Re:Remember your history
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Interface Zen
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· Score: 1
But there were no CTRL or ALT/META keys on those old keyboards.
If we go back to COMPUTER input devices, we have the 029 keypunch (shudder!) and the teletype. The 029 used EBCDIC, and the teletype used ASCII.
It was mostly due to the preference of ASCII that the teletype is the place from which most of our current keyboard arrangement descended.
The teletype has the CTRL key "where God meant it to be [J. Pournelle]" (above the SHIFT key), and the CAPSLOCK relegated underneath the SHIFT.
History lesson to be continued some other time. --
Re:Of Keyboards and Repeat
on
Interface Zen
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· Score: 1
I figured there was a way. I haven't used a Mac in years (I have a Mac Plus somewhere in my garage). Thanks for the illumination. --
Of Keyboards and Repeat
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Interface Zen
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· Score: 5
Despite the repeated sections (Rob... PLEASE fix this!), this is pretty informative. But I still have a few nits to pick.
CAPSLOCK. Why? Well, some people don't touch type. Other people have physical deformities that makes hitting SHIFT plus another key difficult, and "accessibility" wasn't something that was thought about in previous generations of systems.
CONTROL. Yes. It should be where PC keyboards put the CAPSLOCK key, but it isn't. Same with the ESCAPE key being sent to Siberia. Frustrates the heck out of us VI users (um... EMACS users use those keys too... no flame wars please).
Those of us with X have xmodmap and xkeycaps and other utilities for redefining our keyboard layouts. I imagine that there are similar utilities for Macs and Windows... so there are people aware of the problem and who have some solutions.
Using the right input device for the right job is crucial. Otherwise we will never be able to get the non-initiated to use them.
People not "in the know" still wonder how a Palm Pilot can survive without a keyboard. The answer is really simple: the software is written such that using the stylus becomes second nature. Same as with the Millipede example... the software was written for a specific input device.
Maybe neurocomputing will allow people to get information into a computer faster than is currently possible (I doubt so, but I'm willing to be proven wrong!), but that is not available right now. Keyboards have worked for a nice long time and will probably be ubiquitous for a time being.
Remember that laptops were thought of as toys (with "chiclet keys!") originally until the TRS-80 Model 100 came out with a FULL SIZE KEYBOARD. We've progressed past that humble 8K RAM beginning, and now laptops are so common that even the people at the airport detectors barely look at them except to tell you to turn them on. --
I remember reading the Lazlo Letters by Don Novello (aka Father Guido Sarducci) in the late 1970's, and later during when _Spy_ magazine was still in print.
It's a funny idea, writing mock letters of gratitude or complaint to various companies ("I got a crushed M&M") and political figures ("I'm pulling for ya!") and seeing who get's it or who falls for his line.
This is much the same thing...
That said, I enjoyed reading these letters as well.
And yes, some of these will be offensive to some people.
Of course, the background says that he's a Linux user, and "once tried to install a beta of Windows NT 3.51, but encountered a BSOD." Thus, his opinion is about as biased as any opinion voiced here.
Be that as it may, it was very clever for him to point out that Microsoft counts "X number of licenses purchased, ergo X number of licenses used" as a source of inflated Microsoft claims.
I don't think that this article will change any PHB's opinions vis-a-vis Linux vs Microsoft, but it is heartening to see such articles written that contain substance and not as much diatribe.
"All in all, I give it two thumbs up." "All in all, I give Microsoft one finger up." --
There are lots of other browsers, if one just looks.
There's W3C's Amaya, and their orphaned Arena browser. Sun has HotJava. There's Netscape and Mozilla (of course). Lynx. Mosaic is still around. I remember something called "dozer" (or was that an HTML editor?) as well. Star Office also contains a browser within it.
There are probably a few projects that I haven't heard about.
It makes sense for KDE and Gnome to incorporate browser technology into their desktop environments.
What would be bad for everybody would be if every one of these started to extend HTML with their own proprietary features (Netscape's CENTER tag comes immediately to mind, but there are plenty of other culprits here).
If I can sit down at any of these browsers, and once I figure out how navigation works (click on links for graphical browser, TAB and ENTER for lynx, etc.), I should be able to surf on any and all of these. And all pages should render as best as possible on every one of these browsers.
This means that JVM's need to be standardized, JavaScript implementations need to be compliant to some standard, or else we will be in a tower of Babel where everybody can talk, but nobody can hear what anybody else is saying.
To see what I'm talking about, just browse some of the comp.infosystems.www.* newsgroups, and listen to all the complaints about how Netscape and IE disagree on the rendering of this-and-that, and multiply it by the sheer number of browsers that are still coming out.
