A company comes out with a product that is atleast fairly cool. If it does nothing that it says it will, it atleast will turn some heads and get some attention. So at its worst, this is AMAZING PR for linux in general. Can't you just picture it now:
MS Driod: Its good, we don't have anything like it, lets buy the company.
Tech Dude: Uhh, Sir, this runs on Linux. We *CANT* aquire them.
Beyond that, this reaffirms the idea that Linux is a valid operating system for the enterprise, and MySQL as a valid Data base solution. Even though I know this, and you probably know this, what matters is the the VP's and VC's know this. My company is forced to use Oracle because our clients "don't trust PostgreSQL nor MySQL."
If sony were to stop letting their content production department run thier corperation, they would realize that Minidiscs are awesome. What other portable player fits 74 miniutes on a versilile (have you ever thrown a flash card accross the room,) ans cheap (about $2.) There is one problem with these discs, there is no way to do a direct transfer from your computer to them. I would be in hog heaven if I could stick a minidisc in my computer, drag some MP3's onto it, and leave. Instead, you have to play the MP3's from your computer, and record them on your MD. This sux, and could be remidied by such a trivial little device.
I think we are all overlooking one extrodinarily important factoid, All open source software is open source. That is, the code, and change logs, and CVS logs, etc... are completely and totally open to the public. M$ or thier lawyers would have an extremely hard time claiming that MS interop was a result of the hack if it wasn't, as judges could see a clear progression of the source code. Just think, MS says that the samba team hacked thier servers, stole the source, and is using it. Well, just look @ the samba logs and see that they were doing this well in advance of the hack. Hooray for open source.
Also, Microsoft is one of the few true symbols of "Big evil company" out there, can you imagine the kind of PR they'll get when the local news starts reporting that MS is "Going after a free alternative OS" Unless MS owns news anchors, (well, more than one networks worth,) the news couldn't possible substantiate the spin we are all paraniod of.
Now, the only real question left is, if someone has the source to say, windows, what good is it going to do them? THe only real motive I can think of is. Post it on the net anonymously.
If this happens, then MS is fucked, as trade secrets aren't trade secrets once thier known.
Well, we can all cross our fingers (and penguin's can cross thier fingers)
As we have seen in many biological environments, evolution does NOT happen at a continous rate. Instead, species tend to evolve very significantly in a very short amount of time, and then stay pretty much the same untill this happens again. This theory is known as Punctuated Equilibruum, and is currently accepted in the world of biology. WHen mapped to software, each brief occurance of rapid evolution can be thought of as a software release.
Throughout History, these punctures usually result in an extremely rapid power shift. (Think of the chimps when Homo Erectus first showed up.) In the end, that species that wins is the most able to adapt. In other words, if this evolutionary model works (which it sure does seem to!) than the new release of a distro might cause the dominant OS to change extremely rapidly. Further, given the change in useability between Linux PPC 2.5 years ago, and Linux PPC right now, I think we are certainly on the right track.
Although the author of this article would surely disagree, Linux has the potential and will, become the dominant desktop (as well as server, and every other market) in the extremely near future. So don't give up!
Thats right. In cubic's infinite wisdom, they made metrocards as unforgable as possible by making the card themseves analog. This turns out to be really stupid, because the machines then have to expect slightly mangled data (after all, the cards stay in my wallet next to all my other credit cards.) So, if you scratch the right portion of the card, than you can stay under the machine's error threshhold while destroying the part of the card that holds the current price (Apperantly the original amount and the current amount are stored in different locations on the card).
Stupid MTA.
Well, that will show them for putting cops in every station to arrest me for truency after 3:00 and during the summer.
What about these algorithms. While they may seem trivial to all those people in CS gradschool, someone had to come up with these. Not only are they extremely cool, but they are used very frequently.
Is there some part of the contest I am missing, becuase these algorithms seem to be on the smae level as the quicksort algorith, (which is also very cool). Anyway, can someone set me straight?
as root and BOOM. A nice purdy installer pops up and does the intall for you. Very nice work gnome people. From the people I have spoken too, installing and settuing up is by far the hardest part, and this is <B>SIMPLE</B>. I think we should say thank you to the gnome team for this. And hey, they even included a linuxPPC binary. BTW, for people that don't have a RedHat 6.x system, you guys should use <a href="http://www.helixcode.com/desktop/download.ph p3">This Link</a>.
