. The MPAA is trying to stop the spread of INFORMATION that can potentially be used unlawfully. Not only that, but according to the DMCA, they can sue simply because their encryption algorithm was broken!
This raises so many more issues than just piracy. This is a violation of free speech, of fair use, and still other things highly immoral that don't fall conveniantly under any law. It's conveniant to just file this under "Pirating scum tries to rip off artists", but there really is a lot to this story.
This isn't Emmanuel Goldstein running a service that lets you download DVDs for free. This is Emmanuel Goldstein (among others) having the book thrown at him because of what he is printing, or linking, or even just saying!
The interpretation that YOU have is exactly what the MPAA is trying to promote.
One, just set up a few procmail filters to block messages that don't have your e-mail address in the From, To, or Cc fields. Then make exceptions for the lists you ARE subscribed to.
Two, then, for each e-mail that gets through those filters (about 1 in 10, in my experience), set up a specific procmail rule blocking the domain that sent the message. If they went through the trouble to have an e-mail specifically sent to you, then they probably have a semi-legitimate account on the system they're doing it from (rather than abusing an open relay).
Three, blocked e-mail is actually diverted to a spam folder. I go through this folder periodically and call all of the 800 numbers in them. Several times. This lets you leave awful messages on answering machines, or cuss out actual people. If everyone in the world did this for each piece of spam they received, unsolicited bulk e-mail would suddenly become very expensive.
This weekend I had literally 50 pieces of spam hit my mailbox. This is so way beyond abusive. Wouldn't you start torching buildings if your postal mailbox at home had 50 pieces of junkmail in it after 2 days? What if your fax machine had 50 ADS FOR FAX MACHINE TONER sitting on it when you came in Monday morning?
Blacklisting doesn't work anymore. I've instead switched "accept all mail unless message contains" to "reject all mail unless message contains" and only 1 or 2 spams can now ever slip through. The ones that do slip through just let you laugh at how well the filter works.
Basically, whip out procmailrc. Put a rule at the end that matches any address and have it redirected to say, ~/mail/spam. Then, above it, put rules that save specific e-mails from going to the spambox. The first rule checks to see if your e-mail address is in the from, to, or cc field. The next rule checks to see if any of the mailing lists that you're subscribed to are in the from, to, and cc fields (mine looks like * ^(From|To|Cc).*(linux-kernel|freebsd|vorbis) etc.
Also, I know that whenever I do catch a spam with an 800 number in it, I make sure to call them a few times and leave angry messages. Maybe they'll think twice about spamming 15 million e-mail addresses if every one of them called their 800 number, eh?:)
And like any good Windows NT implementation, they do crash. I've seen them bluescreen. If you open up the panel, you'll see that the outer frame of the machine covers the taskbar, with start menu at all.
Someone changed the default backdrop on one of the machines in a local station once.:)
At least now I know who those peons work for when they're in the station slowly servicing one of the malfunctioning machines. 'Death to Cubic!!' I can say, because I pay taxes. Damnit.
You are trying to compare 2 very large and wildly varied problem domains and rate them in terms of performance. This is impossible and will lead to narrow simple-minded benchmarking which can never quite be authoritative.
Everyone is trying to quantify the problem as "well, for condition N, Apache does this but IIS does this". This is useless. It totally depends on
the problem you're trying to solve.
I don't use anything near the default Apache config on really heavily hit web sites. I have it custom tailored to serve data for that site/application and to do it well and it might not work at all for a different problem/site.
Buy the solution that you are more comfortable working with. If you have a staff of largely UNIX oriented people, you will be able to bend Linux (or BSD, or whatever) and Apache to solve your problems easily.
If your staff is full of NT weenies, go with IIS. You'll probably be able to tune the system that much better and won't be delayed/sidetracked by people who have no experience with that system.
Raw and objective performance numbers for these 2 don't exist. Don't even try opting for one of them over another based on performance benchmarks. Go with the platform that your staff is more comfortable with, they will be the real cost, and they will be the ones who will have to deal with it. The price of the servers is negligable compared to that.