I welcome all browsers, even newcomers. But this isn't 1993... there are standards that they are expected to adhere to.
I know the complaints...
HTML (what version? 3.2, 4.0? hmmm?). CSS (1 or 2?). JavaScript. Java (1.02? 1.1.x? 1.1.x + Swing? 1.2?). HTTP (1.0? 1.1?). You name it.
Well, the best thing would be to support as many of these as you can; usually the newer versions are backward compatible. If not, there is usually some way to specify which version something is written to; support as many and as much as you can.
This is a tall order for a web browser nowadays, and the weight of these requirements has been very apparent in the Mozilla development. But your users will love you for it. --
You can indeed compare a college student with a seventh grader.
In both cases, a work of fiction was written that referred to acts of murder against classmates (mentioned by name).
I cited the Baker story because it DOES compare:
The school authorities took action against the student for writing something that the school authorities decided could be taken as a threat against another student.
The student was arrested as a consequence.
The dismissal of Jake Baker was upheld by the courts. The government's prosecution of Baker failed because the govenment failed to show intent to carry out the threat; the judge referred to Baker's story as "a rather savage and tasteless piece of fiction."
Thus, according to the courts, an institution is allowed to dismiss the student for such actions, apparently if they violate some code of ethical conduct. However, such writings don't pass legal muster of showing intent to cause harm. (Note: Baker's case was tried in Federal court; Texas may have its own laws and precedents; again, I am not a lawyer.)
And I think it is this last thing that has people so up in arms... nobody believes that Christopher Beamon INTENDED to do any harm to his classmates... and if there was no intention of harm, how can there be a threat? And if there's no threat, why was he arrested?
This is a question that nobody here can answer. I just hope that the American public sees the kind of slippery slope they are sliding down when they pursue these kinds of things, whether it be a college student writing on alt.sex.stories, a seventh grader writing a "scary essay," or a pre-teen attempting to steal a kiss from another pre-teen. --
I remember a few of years ago, a student named Jake Baker at the University of Michigan wrote piece of erotic fiction on USENET (alt.sex.stories?) that described acts of rape, sexual torture, and murder of a classmate, who was mentioned by name.
He had prepended a disclaimer to his work (mentioning that it contained "lots of sick stuff") and he put his real name on the postings.
When the University was informed of the postings from an alumnus who is an attorney in Moscow (!!!), he was dismissed from the University. The 6th Circuit court of appeals affirmed the dismissal.
Now... the case that Jon sites is different in that this was schoolwork that the 7th grader wrote, but the similarity was that people were mentioned by name.
I agree with Jon's sentiments that students should have freedom of speech and press (which applies here? I'm not a lawyer.). However, the University of Michigan case is a precedent that has already undergone appeal in federal court that states that such writings COULD and ARE considered threatening.
Jake's story was posted to one of the alt.sex groups in early 1995. This was way before the Columbine killings. Instead of seeing an increased panic among school administrators, I see continuity from what they were doing four years ago.
Now... I do not for one minute believe that either Christopher Beamon or Jake Baker meant to threaten anybody by their writings. However, there is still a precedent that considers these writings as threatening and should be punished.
For this reason, I think Jon is jumping the gun here in saying that this has anything to do with the Columbine shootings or the perceived "anti-geek" attitudes that were mentioned in the previous "Hellmouth" stories.
Maybe, just maybe, those shootings made school administrators more willing to take quick action.
Nevertheless, I do not agree with the disposition of either Jake Baker's case, nor with Chris Beamon's.
I think that if schools are going to prosecute people for such things, then there should be a clear policy explained to all the students; the ground rules must be made clear if we are to try to avoid such things that may upset other students or their parents. If a school has such rules, they should be published and placed under the scrutiny of the public. If they are too draconian, allow them to be challenged by the parents, teachers, or students... even the ACLU.
Otherwise, I can see this being a precedent for yet another case, where a five year old says to another student "Come back here! I'll kill you!" and gets expelled.
Well, let's hope that Intel doesn't get any ideas here. I can see the announcements now: You misunderstood, the "64" in IA-64 was for MEGAHERTZ, not 64 bit addressing lines!!!
This could explain all the secrecy and non-disclosures that surround all people that are working on the IA-64 platform...
I have had an online presense since the 1980s, and have always known that things that I say or that I have said could or would be archived and still around years and even decades later. You never know who might be archiving a USENET newsgroup, or even just messages from you.
