I see a two issues with Bell Canada. First, this so-called Traffic Shaping is really a way to artificially screw up what would otherwise be a nicely working system. Who are they to dictate what traffic gets priority? Secondly, on the issue of using DRM, I think Steve Jobs put it nicely in his open paper about DRM-less music being sold on iTunes. Turns out that all this hoopla about piracy that caused the invention of DRM is over-exaggerated and some big businesses are agreeing with him. After all, if piracy were as large a problem as many would like us to believe, then how come iTunes is making Apple boatloads of money? I think Bell Canada would be wise to stop the traffic shaping and do something to support Linux and Mac. Otherwise they are really limiting themselves to that portion of the market that doesn't care about P2P and doesn't use Macs or Linux. Just my two cents on the whole matter.
What would happen if there were two distinct ways of handling the BKL problem, which could be implemented simultaneously: Method number 1, the existing method. This would remain in place to support all the program that use it. Method number 2, a newfangled method that new programs will need to be made aware of. The idea is that "well behaved" programs would, over time, begin to use the second method. The first method would actually use the second method in its implementation, so really there's only one method, although it appears that there are two.
Each resource in the kernel that might potentially be locked receives its own small lock. The idea is that the more finely grained the locking, the less likely it is that more than one program will need the same resource at the same time. The deadlock and resource contention problems will still exist, of course, but they will occur less frequently. Programs that know exactly which locks they'll need over the course of an operation would put in a request for all of those resources. At this moment, the kernel checks if all requested resources are available, and if so, the resources are locked immediately (and simultaneously) and program execution continues into the portion that uses those resources. However, if one or more of the resources are not available, the kernel will queue the request and one of two things will happen at the program's choice: Either the call will block until the resources are available, at which point program execution continues normally (we'll call this "synchronous"); or the program can be notified that "I'll get back to you on that" (we'll call this "asynchronous") in which case it can continue executing some other, unrelated part of its code, such as the part that updates the screen, outputs sound, or whatever. Obviously, this will be a bit trickier for application programmers to implement, but the reward will be programs that appear responsive to a user while they "wait" for locks. There should be an additional option in the locking request: a timeout value (with an option to never timeout). If the request times out, the program can do something appropriate. The kernel function that releases a lock will be modified to check the queue of lock requests, and immediately transfer control of the lock to a waiting program (according to some prioritization method). This means unblocking something that is blocked synchronously, or sending a signal to the process that queued the asynchronous lock request. The BKL will be implemented by requesting all locks, synchronous, never time out. Simple. The lock request function will return a value telling you whether you received the lock or why you didn't receive it. The scheduler "knows" if there are two or more processes in its list that are blocked waiting for a lock. If at least one of them has provided a timeout value other than "never," the scheduler does nothing since the problem will fix itself eventually, a la Office Space. Otherwise, it can examine the lock relationships. If a deadlock situation exists, it will choose one of the processes and return it an answer that it didn't receive the lock for deadlock prevention. That process can then do something appropriate. Code that doesn't know how to handle this situation will crash, but the system won't block indefinitely.
Since removing the BKL will cause deadlock situations like the one you describe, perhaps a solution to this problem is to re-think the way locking is implemented. If a program knows that it will need access to resources A, B, and C, it could put in a request to reserve all three of those resources simultaneously. If the three resources are available at that moment, they will all be locked simultaneously, the task will execute, and then they will be unlocked simultaneously. But if one or more of the resources are not available at that moment, that task will simply stop executing (it won't be scheduled) until the first instance that all three become available. This way, a resource doesn't become locked until it is actually going to be used.
Wouldn't it be really funny if some space ship that we send to Mars to look for signs of life accidently has some bacteria on it, which goes into the Martian soil and eventually evolves into an alien race?
There is a slight difference between the events of September 11, 2001 and an earthquake in China, no matter how many people were killed in either event. Just in case you can't recognize what the difference might be, here it is:
SEPTEMBER 11 WAS DELIBERATELY CAUSED BY EVIL PEOPLE WHO PLANNED AND EXECUTED AN EVIL PLAN WHICH KILLED INNOCENT PEOPLE, DELIBERATELY. An earthquake, on the other hand, is a natural disaster that humans have no control over. Nobody decided to have an earthquake. But a bunch of really evil pieces of garbage like the 19 cockroaches from Saudi Arabia and the other cockroaches that supported them like that archcockroach Osama Bin Laden DID decide to have September 11. That's the tiny difference. Even if September 11 killed less people than an earthquake, the events of that day alone do completely justify the total and utter destruction of all terrorist organizations around the world, even if no terrorist organization ever participated in any other terrorist attack, and we all know that these organizations DID participate in hundreds of such attacks around the world.
