TCP is a good protocol, but it is far from perfect. It does have weakness in it's windowing mechanism which can vastly reduce the throughput over long distances/mild latency with long durations. (Think FTP.) This is probably the problem they are refering to with #1.
For #2, this could simply be retransmission problems. TCP has a strict sequential ordering to packets, so a packet lost in the stream could cause other packets to be discarded, forcing more retransmissions than were technically required. This could be considered a 'weakness' of the protocol, since under some circumstances it could be desireable to receive the packets in a random order and allow assembly at the endpoint. (Think BitTorrent) So it's not unreasonably to examine advances in networking protocols. As for wide spread adoption....well, that's another story all together.
With a name like BridgeBum, how could I not reply to this?:-)
I'll address the tournament rules of bridge, rather than the Laws of Contract Bridge, which are different.
Basically, the governing bodies in power running tournaments can and do restrict agreements (known as 'conventions') that are allowed between partnerships. However, these restrictions are not so stifling as to only allow known agreements...if that were the case, no invention could happen.
The rules relating to conventions basically fall into two categories:
1) Any agreements you have must be made available to your opponents upon request. There may also be proceedural changes ('Alerts') for agreements which are unusual in nature to help inform the opponents when they should inquire.
2) Any conventions you play are 'categorized' and must fall into the allowed categories for the event. In the US/Canada/Mexico part of the world, they have in general the most restrictive rules about conventions, but even within those frameworks, inovation can and does happen.
Another good general rule: the higher the level of competition (National event, International, etc.), the more liberal the rules are about conventions.
In parts of the world outside North America, the local tournaments tend to be more liberal. Austrailia/New Zealand probably have the loosest rules restrictions of anywhere in the world. (I'm not sure there *are* any restrictions, except for the disclosure rule #1 above.)
Why your own virtual machine? Why not compile to JVM/.NET? Those VMs are designed for statically typed languages. That's fine, since Java, C#, and lots of other languages are statically typed. Perl isn't. For a variety of reasons, it means that Perl would run more slowly there than on an interpreter geared towards dynamic languages.
The.NET VM didn't even exist when we started development, or at least we didn't know about it when we were working on the design. We do now, though it's still not suitable.
So you won't run on JVM/.NET? Sure we will. They're just not our first target. We build our own interpreter/VM, then when that's working we start in on the JVM and/or.NET back ends.
I'm in the other camp, I'd like to see a larger voter turn out, even if it is mostly made up of uninformed people. (I would actually consider this the norm - how many voters are truely informed? TV debates don't count.)
I don't think that care-then-vote will work as well as vote-then-care. If you can convince people who don't care to vote, they may come to care in the future. That's the hope anyway.
Third, and here's where I get crazy, I believe that at some point in the next five years, Microsoft is going to produce Linux software (for crazy reasons that I'll keep to myself until they begin to sound less crazy.)
Why is that even a little crazy? Microsoft has been quietly writing Mac applications for a long time now, and will for the forseeable future. Granted, Windows won't run on Mac hardware, so it's not a direct comparision. However, if Linux does make a deep market penetration with Joe Homeuser or makes it to the desktop of MyCorporation LLC, why wouldn't MS want to offer it's Office suite and other products for those platforms? With Linspire PCs now being sold at Walmart, is it such a large extrapolation to see home users chosing to go down that road in ever growing numbers?
If that does happen, wouldn't it make financial sense for MS to start writing Office, Outlook, etc. for Linux?
If this is a measure of when people will start using IPv6, the answer is today. It's already there. Every major TCP/IP stack out there supports IPv6. Tunnel networks exist through IPv4. Internet 2 uses it exclusively.
When are corporations going to start moving to IPv6? Who knows...that will depend on individual needs, but in general, large corporations aren't going to see a big need to move towards IPv6 any time soon. Without end user by in, who is going to 'force' people to use IPv6?
Yes, IPv4 space is running out. It has been for a long time. That's why Network Address Translation and private address space are so common in today's world. They may be hacks, but they do the trick. Where's the business case involved in reorganizing major networks?
Doesn't it impliment the Windows APIs, not the x86 calls themselves? I think it's a much higher level of abstraction. You don't need x86 to create windows, drop down menus, etc, etc.
I don't know about Apache mods, but there certainly are ways of limiting bandwidth on a per-IP basis on enterprise quality routers. (Cisco, Nortel, etc.)
DDOS attacks (Distributed Denial of Service) aren't new. There are remidies out there, if the network people running the site know their stuff.
There are many instances where internal hosts (that is, those behind a firewall) have real registered address space addresses. RFC 1918 addresses are nice, but not even close to every company uses them, even for their internal network.