I comport my life in that I tend to say what I mean, and mean what I say (and Humpty Dumpty points out that these aren't always the same things!). My opinions may change over the years, but I have rarely said things in public forums that I am sorry for having said... if my views have changed over time, then it's documentation of a learning process!
In the unlikely event that somebody would find such a change in my personal opinions, and would take the effort to try to use my own words against me, my response would be to point out that EVEN *I* CAN MANAGE TO CHANGE MY MIND AND (get this!) evolve better opinions!
For those people who may find themselves ashamed for things that they may have said a few years ago, my feeling is "well... it's your own fault if you said such things in a public forum."
Speaking on USENET, on a "community bulletin board," on Slashdot, or in any other public online forum, is the same as talking to a reporter for a newspaper. Whatever you say will be still be around years later... even after you die (there are newspaper "morgues" that go back many decades!).
The moral is: think before you speak. And most important: Think about the legacy you are leaving behind! I think I am proud of my legacy... even the things that I have done in the past that turned out to be incorrect. After all, everything has contributed in my being the person that is me right now.
But then again, maybe I won't feel this way in a year or so. If not, in the words of Emily Litella, "Never mind!" --
Strunk and White is ESSENTIAL for anybody writing ANYTHING. His answer to that question, and the obvious thought that went into the other answers, gives me more reason to be impressed by him.
A further suggestion on my part would be for aspiring authors to find out what THEY like to read, and try to figure out what about the style impresses them. --
The compiler, as distributed, is Beta software, and the license reflects this. There is no mention as to whether the final product will be commercial, free to use, or open source. (I personally doubt the latter, though.)
Although I work for Compaq (and formerly for Digital), I do not work for the GEM group and cannot speak with any official say on this, but it is my recollection that parts of the compiler are NOT written in C or assembler, so having the source code may not be a big help, actually.
The reason that GEM gets such good numbers is that the people working on it are Alpha chip experts. They know what optimizations work exceptionally well on the architecture.
In response to some comments made above, I would like to point out that Compaq (and Digital before that) has supported Linux for a long time, on Intel and Alpha chips. Compaq is not just now jumping on a bandwagon. Remember that Jon ("maddog") Hall, Executive Director of Linux International, was employed by Digital/Compaq up until recently, when LI was able to hire him directly. Compaq's commitment continues, as is evidenced by the release of the C compiler.
Releasing GEM for Alpha Linux is a smart move in my (admittedly biased) opinion; it allows more applications that are built on Tru64 Unix to run on Alpha Linux. Up until now, only statically linked binaries could run, which precluded threaded applications, etc. One can only hope that some of the other applications now only available on Tru64 Unix will eventually be supported on Linux. And whether they are free or not, having applications available is a win for the whole community.
Finally, please note that I am a Compaq employee, but in no way am I speaking for them in this comment. --
On the radio, the news shows are starting to sound like John Lennon chanting "Number nine... Number nine... Number nine..." And now its the web 'zines. [sigh] Give me a break! --
I was rather amazed by the (unattributed) comment that Cringely made in his column:
Compaq engineers quietly admit that Linux on Alpha runs better than Compaq's own Unix.
Since Linux is built with GCC, and Tru64 Unix with GEM C, I cannot figure out which engineers that Cringely has been talking with. GEM has been rather carefully optimized and tuned for the Alpha architecture, and I know the same is true of Tru64's libc and pthreads implementation.
Don't get me wrong, Linux works fine on Alphas, and their performance will only get better as Linux (and GCC) are made more 64-bit aware. And Compaq has a whole bunch of people trying to help get applications ported to both Tru64 and Linux. --
I may not be as eloquent as Jon, but as a parent, it is *I* or my wife that makes the decision as to which movies my daughters (ages 10 and 11) can see. Right now, they'd love to see South Park, but my wife dislikes the show, so we'll wait for it to come out on video. They have shown no interest in American Pie, and they laughed at Something About Mary last year (they didn't understand some of the scenes).
Right now, we are kind of lucky in that whatever intrigues the girls is something that either my wife or I would like to see. Otherwise, we try to convince the kids to wait until it comes out on video... this is usually a short wait.
Will I take them to see Eyes Wide Shut? Perhaps not. We made a similar decision years ago with Sliver.
But in each and every one of these cases, it was my wife and I that made the decisions as to the suitability of a movie for our children. We don't necessarily trust an MPAA rating; they are inconsistantly applied. There are other services right here on the web such as Screen It which gives a lot more information about a particular movie than any single R or PG13 could do.
