Under a proposed settlement that Microsoft reached with the Department of Justice and the nine other states suing it, the company already would give computer makers unprecedented freedom to distribute non-Microsoft products.
This is the problem. Why is MS in a position where it can dictate what sorts of freedom its customers are to be allowed?
Hey, I'm not against the kid coding and contributing. Quite to the contrary.
Or perhaps in YOUR limited hindsight you could offer a solution that forces minors to lie to participate in something they view as both fun and interesting.
Que?
In the previous posts above one such person suggested that Apple rewrite the contract to allow a legal guardian to sign.
I am all for this.
Look the point is, he lied and got caught. There are some consequences. Pretty damned minor if you compare with someone like Jon Johansen. Apple legal has to cover ass because this kid is clearly not bound by any license agreement. Hopefully they'll work something out where he can contribute.
Those are some quality inferences... You're absolutely right. I am anti-democracy and pro-slavery (oh, and lazy and cowardly). Go status quo!
I never said I didn't think the kid should be allowed to contribute if he wants to... I was making the point that it's irresponsible of/. to post a story that is so obviously one-sided (and by the kid's own admission, incomplete). At the end of the day, thousands of eyes have seen "Evil corporation smacks down poor kid" rather than "Cautious/Lawyer-filled corporation covers its ass". There's a world of difference. All it would have taken is an email to follow-up with Finlay.
It's also irresponsible of Finlay and his ADC account-sharing friends to think that surreptitiously circumventing a legal agreement is going to produce the desired result... That's where the "real world" comment comes in... In this world, you can expect repercussions when you break contracts. And that's what he and his friend did.
So, 3 hours after you posted the story, after ~600/.-ers have sounded off against Apple, after a few other stories to grab attention have piled up, and at the end of the business day you finally realize that maybe you should occasionally do some research.
The reason? It turns out this kid's rant against Apple was missing one important detail... The one where we learn he was being provided developer access by someone who was violating a legally binding agreement. Maybe that's why Apple went all heavy-handed and cut off this developer's account? Oops.
I feel sorry for the kid if he wants to hack Darwin and Apple won't let him contribute his code back. I don't feel sorry for the kid (or his co-conspirators) for doing an end-run around Apple's contracts and getting burned. Welcome to the real world - you better get used to it.
I had this happen to me... there's a fix, although I don't remember it atm. Since you've obviously got a web browser working, search through the macfixit forums - that's where I found a fix.
If you can step back to N-dimensions and see patterns you can exploit then it wasn't random data in the first place.
Exactly! But until you make that connection, it may as well be random!
There are 2^N bit sequences of length N. There are 2^M sequences of length M. If M<N then 2^M<2^N. So you can't represent all sequences of length 2^N using sequences of length 2^M. You can't even represent most sequences of length N using sequences of length M. It doesn't matter if you can visualise infinite dimensional spaces with pretty purple knobs on. You can't have an algorithm that packs most sequences of length N into M bits.
I'll assume by "sequences" you mean "random sequences" because otherwise you are saying that lossless compression is impossible. =) I agree with you otherwise, given one crippling constraint: that you can't observe your data except as one-dimensional binary numbers.
After re-reading this press release a few times, I don't think these people have really accomplished much. Bear with me and I'll flesh out the point I'm trying to make - if someone could find a way to do this, I think it could work.
With PURE random data, this won't work. Why anyone would want to transmit gigabytes worth of pure random data is beyond me. A signal worth compressing isn't going to be purely random. It may look like it, but there is some information there. This is why signal processing people use random processes to model signals. Not because their signals are completely random - but because - given enough samples - they look like specific random processes (Gaussian, Rayleigh, Rician...).
Now, the technique I'm thinking of would do something along the lines of take a pseudo-random process and map it to an n-dimensional space. An algorithm then searches this space for (even just) simple patterns. Suppose it finds ten equally spaced points along a "line" in 12-dimensional space. That's 120 bytes that can be reduced to a significantly smaller vector (plus an offset to aid reconstruction in the right place), no?
I don't know... would this work? I think so. Would it be feasible given existing computing power? I'm not so sure...