Also, this test doesn't really consider network address translated addresses with public DNS entries. For example, suppose I have an address for www.mydomain.com with my own authoratative domain server. The address is, say, 172.16.1.1 and anyone can connect to it. However, I actually have my firewall round robin the requests for that address to my web farm of 10 machines, 192.168.1.1-10, none of which are in external DNS. The survey would only catch one address, which actually has *no* machine directly associated with it. DNS is a reasonable measure of the size of the internet, but it is hardly an authoritative one.
This isn't even counting DMZ machines (those external to firewalls) that are connected to the internet "directly", but don't have a DNS entry. Why would you want a machine like that? Well, how about IP addresses on routers? Would you want those in DNS? How about intrusion detection servers, which monitor incoming traffic for attempted break ins. You really want to make yourself publicly known, making it easier for script kiddies to find you?
A better test would be an aggragate test of DNS reverse resolution, ping & traceroute. I'm sure that there are many machines out there that are open to some of these but not all three.
Security through obscurity really only works if a vulnerablilty you have discovered remains hidden from the net in general. Which means that no one else will discover it, a highly unlikely assumption as more and more people probe for such weaknesses. Which senario would *you* want: a vulnerability discovered by some cracker which he shares with his friends to break into sites, or a notice up on SecurityFocus explaining the vulnerability, setting in motion the code writers' ability to close the whole? Personally, I'd rather have more eyes looking at the problem, and trying to fix it.
IANAL, but isn't all that happened here is Napster not having the case dismissed for being meritless? All the ruling seems to be is that the case should go to trial. It seems to me that there is a long way to go.
Given that Linux is receiving better and better support for the latest hardware (sound cards, video, etc.), what do you see as the next big obstacle for Linux game development/porting?
I attended a state school. I assure you that students have lab fees to pay for networks, computer labs, etc. at public schools just as they would in private schools.
I know that when it was new, ICQ was "banned" in the dorms. Obviously ICQ is not very network intensive, but it was deemed a security risk. (If you have ever taken a look at the protocalls, you would understand why.) Firewalls in place...bam bam! No more ICQ. I believe there was something of a protest over this, and eventually the restriction was lifted.
(Of course, even if they aren't, ICQ is now pretty smart about getting through firewalls. I'm not sure if it was then, I don't remember.)
So the question remains...how important are these programs to the student body? If they decide it is important, then there needs to be some organization to express that to the university. Quietly grumbling isn't going to get anything done.
The family of puzzles in which you are given and "end position" and have to reconstruct what happened are called retrograde analysis, a facinating sub-genre of puzzles. Chess is perhaps the best known for retrograde puzzles, but I have seen puzzles for checkers, bridge, Scrabble and other games. A classic "retrograde" question regarding chess is given some board position, can you demonstrate either (1)all the pieces on the board are the original piece or (2)some piece on the board has been promoted from a pawn. Other typical questions might include "Has white castled?"
I don't have any puzzles at my finger tips, but I'll try to see if I can post some later.
But you just hit upon the point...they don't make sense for power users. Alas, most users are not in this category. The best of all possible worlds has to be the flexibility to use either a text/command line interface or point and click...which ever the user is most comfortable.
Until very recently, Open Source programs in general and Linux/BSD/whatever especially have been by the geek, for the geek and of the geek. There is nothing wrong with this; that has been it s user base. The OS community is at a cross roads now. Never before in its history has the general public been more aware of its existance. The question before us now is what do we want to do? If we want to slink back into obscurity then we can continue to make better tools for the few that the masses could not use. If we want to become more common place, Linux/BSD/whatever on every desktop, then there does have to be a "dumb-user" mindset for UI design.
You know, it is also my birthday. I was thinking of posting a message similar to this, but instead I will just sulk. Maybe all/.ers who's birthday is 20 Jan should unite? *grin*
I couldn't agree more. The last computer I bought (a couple of years ago at this point) uses an AMD chip, and I have no complaints. AMD has established itself as a "real" competitor to Intel, which has to be good from the consumers point of view. (At least, if you buy into the whole free market idea. *grin*)
Anyone have some benchmark numbers yet? I'd be interested in seeing how fast this baby can fly. Maybe I'll think about picking up a new machine soon.
Slashdot Mirror
TCP is a good protocol, but it is far from perfect. It does have weakness in it's windowing mechanism which can vastly reduce the throughput over long distances/mild latency with long durations. (Think FTP.) This is probably the problem they are refering to with #1.
For #2, this could simply be retransmission problems. TCP has a strict sequential ordering to packets, so a packet lost in the stream could cause other packets to be discarded, forcing more retransmissions than were technically required. This could be considered a 'weakness' of the protocol, since under some circumstances it could be desireable to receive the packets in a random order and allow assembly at the endpoint. (Think BitTorrent) So it's not unreasonably to examine advances in networking protocols. As for wide spread adoption....well, that's another story all together.