As you wil recall from scopin' around your computer, the clock pulse is a square wave, (computers are digital, remember?) However, even if they are oscilating at speeds that would put them in the microwave spectrum, cmos chips don't output or draw enough current to cause anyone any harm..
As far as I can tell, the most promising facet of subatomic particles and their bazaar properties is in the application of data transfer. As you may or may not know, subatomic particles often come in pairs, where the spins add up to zero. Remember electron orbitals from chem class, where each orbital could have two electrons, a +1/2 spin electron and a -1/2 spin electron? Well, as it turns out there are many other subatomic particles that come in pairs like this. But here is by far the coolest part:
If we seperate the pair of particles, and alter the spin of one particle, the other particle's spin changes too!
But wait, theres more:
This change happens instantly, faster than the speed of light!
What is extremely cool is that we already have devices that can both change the spin of a particle and see what the spin of a particle is. Although this doesn't seem incredibly amazing yet, as we already have a means of getting data from one place to another at the speed of light, and the distances are small enough that the transfer is essentally instant. But what about further in the future, when we want to communicate with say mars, which I believe is around 2 light minuites away, (and I don't think we can strech fiber lines). Radio? That would suck, If we can figure out how to implement this technology than we can just comunicate our binary data (how convienent, there are two states for an electron,) superluminously (faster than the speed of light,) for essentially nothing. Remember, there is no chance of some idiot disrupting communications with a back hoe here! Anyway, just my $0.02
Ericson's goal in a phone is functionality unlike most cell phone makers out there who want the phones to be purdy. Thier phones are really solid with no extraneous features. Further, some of them have ir ports, so you can go on the net with your pilot through them.
Does anyone have a copy of gnutella, It would really be a pity if we let AOL kill a piece of software that is sooo coooooooool. Please reply and post a link, or e-mail me, I want to put up a public mirror.
--Fosh
Why use IR while connected on the Net?
on
Laptop Exams?
·
· Score: 1
They were aloud wireless modems, why use IR when they could just e-mail, or hell, ICQ, the answers back and forth.
Now those newtons were truly beautiful peices of machinery. 200 mHz, full, amazingly accurate handwriting recognition, and a killer interface. God, I really with they hadn't discontinued them.
O, Wait, what am I saying
None of this swwweeeeet technology is going to goto waste, hooray. They are just reincarnating it (for around the same price) as the power book. Now I heard a rumor that someone got quake on one of those puppies, that'd be sweet!
And now, the Hardware Hacker emerges from the dark cave:
Now, does anyone know whether the handwriting recognition is implemented in hardware, or software. Now if it were implemented in hardware, that would be awesome. It would mean you coul plug one of these devices into anything and have it "just work! (tm)" Obviouslty, this means bultin linux support (tm). -fosh The opinions expressed here are not nessesarily anyones
I feel so bad for the intellectuals in China... They can't feed thier minds the way that they want to. <br><br> I hope that in the <b>near</b> future the linux community (soon to be arch enemy of china) can set up a MASSIVE collection of U.S. based proxy servers. I think the U.S, the same way the pumped radio signals into radio-free europe, has an obligation to find a way to pump non-censored internet into china. As a community of intellectuals, we MUST find a way to set up proxies such that they are abundant enough that the chinese government has no chance of being able to filter them!
The most amusing side affect of this new "innovation" is that it will be no longer possible to back up your important files. Further, if a user wants to copy another users file, and then edit it, both of them will end up with the same copy.
Thank you Microsoft, for inventing another feature that sucks
If the Government can pass a law forcing all network traffic be copied, and saved so that they can reveiw it, then either Russian Crypto isn't good, or a law will be passed against it in the near future.
I find it extremely interesting that YDL, by far the most commercal distro of Linux on a PPC is first in the list, with LinuxPPC, the most functional, following second. I wonder how this order was decided upon. Further, I find it interesting that BootX, the tool that allows linux to run on most PPC's, is listed last. Hmmmm, I wonder whose website this really is.
