Geeks know how the world works...
on
Lawsuits Suck
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· Score: 1
It's stupid to conclude that idealists (the geeks suck refers to in this case) don't know how the world works. For instance, I might know how the world works, but I can choose to disagree with some of it and try to change things.
The same is true for others: members of the RIAA understand that digital media and file-sharing will end their empire. But they don't care about jumping on the train of renewal right away, simply because it is in their financial interest not to do so. They'll stall their downfall for as long as possible: and make loads of money in the meantime.
In other words: doing or supporting things you know won't stand up in today's court or next year's court, does not mean you don't understand the way the world works.
All you really need to be certain of is that everyone receives their certificates, but you can have them delivered to their homes by regular mail, just like other voting documents.
If the certificates are PKI-based, eg. using a public/private key system, authentication is simple and very secure.
Only one thing: can you be certain the person behind the computer is actually the one that's supposed to vote? Well, the same is true for regular voting (at least here in The Netherlands, you don't need to show anything except your voting form when you vote.)
The Gameboy Color demoscene is made possible by these and they've been at it for quite a while. For some interesting info about it, have a look here. For programming info (hey now that I'm posting links anyway =)), the C-based GBDK can be found here, along with info on how to code for the GB in Asm.
I think this tool could actually be pretty cool, I've IRCed for years (and finally gotten rid of that habit) and it happens a lot that channels with obvious names are either in constant takeover-wars or contain only idlers (somehow people think it's hip to be in certain channels 24 hours a day.) The interesting discussion often takes place in other channels. So if you can search through the actual text in real-time, that's a great solution!
Concerning privacy, the structure of IRC makes it a very dangerous place to talk about stuff that's illegal, since private messages go through the server too (so the servers can log everything), except for DCC Chats, which can't be monitored by ENow either. So this doesn't change anything.
I know it sounds strange, but Lego Mindstorms is actually pretty cool. O'Reilly has a good book for it and they also list lots of online resources here.
The term Open Source has a much broader meaning these days - and that is what I was referring to.
(Although I must admit that you are correct when you are referring to the official Open Source definition and I agree that it would have been better to give a different example.)
I know that there are commercial vendors offering VPN solutions that interoperate beautifully between Windows and Linux, but these carry a hefty pricetag, upwards of several thousand dollars. I would much rather go with an Open Source solution.
Please remember that Open Source != Free Software. Open Source does not specifically require the software to be free, an example of this is Solaris. Free Software (in the FSF sense of the term) however, requires the software to be free, open source and a bunch of other things (concerning distribution, etc.)
Sorry for bitching, but I think that at least the people at/. (and those submitting to/.) should have the terms straight.
What's a standard? A HTML4 feature not supported by IE5, so less than 20% of all people browsing the web have a chance at viewing it correctly or an MS-only feature that can be viewed by over 85% of everybody surfing on the web?
It sucks, but I guess the only way to combat this is to not use those features, but then again - it won't do your company any good not to exploit features that by far the majority would be capable of using and that would enhance your site. So all we can do is hope that a good competitor emerges that can take some of that marketshare back from MS, making their proprietary features less widespread (and with that less of a standard.)
That most people are hypocrites? We knew that before British Columbia slapped the restriction the article mentions on SoF.
Important to remember is, that it's not one single person responsible for all the rulings and restrictions. In other words: the person who ultimately advised SoF to be made available to people aged at least 18, may feel the same way you do about eating animals.
How do you propose every new rule or law is to be introduced? First check to see if there's somewhere something happening that might look or sound hypocrite or contradictory to the proposed rule or law? That's impossible.
Lots of people are posting the usual "Anime sucks" replies to something regarding Anime, but Macross is different. I mean, I'm no Anime fan either, but watching Robotech as a kid was a very important part of my childhood! Ok that's probably an overstatement, but regardless: Robotech rocked. I think I'll pick up the DVDs just for old times sake:)
I see such ideas like this as yet another step in the further removal of the user from control of her own system.
First of all, don't dismiss Application Service Providers right away with all the usual tales of privacy destruction, but please, if only for once, think about the advantages. Besides, nobody says you ever have to use ASPs, so nothing's going to happen without you agreeing to it anyway.
