"Running and hiding" are okay -- the president doesn't really have a say in this.
But running and hiding from airliners is just bizarre behaviour, there's no other word for it. Was he expecting a stealth 767? "OK, George, you can come out from under your desk now, somebody's here to see you."
When he did get brave enough to stick his nose out, he toured the pentagon where 200 hundred soldiers died, not New York where thousands died.
i (not a mechanical engineer in the least) think it was the fire that got them... i didn't see them collapse until the fire had burned its way several floors below the point at which the building crumpled, which started the fall.
Think about it. The building has no columns, the floor was not made to withstand the weight of a passenger aircraft, much less an intensely hot burning one. Add to that the weight of debris from the damaged floors immediately above, plus new debris caused by the progress of the fire. After a while the floor that is taking most of the aircraft's weight collapses, and then all that weight is added to the floor below, which collapses in turn, but sooner. This process accelerates rapidly because each floor takes the weight of all the floors above it. Soon, momentum gets added to the equation and shortly thereafter the whole thing goes into freefall.
Obvious suggestion: bring back columns. Not that this alone would protect a building from the impact of a jetliner, but at least it would give people more time to get out.
Oh, and make the stairwells wider, especially on the bottom floors.
The ECMA standards body rules section 1.4 [www.ecma.ch] say that if a company shows up with a patent and doesn't license it with "reasonable, non-discriminatory" license practices, then the standard will be cancelled.
Yes, sure, after Microsoft has already brayed about their standard for years and gotten all the marketing value out of it. By that time you will have become dependent on some system that relies on it and Microsoft can extort whatever they want from you, with impunity.
I think that a legally binding 'patent challenge' might be the answer.
Any solution that adds more procedures and needs more money and time spent on it just makes the problem worse, I hope you realize. Please only consider solutions that actually make the situation better for those with few financial resources.
Think it through a bit, you'll realize this boils down to one conclusion: time to tear the old creaking structure down, because it's infested with rats and is a health hazard.
Great and everything but you need Artists to make the 3D Graphics for the game, etc. The question should be. What should the Linux OS do to attract artists?
Exactly what it's doing. Linux is taking over the animation market, why? Because artists are more productive with Linux.
OK there's more we can do: keep focussing on making the gui interface better, port more tools, keep improving the rendering quality, dual head support, etc., but believe me, artists are not dummies. Artists use the best tool, artists are willing to put in the effort to perfect their skills to use that tool.
I'm responding to this post because it's near the top of the list and I feel what I have to say is important.
Large aircraft are, by themselves, dangerous weapons of mass destruction, we can see this plainly now. It is necessary to design and install safety overrides on all large aircraft, so that control can be taken away from the pilot in the event of just such an emergency.
Everybody reading this is intelligent enough to understand the necessary design elements of such an override system, such as the guarantee of secure operation (encryption, authorization, physical security, etc) so I won't go into it further. But we, the techies, are the ones responsible for pushing this forward, for the protection of everyone, including ourselves. Oh, I almost forgot to mention, obviously the control system software must be open source, the entire design must be open. Imagine the consequences of the security system itself being compromised.
"The leader of the Northern Alliance is belived to have been killed over the weekend in an ambush. He was charismatic and able hold various factions together. Needless to say, his troops (which control 5% of Afghanistan) are pretty upset."
Maybe they got a round of funding from the CIA. Wouldn't be the first time for America to support and help out "contra"-like groups. (Remember Nicaragua)
Maybe. But realize, other countries can have their own heros, their own motivations. Masood (or was) is a made-in-Afghanistan hero who fought against horrible odds first against Russia, then against the Taliban fanatics, finally losing his life to a suicide bomber.
This is not only a time for just and strong retaliation, but also for all Americans to search their own souls and examine the deep reasons why it is so easy for these fanatics to whip up hatred against Americans.
Start by learning learning about how the rest of the world works.