Perhaps Clinton and Congress are bemoaning the lack of parental responsibility in this country. I may be the exception rather than the rule in how I make my judgments; I cannot talk for other parents.
Having the MPAA's rating system "enforced" by theatre managers is silly, and is deserving of all the contempt you can give it.
However, Jon's suggestion that adults hang out and pick up minors to "escort" them to see a movie sends chills up and down my spine. If I were to see that, I'd probably alert the authorities.
How? This is a streaming encryption system. Brute force attacks attempt to try to use a lot of keys in succession; this system appears to use a single key on a lot of data. Not the same thing. --
..and DES is not reasonable security. If anything, this product makes DES less secure.
Not necessarily. And if you read the text closer, you'll see that any encryption scheme could be implemented. That makes it more interesting.
Just think, you could encrypt a 10 Gb hard disk in eight seconds using the throughput that they mention. Something like that could easily be put into a device driver under Linux.
Even if one didn't want to encypt an entire hard disk, it could be used to encrypt backups, or (using IPSEC like you mentioned) an internal LAN or IP Tunnel; all of these are slower than 1 gigabit/sec so the overhead might not be noticed. --
Sure, they would be praised if they had simply contacted Packet Storms admin and told him that the offensive material would have to go or they would be forced to shut down the site. But then they would have become censors. Censoring content just doesn't seem very Harvard to me.
Removal of a site is also censorship.
Maybe if they forwarded the complaint to the maintainer of the site and have the maintainer explain exactly how he was going to react to the complaint (remove the materials, shut down his own site, etc.) and then have the web admins decide if the action was enough. This seems nicer in theory, but it would have taken some time and the offending materials may have still been available.
However, whether or not the offending materials were ever removed, the fact remains that they may have been there, and they may have been accessible to anybody who knew their location. If so, the claim of damage may have still been valid and a lawsuit could possibly still been filed. (Of course, I don't even play a lawyer on TV...!)
I sincerely think that Harvard had a right to shut down the site, for whatever reason. And I think it proper for them to return the data, if that's what they are claiming that they will do. I cannot see how you can fault them too much for this at this point.
Again, we'll see if Packet Storm reappears in a new location. And I think that it will have a much better agreement with the entities hosting them than they did with Harvard... I hope that this may be a learning experience for Packet Storm AND for all of us. --
Yes. My personal opinion of Harvard's network admins wasn't very high when I had heard that the data was going to be deleted without hesitation. Either the original report was misunderstood, or somebody had a change of heart after receiving complaints from the internet community. Either way, being able to re-create the site at a different location is nice.
I don't know what ISP would host a site as popular as that free of charge (unless banner ads were allowed). But I think that the next move would be to actually receive the data and start looking.
I sincerely hope that any people that sent complaints to AntiOnline or Harvard that specifically referenced Slashdot were written with cool heads and a moderation of actual flaming and insults; it would certainly make us look a lot more mature in the eyes of the outsiders. Of course, I know that this is just wishful thinking, especially after some of the comments made to yesterday's article here. [smile]
Anyway, things look a bit better now, and I hope that a new site can be set up quickly. --
It may be "Definitely a tool" but the article points out, quite correctly, that too many people are just, er... "playing with their palms" (now THERE'S a Freudian term!) rather than being productive with them.
Note that the article did point out some legitimate uses; it wasn't a blanket indictment, which some articles would have descended into. Much good thinking here, especially if you are in middle- to upper-management. --
There's nothing that will prevent people from continuing to write MP3 encoders and decoders, mostly because the format is already open and available.
If SDMI proves to be too restrictive, it will leave a bunch of companies behind with their "betamax" style technology.
Interesting how these people don't mind "first generation copies" but want to prevent Nth generation copies. But what if the original is my own work or is in the public domain? Why should I be restricted to the same limitations?
If SDMI doesn't address these issues properly, then they will find out that they created their little format, but nobody wants to play with them.
If this means more reliability for Slashdot, then this is good news.
I just hope this place doesn't lose its focus... nice hacker places on the Internet are few and far between.
When IMDB was acquired by Amazon last year, it precipitated a change in look (arguably better), but the service remained the same, which is really what people using the service really want to see.
So, it looks like we'll have to purchase one of these and find out what it runs.
If it doesn't look usable, it might be simple enough to reformat the drive and load REAL Linux on it.
Whichever, it still looks like an interesting system. ("Interesting" in the meaning that Spock might use; I got beat up on this term a month or so ago.) --
Slashdot Mirror
But there were no CTRL or ALT/META keys on those old keyboards.