I do lots of coding at home, so I have a compiler and other development tools permanently installed on my local harddrive. I have either paid for them or they are free. Now, it does happen that for some reason I need a cool splashscreen or a cool logo for the website or whatever. I can do two things now: get a free/shareware/illegal version of software to assist me in the creation or I can buy one.
I don't want to spend half a day looking and trying to end up with an inadequate tool anyway and I don't want to buy a large commercial and well-known tool just for the occasional logo.
So what if I could use Photoshop with 2000 installed filters and all the cool add-ons for a single afternoon for a couple of bucks?
Conclusion: it's just another option, which is always good. I could still download and install the Gimp ofcourse, but this way, I can use Photoshop if I prefer it without having to shell out for the entire app. It depends on your principles if you actually want to do such a thing ofcourse... But hey, long live free choice.
First off, I'm not a big supporter of Rambus memory, but I do think it's a pretty decent solution.
The fact that RDRAM has a higher latency than SDRAM will become less and less important as CPU caches increase in size - this will mean larger chunks of memory will be copied into the cache at a time, making bandwidth the bottleneck instead of the latency.
The signallig problem is called bus skew and basically has to do with synchronizing at high speed. It might sound ridiculous, but when you have signals moving across a bus at 800+MHz, pin 0 could already be sending its n+1th bit when pin 15 is still waiting for bit n. This means you have to be absolutely certain your timing is perfect, because adding circuits to fix these problems will only slow things down again (defeating the point of a high speed bus.) This is something SDRAM will run into sooner or later as well though and the problem is much worse with 64 pins.
The yields are currently very bad because you have to assemble a RIMM entirely before you can test them. This means that if you have 1 chip that doesn't work, you can throw away the entire RIMM. Some calculating shows that in a situation like that, 90% yields in chips will only mean about 50% yield in RIMMs. This is probably just a matter of time though, before someone figures out a way to test them without assembling the entire RIMM first.
In the long run, I think Rambus could have a really interesting technology, but the way they try to force it onto everybody and demanding licensing fees and royalties, it will be hard to convince people... The company sucks and will probably drag down the technology with it.
These are some sites that were very useful to me when I was learning OpenGL:
- NeHe productions has over 20 OpenGL tutorials online, starting at the absolute beginning. - The OpenGL Challenge is a weekly OpenGL compo that requires entries to be opensource. Has some *really* cool stuff. - Romka Graphics has loads of misc OpenGL stuff, worth checking out. - The OpenGL FAQ and troubleshooting guide is another overload in OpenGL-related material.
And besides that, I also run my own daily news site located at www.demoscene.org and is all about multimedia development, so a couple of OpenGL-related links turn up every week. Hope this helps...
As a developer, I find the basic architecture and startup-phase of a new project very important - and also the most enjoyable. So I doubt it'll be easy to find new maintainers for projects like these - the only reason someone would take over the maintainance of an on-going project is probably because it's famous and widely-used. But you don't stop maintaining a famous and widely-used opensource project you originally created (even if you do, you won't need this because people will probably be lining up to take over.)
I was actually looking for the same thing a while so I collected some links. Here they are:
Index Generator 2.0 is a freeware Windows-tool which has an easy interface and is fairly powerful too. The website is horrible though:)
LinkScan 7.2 is a commercial tool for Unix/Windows that has a free evaluation version available. Haven't tried it out, does seem to have loads of features.
Tree.pl is opensource and therefor easily customizable, but doesn't have too many features standard, so a good basis if you know Perl.
They grasped its inherently amoral nature, its wanton invasions of privacy, its embrace of technology and co-option of politics and culture; they anticipated the marginalization and isolation of individuals who don't want to go or get along.
I think it's not realistic to portray the creators of the game as visionaries or social/political prophets. The whole concept the world of Shadowrun is based on doesn't have anything to do with Microsoft, Doubleclick and AOL, but more importantly: it was also no prediction.
Actually, Shadowrun doesn't really bring anything new to the roleplaying game - worlds like these have always been very common in roleplaying and I have devised several myself in different settings (even in AD&D) Apart from that it is a very good game:)
Bad universities probably exist, but how do you know yours is one if you've only been there for a fairly short time? (considering the fact that you are still a junior.)
I'm not quite sure what you expected from your university, but if you thought Software Engineering or Computer Science to be about neat C++ structuring or writing a Quake3 engine, then think again. Sure these are all part of it - but just a tiny bit.