Learn how other people besides Americans are raised, what their culture, beliefs, motivations and history. History. How much does it take to understand that this is not an option, it's a matter of survival?
Still not convinced? Think about nuclear terrorism. Now start trying to know something about the rest of the world. Please.
This post is not a troll or attack, it is a wakeup call. Please understand the important. Please wake up before something worse happens.
Linus just happened to be in the right place at the right time
And he happened to be the right person. I've known a lot of technical people, but I never knew one who could lead a project like this as well as Linus. And don't forget his legendary debugging prowess. Oh, and his intuitive sense of where to lead the design. Ah, and the charisma. Err, I almost forgot about his non-partisan stance. Um, how about his ability to use English better than most native speakers? Well, you get the idea. Pretty hard to find another Linus if you ask me.
"the whole apt-get packaging depends on continous feedback from informed users"
Or , to put it in other way, users unnecessarily burdened with completely irrelevant to the task at hand, issues.
Sure, if you consider having a smoothly functioning distribution/update system irrelevant. Did I mention that said informed users seem more than happy to shoulder this burden so that the other 99% don't have to? No? Think about it.
COM does it a little differently but the basics are there. You request an implementation to an interface, not the object itself. The way this works for different versions is that instead of IID_ICAT you can have IID_ICAT2 and ICat2 interfaces without having to break your old ICat clients. The implementation could even share much of the old code [...] Admittedly it's not the most elegant design, but it works in the sense that you're not breaking old clients and still have room to support new interfaces.
But there's a much better way to do that: versioned libraries as in Unix. With library versions you don't have to insert all that compatibility guck inline in your code, and the library functions don't need the overhead of having to decode it. It's all done at link time. It doesn't make a bit of sense to pass the version information with every call, it should be constant across your whole application. Hmm, you could conclude that Microsoft designers knew what they wanted to accomplish but didn't know how to accomplish it, oh well.
And yes, you can get problems with versioned libraries too, mostly because people may not have all the libraries they need. But that problem is solved definitively by apt-get, and soon apt-get will be standard for rpm's as well. As soon as I started using apt-get, all my library problems just vanished.
No doubt Microsoft would like to pull off something like that but they never will because the whole apt-get packaging depends on continous feedback from informed users with sourcecode on hand, and by that I don't mean go through two months of negotiation to see the piece of source code you need, then start the whole process over again 1 hour later when you hit the next problem.
So here comes COM. I've encountered it with DirectX, and it works like this. When you request something like a DirectDraw object or a DirectDrawSurface object, you also tell the class factory what *version* of the interface you want. Then you're provided with that actual implementation of the library. If you write your game against DirectX 2, but the user has DirectX 5, well your request to the DirectX DLL will actually give you the version 2 implementation! Which is cool, because if you worked around old bugs, those bugs are still there; they're not fixed for you!:)
So you're claiming Microsoft is making a mistake by providing backwards compatibility for DOS, but "open source," whose primary operating systems are Linux and FreeBSD, both designed to be backwards-compatible with 1970s UNIX systems, are somehow not?
Well, speaking as an experienced Dos programmer, the Dos interface is really a piece of crap. Nothing is defined with any kind of generality or foresight. Look at the "critical error handler" interface for example, it's unbelievably awkward and unworkable. Look at what happens if you shell to Dos, start a tsr, then exit the shell. Boom. This is broken by design. Just try to write a program that recovers control when a child aborts, that's when you find out how messed up the resource handling is, and the exit handling. The child tries to exit back to Dos instead of its parent unless you hack into all sorts of undocumented places, which everybody eventually has to do for a big system. All that undocumented-but-essential internal interface dung has to be supported, right?
That said, no I don't think Microsoft made a mistake in supporting old Dos code, it's all part of maintaining the barrier to entry, the more messed up it is, the more expensive to replicate. Never mind that the whole sorry tale isn't good for anyone but Microsoft.