All of the data stored on your disk is already proactively cached, most recently used is much more likely to be in cache longer.
Full blown RAM disks have limited applications, especially when the buffer cache can almost always do a better job. If you have gobs of RAM you're not using, increase the size!
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There were days where I'd just skip school and instead hang out at the library all day. In retrospect, I wish I had dropped out of school instead of graduating before I went to work (to hell with college, I wasn't going to start paying for "education"). Do you feel this way? And if not, why?
Player/recorder stores public keys from all compliant manufacturers. Disk has it's secret key.
The player/recorder wants to be sure that the drive is a friend. It computes a random value and sends it to the drive. The drive uses it's private key on the random value and sends the ciphertext back to the player/recorder. The player/recorder uses the corresponding public key to decrypt the ciphertext into plaintext, which should match it's random value. Secure communication/storage can now occur.
The first thing that comes to mind is MAN-IN-THE-MIDDLE-ATTACK!
To protect against MITMA, each device would need a recognized host key that is never revealed in the clear.
This will always be flawed though. You have full physical control over these devices when they're in your possession. You can layer encryption scheme upon encryption scheme, but it all has to start somewhere with a key stored in the clear -- and once you get at that, the entire system collapses.
Why don't they just rot13 all of their media? They can apply the same law (w/ DMCA) against someone cracking that as they can to people who can break their elaborate multi-million dollar encryption schemes.
I certainly didn't think I'd be signing up for something of this magnitude by subscribing to these blacklists.
I'm sure Paul Vixie is a nice guy and all, but in my professional life as a sys admin, whenever I come across his name I know I'm in for trouble. cron and named holes? Vixie anyone? This just adds to his legacy, if you ask me.
This is just a little vigilante group that has become obsessed with the power they have. Maybe you've gone too far, guys? Spammers suck and deserve to die, but censorship really does more harm than good.
Oh please. They can drop T1's for weeks at a time with no valid explanation or reason (oops, we lost your circuit!)
Fuck Verizon.
We're trying to offer ADSL which Verizon also offers. Verizon provides us with ADSL as part of a deal with the FTC. Verizon sells ADSL to the userbase with free installation, free equipment, and a low rate (close to $50).
Verizon sells ADSL to us for almost that same rate when it comes down to each user. We in turn have to charge a higher rate and must also eat the costs of installation and setup to try to even come close to staying competitive.
In turn, Verizon fucks up billing constantly (bills us for people who aren't our own customers), provides a crappy as hell service (ie, goes out for days at a time with no warning -- we've resorted to making dialup accounts part of the package). When the service goes down, users call US. Our answer is always "Verizon has it's fingers stuck in it's ass and we have to wait for them to unfuck themselves. Sorry but there's nothing we can do at all."
Many DSL providers have folded in the NYC area. Verizon gives the illusion that they're letting competitors onto their network, but it's so expensive that we can't compete with what they are selling directly to the potential userbase.
Ziplink went out of business about a week ago, and they sold their dialups off to seperate companies IIRC.
The real ticker is.. Ziplink dialups cost $8/mo per user. Altavista had it's users download some little ad spewing thingy. Could they really recoup the $8/mo Ziplink fee plus cost of radius servers/etc?
They mentioned something about building their own fibre network along with new technology that allows you to cram multiple waves over a single fibre. I really have no idea what this means, and they were sales guys, but their offer seemed worth listening to.
We're interested in their connection because it would allow us multiple internet uplinks (ie, redundancy) since Verizon has proven itself less than friendly/competent.
There was a catch though, and one that my boss was upset about. I haven't been given all of the details since I'm not in that office anymore.
Gore fucked up his own election.
ANYONE could have run on the Florida ballot and taken enough votes away from Gore to cost him the election. Check out the results for every single third party candidate. The lowest one was a 1000-something.
Blaming Nader for costing Gore the election is the same kind of reasoning you could use for blaming a local KKK leader for not running for President so that he could take enough votes away from Bush to cost him the election.