They decided to bomb the WTC, twice. They decided to blow up the aircraft carriers. They decided to hijack and/or blow up airliners on several occasions in the past few decades. They decided to blow up embassies around the world. They decided to burn hundreds of cars in France. They decided to blow up the hotels in Egypt. They decided to blow up the trains in Spain. They decided to blow up the theater in Russia. They decided to blow up the subways in London. They decided to hijack Air France flight 139. They decided to fire thousands upon thousands of rockets into communities throughout Israel, and to blow up nightclubs, pizza parlors, and hotels in the same country. They decided to open fire into a crowd at Los Angeles International Airport. They decided to blow up bombs at marketplaces throughout Iraq. They decided to blow up a playground in Thailand. And since I'm getting tired of typing, let's just sum it up by saying that they decided to perform all kinds of terrorist attacks in Dagestan, India, Lebanon, Somalia, Pakistan, Jordan, Chechnya, Sudan, Yemen, Indonesia, Philippines, Algeria, Mauritania, Turkey, Egypt, and who the heck knows how many other countries.
BUT NOBODY EVER DECIDED TO HAVE AN EARTHQUAKE, TORNADO, ETC.
This is definitely a step forward for the F/OSS community. Not only is most hardware supported already under Linux (even "obsolete" stuff and processor architectures that are no longer produced), but now the major box builders are taking steps to make sure your hardware will be recognized. Sure, this doesn't necessarily mean that drivers will be available for all products, but it does essentially mean that these large companies are standing with the F/OSS community (especially Linux, as this is the best known piece of F/OSS software in non-technical circles). This statement by the companies serves to help the recognition of Linux as a major software platform, which is good no matter what F/OSS software you use and for what purpose you use it.
Take the suggestions that others gave here: Steel core door, dog(s), cheap cameras, heck I didn't see this one but putting bars on the windows is very helpful. And then you should do two additional things: One, get a large, heavy safe that can be bolted to the floor with concrete being poured into the base per the safe's instructions to make it an unmovable object, and keep your most valuable things locked inside; Two, get yourself a gun and know how to use it. I'm not kidding on this one. Many gun control activists believe that the police should be the ones wielding weapons, but having a gun yourself and knowing how to use it will give you the ability to defend yourself during the two hours between the time you call the police and the time they arrive.
A question I keep asking myself is whether this ethanol thing is really as price efficient as it's supposed to be. Since farmers are able to make more money in the lucrative ethanol market than in growing wheat for bread production, there will eventually be a shortage of bread and other foods in the name of fulfilling energy needs. Since the laws of supply and demand dictate that a new equilibrium will be reached, I think this means that food prices will rise even more than they have lately, bringing back production of some crops for food, but overall raising the prices of both food and ethanol. We're not going to achieve $1.00 per gallon fuel; instead, we're simply going to cause yet higher prices for everything.
With Apple's sales having gone up 43% in the previous quarter, this is a good time to write letters to developers who produce useful software that is not currently available as native Mac OS X software. For example, people from two unrelated departments at work have remarked that they would like to change their systems from the Wintel boxes they currently use to iMacs. Such a change would remove a great deal of clutter (since the iMac is an all-in-one architecture), give their office space a facelift (by replacing ugly beige boxes with stylish large-screened iMacs), give them a performance boost (since they are currently using ancient Pentium 3-based systems), and give them a better user experience overall. Most of these same people have Mac computers at home. What's stopping us from being able to make this switch? The very expensive software packages they must use are not available for the Mac nor do they have an acceptable Mac alternative. So these poor users are stuck with an OS they do not like. The point isn't that Macs are great and Windows sucks. The point is that the need for certain software titles continues to force many people who want an alternative to keep using Windows. It must be made clear to developers that the availability of their software on the Mac would fuel sales.