I just really hope that apple begins to recognize such truly fabulous distros as LinuxPPC, the first distro of linux have an X based install, and the first distro to boot directly into X after the first install. Anyway,
My guess is that the reason the govennment can't break mitniks files is becuase the have been compressed in some way, like adaptive huffman coding, or something. Becuase Brute force only works when u can check the decrypted file against a vocab list, it is EXTREMEMLY difficult to break an enctrypted file.
IMHO, the true reason the TV industry, (and other industries) are so worried about people copying thier stuff digitally is not becuase the are worried about the initial copy from broadcast to your media, it is the subsequent transfers that they worry about. FOr example, after the matrix is shown as a movie on TV, if u make a digital copy, you can then give an EXACT replica to all of your friends, and they could give it to all thier friends, etc. On the flip side, if the whole process was analog, there would be a noticiable difference in the quality after every copy. Other industries have already realized this danger and have taken REASONABLE steps against it. For example, you are not aloud to create a potable minidisc player that has a digital output. However, there is no restriction to home units. This way, the record companies don't have to be concerned that people are running aroung making EXACT replicas of thier music. The TV industry needs to come up with a set of reasonable guidelines like these. What the SHOULDN'T do is try to not allow the data to be stored digitally, or encrypt it (Ahem, DeCSS) etc. Instead, they should reach a COMPORMISE --Alex the Fishman, the coherent superposition
Tne thing that I find really amusing, and quite synical (I do live in NYC) is that we have NO way of preventing a cosmic rock from hitting us if it is headed towards earth. Becuase of this slight detail, isn't forming a Cosmic Rock Watching comitee purely aimed at media hype/Mass Hesteria?? I can just see it now, it'll be like the Y2K Fiasco, a reported on the news will anounce one day that we are all going to die jan 1, 2999...
Dr. Taco, I would just like to say that I think you are doing a phenomenal job running slashdot. I check it between 4-15 times a day (as any geek should) and find that there has almost always been an update. I find the articles truely fascinating, and the current trend to have more stories with bodies (err..) excellent. Also, the interviews are incredible. Finally, geeks in space is my new fave radio show. You guys should do a morning edition one day! Also, I find that reading people's comments is wonderful, however there is so much crap out there, and almost all of it comes from Anonymous Cowards. SO my first real question is:
Would you ever consider not allowing Anonymous Cowards to post? Or atleast forcing people to register if they want to post anonymously? THis would cut down on alot of the garbage comments as well as forcing people to think themselves through.
Also, I would love (!!LOVE!!) it if the current slashdot source were released along with a document explianing the central algorithms used in slashdot as well as a discussion about how the user database is kept, and your personal views on penguins. The second real question is:
Would you ever consider releasing all of source to slashdot as well as a paper explaining how it works?
Also, in my readings of slashdot, I have found that most of the articles are Gee-Whiz type articles, that seem to say: "Look at this!!! Wow!!!," as opposed to the Heres-How-They_Work kind of article. As a representative member of the party of geeks, i personally find the Heres-How-They_Work type articles much more interesting and impressing. So, here comes question number 3:
WOuld you consider posting more Heres-How-They_Work type articles as opposed to the Gee-Whiz type article?
Along these same lines is the question of open discussion forums. I personally find the comments of articles such as: What do you think of Artificial Intelligence? incredible interesting to read. SO whithout further adue, question four:
Would You consider posting more discussion oriented articles, (like this one!)?
From here on in, the geek side of me is going to sleep for a while so the investor part of me can ask a few question about the Andover.net stock. My first question is:
Do you make money in any other way than advertising? About how many people have an Andover.Net site as their home page? About how many registered users are there on SLashdot? How many hits does Slashdot recieve a day?
THank you Dr. Taco and Mr. Hemos for everything. I can't wait to hear (see?) your responses///
Gee, I bet there are some really bitter survivalists out there somewhere in there bomb shelters with a years worth of canned baked beans. I love america!
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously guys,
A company comes out with a product that is atleast fairly cool. If it does nothing that it says it will, it atleast will turn some heads and get some attention. So at its worst, this is AMAZING PR for linux in general. Can't you just picture it now:
MS Driod: Its good, we don't have anything like it, lets buy the company.
Tech Dude: Uhh, Sir, this runs on Linux. We *CANT* aquire them.