I'm not sure if I understand your point, but from what I do understand, it seems to me you are missing it.
If you look at this sequence as a one-dimensional series: 00101101, it's pretty hard (at least for a processor) to distinguish a pattern there... it's a pseudo-random sequence. But if I paint it this way, in 2d: (0,0) (1,0) (1,1) (0,1), I can step back and see a square with sides of length one.
AFAIK, what these people are claiming is that they've developed a way to step WAY back, to n-dimensions, and have patterns emerge from seemingly random data.
It's not the random-number generation that's significant here... it's the purported ability to compress a seemingly random sequence. RLE typically doesn't fare very well with pure random data because it only looks for certain types of redundancy.
If I haven't missed the boat here, it's really a very interesting achievment.
And when you graduate EE- you'll be using Win NT with an X server or a Sun/Linux box to do your work! All your sims will run on linux or Sun servers.
Hell, all my sims already run on Solaris... Spectre and HSPICE only run on our Sun boxes (though I think they may have NT versions). It's mostly only Matlab that I can use for sim work on the Mac... that's not what I was talking about. You'll notice I never claimed the Mac was replacing anything else for simulation work.
I haven't seen an engineering organization using a Mac for better than 12 years! (That counts about 10 organizations...)
I have. One of the wireless research companies out here uses Macs almost exclusively. They use Linux for some simulation work... but the real work is done by data generators and analyzers that can actually operate at 30 GHz. Data is captured by the Macs over GPIB.
Again, I'm not talking about engineering companies switching to Macs wholesale... I'm talking about Macs filling an important niche. Content preparation and delivery. Macs excel in this role. Design and simulation are still very much the domain of something like Solaris or HP-UX. You don't see Cadence releasing a custom IC layout tool like Virtuoso for Mac (or Windows or Linux for that matter... at least not yet).
It's not about performance or commodity hardware. Since when do professionals or researchers care whether or not their personal machines are made from bargain-basement components? These are the same peole that are springing for $10-20k workstations out of their budget...
It's about having a computer that:
Travels well - Powerbooks and now even the iBook are dream laptops.
Allows you to prepare and deliver presentations, often just minutes before you step up to the mike - with a native Powerpoint you are leagues ahead of anything Linux can offer.
Gives you the Unix underbelly all geeks know and love.
Gives you a beautiful, functional GUI - say what you want about Aqua, amidst a sea of Winbooks, it still raises the occasional eyebrow at conferences and makes people just that tiny bit more likely to remember your talk specifically.
I'm not just saying this as a rabid Mac advocate. As an EE grad student I look around my department and I see a sizeable chunk of profs and students using Macs - myself included (though I still have a PC at home). My supervisor - a hardcore Mac user - has just switched to OS X exclusively. We don't all use Macs because we are a bunch of Luddites... we use them because, all things considered, we'd rather just get our work done: easily and effectively.
I won't even touch the x86 argument except to point out that re-compiling an app for a different hardware platform is done thousands of times a day by Linux developers - what makes you think it would be any harder for Apple developers to do? Though I agree we might be long accustomed to airborne swine before Apple publishes OS X for x86. =)
Firewire... I guess I would have to credit Sony here
Sony?
IIRC, Apple developed Firewire and got it approved by the IEEE (as IEEE 1394). Why do you think Sony doesn't call it "Firewire"?
I suppose I might agree if you're suggesting that Sony's decision to provide Firewire outputs on their DV cams has pushed Firewire into the mainstream. But at the same time, it could be argued that they really didn't have too many options. USB? YAPI (Yet Another Proprietary Interface)? Firewire was a logical choice. A choice available because Apple developed it - over 6 years ago. Also, a lot of DV cam early adopters were Mac people. =)
(Prices from Pricewatch... I skipped the "house brand" GF2 MX cards when finding that bank-breaking $43 Abit to spare myself much embarassment when the Shuttle combo came in $10 cheaper). I also neglect shipping - where I'll let you do the math as to which is cheaper: 3 boxes vs. 5.
So for one dollar more, you would recommend to your customers that they get infinitely crappier sound, a far worse NIC, undoubtedly a crappier video card (by nature of the external AGP interface), less USB ports and a mobo with no good reputation for reliability?