You don't need to have a math-themed party just because she is a math major. It's like when people who don't know me well, who know that I work with computers, but who know nothing about computers, try to strike up a conversation with me, but they have no idea what to talk to me about, so they try to talk computers, like, "Duh, I just bought a Dell. Is that good?" I'm like, "Uh, does it work for you?" They're all, "Duh, no, I don't know how to use it and it crashes all the time." I'm like, "Uh, yeah, you should have gotten a Mac dude." End of conversation. No good! If you're doing math all day long and then you want to go to a party and have some fun, who the heck is gonna want math at that party? How about just throwing a "normal" party? Booze, chips and salsa, a cake, some random movie playing in the background that nobody is paying any attention to, and just tell all your friends to come.
If mathematics is invented, then let's invent some right now. First, let's set the scene: Mathematicians ran into this annoying problem that you can't take the square root of a negative number, so they invented this number, i, that is defined as the square root of -1. Then, by using this i in your answer, any root can be expressed. Ok, now that the scene is set, I find it incredibly annoying that you cannot divide by zero. Therefore, I am hereby inventing a number, j, that is defined as one divided by zero. Henceforth, you can express any number divided by zero by using this j in your answer. Who knows, such a thing might actually be useful.
There should be something additional in the proposed bill: A time limit for the copyright holder to respond, say, 90 days. In other words, if it is believed that the copyright holder no longer exists (the person is dead or the company went out of business), the request is filed at the copyright office. The party filing the request could choose to use the material immediately, and pay the reasonable fee if the copyright holder comes forward. However, since you have no idea what "reasonable fee" the copyright holder might demand, and since it really isn't the business of a court to decide how much something should cost, this could still put the party at risk of huge expenses. Therefore, upon filing the request, they could choose to simply wait the 90 days. If the copyright holder didn't come forward in that time, the requesting party gains the ability to use that copyrighted material as though they received from the copyright holder a free non-exclusive license to use that material. Remember, chances are that there is no copyright holder at all, since one cannot be found or identified, and the request is on file at the copyright office for 90 days before this happens.
If we're going to start using the term "grayware" to describe software that falls somewhere between a useful application and a piece of malware, then we need to start using the term "blackware" to refer to malware, and "whiteware" to refer to useful software. By the same token, some software could be "light gray ware," other could be "dark gray ware," et cetera. Whiteware that contains exploitable bugs should be termed "off-white ware" and security software which would otherwise be termed whiteware but could be used by a malcontent for evil purposes should be termed "whiteware with black polka dots." We could further extend this concept to include whiteware that could be dangerous if misused, such as software that controls a nuclear rocket; such software would be termed "redware." Software that helps the environment would be called "greenware." Now all we need is something for "blueware" and we can use the entire color space to describe a computer program.
The disconnection between Sun's executives and the kernel developers might be one reason why OpenSolaris is failing to build a community, but I believe a much larger reason is the lack of any substantial need for OpenSolaris in the market at this point. Currently there is so much development around Linux and the BSDs that these projects fulfill most of the users' needs and offer people looking for an OS something quite compelling, with a developer community in the millions of knowledgeable people. OpenSolaris is first and foremost suffering the chicken-and-egg problem that since there isn't much of a developer community, nobody wants to join, and secondly, since Linux and the BSDs can carry out nearly all the functions that OpenSolaris carries out, there's no compelling need for developers to join that community. Let's face it, Sun should concentrate their efforts on improving Linux and selling distributions and support for their custom distribution. Part of this improvement would entail porting the few advantageous features that Solaris has over Linux currently. OpenSolaris would eventually be phased out completely. Otherwise, they are simply throwing good money after bad.
Hmmm, let me get this straight. Closed-source software can be improved. Open-source software cannot. Ok. I think I missed something here but nonetheless let's try to make some sense out of this statement. Suppose I build some sort of product that has a 3rd software component. Now suppose that there are bugs in that software component, which you can rest assured there will be, since no software is ever completely perfect. Ok, now that we've set up our example situation, a situation that occurs in reality quite often, let's see. If that software component is closed-source, we can ask its producer to fix the bug, and maybe it will happen, but chances are that it won't, because they have more important things on their priority list, like going golfing. So we end up doing all kinds of kludgy workarounds, and the product isn't as reliable as it should be. And you get products on the market that suck. On the other hand, if that software component is open source, we can ask its maker to fix the bugs. And they might be nice and fix them, for the love of programming. Or they might have more important things to do, like going golfing. In which case, we can fix it ourselves, or hire someone to fix it, or find someone online who feels like fixing it for free, or whatever. So there are options. And the open source program gets improved. What in the "F" word is Gates flapping his trap about?