In the end, it's all about understanding Information Technology - what it is capable of and how to apply it. A Quake3 engine is not much different from Oracle 8i in that they both use complex datastructures to maximize the efficiency in throwing data around and presenting it as information to the outside world.
The same is true for C++, COBOL and Basic. They are just tools, nothing more. It doesn't matter whether you give a construction engineer a bulldozer or just a simple hammer to take down a house - it is the knowledge he has about the way houses are built and how they are structured that decides how he approaches the problem. Some tools are better in some places though - the bulldozer is probably better for tearing down a house, the hammer is most likely a better choice for putting a nail in the wall.
The same is true for Software Engineering: it's all theory, but once you master it, you'll be able to do anything. So have some patience with your university - or find another one.
But an observation instead about the advices given to political sites in "A Citizen-centric Internet":
Be User-driven - This sounds like advice to a portal site or something different. I thought a political message should be the same for the entire populaton, after all, we all have to agree with it in the same form in the end anyway. The only other thing this could mean is something simple like using cookies to remember what article someone read, but that's standard site-building practice.
Exchange Value Fairly - Ha! This is even stranger! Now the objective advice tells the politicians how they should feel and act regarding online privacy (mind you I agree fully, but it's just wrong to read it here.)
Be Objective - I saved this one for last because it's the most ridiculous of all. Politics is about everyone's personal view of the world and life. There's nothing objective about it.
Conclusion: worthless advice for "sided" sites and old news for the big news sites that already know how websites are built.
I remember that I didn't really understand what people meant with it about ten years ago, when they told me advanced digital informaton technology could potentially disrupt society in such a way that systems such as capitalism and democracy would crumble.
Back then, I looked at my computer with the bright green monitor and 300baud modem and wondered how this could ever be the case - since other technologies such as television and radio were far more advanced. Or so it seemed.
Now, ten years down the road, the Internet is huge and has an enormous impact on both society and business in such a way that I'm beginning to wonder if some of those theories from back then might become reality.
For example, digital information technology basically makes copyrights obsolete. You might disagree and say that the idea is still here and that a new form of media doesn't change the law or the morals, but once a system exists that allows you to anonymously create an infinite amount of perfect replicas of any work, it's time to wake up and be realistic.
Besides changing the way we look at copyrights on the Internet for example, it might change the way we look at copyrights in general. In other words: the Internet is possibly not just a revolution for business and technology, but very possibly also for society as a whole. And it'll be very interesting to see how this develops.
I'm amazed at how easy most crackers are traced these days. I think it will have to go a bit further than just analyzing logs.
Example: you find some entry in your logfile that would give you someone's IP address. So you call the hostmaster of that machine, he tells you that the cracker also logged in remotely on his machine. Repeat the above 10-20 times and then discover the login came from a FreeBSD 0.x machine somewhere in Siberia. So you call these people and ask them about it and all they say is: "Logfiles? What are those?"
Then how do you trace them? Although most likely, today's crackers login directly from their home DSL or cable uplink, which is pretty stupid.
To trace these people, all you can do is probably do some investigating on IRC and gather as much (circumstantial) evidence as you can...
Slashdot Mirror
The same is true for others: members of the RIAA understand that digital media and file-sharing will end their empire. But they don't care about jumping on the train of renewal right away, simply because it is in their financial interest not to do so. They'll stall their downfall for as long as possible: and make loads of money in the meantime.
In other words: doing or supporting things you know won't stand up in today's court or next year's court, does not mean you don't understand the way the world works.
So that's all they should need: information vital to be able to make the payment and nothing else.
If the certificates are PKI-based, eg. using a public/private key system, authentication is simple and very secure.
Only one thing: can you be certain the person behind the computer is actually the one that's supposed to vote? Well, the same is true for regular voting (at least here in The Netherlands, you don't need to show anything except your voting form when you vote.)
The Gameboy Color demoscene is made possible by these and they've been at it for quite a while. For some interesting info about it, have a look here. For programming info (hey now that I'm posting links anyway =)), the C-based GBDK can be found here, along with info on how to code for the GB in Asm.
Concerning privacy, the structure of IRC makes it a very dangerous place to talk about stuff that's illegal, since private messages go through the server too (so the servers can log everything), except for DCC Chats, which can't be monitored by ENow either. So this doesn't change anything.