Well, now that we have a several real operating systems as alternatives, there's no longer any advantage to Microsoft in keeping Dos on life support. When Dos gets painful, people just walk now. But Microsoft still has to support it or everybody will start publishing articles about how Windows doesn't work, and they have to keep all those "enterprise" solutions that consist of Dos programs and BAT files running. Now Dos support is just an expensive liability Microsoft can't escape. Heh, but the rest of us can, and do.
The original Unix interface on the other hand, was quite well designed. 30 years later, for the most part the whole thing is intact and still in use, functioning reliably in enterprise-level multiprogramming environments. So, no, maintaining compatibility with that old-but-good interface is unquestionably not a mistake.
The short story is: the whole Dos interface was a mistake, and Microsoft now has to live with it. The unix interface was not a mistake and we're happy to carry it forward.
The 'EU' doesn't give any more of a damn about the privacy of its citizens than the 'US' does. By 'EU' and 'US' we refer to the political power brokers of the respective organizations. Recall the draconian British laws that require law enforcement to be able to have access to any encryption that a private citizen my employ on pain of jail time. What the 'EU' is truly concerned with here is that they US may be able to spy on 'EU' corporations and obtain market advantages. The fact that the most popular desktop software is owned by and US corporation with a reputation (deserved or not) for backdoors and hacks to break competitors doesn't sit well with the 'EU'. They would much rather be in control themselves.
I can only conclude you didn't read the report. It included many recommendations aimed at enforcement of the individual's fundamental right to privacy, a concept that some Americans may find difficult to grasp. It does not seem partial to business interests at all.
That's the key one, let's not let anyone forget it.
If you can't build the whole source for the OS, at least, every last bit of it involved in the security/communications chain, then it can't be said to be trustworthy.
Finally my fear is that SVG will become like PNG - a great format that's poorly supported in differently broken ways so it's just not worth the hassle.
Err, PNG is broken how? Every browser I use handles it just fine. PNG is quite obviously here to stay.
Politicians make a decent salary, but generally much less than they could make in private industry. You might just as well ask the congressman why he puts his time and energy into public service.
Well I have a rather jaded view of politicians, sorry, I'd like to be corrected by all my experience just serves to reinforce this stereotype: politicians are in it for the power trip, for greed (how exactly does the wealth increase by more than the salary between beginning of term and end?) and because they don't really do much well except project their image and... play politics. It's harder to survive on that alone in the real world. Not impossible, but harder.
Personally, as a hacker I'd prefer not to be compared to a politician thanks.
I want to do something bigger than myself, something that has a real potential to help people in a serious way. I want to leave behind a legacy of good will when I'm wrom food.
Yes, that's my main motivation as well, though there certainly are other rewards... such as working with people you respect and can learn from, lots of little 15 minute's of fame, mental exercise, getting things working the way you want for yourself, and just plain satisfaction. That's enough for me, and oh, it doesn't hurt that it pays well.
The one thing that makes me think these orders will stick is public (and corporate) scrutiny. Microsoft's bullying tactics are much more widely known and understood than they were in the mid '90's.
Losing in court changes the game entirely. It's not "honor system" any more, they will have feds in the hallways.
ps- I'm sure someone will complain about my use of the feminine preferred. My statement applies to any hypothetical president, and all our female presidents so far have been hypothetical:)
Then use the plural, say "they", and you won't need a footnote.
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But running and hiding from airliners is just bizarre behaviour, there's no other word for it. Was he expecting a stealth 767? "OK, George, you can come out from under your desk now, somebody's here to see you."
When he did get brave enough to stick his nose out, he toured the pentagon where 200 hundred soldiers died, not New York where thousands died.
Think about it. The building has no columns, the floor was not made to withstand the weight of a passenger aircraft, much less an intensely hot burning one. Add to that the weight of debris from the damaged floors immediately above, plus new debris caused by the progress of the fire. After a while the floor that is taking most of the aircraft's weight collapses, and then all that weight is added to the floor below, which collapses in turn, but sooner. This process accelerates rapidly because each floor takes the weight of all the floors above it. Soon, momentum gets added to the equation and shortly thereafter the whole thing goes into freefall.