Another good Python network resource: Twisted Matrix, a networking framework for Python.
For those interested in starting in network programming in Python, I'd recommend checking it out.
With a name like BridgeBum, how could I not reply to this? :-)
I'll address the tournament rules of bridge, rather than the Laws of Contract Bridge, which are different.
Basically, the governing bodies in power running tournaments can and do restrict agreements (known as 'conventions') that are allowed between partnerships. However, these restrictions are not so stifling as to only allow known agreements...if that were the case, no invention could happen.
The rules relating to conventions basically fall into two categories:
1) Any agreements you have must be made available to your opponents upon request. There may also be proceedural changes ('Alerts') for agreements which are unusual in nature to help inform the opponents when they should inquire.
2) Any conventions you play are 'categorized' and must fall into the allowed categories for the event. In the US/Canada/Mexico part of the world, they have in general the most restrictive rules about conventions, but even within those frameworks, inovation can and does happen.
Another good general rule: the higher the level of competition (National event, International, etc.), the more liberal the rules are about conventions.
In parts of the world outside North America, the local tournaments tend to be more liberal. Austrailia/New Zealand probably have the loosest rules restrictions of anywhere in the world. (I'm not sure there *are* any restrictions, except for the disclosure rule #1 above.)
More information:
American Contract Bridge League
World Bridge Federation
Performance.
.NET VM didn't even exist when we started development, or at least we didn't know about it when we were working on the design. We do now, though it's still not suitable.
.NET back ends.
From the FAQ:
Why your own virtual machine? Why not compile to JVM/.NET?
Those VMs are designed for statically typed languages. That's fine, since Java, C#, and lots of other languages are statically typed. Perl isn't. For a variety of reasons, it means that Perl would run more slowly there than on an interpreter geared towards dynamic languages.
The
So you won't run on JVM/.NET?
Sure we will. They're just not our first target. We build our own interpreter/VM, then when that's working we start in on the JVM and/or
I'm in the other camp, I'd like to see a larger voter turn out, even if it is mostly made up of uninformed people. (I would actually consider this the norm - how many voters are truely informed? TV debates don't count.)
I don't think that care-then-vote will work as well as vote-then-care. If you can convince people who don't care to vote, they may come to care in the future. That's the hope anyway.
I got a 503 error earlier today using IE from work. So it's not limited to Firefox.
Third, and here's where I get crazy, I believe that at some point in the next five years, Microsoft is going to produce Linux software (for crazy reasons that I'll keep to myself until they begin to sound less crazy.)
Why is that even a little crazy? Microsoft has been quietly writing Mac applications for a long time now, and will for the forseeable future. Granted, Windows won't run on Mac hardware, so it's not a direct comparision. However, if Linux does make a deep market penetration with Joe Homeuser or makes it to the desktop of MyCorporation LLC, why wouldn't MS want to offer it's Office suite and other products for those platforms? With Linspire PCs now being sold at Walmart, is it such a large extrapolation to see home users chosing to go down that road in ever growing numbers?
If that does happen, wouldn't it make financial sense for MS to start writing Office, Outlook, etc. for Linux?
Anyone knows an ant can't move them.
If this is a measure of when people will start using IPv6, the answer is today. It's already there. Every major TCP/IP stack out there supports IPv6. Tunnel networks exist through IPv4. Internet 2 uses it exclusively.
When are corporations going to start moving to IPv6? Who knows...that will depend on individual needs, but in general, large corporations aren't going to see a big need to move towards IPv6 any time soon. Without end user by in, who is going to 'force' people to use IPv6?
Yes, IPv4 space is running out. It has been for a long time. That's why Network Address Translation and private address space are so common in today's world. They may be hacks, but they do the trick. Where's the business case involved in reorganizing major networks?
Yes and no. See this article.
Doesn't it impliment the Windows APIs, not the x86 calls themselves? I think it's a much higher level of abstraction. You don't need x86 to create windows, drop down menus, etc, etc.
I don't know about Apache mods, but there certainly are ways of limiting bandwidth on a per-IP basis on enterprise quality routers. (Cisco, Nortel, etc.)
DDOS attacks (Distributed Denial of Service) aren't new. There are remidies out there, if the network people running the site know their stuff.
There are many instances where internal hosts (that is, those behind a firewall) have real registered address space addresses. RFC 1918 addresses are nice, but not even close to every company uses them, even for their internal network.
Also, this test doesn't really consider network address translated addresses with public DNS entries. For example, suppose I have an address for www.mydomain.com with my own authoratative domain server. The address is, say, 172.16.1.1 and anyone can connect to it. However, I actually have my firewall round robin the requests for that address to my web farm of 10 machines, 192.168.1.1-10, none of which are in external DNS. The survey would only catch one address, which actually has *no* machine directly associated with it. DNS is a reasonable measure of the size of the internet, but it is hardly an authoritative one.