Beyond that, this reaffirms the idea that Linux is a valid operating system for the enterprise, and MySQL as a valid Data base solution. Even though I know this, and you probably know this, what matters is the the VP's and VC's know this. My company is forced to use Oracle because our clients "don't trust PostgreSQL nor MySQL."
So the way I see it, we win!
--Alex the Fishman, (very proud fishman)
If sony were to stop letting their content production department run thier corperation, they would realize that Minidiscs are awesome. What other portable player fits 74 miniutes on a versilile (have you ever thrown a flash card accross the room,) ans cheap (about $2.) There is one problem with these discs, there is no way to do a direct transfer from your computer to them. I would be in hog heaven if I could stick a minidisc in my computer, drag some MP3's onto it, and leave. Instead, you have to play the MP3's from your computer, and record them on your MD. This sux, and could be remidied by such a trivial little device.
Sony! Wake up!!!
--Alex the (mad @ sony) Fishman
I think we are all overlooking one extrodinarily important factoid, All open source software is open source. That is, the code, and change logs, and CVS logs, etc... are completely and totally open to the public. M$ or thier lawyers would have an extremely hard time claiming that MS interop was a result of the hack if it wasn't, as judges could see a clear progression of the source code. Just think, MS says that the samba team hacked thier servers, stole the source, and is using it. Well, just look @ the samba logs and see that they were doing this well in advance of the hack. Hooray for open source.
Also, Microsoft is one of the few true symbols of "Big evil company" out there, can you imagine the kind of PR they'll get when the local news starts reporting that MS is "Going after a free alternative OS" Unless MS owns news anchors, (well, more than one networks worth,) the news couldn't possible substantiate the spin we are all paraniod of.
Now, the only real question left is, if someone has the source to say, windows, what good is it going to do them? THe only real motive I can think of is. Post it on the net anonymously.
If this happens, then MS is fucked, as trade secrets aren't trade secrets once thier known.
Well, we can all cross our fingers (and penguin's can cross thier fingers)
Thats enough rambling,
--Alex the Gnome Fish
As we have seen in many biological environments, evolution does NOT happen at a continous rate. Instead, species tend to evolve very significantly in a very short amount of time, and then stay pretty much the same untill this happens again. This theory is known as Punctuated Equilibruum, and is currently accepted in the world of biology. WHen mapped to software, each brief occurance of rapid evolution can be thought of as a software release.
Throughout History, these punctures usually result in an extremely rapid power shift. (Think of the chimps when Homo Erectus first showed up.) In the end, that species that wins is the most able to adapt. In other words, if this evolutionary model works (which it sure does seem to!) than the new release of a distro might cause the dominant OS to change extremely rapidly. Further, given the change in useability between Linux PPC 2.5 years ago, and Linux PPC right now, I think we are certainly on the right track.
Although the author of this article would surely disagree, Linux has the potential and will, become the dominant desktop (as well as server, and every other market) in the extremely near future. So don't give up!
Ok, I'll stop rambling now,
--Alex the Gnome Fish
Thats right. In cubic's infinite wisdom, they made metrocards as unforgable as possible by making the card themseves analog. This turns out to be really stupid, because the machines then have to expect slightly mangled data (after all, the cards stay in my wallet next to all my other credit cards.) So, if you scratch the right portion of the card, than you can stay under the machine's error threshhold while destroying the part of the card that holds the current price (Apperantly the original amount and the current amount are stored in different locations on the card).
Stupid MTA.
Well, that will show them for putting cops in every station to arrest me for truency after 3:00 and during the summer.
--Alex the very bitter Fishman
THe initial page crashes every linux browser, so goto the inner page, http://www.techpages.com/linux.html to download,
THis should be a good laugh
What about these algorithms. While they may seem trivial to all those people in CS gradschool, someone had to come up with these. Not only are they extremely cool, but they are used very frequently.
Is there some part of the contest I am missing, becuase these algorithms seem to be on the smae level as the quicksort algorith, (which is also very cool). Anyway, can someone set me straight?