If we go back to COMPUTER input devices, we have the 029 keypunch (shudder!) and the teletype. The 029 used EBCDIC, and the teletype used ASCII.
It was mostly due to the preference of ASCII that the teletype is the place from which most of our current keyboard arrangement descended.
The teletype has the CTRL key "where God meant it to be [J. Pournelle]" (above the SHIFT key), and the CAPSLOCK relegated underneath the SHIFT.
History lesson to be continued some other time.
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I figured there was a way. I haven't used a Mac in years (I have a Mac Plus somewhere in my garage). Thanks for the illumination.
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Despite the repeated sections (Rob... PLEASE fix this!), this is pretty informative. But I still have a few nits to pick.
CAPSLOCK. Why? Well, some people don't touch type. Other people have physical deformities that makes hitting SHIFT plus another key difficult, and "accessibility" wasn't something that was thought about in previous generations of systems.
CONTROL. Yes. It should be where PC keyboards put the CAPSLOCK key, but it isn't. Same with the ESCAPE key being sent to Siberia. Frustrates the heck out of us VI users (um... EMACS users use those keys too... no flame wars please).
Those of us with X have xmodmap and xkeycaps and other utilities for redefining our keyboard layouts. I imagine that there are similar utilities for Macs and Windows... so there are people aware of the problem and who have some solutions.
Using the right input device for the right job is crucial. Otherwise we will never be able to get the non-initiated to use them.
People not "in the know" still wonder how a Palm Pilot can survive without a keyboard. The answer is really simple: the software is written such that using the stylus becomes second nature. Same as with the Millipede example... the software was written for a specific input device.
Maybe neurocomputing will allow people to get information into a computer faster than is currently possible (I doubt so, but I'm willing to be proven wrong!), but that is not available right now. Keyboards have worked for a nice long time and will probably be ubiquitous for a time being.
Remember that laptops were thought of as toys (with "chiclet keys!") originally until the TRS-80 Model 100 came out with a FULL SIZE KEYBOARD. We've progressed past that humble 8K RAM beginning, and now laptops are so common that even the people at the airport detectors barely look at them except to tell you to turn them on.
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I remember reading the Lazlo Letters by Don Novello (aka Father Guido Sarducci) in the late 1970's, and later during when _Spy_ magazine was still in print.
It's a funny idea, writing mock letters of gratitude or complaint to various companies ("I got a crushed M&M") and political figures ("I'm pulling for ya!") and seeing who get's it or who falls for his line.
This is much the same thing...
That said, I enjoyed reading these letters as well.
And yes, some of these will be offensive to some people.
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Of course, the background says that he's a Linux user, and "once tried to install a beta of Windows NT 3.51, but encountered a BSOD." Thus, his opinion is about as biased as any opinion voiced here.
Be that as it may, it was very clever for him to point out that Microsoft counts "X number of licenses purchased, ergo X number of licenses used" as a source of inflated Microsoft claims.
I don't think that this article will change any PHB's opinions vis-a-vis Linux vs Microsoft, but it is heartening to see such articles written that contain substance and not as much diatribe.
"All in all, I give it two thumbs up."
"All in all, I give Microsoft one finger up."
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There are lots of other browsers, if one just looks.
There's W3C's Amaya, and their orphaned Arena browser. Sun has HotJava. There's Netscape and Mozilla (of course). Lynx. Mosaic is still around. I remember something called "dozer" (or was that an HTML editor?) as well. Star Office also contains a browser within it.
There are probably a few projects that I haven't heard about.
It makes sense for KDE and Gnome to incorporate browser technology into their desktop environments.
What would be bad for everybody would be if every one of these started to extend HTML with their own proprietary features (Netscape's CENTER tag comes immediately to mind, but there are plenty of other culprits here).
If I can sit down at any of these browsers, and once I figure out how navigation works (click on links for graphical browser, TAB and ENTER for lynx, etc.), I should be able to surf on any and all of these. And all pages should render as best as possible on every one of these browsers.
This means that JVM's need to be standardized, JavaScript implementations need to be compliant to some standard, or else we will be in a tower of Babel where everybody can talk, but nobody can hear what anybody else is saying.
To see what I'm talking about, just browse some of the comp.infosystems.www.* newsgroups, and listen to all the complaints about how Netscape and IE disagree on the rendering of this-and-that, and multiply it by the sheer number of browsers that are still coming out.
I welcome all browsers, even newcomers. But this isn't 1993... there are standards that they are expected to adhere to.
I know the complaints...