It never ceases to amaze me how much extra time people seem to have on their hands. Do you mean to tell me that researchers don't have more important things to do, like, oh, I don't know, conducting research?!?!
Here's the trouble. If you rat them out, you'll lose your job and they'll make you look so bad you won't be able to get another job in this hemisphere again. But if you don't rat them out, then some security exploit will take place in the future, and 900,000,000 customers' private information will fall into the hands of some con artist in Zimbabwe, who will then proceed to jack a billion dollars from said customers, resulting in an investigation. (Luckily, each consumer will only lose a little more than a dollar, but it's still wrong.) And when you're at the deposition answering why the security problems existed and the issue comes up that you knew about them and didn't rat anybody out, then you will be held responsible for it. In other words, damned if you do, and damned if you don't.
My suggestion is that you should shut the heck up and at the same time gather evidence to make extremely clear what is happening in terms of security, evidence that is easy for any idiot to corroborate, but that doesn't violate any contractual obligations you might have or NDAs, that sort of thing. Do everything on the up-and-up but without exposing your name for the safety of yourself and your family. Send that info to CNN. They don't have to worry about getting fired. If it's really a Fortune 300 company, it's a well enough known brand name that any idiot will recognize it. That will get the management's attention to get the problem fixed. Next thing you know, they'll order you to run everything on OpenBSD heh heheh...
As an organization, the IT department should give the corporate users a choice. They can take the blue pill, which means their computer is managed by the IT department. People who aren't knowledgeable about the inner workings of their system and just want to get their work done without getting too sophisticated technically will probably choose this option. Or they can take the red pill and manage their own system, under one condition: The IT department has within it several 1337 h4x0rz who will be allowed to try and hack into these self-managed systems at any time that they wish. So long as they cannot find an exploit, the user is left alone. But if they find an exploit, that user has to buy everyone dinner. Or something along those lines. That way, people who want to control their own systems will have the opportunity to do so, but not in a manner that puts corporate data at risk.
This sounds like some kind of serious hogwash to me. The laws applying to Internet sales should be no different than those which apply to catalog sales. If you order something out of a catalog and you have it shipped to the same state where the catalog company is, then you pay the sales tax in that state just as if you had gone to a store in that state and bought the item. But if the catalog company is in Maine and you are in Florida, then you don't pay Jack Schitt for taxes. An internet site that sells stuff is nothing more than an electronic version of a page in a catalog. Amazon is nothing more than a vast catalog of products, as are most other electronic retailing sites. So if you're in the same state where Amazon is, it makes sense that the sales tax should be added to the price, but if you are in any other state, there should be NO tax of any kind on the purchase. Amazing and incredible that every time politicians are faced with a spending problem, they just invent more taxes, instead of reducing all the unnecessary spending. Or as Mark Twain said, "Suppose you're an idiot. And suppose you're a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."
Why shut down the grid? Get free electricity! Joking aside, this reminds me of a true story I once heard. It took place sometime in the late 1940's and involved the British energy company providing free electricity to a factory, due to someone's connections with employees of the energy company. This continued for many months, maybe even a few years. They were never caught, as far as I know, and the story was kept secret by all those involved for at least two decades.
In other words, Microsoft Yahoo! Vista 2008 Ultimate Edition SP2 hasn't quite been announced, at least not yet.
computer game user interface for this thing
on
The DIY Tank
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· Score: 1
Now all you need is to automate the thing so you can operate it by remote control through a laptop. Make the user interface on the laptop look just like a computer game. Then sit back and watch what happens when someone thinks it is a computer game!!! Bwaaahaahahahahahahahahaha!!!
I thought introverts were the kind of geeks who spent all day in front of a computer inventing this stuff while extroverts were outside playing football and having no idea what the heck IM stands for. My, how times have changed.