Obvious suggestion: bring back columns. Not that this alone would protect a building from the impact of a jetliner, but at least it would give people more time to get out.
Oh, and make the stairwells wider, especially on the bottom floors.
Yes, sure, after Microsoft has already brayed about their standard for years and gotten all the marketing value out of it. By that time you will have become dependent on some system that relies on it and Microsoft can extort whatever they want from you, with impunity.
Any solution that adds more procedures and needs more money and time spent on it just makes the problem worse, I hope you realize. Please only consider solutions that actually make the situation better for those with few financial resources.
Think it through a bit, you'll realize this boils down to one conclusion: time to tear the old creaking structure down, because it's infested with rats and is a health hazard.
Exactly what it's doing. Linux is taking over the animation market, why? Because artists are more productive with Linux.
OK there's more we can do: keep focussing on making the gui interface better, port more tools, keep improving the rendering quality, dual head support, etc., but believe me, artists are not dummies. Artists use the best tool, artists are willing to put in the effort to perfect their skills to use that tool.
Large aircraft are, by themselves, dangerous weapons of mass destruction, we can see this plainly now. It is necessary to design and install safety overrides on all large aircraft, so that control can be taken away from the pilot in the event of just such an emergency.
Everybody reading this is intelligent enough to understand the necessary design elements of such an override system, such as the guarantee of secure operation (encryption, authorization, physical security, etc) so I won't go into it further. But we, the techies, are the ones responsible for pushing this forward, for the protection of everyone, including ourselves. Oh, I almost forgot to mention, obviously the control system software must be open source, the entire design must be open. Imagine the consequences of the security system itself being compromised.
Maybe they got a round of funding from the CIA. Wouldn't be the first time for America to support and help out "contra"-like groups. (Remember Nicaragua)
Maybe. But realize, other countries can have their own heros, their own motivations. Masood (or was) is a made-in-Afghanistan hero who fought against horrible odds first against Russia, then against the Taliban fanatics, finally losing his life to a suicide bomber.
This is not only a time for just and strong retaliation, but also for all Americans to search their own souls and examine the deep reasons why it is so easy for these fanatics to whip up hatred against Americans.
Start by learning learning about how the rest of the world works. Learn how other people besides Americans are raised, what their culture, beliefs, motivations and history. History. How much does it take to understand that this is not an option, it's a matter of survival?
Still not convinced? Think about nuclear terrorism. Now start trying to know something about the rest of the world. Please.
This post is not a troll or attack, it is a wakeup call. Please understand the important. Please wake up before something worse happens.
And he happened to be the right person. I've known a lot of technical people, but I never knew one who could lead a project like this as well as Linus. And don't forget his legendary debugging prowess. Oh, and his intuitive sense of where to lead the design. Ah, and the charisma. Err, I almost forgot about his non-partisan stance. Um, how about his ability to use English better than most native speakers? Well, you get the idea. Pretty hard to find another Linus if you ask me.
It's GPL, right? Would you consider putting it up on a sourceforge page?
Or , to put it in other way, users unnecessarily burdened with completely irrelevant to the task at hand, issues.
Sure, if you consider having a smoothly functioning distribution/update system irrelevant. Did I mention that said informed users seem more than happy to shoulder this burden so that the other 99% don't have to? No? Think about it.
But there's a much better way to do that: versioned libraries as in Unix. With library versions you don't have to insert all that compatibility guck inline in your code, and the library functions don't need the overhead of having to decode it. It's all done at link time. It doesn't make a bit of sense to pass the version information with every call, it should be constant across your whole application. Hmm, you could conclude that Microsoft designers knew what they wanted to accomplish but didn't know how to accomplish it, oh well.
