People knew how to get along prior. Christ was executed because he was an insurrectionist in the first colony to rebel against the Roman empire. Last I heard, treason was not looked upon so well in the United States.
Statements like these degrade the level of civilization achieved in the ancient world. I wish a prominent pagan culture had survived so views like this wouldn't be so mainstream.
Yup, that accounts for the mass disinterest in Go and Chess.
My friend tells me that in Australlian Universities, Chess clubs have a strong following, and not necessarily just geeks! Apparently it's common to get smashed while playing chess. It makes it that much more entertaining.
I enjoy most types of games, honestly. I was never very good at tetris though. I enjoy "Bust a Move" a fair amount.
I never said that abstract games weren't rewarding. I just claim that they are harder to appreciate and enjoy right of the bat. It's a challenge to make an abstract game that is involving! I'm sure you've noticed in puzzle games it has become the norm to put a small character in the bottom corner who will get hurt if you don't win. They are there so your actions have meaning and you can relate to the game.
Games and reality are two different things, not in competition with eachother. Both provide an entertaining challenge. The whole simulation thing isn't necessarily for recreating the feeling of snowboarding. It is an attempt to make games that the player can relate to. Games which are too abstract are harder to enjoy. If anything, I think of playing a simulation more like watching a little dude in a simplified world with stuff that is remotely similar to ours.
Johaness Kepler came up with his 3 laws which govern planetary motion or motion along an elipse due to gravity really. He needed to verify that his laws were correct but he didn't have the data to back up his claims. He knew an individual, Tycho Brahe, who had the data but was quite insistant on not giving it to Kepler. Kepler just wated for the dude to die (hehe, "waited") and then stole the data.
I wonder if the guy who died wanted the data to go away with him. I wonder if he thought he deleted the last remaining copys. I wonder if the stuff is just historical data.
Was this guy really just an independant expert who had no tie to the data?
Enough conspiracy theories, but I hope the people who decide to help out are wise enough to ask before they do the work.
Ralph Nader P.O. Box 19312, Washington, DC 20036 James Love Consumer Project on Technology P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036 http://www.cptech.org
June 4, 2002
Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr., Director Office of Management and Budget Executive Office Building 17th Street & Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, D C 20503
RE: Procurement policy and competition and security in software markets
Dear Mr. Director:
We are writing to follow up a topic from our April 8, 2002 meeting. Can the federal government use its purchasing power to solve issues concerning security and competition in the software market? As you know, Microsoft has an astounding market share for desktop operating systems and office productivity software. The Department of Justice is spending years in court trying to restrain very modest elements of Microsoft's monopoly abuses. There are serious problems with the Microsoft monopoly, including those associated with harm to innovation, security, and pricing. We request the following information to advance constructive deliberations on this subject:
1. Approximately how much money has the federal government spent each of the past seven years to license MS Windows for the client platforms?
2. Are there estimates of the percent of federal client PC operating systems and word processing and other office productivity products that are licensed from Microsoft? Is this market share increasing or decreasing?
3. How much money would it cost the federal government to purchase outright the code to the components of a high quality office productivity package, including the basic functions of word processing, spreadsheets, presentation graphics and email clients?
4. Does the lack of competition in client software markets create security risks for federal agencies? For example, does a "monoculture" make the federal government more vulnerable to computer viruses or to unauthorized access to federal computers?
5. Would it be easier to manage security concerns if client software was open in terms of the source code?
USE OF PROCUREMENT TO PROMOTE COMPETITION
6. OMB should consider if Microsoft should be required (as a matter of procurement policy) to fully disclose the file formats of its office productivity and multimedia programs, so that the data created in such programs could be reliably read by non-Microsoft software.
7. OMB should consider a cost benefit analysis to determine whether dominant software providers should make their source code public, in order to enhance interoperability with products offered by smaller competitors.
8. OMB should consider if limits on the number of purchases from any one firm would enhance competition for PC operating systems and office productivity tools, and if such enhanced competition would have significant benefits in terms of licensing fees.
9. We note that limits on market shares are feasible to implement in the client area, because Apple has a very good PC operating system, and both Corel and IBM have quite functional products for word processing and other office productivity tools, that suffer primarily because of interoperability issues with Microsoft's products. If there existed more demand, Linux office productivity tools might find a market, or new operating systems like the BeOS might become more important alternatives, particularly if file formats were more transparent and interoperable.
10. We also note that Microsoft's permitted market share could be both a carrot and a stick the government could use to address Microsoft's efforts to resolve interoperability issues with rival software products. A determination that Microsoft was sabotaging rival products or refusing to disclose interface information to rival software makers could be the basis for a lower cap on the dominant firm's market share.
11. OMB should also consider if dominant office productivity tools, including word processing, spreadsheets and presentation graphics, should be required to provide high quality ports to other operating systems, including platforms such as Linux or the BeOS. Such a policy could be enforced by having a sliding scale for the permitted market share, depending upon the number of operating systems the product would support.