HTML (what version? 3.2, 4.0? hmmm?). CSS (1 or 2?). JavaScript. Java (1.02? 1.1.x? 1.1.x + Swing? 1.2?). HTTP (1.0? 1.1?). You name it.
Well, the best thing would be to support as many of these as you can; usually the newer versions are backward compatible. If not, there is usually some way to specify which version something is written to; support as many and as much as you can.
This is a tall order for a web browser nowadays, and the weight of these requirements has been very apparent in the Mozilla development. But your users will love you for it.
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In both cases, a work of fiction was written that referred to acts of murder against classmates (mentioned by name).
I cited the Baker story because it DOES compare:
- The school authorities took action against the student for writing something that the school authorities decided could be taken as a threat against another student.
- The student was arrested as a consequence.
The dismissal of Jake Baker was upheld by the courts. The government's prosecution of Baker failed because the govenment failed to show intent to carry out the threat; the judge referred to Baker's story as "a rather savage and tasteless piece of fiction."Thus, according to the courts, an institution is allowed to dismiss the student for such actions, apparently if they violate some code of ethical conduct. However, such writings don't pass legal muster of showing intent to cause harm. (Note: Baker's case was tried in Federal court; Texas may have its own laws and precedents; again, I am not a lawyer.)
And I think it is this last thing that has people so up in arms... nobody believes that Christopher Beamon INTENDED to do any harm to his classmates... and if there was no intention of harm, how can there be a threat? And if there's no threat, why was he arrested?
This is a question that nobody here can answer. I just hope that the American public sees the kind of slippery slope they are sliding down when they pursue these kinds of things, whether it be a college student writing on alt.sex.stories, a seventh grader writing a "scary essay," or a pre-teen attempting to steal a kiss from another pre-teen.
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I remember a few of years ago, a student named Jake Baker at the University of Michigan wrote piece of erotic fiction on USENET (alt.sex.stories?) that described acts of rape, sexual torture, and murder of a classmate, who was mentioned by name.
He had prepended a disclaimer to his work (mentioning that it contained "lots of sick stuff") and he put his real name on the postings.
When the University was informed of the postings from an alumnus who is an attorney in Moscow (!!!), he was dismissed from the University. The 6th Circuit court of appeals affirmed the dismissal.
Now... the case that Jon sites is different in that this was schoolwork that the 7th grader wrote, but the similarity was that people were mentioned by name.
I agree with Jon's sentiments that students should have freedom of speech and press (which applies here? I'm not a lawyer.). However, the University of Michigan case is a precedent that has already undergone appeal in federal court that states that such writings COULD and ARE considered threatening.
Jake's story was posted to one of the alt.sex groups in early 1995. This was way before the Columbine killings. Instead of seeing an increased panic among school administrators, I see continuity from what they were doing four years ago.
Now... I do not for one minute believe that either Christopher Beamon or Jake Baker meant to threaten anybody by their writings. However, there is still a precedent that considers these writings as threatening and should be punished.
For this reason, I think Jon is jumping the gun here in saying that this has anything to do with the Columbine shootings or the perceived "anti-geek" attitudes that were mentioned in the previous "Hellmouth" stories.
Maybe, just maybe, those shootings made school administrators more willing to take quick action.
Nevertheless, I do not agree with the disposition of either Jake Baker's case, nor with Chris Beamon's.
I think that if schools are going to prosecute people for such things, then there should be a clear policy explained to all the students; the ground rules must be made clear if we are to try to avoid such things that may upset other students or their parents. If a school has such rules, they should be published and placed under the scrutiny of the public. If they are too draconian, allow them to be challenged by the parents, teachers, or students... even the ACLU.
Otherwise, I can see this being a precedent for yet another case, where a five year old says to another student "Come back here! I'll kill you!" and gets expelled.
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Well, let's hope that Intel doesn't get any ideas here. I can see the announcements now: You misunderstood, the "64" in IA-64 was for MEGAHERTZ, not 64 bit addressing lines!!!
This could explain all the secrecy and non-disclosures that surround all people that are working on the IA-64 platform...
Nah! That would be a conspiracy...!
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Such NONSENSE!!!!!!!!!
I have had an online presense since the 1980s, and have always known that things that I say or that I have said could or would be archived and still around years and even decades later. You never know who might be archiving a USENET newsgroup, or even just messages from you.
I comport my life in that I tend to say what I mean, and mean what I say (and Humpty Dumpty points out that these aren't always the same things!). My opinions may change over the years, but I have rarely said things in public forums that I am sorry for having said... if my views have changed over time, then it's documentation of a learning process!