Wow. Way to do your homework.
Or maybe you would instead recommend that they get the GeForce3 for an added $119. While they're at it, why not throw in an OEM Creative Audigy for an extra $50?
Don't even try that lame argument that it's not "high-performance" enough. Do you mean to tell me that Johnny Necktie will notice the difference between 200 fps and 210? I've got an Asus A7V, Athlon TB 750 and Diamond TNT2... I play all the games I want. I still type my Word documents with no impediments. Honestly, the only thing I find might need changing is the four-generation-old TNT2.
Maybe I should have phrased that differently. On the other hand, maybe I should have checked my source before posting:
With its second generation transform and lighting capabilities, per-pixel shading operations, a fill rate of up to 350M pixels per second and an internal 8X AGP interface, the integrated GeForce2...
I didn't mean to imply that the only reason the integrated GeForce2 is 8x (I said 6x, my bad) is because it's in the IGP - merely that it is equivalent to 8x AGP, as a consequence of its location and nVidia's nice work.
You have no idea how hard I found it to respond to your comment in a civil manner. Next time, you try the whole "civility" thing.
The nForce chipset has a Geforce2 integrated into the northbridge... it's not exactly the type of thing you just leave off a board. Not only that, but since it's in the northbridge, the interface is equivalent to AGP 6x. I really question why they didn't test or show results for the nForce boards sans Geforce3.
Furthermore, can somebody explain to me why they used a memory configuration of 1x256, 2x128? Doesn't this switch off the nForce dual-channel configuration by using three dimms?
I really have issues with their methodology and conclusions here... "Trounces"? The best KT266A mobo does marginally better on Q3A and office benchmarks and gets beaten on bandwidth intensive apps. I don't know about Germany, but where I come from, that's not a trouncing by any means.
The GNU tools are cool... and they're free... but they were originally released precisely to be run on non-free versions of Unix.
Yes, yes, no.
From the GNU homepage:
The GNU Project was launched in 1984 to develop a complete Unix-like operating system which is free software: the GNU system.
You see, the original goal of GNU was to develop a complete Unix replacement - designed to be interoperable, but free. (I think Mach was originally developed to be the kernel for the GNU system). A side-effect of this was that the GNU tools could be built on non-free Unix - and eventually Linux.
It's kind of ironic. GNU tools have helped keep commercial Unix vendors like Sun in the game against Microsoft and launched Linux to new heights. Meanwhile, the intended core of the GNU system has now been absorbed by one of the great satans of non-free software: Apple. But through it all, the complete GNU system has never emerged as a real contender or even alternative. Makes you wonder why...
For some really, really interesting stuff, look into using two bases for computation.
One of the professors in our department has been doing some heavy research into computations using more than one base. The idea goes like this:
Select two bases that will be able to represent your expected number space best. He started out using 2 and 3, but you can easily use 2 and 7, 2 and 13, 2 and 9973, whatever floats your boat. In fact, you can use any real number as your second base.
Map your real numbers to the DBNS number space thusly:
6 = 2^1 * 3^1
18 = 2^1 * 3^2
231.67 ~= 2^3 * 3^3.0637
Keep in mind that there are many possibilities for your mapping (he's developed optimizations for finding good mappings)
Exploit the exponential nature of the system! A multiplication is now a simple addition of exponents. Division is a subtraction.
Keep in mind that huge numbers (or huge precision) can be maintained with a small number of bits in the exponents. For example, the number 105413504 (2^7*7^7) requires only two bytes. In binary it requires 27 bits to be represented.
Obviously this isn't a universal solution, but think about DSP hardware, where multiplications are expensive and needed all the time. Not to mention exponentiation for cryptography. Also, this brief explanation doesn't do justice to the full potential/applications of DBNS. A lot of work has gone into it.