--Alex
The installer is just BEAUTIFUL. Also, installing is rediculously simple. All you do is type:
h p3">This Link</a>.
lynx -source http://spidermonkey.helixcode.com/go-gnome-sh
as root and BOOM. A nice purdy installer pops up and does the intall for you. Very nice work gnome people. From the people I have spoken too, installing and settuing up is by far the hardest part, and this is <B>SIMPLE</B>. I think we should say thank you to the gnome team for this. And hey, they even included a linuxPPC binary. BTW, for people that don't have a RedHat 6.x system, you guys should use <a href="http://www.helixcode.com/desktop/download.p
Once again, Three Cheers for the gnome people,
Hip Hip Hooray
--Alex
As you wil recall from scopin' around your computer, the clock pulse is a square wave, (computers are digital, remember?) However, even if they are oscilating at speeds that would put them in the microwave spectrum, cmos chips don't output or draw enough current to cause anyone any harm..
--Alex,
As far as I can tell, the most promising facet of subatomic particles and their bazaar properties is in the application of data transfer. As you may or may not know, subatomic particles often come in pairs, where the spins add up to zero. Remember electron orbitals from chem class, where each orbital could have two electrons, a +1/2 spin electron and a -1/2 spin electron? Well, as it turns out there are many other subatomic particles that come in pairs like this. But here is by far the coolest part:
If we seperate the pair of particles, and alter the spin of one particle, the other particle's spin changes too!
But wait, theres more:
This change happens instantly, faster than the speed of light!
What is extremely cool is that we already have devices that can both change the spin of a particle and see what the spin of a particle is. Although this doesn't seem incredibly amazing yet, as we already have a means of getting data from one place to another at the speed of light, and the distances are small enough that the transfer is essentally instant. But what about further in the future, when we want to communicate with say mars, which I believe is around 2 light minuites away, (and I don't think we can strech fiber lines). Radio? That would suck, If we can figure out how to implement this technology than we can just comunicate our binary data (how convienent, there are two states for an electron,) superluminously (faster than the speed of light,) for essentially nothing. Remember, there is no chance of some idiot disrupting communications with a back hoe here! Anyway, just my $0.02
I hope no one missed Windows 2000 post on FM, also, don't forget RMS' visual Basic
Ericson's goal in a phone is functionality unlike most cell phone makers out there who want the phones to be purdy. Thier phones are really solid with no extraneous features. Further, some of them have ir ports, so you can go on the net with your pilot through them.
--Alex
Does anyone have a copy of gnutella, It would really be a pity if we let AOL kill a piece of software that is sooo coooooooool. Please reply and post a link, or e-mail me, I want to put up a public mirror.
--Fosh
They were aloud wireless modems, why use IR when they could just e-mail, or hell, ICQ, the answers back and forth.
Now those newtons were truly beautiful peices of machinery. 200 mHz, full, amazingly accurate handwriting recognition, and a killer interface. God, I really with they hadn't discontinued them.
O, Wait, what am I saying
None of this swwweeeeet technology is going to goto waste, hooray. They are just reincarnating it (for around the same price) as the power book. Now I heard a rumor that someone got quake on one of those puppies, that'd be sweet!
And now, the Hardware Hacker emerges from the dark cave:
Now, does anyone know whether the handwriting recognition is implemented in hardware, or software. Now if it were implemented in hardware, that would be awesome. It would mean you coul plug one of these devices into anything and have it "just work! (tm)" Obviouslty, this means bultin linux support (tm). -fosh The opinions expressed here are not nessesarily anyones
I feel so bad for the intellectuals in China... They can't feed thier minds the way that they want to.
<br><br>
I hope that in the <b>near</b> future the linux community (soon to be arch enemy of china) can set up a MASSIVE collection of U.S. based proxy servers. I think the U.S, the same way the pumped radio signals into radio-free europe, has an obligation to find a way to pump non-censored internet into china. As a community of intellectuals, we MUST find a way to set up proxies such that they are abundant enough that the chinese government has no chance of being able to filter them!
The most amusing side affect of this new "innovation" is that it will be no longer possible to back up your important files. Further, if a user wants to copy another users file, and then edit it, both of them will end up with the same copy.
Thank you Microsoft, for inventing another feature that sucks
If the Government can pass a law forcing all network traffic be copied, and saved so that they can reveiw it, then either Russian Crypto isn't good, or a law will be passed against it in the near future.