The Simpsons are more relevant now than ever:
"No matter WHO you vote for your planet is doomed.. DOOMED!!"
"Go ahead! Throw your vote away!!"
So, who wants punch?
How to destroy the Internet:
- Acquire dialup account. Stolen if possible so that they have less contact information for you on file. For best results, see if you can find an ISP that does not record remote calling IDs.
- Acquire a shell account or preferably run Linux (free) on your own computer.
- Read bugtraq. Learn the skills of the skr1pt k1dd1e. IRC can help too.
- Start 0wning servers. Preferably servers with foreign domains. The language barrier helps and less mainstream countries have a much harder time dealing with internet problems. Also, it helps to own one server and then own other servers from that owned server. If a sharp admin tracks you down, you simply need rm -rf / the owner server to cut off all associations with you.
- Start sweeping for broadcast addresses. netscan.org also publishes a handy list.
- Take advantage of all of the distributed denial of service tools out there. Start outfitting your shell accounts with said tools.
- Set up for the big day. Also have a backup plan ready and tell no one about what you're going to do. Your friends will easily betray you for the glory of bringing the internet killer to justice. The thrill may be overwhelming but a lot of people will be mad at you if they find out. If you can't keep a secret, don't do this.
- Pick the big day. New Years Eve would be conveniant because people will be drunk and confused and think of the Millenium Bug.
- When the big day arrives, your goal is to hit the root servers. Hit them with everything you possibly can. X.root-servers.net. Preferably send a barrage of spoofed, fake DNS requests. Spoofed so that they have no hope of hunting down the machines you're doing it from (or at least all of them, in any timely fashion) and fake DNS requests because they cannot function if they filter DNS.
- Never connect to these machines again. Destroy your own machine with fire.
The internet should now be unusable to about 99.99% of it's users.My research is just as valid as theirs, and mine is much more plausible. So pfft.
They probably even look at the source code and say "Hey, that's neat too. I'll remember that."
But claiming that they can just drop Linux's code right into Windows, in turn improving the overall stability of 30 million lines of code is insane.
Microsoft employs a lot of people, some of them are even talented. They are probably capable of producing a stable product. It was just never a priority for their company. People would buy their crap because they really have no choice. People are still buying their crap because they have no choice, but a lot of people are seeking alternatives. That is why the company has suddenly decided that maybe it's time to work on stability. They're probably not going to win any awards for stability, but they're definitely making improvements relative to Microsoft's standards.
If stability was the primary goal for a company that makes billions of dollars a year, they would certainly dedicate vast resources towards meeting it. It's obviously not their primary goal (I guess "GREAT SOFTWARE!" doesn't mean stable software), so it'll suck a big one. Stability is now more important to them than it used to be, but it'll probably never be the number one priority.
The moral? Don't listen to Nick Petreley.
This is a good idea if it can be done without bias. It would certainly erase any doubts as to whether or not an application has been tampered with by a virus (the code anyway) and it'd be neat if they extended it to Outlook, which could eliminate those stupid script "viruses" that seem to be causing so much chaos.
The scary disaster scenario is that you cannot run code that is not signed by Microsoft. It's optional right now, but I would imagine that Microsoft's competitors or competing standards would have a very difficult time running on Windows once Microsoft got their customers used to the idea of trusted code.
Imagine Microsoft refusing to certify an OpenGL driver provided by a vendor because they want to push their Direct3D agenda. Imagine them refusing to sign AOL software because they want to promote MSN.
Also, what do you do if "trusted" Microsoft code is found to have a vulnerability or a trojan? That's a PR blunder waiting to happen.
This could work really well if the vendor does not have biased commercial interests.. which they always will. *shrug*.
In other words, this isn't going to happen overnight. People are starvingly poor and others are gluttonously rich. Those caught in the middle have a decent quality of life but don't want to work for the rest of their lives for an asshole (boss). IP is what empowers those in any one of these groups to just come up with an idea and "own" it. In owning such an idea, they can have financial freedom. Get out of poverty. Stop working for someone else. Make yourselves richer, whatever. The chances of this actually happening are quite slim, but the fact that it's possible will make many unwilling to give it up.