... just to find this from dissenting panelist David Sorkin:
"As the majority suggests, there may well be some narrow categories of trademarks for which the word "sucks" does not clearly disassociate a domain name from the trademark, and therefore it may be unwise to adopt a per se rule holding that "sucks" domain names can never be found confusingly similar to the trademarks they contain. But the Complainant in this proceeding does not claim to be known as a manufacturer of vacuum cleaners or suction pumps, or as a self-deprecating alternative rock band, or a test laboratory for beverage straws, or a porn star, a black hole, or any other sort of entity that people are likely to associate with sucking. And even if the Complainant did fall within one of these categories, it would still bear the burden of proving a likelihood of confusion."
Dude, I got the _same_ case from Onvia a while back... same deal - the case had a giant dent in the back - looked like it had been dropped on its side from about 6 feet.
The iPod can draw power through a Firewire connection, but I don't think PCMCIA cards can supply the juice needed. I've got a PCMCIA Firewire (VST) card in my Lombard PB... unfortunately, it can't power an external Firewire drive unless it has a separate AC adaptor hooked up.
Slashdot Mirror
This is the problem. Why is MS in a position where it can dictate what sorts of freedom its customers are to be allowed?
Look the point is, he lied and got caught. There are some consequences. Pretty damned minor if you compare with someone like Jon Johansen. Apple legal has to cover ass because this kid is clearly not bound by any license agreement. Hopefully they'll work something out where he can contribute.
Those are some quality inferences... You're absolutely right. I am anti-democracy and pro-slavery (oh, and lazy and cowardly). Go status quo!
/. to post a story that is so obviously one-sided (and by the kid's own admission, incomplete). At the end of the day, thousands of eyes have seen "Evil corporation smacks down poor kid" rather than "Cautious/Lawyer-filled corporation covers its ass". There's a world of difference. All it would have taken is an email to follow-up with Finlay.
I never said I didn't think the kid should be allowed to contribute if he wants to... I was making the point that it's irresponsible of
It's also irresponsible of Finlay and his ADC account-sharing friends to think that surreptitiously circumventing a legal agreement is going to produce the desired result... That's where the "real world" comment comes in... In this world, you can expect repercussions when you break contracts. And that's what he and his friend did.
God forbid an opposing viewpoint...
So, 3 hours after you posted the story, after ~600 /.-ers have sounded off against Apple, after a few other stories to grab attention have piled up, and at the end of the business day you finally realize that maybe you should occasionally do some research.
The reason? It turns out this kid's rant against Apple was missing one important detail... The one where we learn he was being provided developer access by someone who was violating a legally binding agreement. Maybe that's why Apple went all heavy-handed and cut off this developer's account? Oops.
I feel sorry for the kid if he wants to hack Darwin and Apple won't let him contribute his code back. I don't feel sorry for the kid (or his co-conspirators) for doing an end-run around Apple's contracts and getting burned. Welcome to the real world - you better get used to it.
Isn't that what's commonly referred to as "Fair Use"... since when is that illegal?
I had this happen to me... there's a fix, although I don't remember it atm. Since you've obviously got a web browser working, search through the macfixit forums - that's where I found a fix.
Next time I'll think twice before attempting to present an idea in this hallowed scientific forum.
Your inference of mathematical ability merely from my use of quotation marks is nothing short of remarkable.
Exactly! But until you make that connection, it may as well be random!
I'll assume by "sequences" you mean "random sequences" because otherwise you are saying that lossless compression is impossible. =) I agree with you otherwise, given one crippling constraint: that you can't observe your data except as one-dimensional binary numbers.
After re-reading this press release a few times, I don't think these people have really accomplished much. Bear with me and I'll flesh out the point I'm trying to make - if someone could find a way to do this, I think it could work.
With PURE random data, this won't work. Why anyone would want to transmit gigabytes worth of pure random data is beyond me. A signal worth compressing isn't going to be purely random. It may look like it, but there is some information there. This is why signal processing people use random processes to model signals. Not because their signals are completely random - but because - given enough samples - they look like specific random processes (Gaussian, Rayleigh, Rician...).
Now, the technique I'm thinking of would do something along the lines of take a pseudo-random process and map it to an n-dimensional space. An algorithm then searches this space for (even just) simple patterns. Suppose it finds ten equally spaced points along a "line" in 12-dimensional space. That's 120 bytes that can be reduced to a significantly smaller vector (plus an offset to aid reconstruction in the right place), no?