This isn't even counting DMZ machines (those external to firewalls) that are connected to the internet "directly", but don't have a DNS entry. Why would you want a machine like that? Well, how about IP addresses on routers? Would you want those in DNS? How about intrusion detection servers, which monitor incoming traffic for attempted break ins. You really want to make yourself publicly known, making it easier for script kiddies to find you?
A better test would be an aggragate test of DNS reverse resolution, ping & traceroute. I'm sure that there are many machines out there that are open to some of these but not all three.
Security through obscurity really only works if a vulnerablilty you have discovered remains hidden from the net in general. Which means that no one else will discover it, a highly unlikely assumption as more and more people probe for such weaknesses. Which senario would *you* want: a vulnerability discovered by some cracker which he shares with his friends to break into sites, or a notice up on SecurityFocus explaining the vulnerability, setting in motion the code writers' ability to close the whole? Personally, I'd rather have more eyes looking at the problem, and trying to fix it.
IANAL, but isn't all that happened here is Napster not having the case dismissed for being meritless?
All the ruling seems to be is that the case should go to trial. It seems to me that there is a long way to go.
Oh how I wish I had some moderator points. :)
Given that Linux is receiving better and better support for the latest hardware (sound cards, video, etc.), what do you see as the next big obstacle for Linux game development/porting?
I attended a state school. I assure you that students have lab fees to pay for networks, computer labs, etc. at public schools just as they would in private schools.
I know that when it was new, ICQ was "banned" in the dorms. Obviously ICQ is not very network intensive, but it was deemed a security risk. (If you have ever taken a look at the protocalls, you would understand why.) Firewalls in place...bam bam! No more ICQ. I believe there was something of a protest over this, and eventually the restriction was lifted.
(Of course, even if they aren't, ICQ is now pretty smart about getting through firewalls. I'm not sure if it was then, I don't remember.)
So the question remains...how important are these programs to the student body? If they decide it is important, then there needs to be some organization to express that to the university. Quietly grumbling isn't going to get anything done.
---
The family of puzzles in which you are given and "end position" and have to reconstruct what happened are called retrograde analysis, a facinating sub-genre of puzzles. Chess is perhaps the best known for retrograde puzzles, but I have seen puzzles for checkers, bridge, Scrabble and other games. A classic "retrograde" question regarding chess is given some board position, can you demonstrate either (1)all the pieces on the board are the original piece or (2)some piece on the board has been promoted from a pawn. Other typical questions might include "Has white castled?"
I don't have any puzzles at my finger tips, but I'll try to see if I can post some later.
---
Ah, fun with Pythagorian triplets.
:)
I know of two "generators" for triplets, but I don't think it is helpful for the x^2, (x+1)^2 series (except in the very basic case of 3-4-5).
Anyway, for all natural numbers n:
If n is odd, then n, floor(n^2/2), ceil(n^2/2) is a triplet.
If n is even, then n, (n/2)^2-1, (n/2)^2+1 is a triplet.
A little algebra will show why these are true, but it is interesting how it starts by catching some of the better known triplets.
(3-4-5, 5-12-13, 7-24-25, 8-15-17, etc.)
Now if only the site becomes un/.ed, I might not get any work done today.
----
I'm sure my Dad will be upset...Slan has been his favorite book of all time from since before I was born. He will be missed.
But you just hit upon the point...they don't make sense for power users. Alas, most users are not in this category. The best of all possible worlds has to be the flexibility to use either a text/command line interface or point and click...which ever the user is most comfortable.
Until very recently, Open Source programs in general and Linux/BSD/whatever especially have been by the geek, for the geek and of the geek. There is nothing wrong with this; that has been it
s user base. The OS community is at a cross roads now. Never before in its history has the general public been more aware of its existance. The question before us now is what do we want to do? If we want to slink back into obscurity then we can continue to make better tools for the few that the masses could not use. If we want to become more common place, Linux/BSD/whatever on every desktop, then there does have to be a "dumb-user" mindset for UI design.
You know, it is also my birthday. I was thinking of posting a message similar to this, but instead I will just sulk. Maybe all /.ers who's birthday is 20 Jan should unite? *grin*
I couldn't agree more. The last computer I bought (a couple of years ago at this point) uses an AMD chip, and I have no complaints. AMD has established itself as a "real" competitor to Intel, which has to be good from the consumers point of view. (At least, if you buy into the whole free market idea. *grin*)
Anyone have some benchmark numbers yet? I'd be interested in seeing how fast this baby can fly. Maybe I'll think about picking up a new machine soon.
More on Vader:
:)
"Apology accepted." bounced through French returns
"Received excuses."
Perhaps there is something to this translation thing after all.