In the unlikely event that somebody would find such a change in my personal opinions, and would take the effort to try to use my own words against me, my response would be to point out that EVEN *I* CAN MANAGE TO CHANGE MY MIND AND (get this!) evolve better opinions!
For those people who may find themselves ashamed for things that they may have said a few years ago, my feeling is "well... it's your own fault if you said such things in a public forum."
Speaking on USENET, on a "community bulletin board," on Slashdot, or in any other public online forum, is the same as talking to a reporter for a newspaper. Whatever you say will be still be around years later... even after you die (there are newspaper "morgues" that go back many decades!).
The moral is: think before you speak. And most important: Think about the legacy you are leaving behind! I think I am proud of my legacy... even the things that I have done in the past that turned out to be incorrect. After all, everything has contributed in my being the person that is me right now.
But then again, maybe I won't feel this way in a year or so. If not, in the words of Emily Litella, "Never mind!"
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A bit more information on COMPAQ, Alphas, and Linux can be found in the UK Register here.
Especially interesting is the fact that even when IA64 comes out, Alphas are still expected to be running faster.
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Strunk and White is ESSENTIAL for anybody writing ANYTHING. His answer to that question, and the obvious thought that went into the other answers, gives me more reason to be impressed by him.
A further suggestion on my part would be for aspiring authors to find out what THEY like to read, and try to figure out what about the style impresses them.
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- The compiler, as distributed, is Beta software, and the license reflects this. There is no mention as to whether the final product will be commercial, free to use, or open source. (I personally doubt the latter, though.)
- Although I work for Compaq (and formerly for Digital), I do not work for the GEM group and cannot speak with any official say on this, but it is my recollection that parts of the compiler are NOT written in C or assembler, so having the source code may not be a big help, actually.
- The reason that GEM gets such good numbers is that the people working on it are Alpha chip experts. They know what optimizations work exceptionally well on the architecture.
- In response to some comments made above, I would like to point out that Compaq (and Digital before that) has supported Linux for a long time, on Intel and Alpha chips. Compaq is not just now jumping on a bandwagon. Remember that Jon ("maddog") Hall, Executive Director of Linux International, was employed by Digital/Compaq up until recently, when LI was able to hire him directly. Compaq's commitment continues, as is evidenced by the release of the C compiler.
- Releasing GEM for Alpha Linux is a smart move in my (admittedly biased) opinion; it allows more applications that are built on Tru64 Unix to run on Alpha Linux. Up until now, only statically linked binaries could run, which precluded threaded applications, etc. One can only hope that some of the other applications now only available on Tru64 Unix will eventually be supported on Linux. And whether they are free or not, having applications available is a win for the whole community.
Finally, please note that I am a Compaq employee, but in no way am I speaking for them in this comment.--
On the radio, the news shows are starting to sound like John Lennon chanting "Number nine... Number nine... Number nine..." And now its the web 'zines. [sigh] Give me a break!
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I was rather amazed by the (unattributed) comment that Cringely made in his column:
Compaq engineers quietly admit that Linux on Alpha runs better than Compaq's own Unix.
Since Linux is built with GCC, and Tru64 Unix with GEM C, I cannot figure out which engineers that Cringely has been talking with. GEM has been rather carefully optimized and tuned for the Alpha architecture, and I know the same is true of Tru64's libc and pthreads implementation.
Don't get me wrong, Linux works fine on Alphas, and their performance will only get better as Linux (and GCC) are made more 64-bit aware. And Compaq has a whole bunch of people trying to help get applications ported to both Tru64 and Linux.
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I may not be as eloquent as Jon, but as a parent, it is *I* or my wife that makes the decision as to which movies my daughters (ages 10 and 11) can see. Right now, they'd love to see South Park, but my wife dislikes the show, so we'll wait for it to come out on video. They have shown no interest in American Pie, and they laughed at Something About Mary last year (they didn't understand some of the scenes).
Right now, we are kind of lucky in that whatever intrigues the girls is something that either my wife or I would like to see. Otherwise, we try to convince the kids to wait until it comes out on video... this is usually a short wait.
Will I take them to see Eyes Wide Shut? Perhaps not. We made a similar decision years ago with Sliver.
But in each and every one of these cases, it was my wife and I that made the decisions as to the suitability of a movie for our children. We don't necessarily trust an MPAA rating; they are inconsistantly applied. There are other services right here on the web such as Screen It which gives a lot more information about a particular movie than any single R or PG13 could do.
Perhaps Clinton and Congress are bemoaning the lack of parental responsibility in this country. I may be the exception rather than the rule in how I make my judgments; I cannot talk for other parents.