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I see a two issues with Bell Canada. First, this so-called Traffic Shaping is really a way to artificially screw up what would otherwise be a nicely working system. Who are they to dictate what traffic gets priority? Secondly, on the issue of using DRM, I think Steve Jobs put it nicely in his open paper about DRM-less music being sold on iTunes. Turns out that all this hoopla about piracy that caused the invention of DRM is over-exaggerated and some big businesses are agreeing with him. After all, if piracy were as large a problem as many would like us to believe, then how come iTunes is making Apple boatloads of money? I think Bell Canada would be wise to stop the traffic shaping and do something to support Linux and Mac. Otherwise they are really limiting themselves to that portion of the market that doesn't care about P2P and doesn't use Macs or Linux. Just my two cents on the whole matter.
What would happen if there were two distinct ways of handling the BKL problem, which could be implemented simultaneously: Method number 1, the existing method. This would remain in place to support all the program that use it. Method number 2, a newfangled method that new programs will need to be made aware of. The idea is that "well behaved" programs would, over time, begin to use the second method. The first method would actually use the second method in its implementation, so really there's only one method, although it appears that there are two.
Each resource in the kernel that might potentially be locked receives its own small lock. The idea is that the more finely grained the locking, the less likely it is that more than one program will need the same resource at the same time. The deadlock and resource contention problems will still exist, of course, but they will occur less frequently. Programs that know exactly which locks they'll need over the course of an operation would put in a request for all of those resources. At this moment, the kernel checks if all requested resources are available, and if so, the resources are locked immediately (and simultaneously) and program execution continues into the portion that uses those resources. However, if one or more of the resources are not available, the kernel will queue the request and one of two things will happen at the program's choice: Either the call will block until the resources are available, at which point program execution continues normally (we'll call this "synchronous"); or the program can be notified that "I'll get back to you on that" (we'll call this "asynchronous") in which case it can continue executing some other, unrelated part of its code, such as the part that updates the screen, outputs sound, or whatever. Obviously, this will be a bit trickier for application programmers to implement, but the reward will be programs that appear responsive to a user while they "wait" for locks. There should be an additional option in the locking request: a timeout value (with an option to never timeout). If the request times out, the program can do something appropriate. The kernel function that releases a lock will be modified to check the queue of lock requests, and immediately transfer control of the lock to a waiting program (according to some prioritization method). This means unblocking something that is blocked synchronously, or sending a signal to the process that queued the asynchronous lock request. The BKL will be implemented by requesting all locks, synchronous, never time out. Simple. The lock request function will return a value telling you whether you received the lock or why you didn't receive it. The scheduler "knows" if there are two or more processes in its list that are blocked waiting for a lock. If at least one of them has provided a timeout value other than "never," the scheduler does nothing since the problem will fix itself eventually, a la Office Space. Otherwise, it can examine the lock relationships. If a deadlock situation exists, it will choose one of the processes and return it an answer that it didn't receive the lock for deadlock prevention. That process can then do something appropriate. Code that doesn't know how to handle this situation will crash, but the system won't block indefinitely.
Since removing the BKL will cause deadlock situations like the one you describe, perhaps a solution to this problem is to re-think the way locking is implemented. If a program knows that it will need access to resources A, B, and C, it could put in a request to reserve all three of those resources simultaneously. If the three resources are available at that moment, they will all be locked simultaneously, the task will execute, and then they will be unlocked simultaneously. But if one or more of the resources are not available at that moment, that task will simply stop executing (it won't be scheduled) until the first instance that all three become available. This way, a resource doesn't become locked until it is actually going to be used.
Wouldn't it be really funny if some space ship that we send to Mars to look for signs of life accidently has some bacteria on it, which goes into the Martian soil and eventually evolves into an alien race?
There is a slight difference between the events of September 11, 2001 and an earthquake in China, no matter how many people were killed in either event. Just in case you can't recognize what the difference might be, here it is:
SEPTEMBER 11 WAS DELIBERATELY CAUSED BY EVIL PEOPLE WHO PLANNED AND EXECUTED AN EVIL PLAN WHICH KILLED INNOCENT PEOPLE, DELIBERATELY. An earthquake, on the other hand, is a natural disaster that humans have no control over. Nobody decided to have an earthquake. But a bunch of really evil pieces of garbage like the 19 cockroaches from Saudi Arabia and the other cockroaches that supported them like that archcockroach Osama Bin Laden DID decide to have September 11. That's the tiny difference. Even if September 11 killed less people than an earthquake, the events of that day alone do completely justify the total and utter destruction of all terrorist organizations around the world, even if no terrorist organization ever participated in any other terrorist attack, and we all know that these organizations DID participate in hundreds of such attacks around the world.