I know it sounds strange, but Lego Mindstorms is actually pretty cool. O'Reilly has a good book for it and they also list lots of online resources here.
(Although I must admit that you are correct when you are referring to the official Open Source definition and I agree that it would have been better to give a different example.)
Please remember that Open Source != Free Software. Open Source does not specifically require the software to be free, an example of this is Solaris. Free Software (in the FSF sense of the term) however, requires the software to be free, open source and a bunch of other things (concerning distribution, etc.)
Sorry for bitching, but I think that at least the people at /. (and those submitting to /.) should have the terms straight.
It sucks, but I guess the only way to combat this is to not use those features, but then again - it won't do your company any good not to exploit features that by far the majority would be capable of using and that would enhance your site. So all we can do is hope that a good competitor emerges that can take some of that marketshare back from MS, making their proprietary features less widespread (and with that less of a standard.)
Important to remember is, that it's not one single person responsible for all the rulings and restrictions. In other words: the person who ultimately advised SoF to be made available to people aged at least 18, may feel the same way you do about eating animals.
How do you propose every new rule or law is to be introduced? First check to see if there's somewhere something happening that might look or sound hypocrite or contradictory to the proposed rule or law? That's impossible.
Lots of people are posting the usual "Anime sucks" replies to something regarding Anime, but Macross is different. I mean, I'm no Anime fan either, but watching Robotech as a kid was a very important part of my childhood! Ok that's probably an overstatement, but regardless: Robotech rocked. I think I'll pick up the DVDs just for old times sake :)
First of all, don't dismiss Application Service Providers right away with all the usual tales of privacy destruction, but please, if only for once, think about the advantages. Besides, nobody says you ever have to use ASPs, so nothing's going to happen without you agreeing to it anyway.
I do lots of coding at home, so I have a compiler and other development tools permanently installed on my local harddrive. I have either paid for them or they are free. Now, it does happen that for some reason I need a cool splashscreen or a cool logo for the website or whatever. I can do two things now: get a free/shareware/illegal version of software to assist me in the creation or I can buy one.
I don't want to spend half a day looking and trying to end up with an inadequate tool anyway and I don't want to buy a large commercial and well-known tool just for the occasional logo.
So what if I could use Photoshop with 2000 installed filters and all the cool add-ons for a single afternoon for a couple of bucks?
Conclusion: it's just another option, which is always good. I could still download and install the Gimp ofcourse, but this way, I can use Photoshop if I prefer it without having to shell out for the entire app. It depends on your principles if you actually want to do such a thing ofcourse... But hey, long live free choice.
The fact that RDRAM has a higher latency than SDRAM will become less and less important as CPU caches increase in size - this will mean larger chunks of memory will be copied into the cache at a time, making bandwidth the bottleneck instead of the latency.
The signallig problem is called bus skew and basically has to do with synchronizing at high speed. It might sound ridiculous, but when you have signals moving across a bus at 800+MHz, pin 0 could already be sending its n+1th bit when pin 15 is still waiting for bit n. This means you have to be absolutely certain your timing is perfect, because adding circuits to fix these problems will only slow things down again (defeating the point of a high speed bus.) This is something SDRAM will run into sooner or later as well though and the problem is much worse with 64 pins.
The yields are currently very bad because you have to assemble a RIMM entirely before you can test them. This means that if you have 1 chip that doesn't work, you can throw away the entire RIMM. Some calculating shows that in a situation like that, 90% yields in chips will only mean about 50% yield in RIMMs. This is probably just a matter of time though, before someone figures out a way to test them without assembling the entire RIMM first.
In the long run, I think Rambus could have a really interesting technology, but the way they try to force it onto everybody and demanding licensing fees and royalties, it will be hard to convince people... The company sucks and will probably drag down the technology with it.
Brilliant eh?
- NeHe productions has over 20 OpenGL tutorials online, starting at the absolute beginning.
- The OpenGL Challenge is a weekly OpenGL compo that requires entries to be opensource. Has some *really* cool stuff.
- Romka Graphics has loads of misc OpenGL stuff, worth checking out.
- The OpenGL FAQ and troubleshooting guide is another overload in OpenGL-related material.