Having the MPAA's rating system "enforced" by theatre managers is silly, and is deserving of all the contempt you can give it.
However, Jon's suggestion that adults hang out and pick up minors to "escort" them to see a movie sends chills up and down my spine. If I were to see that, I'd probably alert the authorities.
That's just my opinion.
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It's easy to wax lyrical about the "good old days." However, change will always happen, especially on a medium as volatile as the Internet.
Let's see what happens with Wired mk III.
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How? This is a streaming encryption system. Brute force attacks attempt to try to use a lot of keys in succession; this system appears to use a single key on a lot of data. Not the same thing.
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..and DES is not reasonable security. If anything, this product makes DES less secure.
Not necessarily. And if you read the text closer, you'll see that any encryption scheme could be implemented. That makes it more interesting.
Just think, you could encrypt a 10 Gb hard disk in eight seconds using the throughput that they mention. Something like that could easily be put into a device driver under Linux.
Even if one didn't want to encypt an entire hard disk, it could be used to encrypt backups, or (using IPSEC like you mentioned) an internal LAN or IP Tunnel; all of these are slower than 1 gigabit/sec so the overhead might not be noticed.
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Sure, they would be praised if they had simply contacted Packet Storms admin and told him that the offensive material would have to go or they would be forced to shut down the site. But then they would have become censors. Censoring content just doesn't seem very Harvard to me.
Removal of a site is also censorship.
Maybe if they forwarded the complaint to the maintainer of the site and have the maintainer explain exactly how he was going to react to the complaint (remove the materials, shut down his own site, etc.) and then have the web admins decide if the action was enough. This seems nicer in theory, but it would have taken some time and the offending materials may have still been available.
However, whether or not the offending materials were ever removed, the fact remains that they may have been there, and they may have been accessible to anybody who knew their location. If so, the claim of damage may have still been valid and a lawsuit could possibly still been filed. (Of course, I don't even play a lawyer on TV...!)
I sincerely think that Harvard had a right to shut down the site, for whatever reason. And I think it proper for them to return the data, if that's what they are claiming that they will do. I cannot see how you can fault them too much for this at this point.
Again, we'll see if Packet Storm reappears in a new location. And I think that it will have a much better agreement with the entities hosting them than they did with Harvard... I hope that this may be a learning experience for Packet Storm AND for all of us.
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Yes. My personal opinion of Harvard's network admins wasn't very high when I had heard that the data was going to be deleted without hesitation. Either the original report was misunderstood, or somebody had a change of heart after receiving complaints from the internet community. Either way, being able to re-create the site at a different location is nice.
I don't know what ISP would host a site as popular as that free of charge (unless banner ads were allowed). But I think that the next move would be to actually receive the data and start looking.
I sincerely hope that any people that sent complaints to AntiOnline or Harvard that specifically referenced Slashdot were written with cool heads and a moderation of actual flaming and insults; it would certainly make us look a lot more mature in the eyes of the outsiders. Of course, I know that this is just wishful thinking, especially after some of the comments made to yesterday's article here. [smile]
Anyway, things look a bit better now, and I hope that a new site can be set up quickly.
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It may be "Definitely a tool" but the article points out, quite correctly, that too many people are just, er... "playing with their palms" (now THERE'S a Freudian term!) rather than being productive with them.
Note that the article did point out some legitimate uses; it wasn't a blanket indictment, which some articles would have descended into. Much good thinking here, especially if you are in middle- to upper-management.
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There's nothing that will prevent people from continuing to write MP3 encoders and decoders, mostly because the format is already open and available.
If SDMI proves to be too restrictive, it will leave a bunch of companies behind with their "betamax" style technology.
Interesting how these people don't mind "first generation copies" but want to prevent Nth generation copies. But what if the original is my own work or is in the public domain? Why should I be restricted to the same limitations?
If SDMI doesn't address these issues properly, then they will find out that they created their little format, but nobody wants to play with them.
Only time will tell...
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If this means more reliability for Slashdot, then this is good news.
I just hope this place doesn't lose its focus... nice hacker places on the Internet are few and far between.
When IMDB was acquired by Amazon last year, it precipitated a change in look (arguably better), but the service remained the same, which is really what people using the service really want to see.
Congratulations!
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So, it looks like we'll have to purchase one of these and find out what it runs.
If it doesn't look usable, it might be simple enough to reformat the drive and load REAL Linux on it.
Whichever, it still looks like an interesting system. ("Interesting" in the meaning that Spock might use; I got beat up on this term a month or so ago.)
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