I wouldn't be surpised if people who contribute to open source are people who are either financially secure (ie, don't have to work anymore), or people who like their jobs enough that they don't feel that they need to spend their efforts making themselves financially secure (since their job might guarantee it). There are of course exceptions, but if we were all poor and miserable, open source would largely not exist.
This isn't just source code. Artists who are financially secure have so much less of a problem with Napster than those who are trying to make their living with their music. There are exceptions like Metallica, but you really don't care about trying to enrich society with your music if you need to eat.
So, this finally brings me to the stated point: Intellectual property won't go away unless we significantly improve the quality of life. Like on Star Trek. :)
The Hurd was an interesting project that I tried pursuing but I only found myself abandoning. I had a running Hurd system for awhile and even wrote a few utilities (this is what mount might look like: http://nyct.net/~mbac/_mount.c), it really leaves a lot to be desired. The "micro"-kernel is about as big as the Linux kernel. The ext2fs driver is userspace and (last I checked), can only mount 1 GB filesystems because it mmap()s the partition. It's a clever idea, but the end result is not usable and I'm worried that they'll layer hack upon hack to try to maintain the clever idea and still keep it useful. Every basic system interaction involves a server and a translator. All servers must be explicitly multi-threaded and a running system can only go a few days before you've leaked all of your memory. This system is obviously still very beta, but these bugs are already plaguing the system.
The programmers that work on the Hurd are very talented and for the system to have as many problems as it does, I worry about how less talented people are going to deal with it. That article and this comment should not be an alternative to actually playing with the system. Give it a try. The experience is worthwhile even if you end up deleting the system 2 hours later. Hey, you might like it and think I'm an idiot and make it badass enough to smash Linux. That'll show us. :)
Also, the article mentions that the only way to add a new network protocol to Linux is by adding it to the kernel. This is untrue as the raw sockets interface allows you to develop your own protocols. This is how routed, gated, and dhcpd function without requiring explicit kernel support.
The math seems right, but why must polygons be stored and manipulated within 4 megs of VRAM? I would think that the Playstation 2 would have seperate vector processors that could operate on the data set in main memory (of which it has 32MB).
I would guess that from there, you would perform functions that convert these coordinates from 3d worldspace to 2d visual/screen space, and that is what gets drawn into the 4 megs of VRAM, which is probably actually a framebuffer.
This doesn't leave the PS2 much room for its framebuffer which uses around 1.2MB just to display the end data, not to mention that you still need to leave room for textures to put on those polygons.
Again, I would not expect a console to have layouts similar to PC memory. There's no reason to design the PS2 so that you cannot perform hardware tranformations/manipulations on data sitting in main memory. On something like the PC, VRAM is the only domain for this because only the video adapter is really good at these operations. I would wager much differently for the PS2.
There are exceptions to this of course, such as media extensions to the main processor (MMX, 3DNow!) and video adapter DMA to main memory, but a dedicated game system has room to do so much more.
The defacement can be viewed at http://www.attrition.org/mirror/attrition/1999/11/ 14/www.dare.com/
He admitted to it a few weeks later after the FBI raided his house and confiscated his computers. They're charging the (then 17) teen as an adult who can face up to 30 years imprisonment (15 years per 2 counts, which is what he's actually being charged with) and $18,000 in fines. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/9701. html
Now, I don't use drugs. I don't care about using drugs. But I know what fucked up is. This is going too far. Legislation is being pushed to make it illegal to even write about illegal drug use.
Managers have extremely inflated salaries, artificial authority, and usually know far less about the work they're managing than the employees in that department.
Why do companies do this? If you're losing a lot of your staff, you would need LESS managers since the displacement from the president should logically decrease as people leave.
Ho hum
There is nothing stopping you from taking a DVD and recording it onto another DVD, encrypted bits and all. The copy will work and appear exactly as the original. This can, and already is being done. Just like it can be done for any other media you probably own or use.