I find it extremely interesting that YDL, by far the most commercal distro of Linux on a PPC is first in the list, with LinuxPPC, the most functional, following second. I wonder how this order was decided upon. Further, I find it interesting that BootX, the tool that allows linux to run on most PPC's, is listed last. Hmmmm, I wonder whose website this really is.
I just really hope that apple begins to recognize such truly fabulous distros as LinuxPPC, the first distro of linux have an X based install, and the first distro to boot directly into X after the first install. Anyway,
Just my $0.02,
My guess is that the reason the govennment can't break mitniks files is becuase the have been compressed in some way, like adaptive huffman coding, or something. Becuase Brute force only works when u can check the decrypted file against a vocab list, it is EXTREMEMLY difficult to break an enctrypted file.
Just my $0.02
IMHO, the true reason the TV industry, (and other industries) are so worried about people copying thier stuff digitally is not becuase the are worried about the initial copy from broadcast to your media, it is the subsequent transfers that they worry about. FOr example, after the matrix is shown as a movie on TV, if u make a digital copy, you can then give an EXACT replica to all of your friends, and they could give it to all thier friends, etc. On the flip side, if the whole process was analog, there would be a noticiable difference in the quality after every copy. Other industries have already realized this danger and have taken REASONABLE steps against it. For example, you are not aloud to create a potable minidisc player that has a digital output. However, there is no restriction to home units. This way, the record companies don't have to be concerned that people are running aroung making EXACT replicas of thier music. The TV industry needs to come up with a set of reasonable guidelines like these. What the SHOULDN'T do is try to not allow the data to be stored digitally, or encrypt it (Ahem, DeCSS) etc. Instead, they should reach a COMPORMISE --Alex the Fishman, the coherent superposition
Tne thing that I find really amusing, and quite synical (I do live in NYC) is that we have NO way of preventing a cosmic rock from hitting us if it is headed towards earth. Becuase of this slight detail, isn't forming a Cosmic Rock Watching comitee purely aimed at media hype/Mass Hesteria?? I can just see it now, it'll be like the Y2K Fiasco, a reported on the news will anounce one day that we are all going to die jan 1, 2999...
(Sound Familiar???)
First,
Dr. Taco, I would just like to say that I think you are doing a phenomenal job running slashdot. I check it between 4-15 times a day (as any geek should) and find that there has almost always been an update. I find the articles truely fascinating, and the current trend to have more stories with bodies (err..) excellent. Also, the interviews are incredible. Finally, geeks in space is my new fave radio show. You guys should do a morning edition one day! Also, I find that reading people's comments is wonderful, however there is so much crap out there, and almost all of it comes from Anonymous Cowards. SO my first real question is:
Would you ever consider not allowing Anonymous Cowards to post? Or atleast forcing people to register if they want to post anonymously? THis would cut down on alot of the garbage comments as well as forcing people to think themselves through.
Also, I would love (!!LOVE!!) it if the current slashdot source were released along with a document explianing the central algorithms used in slashdot as well as a discussion about how the user database is kept, and your personal views on penguins. The second real question is:
Would you ever consider releasing all of source to slashdot as well as a paper explaining how it works?
Also, in my readings of slashdot, I have found that most of the articles are Gee-Whiz type articles, that seem to say: "Look at this!!! Wow!!!," as opposed to the Heres-How-They_Work kind of article. As a representative member of the party of geeks, i personally find the Heres-How-They_Work type articles much more interesting and impressing. So, here comes question number 3:
WOuld you consider posting more Heres-How-They_Work type articles as opposed to the Gee-Whiz type article?
Along these same lines is the question of open discussion forums. I personally find the comments of articles such as: What do you think of Artificial Intelligence? incredible interesting to read. SO whithout further adue, question four:
Would You consider posting more discussion oriented articles, (like this one!)?
From here on in, the geek side of me is going to sleep for a while so the investor part of me can ask a few question about the Andover.net stock. My first question is:
Do you make money in any other way than advertising? About how many people have an Andover.Net site as their home page? About how many registered users are there on SLashdot? How many hits does Slashdot recieve a day?
THank you Dr. Taco and Mr. Hemos for everything. I can't wait to hear (see?) your responses///
-fosh
Gee, I bet there are some really bitter survivalists out there somewhere in there bomb shelters with a years worth of canned baked beans. I love america!
Don't forget the digital S/PdIF in/out.