They decided to bomb the WTC, twice. They decided to blow up the aircraft carriers. They decided to hijack and/or blow up airliners on several occasions in the past few decades. They decided to blow up embassies around the world. They decided to burn hundreds of cars in France. They decided to blow up the hotels in Egypt. They decided to blow up the trains in Spain. They decided to blow up the theater in Russia. They decided to blow up the subways in London. They decided to hijack Air France flight 139. They decided to fire thousands upon thousands of rockets into communities throughout Israel, and to blow up nightclubs, pizza parlors, and hotels in the same country. They decided to open fire into a crowd at Los Angeles International Airport. They decided to blow up bombs at marketplaces throughout Iraq. They decided to blow up a playground in Thailand. And since I'm getting tired of typing, let's just sum it up by saying that they decided to perform all kinds of terrorist attacks in Dagestan, India, Lebanon, Somalia, Pakistan, Jordan, Chechnya, Sudan, Yemen, Indonesia, Philippines, Algeria, Mauritania, Turkey, Egypt, and who the heck knows how many other countries.
BUT NOBODY EVER DECIDED TO HAVE AN EARTHQUAKE, TORNADO, ETC.
This is definitely a step forward for the F/OSS community. Not only is most hardware supported already under Linux (even "obsolete" stuff and processor architectures that are no longer produced), but now the major box builders are taking steps to make sure your hardware will be recognized. Sure, this doesn't necessarily mean that drivers will be available for all products, but it does essentially mean that these large companies are standing with the F/OSS community (especially Linux, as this is the best known piece of F/OSS software in non-technical circles). This statement by the companies serves to help the recognition of Linux as a major software platform, which is good no matter what F/OSS software you use and for what purpose you use it.
If, as suggested in this article's hypothetical situation, Microsoft were to write a EULA for malware, it would be pretty ridiculous. Oh, wait...
Take the suggestions that others gave here: Steel core door, dog(s), cheap cameras, heck I didn't see this one but putting bars on the windows is very helpful. And then you should do two additional things: One, get a large, heavy safe that can be bolted to the floor with concrete being poured into the base per the safe's instructions to make it an unmovable object, and keep your most valuable things locked inside; Two, get yourself a gun and know how to use it. I'm not kidding on this one. Many gun control activists believe that the police should be the ones wielding weapons, but having a gun yourself and knowing how to use it will give you the ability to defend yourself during the two hours between the time you call the police and the time they arrive.
A question I keep asking myself is whether this ethanol thing is really as price efficient as it's supposed to be. Since farmers are able to make more money in the lucrative ethanol market than in growing wheat for bread production, there will eventually be a shortage of bread and other foods in the name of fulfilling energy needs. Since the laws of supply and demand dictate that a new equilibrium will be reached, I think this means that food prices will rise even more than they have lately, bringing back production of some crops for food, but overall raising the prices of both food and ethanol. We're not going to achieve $1.00 per gallon fuel; instead, we're simply going to cause yet higher prices for everything.
With Apple's sales having gone up 43% in the previous quarter, this is a good time to write letters to developers who produce useful software that is not currently available as native Mac OS X software. For example, people from two unrelated departments at work have remarked that they would like to change their systems from the Wintel boxes they currently use to iMacs. Such a change would remove a great deal of clutter (since the iMac is an all-in-one architecture), give their office space a facelift (by replacing ugly beige boxes with stylish large-screened iMacs), give them a performance boost (since they are currently using ancient Pentium 3-based systems), and give them a better user experience overall. Most of these same people have Mac computers at home. What's stopping us from being able to make this switch? The very expensive software packages they must use are not available for the Mac nor do they have an acceptable Mac alternative. So these poor users are stuck with an OS they do not like. The point isn't that Macs are great and Windows sucks. The point is that the need for certain software titles continues to force many people who want an alternative to keep using Windows. It must be made clear to developers that the availability of their software on the Mac would fuel sales.