The purpose of CSS is to code DVDs for a specific country. Movies sold on DVD in Japan can only be played on DVD players sold in Japan. Basically, if you travel the world and buy DVDs, you'll only be able to play them if you buy a DVD player from each region. While this is highly immoral, this isn't even what we're (I've contributed money to this, http://www.eff.org/) fighting for.
Apparantly, CSS is a weak algorithm. In fact, it's so weak that it can be cracked brute force in a very short time on a PC. The MPAA is trying to stop the spread of INFORMATION that can potentially be used unlawfully. Not only that, but according to the DMCA, they can sue simply because their encryption algorithm was broken!
This raises so many more issues than just piracy. This is a violation of free speech, of fair use, and still other things highly immoral that don't fall conveniantly under any law. It's conveniant to just file this under "Pirating scum tries to rip off artists", but there really is a lot to this story.
This isn't Emmanuel Goldstein running a service that lets you download DVDs for free. This is Emmanuel Goldstein (among others) having the book thrown at him because of what he is printing, or linking, or even just saying!
The interpretation that YOU have is exactly what the MPAA is trying to promote.
Idiots.
Two, then, for each e-mail that gets through those filters (about 1 in 10, in my experience), set up a specific procmail rule blocking the domain that sent the message. If they went through the trouble to have an e-mail specifically sent to you, then they probably have a semi-legitimate account on the system they're doing it from (rather than abusing an open relay).
Three, blocked e-mail is actually diverted to a spam folder. I go through this folder periodically and call all of the 800 numbers in them. Several times. This lets you leave awful messages on answering machines, or cuss out actual people. If everyone in the world did this for each piece of spam they received, unsolicited bulk e-mail would suddenly become very expensive.
Blacklisting doesn't work anymore. I've instead switched "accept all mail unless message contains" to "reject all mail unless message contains" and only 1 or 2 spams can now ever slip through. The ones that do slip through just let you laugh at how well the filter works.
Basically, whip out procmailrc. Put a rule at the end that matches any address and have it redirected to say, ~/mail/spam. Then, above it, put rules that save specific e-mails from going to the spambox. The first rule checks to see if your e-mail address is in the from, to, or cc field. The next rule checks to see if any of the mailing lists that you're subscribed to are in the from, to, and cc fields (mine looks like * ^(From|To|Cc).*(linux-kernel|freebsd|vorbis) etc.
Also, I know that whenever I do catch a spam with an 800 number in it, I make sure to call them a few times and leave angry messages. Maybe they'll think twice about spamming 15 million e-mail addresses if every one of them called their 800 number, eh? :)
And like any good Windows NT implementation, they do crash. I've seen them bluescreen. If you open up the panel, you'll see that the outer frame of the machine covers the taskbar, with start menu at all.
Someone changed the default backdrop on one of the machines in a local station once. :)
At least now I know who those peons work for when they're in the station slowly servicing one of the malfunctioning machines. 'Death to Cubic!!' I can say, because I pay taxes. Damnit.
Everyone is trying to quantify the problem as "well, for condition N, Apache does this but IIS does this". This is useless. It totally depends on the problem you're trying to solve.
I don't use anything near the default Apache config on really heavily hit web sites. I have it custom tailored to serve data for that site/application and to do it well and it might not work at all for a different problem/site.
Buy the solution that you are more comfortable working with. If you have a staff of largely UNIX oriented people, you will be able to bend Linux (or BSD, or whatever) and Apache to solve your problems easily.
If your staff is full of NT weenies, go with IIS. You'll probably be able to tune the system that much better and won't be delayed/sidetracked by people who have no experience with that system.
Raw and objective performance numbers for these 2 don't exist. Don't even try opting for one of them over another based on performance benchmarks. Go with the platform that your staff is more comfortable with, they will be the real cost, and they will be the ones who will have to deal with it. The price of the servers is negligable compared to that.
Try this link
All of the data stored on your disk is already proactively cached, most recently used is much more likely to be in cache longer.
Full blown RAM disks have limited applications, especially when the buffer cache can almost always do a better job. If you have gobs of RAM you're not using, increase the size!