I don't know... would this work? I think so. Would it be feasible given existing computing power? I'm not so sure...
If you look at this sequence as a one-dimensional series: 00101101, it's pretty hard (at least for a processor) to distinguish a pattern there... it's a pseudo-random sequence. But if I paint it this way, in 2d: (0,0) (1,0) (1,1) (0,1), I can step back and see a square with sides of length one.
AFAIK, what these people are claiming is that they've developed a way to step WAY back, to n-dimensions, and have patterns emerge from seemingly random data.
It's not the random-number generation that's significant here... it's the purported ability to compress a seemingly random sequence. RLE typically doesn't fare very well with pure random data because it only looks for certain types of redundancy.
If I haven't missed the boat here, it's really a very interesting achievment.
Hell, all my sims already run on Solaris... Spectre and HSPICE only run on our Sun boxes (though I think they may have NT versions). It's mostly only Matlab that I can use for sim work on the Mac... that's not what I was talking about. You'll notice I never claimed the Mac was replacing anything else for simulation work.
I have. One of the wireless research companies out here uses Macs almost exclusively. They use Linux for some simulation work... but the real work is done by data generators and analyzers that can actually operate at 30 GHz. Data is captured by the Macs over GPIB.
Again, I'm not talking about engineering companies switching to Macs wholesale... I'm talking about Macs filling an important niche. Content preparation and delivery. Macs excel in this role. Design and simulation are still very much the domain of something like Solaris or HP-UX. You don't see Cadence releasing a custom IC layout tool like Virtuoso for Mac (or Windows or Linux for that matter... at least not yet).
Framemaker has a respectable equation editor. Then there's MathType. Latex is also an option for Mac users...
It's not about performance or commodity hardware. Since when do professionals or researchers care whether or not their personal machines are made from bargain-basement components? These are the same peole that are springing for $10-20k workstations out of their budget...
It's about having a computer that:
I'm not just saying this as a rabid Mac advocate. As an EE grad student I look around my department and I see a sizeable chunk of profs and students using Macs - myself included (though I still have a PC at home). My supervisor - a hardcore Mac user - has just switched to OS X exclusively. We don't all use Macs because we are a bunch of Luddites... we use them because, all things considered, we'd rather just get our work done: easily and effectively.
I won't even touch the x86 argument except to point out that re-compiling an app for a different hardware platform is done thousands of times a day by Linux developers - what makes you think it would be any harder for Apple developers to do? Though I agree we might be long accustomed to airborne swine before Apple publishes OS X for x86. =)
Nope... Apple did it. They originally came up with the idea in the mid-80's, refined it and got it accepted as an IEEE standard in 1995 or 1996.
Sony?
IIRC, Apple developed Firewire and got it approved by the IEEE (as IEEE 1394). Why do you think Sony doesn't call it "Firewire"?
I suppose I might agree if you're suggesting that Sony's decision to provide Firewire outputs on their DV cams has pushed Firewire into the mainstream. But at the same time, it could be argued that they really didn't have too many options. USB? YAPI (Yet Another Proprietary Interface)? Firewire was a logical choice. A choice available because Apple developed it - over 6 years ago. Also, a lot of DV cam early adopters were Mac people. =)
Where the hell did you get this from?
Let's see: nForce solution:
- MSI nForce 420D - $129
- GeForce2 MX (at 8x AGP, using system DDR RAM)
- Dolby Digital 5.1 audio controller
- integrated 10/100 NIC
- 6 USB ports
- integrated ATA100 IDE controller
- Athlon XP 1600 - $114
- 512 MB PC2100 Micron DDR RAM (2 x 256 MB) - $72
Total: $315Includes:
Now, let's try the "superior" alternative (and I'm trying to pick out the lowest prices I can):
- Shuttle AK31 (KT266A) - $77
- integrated ATA100
- VIA AC97 sound
- 2+2 USB ports
- Athlon XP 1600 - $114
- 512 MB PC2100 Micron DDR RAM (2 x 256 MB) - $72
- Abit Siluro Nvidia Geforce2 Mx200 (but at 4x AGP w/ less memory bandwidth) - $43 --OR-- MSI G3TI200 PRO-TD GEFORCE3 TI200 $162
- cheap-ass Realtek NIC - $10
Total for GF2MX solution - $316 (for GF3 - $435)Includes:
(Prices from Pricewatch... I skipped the "house brand" GF2 MX cards when finding that bank-breaking $43 Abit to spare myself much embarassment when the Shuttle combo came in $10 cheaper). I also neglect shipping - where I'll let you do the math as to which is cheaper: 3 boxes vs. 5.