You don't need to have a math-themed party just because she is a math major. It's like when people who don't know me well, who know that I work with computers, but who know nothing about computers, try to strike up a conversation with me, but they have no idea what to talk to me about, so they try to talk computers, like, "Duh, I just bought a Dell. Is that good?" I'm like, "Uh, does it work for you?" They're all, "Duh, no, I don't know how to use it and it crashes all the time." I'm like, "Uh, yeah, you should have gotten a Mac dude." End of conversation. No good! If you're doing math all day long and then you want to go to a party and have some fun, who the heck is gonna want math at that party? How about just throwing a "normal" party? Booze, chips and salsa, a cake, some random movie playing in the background that nobody is paying any attention to, and just tell all your friends to come.
If mathematics is invented, then let's invent some right now. First, let's set the scene: Mathematicians ran into this annoying problem that you can't take the square root of a negative number, so they invented this number, i, that is defined as the square root of -1. Then, by using this i in your answer, any root can be expressed. Ok, now that the scene is set, I find it incredibly annoying that you cannot divide by zero. Therefore, I am hereby inventing a number, j, that is defined as one divided by zero. Henceforth, you can express any number divided by zero by using this j in your answer. Who knows, such a thing might actually be useful.
There should be something additional in the proposed bill: A time limit for the copyright holder to respond, say, 90 days. In other words, if it is believed that the copyright holder no longer exists (the person is dead or the company went out of business), the request is filed at the copyright office. The party filing the request could choose to use the material immediately, and pay the reasonable fee if the copyright holder comes forward. However, since you have no idea what "reasonable fee" the copyright holder might demand, and since it really isn't the business of a court to decide how much something should cost, this could still put the party at risk of huge expenses. Therefore, upon filing the request, they could choose to simply wait the 90 days. If the copyright holder didn't come forward in that time, the requesting party gains the ability to use that copyrighted material as though they received from the copyright holder a free non-exclusive license to use that material. Remember, chances are that there is no copyright holder at all, since one cannot be found or identified, and the request is on file at the copyright office for 90 days before this happens.
If we're going to start using the term "grayware" to describe software that falls somewhere between a useful application and a piece of malware, then we need to start using the term "blackware" to refer to malware, and "whiteware" to refer to useful software. By the same token, some software could be "light gray ware," other could be "dark gray ware," et cetera. Whiteware that contains exploitable bugs should be termed "off-white ware" and security software which would otherwise be termed whiteware but could be used by a malcontent for evil purposes should be termed "whiteware with black polka dots." We could further extend this concept to include whiteware that could be dangerous if misused, such as software that controls a nuclear rocket; such software would be termed "redware." Software that helps the environment would be called "greenware." Now all we need is something for "blueware" and we can use the entire color space to describe a computer program.
The disconnection between Sun's executives and the kernel developers might be one reason why OpenSolaris is failing to build a community, but I believe a much larger reason is the lack of any substantial need for OpenSolaris in the market at this point. Currently there is so much development around Linux and the BSDs that these projects fulfill most of the users' needs and offer people looking for an OS something quite compelling, with a developer community in the millions of knowledgeable people. OpenSolaris is first and foremost suffering the chicken-and-egg problem that since there isn't much of a developer community, nobody wants to join, and secondly, since Linux and the BSDs can carry out nearly all the functions that OpenSolaris carries out, there's no compelling need for developers to join that community. Let's face it, Sun should concentrate their efforts on improving Linux and selling distributions and support for their custom distribution. Part of this improvement would entail porting the few advantageous features that Solaris has over Linux currently. OpenSolaris would eventually be phased out completely. Otherwise, they are simply throwing good money after bad.
Hmmm, let me get this straight. Closed-source software can be improved. Open-source software cannot. Ok. I think I missed something here but nonetheless let's try to make some sense out of this statement. Suppose I build some sort of product that has a 3rd software component. Now suppose that there are bugs in that software component, which you can rest assured there will be, since no software is ever completely perfect. Ok, now that we've set up our example situation, a situation that occurs in reality quite often, let's see. If that software component is closed-source, we can ask its producer to fix the bug, and maybe it will happen, but chances are that it won't, because they have more important things on their priority list, like going golfing. So we end up doing all kinds of kludgy workarounds, and the product isn't as reliable as it should be. And you get products on the market that suck. On the other hand, if that software component is open source, we can ask its maker to fix the bugs. And they might be nice and fix them, for the love of programming. Or they might have more important things to do, like going golfing. In which case, we can fix it ourselves, or hire someone to fix it, or find someone online who feels like fixing it for free, or whatever. So there are options. And the open source program gets improved. What in the "F" word is Gates flapping his trap about?