And yes, you can get problems with versioned libraries too, mostly because people may not have all the libraries they need. But that problem is solved definitively by apt-get, and soon apt-get will be standard for rpm's as well. As soon as I started using apt-get, all my library problems just vanished.
No doubt Microsoft would like to pull off something like that but they never will because the whole apt-get packaging depends on continous feedback from informed users with sourcecode on hand, and by that I don't mean go through two months of negotiation to see the piece of source code you need, then start the whole process over again 1 hour later when you hit the next problem.
And neither are the exploits.
Well, speaking as an experienced Dos programmer, the Dos interface is really a piece of crap. Nothing is defined with any kind of generality or foresight. Look at the "critical error handler" interface for example, it's unbelievably awkward and unworkable. Look at what happens if you shell to Dos, start a tsr, then exit the shell. Boom. This is broken by design. Just try to write a program that recovers control when a child aborts, that's when you find out how messed up the resource handling is, and the exit handling. The child tries to exit back to Dos instead of its parent unless you hack into all sorts of undocumented places, which everybody eventually has to do for a big system. All that undocumented-but-essential internal interface dung has to be supported, right?
That said, no I don't think Microsoft made a mistake in supporting old Dos code, it's all part of maintaining the barrier to entry, the more messed up it is, the more expensive to replicate. Never mind that the whole sorry tale isn't good for anyone but Microsoft.
Well, now that we have a several real operating systems as alternatives, there's no longer any advantage to Microsoft in keeping Dos on life support. When Dos gets painful, people just walk now. But Microsoft still has to support it or everybody will start publishing articles about how Windows doesn't work, and they have to keep all those "enterprise" solutions that consist of Dos programs and BAT files running. Now Dos support is just an expensive liability Microsoft can't escape. Heh, but the rest of us can, and do.
The original Unix interface on the other hand, was quite well designed. 30 years later, for the most part the whole thing is intact and still in use, functioning reliably in enterprise-level multiprogramming environments. So, no, maintaining compatibility with that old-but-good interface is unquestionably not a mistake.
The short story is: the whole Dos interface was a mistake, and Microsoft now has to live with it. The unix interface was not a mistake and we're happy to carry it forward.
206 MHz StrongARM SA-1110
32MB DRAM
32MB Flash
240 x 320 pixel, 4096-color
USB, serial, Ethernet
Linux
I can only conclude you didn't read the report. It included many recommendations aimed at enforcement of the individual's fundamental right to privacy, a concept that some Americans may find difficult to grasp. It does not seem partial to business interests at all.
That's the key one, let's not let anyone forget it.
If you can't build the whole source for the OS, at least, every last bit of it involved in the security/communications chain, then it can't be said to be trustworthy.
Err, PNG is broken how? Every browser I use handles it just fine. PNG is quite obviously here to stay.
Well I have a rather jaded view of politicians, sorry, I'd like to be corrected by all my experience just serves to reinforce this stereotype: politicians are in it for the power trip, for greed (how exactly does the wealth increase by more than the salary between beginning of term and end?) and because they don't really do much well except project their image and... play politics. It's harder to survive on that alone in the real world. Not impossible, but harder.
Personally, as a hacker I'd prefer not to be compared to a politician thanks.
Err, forget that, somebody mod both these down please ;-)
Somebody mod up the post above, please
Yes, that's my main motivation as well, though there certainly are other rewards... such as working with people you respect and can learn from, lots of little 15 minute's of fame, mental exercise, getting things working the way you want for yourself, and just plain satisfaction. That's enough for me, and oh, it doesn't hurt that it pays well.
Losing in court changes the game entirely. It's not "honor system" any more, they will have feds in the hallways.
You don't know that.
Then use the plural, say "they", and you won't need a footnote.
Err, sorry, no it ran fast on a 8088 and up. Bloody embarrassing for today's operating systems including Linux if you ask me.
I don't know if the whole thing was written in assembly - I doubt it in fact. Using their SDK (running on a SPARC station 1) I developed for it in C.