So for one dollar more, you would recommend to your customers that they get infinitely crappier sound, a far worse NIC, undoubtedly a crappier video card (by nature of the external AGP interface), less USB ports and a mobo with no good reputation for reliability?
Wow. Way to do your homework.
Or maybe you would instead recommend that they get the GeForce3 for an added $119. While they're at it, why not throw in an OEM Creative Audigy for an extra $50?
Don't even try that lame argument that it's not "high-performance" enough. Do you mean to tell me that Johnny Necktie will notice the difference between 200 fps and 210? I've got an Asus A7V, Athlon TB 750 and Diamond TNT2... I play all the games I want. I still type my Word documents with no impediments. Honestly, the only thing I find might need changing is the four-generation-old TNT2.
I didn't mean to imply that the only reason the integrated GeForce2 is 8x (I said 6x, my bad) is because it's in the IGP - merely that it is equivalent to 8x AGP, as a consequence of its location and nVidia's nice work.
You have no idea how hard I found it to respond to your comment in a civil manner. Next time, you try the whole "civility" thing.
This testing methodology makes astrology look like an exact science.
Furthermore, can somebody explain to me why they used a memory configuration of 1x256, 2x128? Doesn't this switch off the nForce dual-channel configuration by using three dimms?
I really have issues with their methodology and conclusions here... "Trounces"? The best KT266A mobo does marginally better on Q3A and office benchmarks and gets beaten on bandwidth intensive apps. I don't know about Germany, but where I come from, that's not a trouncing by any means.
Yes, yes, no.
From the GNU homepage:
You see, the original goal of GNU was to develop a complete Unix replacement - designed to be interoperable, but free. (I think Mach was originally developed to be the kernel for the GNU system). A side-effect of this was that the GNU tools could be built on non-free Unix - and eventually Linux.
It's kind of ironic. GNU tools have helped keep commercial Unix vendors like Sun in the game against Microsoft and launched Linux to new heights. Meanwhile, the intended core of the GNU system has now been absorbed by one of the great satans of non-free software: Apple. But through it all, the complete GNU system has never emerged as a real contender or even alternative. Makes you wonder why...
One of the professors in our department has been doing some heavy research into computations using more than one base. The idea goes like this:
- 6 = 2^1 * 3^1
- 18 = 2^1 * 3^2
- 231.67 ~= 2^3 * 3^3.0637
Keep in mind that there are many possibilities for your mapping (he's developed optimizations for finding good mappings)Obviously this isn't a universal solution, but think about DSP hardware, where multiplications are expensive and needed all the time. Not to mention exponentiation for cryptography. Also, this brief explanation doesn't do justice to the full potential/applications of DBNS. A lot of work has gone into it.
If you want to find out more about DBNS, there is a primer at www.rcim.ca/Research/Video_Rate/DBNS/, miscellaneous papers at people.atips.ca/~eskritt and a collection of a few published papers at www.atips.ca/research. Also, some older presentations are archived at wooster.hut.fi/geta/courses/graham/Applications/.
Disclaimer: I'm the web guy for our research group at the U of Calgary. The guy who came up with DBNS is a professor here (Dr. V. Dimitrov).
So are you suggesting that the guy who registered vivendiuniversalsucks.com was planning to start a multi-national media conglomerate?
Bravo!
And they wonder why the New Economy failed...
The iPod can draw power through a Firewire connection, but I don't think PCMCIA cards can supply the juice needed. I've got a PCMCIA Firewire (VST) card in my Lombard PB... unfortunately, it can't power an external Firewire drive unless it has a separate AC adaptor hooked up.
I'd be thrilled to find out I'm wrong, however...
Kudos from me, whatever it's worth...