It never ceases to amaze me how much extra time people seem to have on their hands. Do you mean to tell me that researchers don't have more important things to do, like, oh, I don't know, conducting research?!?!
Here's the trouble. If you rat them out, you'll lose your job and they'll make you look so bad you won't be able to get another job in this hemisphere again. But if you don't rat them out, then some security exploit will take place in the future, and 900,000,000 customers' private information will fall into the hands of some con artist in Zimbabwe, who will then proceed to jack a billion dollars from said customers, resulting in an investigation. (Luckily, each consumer will only lose a little more than a dollar, but it's still wrong.) And when you're at the deposition answering why the security problems existed and the issue comes up that you knew about them and didn't rat anybody out, then you will be held responsible for it. In other words, damned if you do, and damned if you don't.
My suggestion is that you should shut the heck up and at the same time gather evidence to make extremely clear what is happening in terms of security, evidence that is easy for any idiot to corroborate, but that doesn't violate any contractual obligations you might have or NDAs, that sort of thing. Do everything on the up-and-up but without exposing your name for the safety of yourself and your family. Send that info to CNN. They don't have to worry about getting fired. If it's really a Fortune 300 company, it's a well enough known brand name that any idiot will recognize it. That will get the management's attention to get the problem fixed. Next thing you know, they'll order you to run everything on OpenBSD heh heheh...
As an organization, the IT department should give the corporate users a choice. They can take the blue pill, which means their computer is managed by the IT department. People who aren't knowledgeable about the inner workings of their system and just want to get their work done without getting too sophisticated technically will probably choose this option. Or they can take the red pill and manage their own system, under one condition: The IT department has within it several 1337 h4x0rz who will be allowed to try and hack into these self-managed systems at any time that they wish. So long as they cannot find an exploit, the user is left alone. But if they find an exploit, that user has to buy everyone dinner. Or something along those lines. That way, people who want to control their own systems will have the opportunity to do so, but not in a manner that puts corporate data at risk.
This sounds like some kind of serious hogwash to me. The laws applying to Internet sales should be no different than those which apply to catalog sales. If you order something out of a catalog and you have it shipped to the same state where the catalog company is, then you pay the sales tax in that state just as if you had gone to a store in that state and bought the item. But if the catalog company is in Maine and you are in Florida, then you don't pay Jack Schitt for taxes. An internet site that sells stuff is nothing more than an electronic version of a page in a catalog. Amazon is nothing more than a vast catalog of products, as are most other electronic retailing sites. So if you're in the same state where Amazon is, it makes sense that the sales tax should be added to the price, but if you are in any other state, there should be NO tax of any kind on the purchase. Amazing and incredible that every time politicians are faced with a spending problem, they just invent more taxes, instead of reducing all the unnecessary spending. Or as Mark Twain said, "Suppose you're an idiot. And suppose you're a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."
Perhaps this knowledge can be used to build an anti-rocket defense system.
Why shut down the grid? Get free electricity! Joking aside, this reminds me of a true story I once heard. It took place sometime in the late 1940's and involved the British energy company providing free electricity to a factory, due to someone's connections with employees of the energy company. This continued for many months, maybe even a few years. They were never caught, as far as I know, and the story was kept secret by all those involved for at least two decades.
In other words, Microsoft Yahoo! Vista 2008 Ultimate Edition SP2 hasn't quite been announced, at least not yet.
Now all you need is to automate the thing so you can operate it by remote control through a laptop. Make the user interface on the laptop look just like a computer game. Then sit back and watch what happens when someone thinks it is a computer game!!! Bwaaahaahahahahahahahahaha!!!
I thought introverts were the kind of geeks who spent all day in front of a computer inventing this stuff while extroverts were outside playing football and having no idea what the heck IM stands for. My, how times have changed.