And besides that, I also run my own daily news site located at www.demoscene.org and is all about multimedia development, so a couple of OpenGL-related links turn up every week. Hope this helps...
So what's left? Not much I guess...
- Index Generator 2.0 is a freeware Windows-tool which has an easy interface and is fairly powerful too. The website is horrible though
:) - LinkScan 7.2 is a commercial tool for Unix/Windows that has a free evaluation version available. Haven't tried it out, does seem to have loads of features.
- Tree.pl is opensource and therefor easily customizable, but doesn't have too many features standard, so a good basis if you know Perl.
Hope this helps...I think it's not realistic to portray the creators of the game as visionaries or social/political prophets. The whole concept the world of Shadowrun is based on doesn't have anything to do with Microsoft, Doubleclick and AOL, but more importantly: it was also no prediction.
Actually, Shadowrun doesn't really bring anything new to the roleplaying game - worlds like these have always been very common in roleplaying and I have devised several myself in different settings (even in AD&D) Apart from that it is a very good game :)
I think this feature is way over the top...
I'm not quite sure what you expected from your university, but if you thought Software Engineering or Computer Science to be about neat C++ structuring or writing a Quake3 engine, then think again. Sure these are all part of it - but just a tiny bit.
In the end, it's all about understanding Information Technology - what it is capable of and how to apply it. A Quake3 engine is not much different from Oracle 8i in that they both use complex datastructures to maximize the efficiency in throwing data around and presenting it as information to the outside world.
The same is true for C++, COBOL and Basic. They are just tools, nothing more. It doesn't matter whether you give a construction engineer a bulldozer or just a simple hammer to take down a house - it is the knowledge he has about the way houses are built and how they are structured that decides how he approaches the problem. Some tools are better in some places though - the bulldozer is probably better for tearing down a house, the hammer is most likely a better choice for putting a nail in the wall.
The same is true for Software Engineering: it's all theory, but once you master it, you'll be able to do anything. So have some patience with your university - or find another one.
- Be User-driven - This sounds like advice to a portal site or something different. I thought a political message should be the same for the entire populaton, after all, we all have to agree with it in the same form in the end anyway. The only other thing this could mean is something simple like using cookies to remember what article someone read, but that's standard site-building practice.
- Exchange Value Fairly - Ha! This is even stranger! Now the objective advice tells the politicians how they should feel and act regarding online privacy (mind you I agree fully, but it's just wrong to read it here.)
- Be Objective - I saved this one for last because it's the most ridiculous of all. Politics is about everyone's personal view of the world and life. There's nothing objective about it.
Conclusion: worthless advice for "sided" sites and old news for the big news sites that already know how websites are built.This guy could sue Amazon for using "GET" and/or "POST" in their one-click-shopping :)
Back then, I looked at my computer with the bright green monitor and 300baud modem and wondered how this could ever be the case - since other technologies such as television and radio were far more advanced. Or so it seemed.
Now, ten years down the road, the Internet is huge and has an enormous impact on both society and business in such a way that I'm beginning to wonder if some of those theories from back then might become reality.
For example, digital information technology basically makes copyrights obsolete. You might disagree and say that the idea is still here and that a new form of media doesn't change the law or the morals, but once a system exists that allows you to anonymously create an infinite amount of perfect replicas of any work, it's time to wake up and be realistic.
Besides changing the way we look at copyrights on the Internet for example, it might change the way we look at copyrights in general. In other words: the Internet is possibly not just a revolution for business and technology, but very possibly also for society as a whole. And it'll be very interesting to see how this develops.
Example: you find some entry in your logfile that would give you someone's IP address. So you call the hostmaster of that machine, he tells you that the cracker also logged in remotely on his machine. Repeat the above 10-20 times and then discover the login came from a FreeBSD 0.x machine somewhere in Siberia. So you call these people and ask them about it and all they say is: "Logfiles? What are those?"
Then how do you trace them? Although most likely, today's crackers login directly from their home DSL or cable uplink, which is pretty stupid.
To trace these people, all you can do is probably do some investigating on IRC and gather as much (circumstantial) evidence as you can...
Not that I would know ofcourse, but I heard someone talk about it the other day. I didn't have a look or anything, it's just what I heard.
The same message also appears when you buy a movie on VHS or VCD. And for as far as I can remember, it always has.