BUY VERSUS LEASE
12. OMB should undertake a cost benefit analysis to compare the benefits from the following two strategies:
a. Licensing office productivity tools from Microsoft, b. Buying outright the code for office productivity products, and releasing that code into the public domain.
13. In undertaking the studies above, OMB should also consider the savings to the public, for example, the benefits of reduced expenditures on older software tools that are often upgraded only to overcome interoperability problems deliberately created by Microsoft as an "incentive" to upgrade software licenses.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
The federal government spends billions of dollars on software purchases from one company that is continually raising prices, making its products incompatible with previous versions in order to force upgrades, deliberately creating interoperability problems with would-be competitors, and is well known for engaging in many other anticompetitive practices. Would a business that was spending this much money be such a passive consumer?
We would like to meet with your staff to discuss these or other uses of federal procurement policy to reduce waste and promote competition.
Porters should be as respected as other programers.
Honestly this is more like worshiping a band for doing a nice cover because whoever ports the software isn't necessarily known just for the software they ported. They might have some original code somewhere.
Having everyone worship their own pet people would do the world good. Distribute the support! Why should 5 key developers get ALL the attention.
If your worshiping anything not out of fear for being stuck in some firey pit, it's all dandy from my point of view.
I believe the simplest way to do this would be to use the ptrace(2) system call. You can specify that a process should be stopped before any system calls are made and then inspect the registers to see what the arguments to the system call are. This would naturally result in extra context switching every time a system call is made, but it is very simple and keeps the added complexity outside of the kernel.
This isn't a really novel project as it has allready been done by David Wagner and Tal Garfinkel. I highly recommend people read the Janus paper located at the bottom of this page. They did something very similar although it uses some funny Solaris/proc interface hack. Notice that the paper presents the exact same idea for isolating web browsers. This Systrace mechanism seems a bit more complete though.
The games run at the same fps with both HDTVs and standard televisions. I believe the game cube does not take advantage of higher resolutions when using an HDTV either. With an HDTV the only benefit is that the picture is progressive rather than interlaced. Some one noticing this jumped to the conclusion that one interlaced frame is the same as 1/2 af a progressive frame so they called it 30fps. Its a silly statement. By the same logic your PS2's "fluid" 60fps is 30 as well.
You will definately not be the first person Alex Chiu revives from the dead! Aha! You posted as an AC so we couldn't identify you... very clever. We'll find out who you are. All we have to do is put two magnets on your head. They will repell eachother if your not a believer.
Re:Holy crap! There's a world outside the USA!
on
BoyCott Advance
·
· Score: 1
Its suprising for someone to be able to get an emulator for a product before they can buy it. The statement wasn't meant to say "only people in the us can make emulators."
I cannot comment on the scientific validity of the story, but alternative energy sources are intrinsically interesting to me, at least.
What scientific validity? Do we expect you to give us a proof that such technology is possible? NO, so shut up! If your an editor for Slashdot then it is implied that you wouldn't know. It's "intrinsically" interesting to you? By nature you are interested in alternate energy sources? Thats a load of crap... Intrinsically all I'm interested in is food, women, and tickling my noggen. I don't think anyone has any innate understanding of fuels.
You are not talking to your buddy. Thousands of people read slashdot. You shouldn't be saying something that has no purpose to anyone.
The comment reeks of artificial yellow #5. Slashdot editors are idiots for the little comments they have to make. No matter what they say... clearly they are trying to look technical and gain respect.
blame it on folks who don't have tripwire
on
New Linux Worm
·
· Score: 1
Regardless, you should have tripwire or something running anyway
That is not a solution to the problem... nor does it lessen the severety of the thing. That "anyway" above is a pretty damn cocky statement. It would be more productive to simply warn people that they should have tripwire installed.
Funny... even though noone seems to read the articles, they get slashdoted.... how comes?
A lot of people read the articles, and never submit comments... the problem is with the people who don't read the article and then comment on it
if Linux kept ipf, then there would be no end to several BSD folks criticism about how Linux just steels code.
Re:Perhaps one day Linux will become useful like B
on
An RPM Port Of APT
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· Score: 1
I see a great difference between the way I approached the problem and the way he did. My responses have been geared more towards finding the truth. His were of unconditional fanatacism. I'm still distressed by the way the BSD folk downplay Linux, however I am seriously considering installing FreeBSD. A lot of the software I run comes from BSD anyhow. I have one outstanding migration issue however.
Re:Perhaps one day Linux will become useful like B
on
An RPM Port Of APT
·
· Score: 1
a good os vs linux
Thats the kinda FUD that steers me away.
Re:Perhaps one day Linux will become useful like B
on
An RPM Port Of APT
·
· Score: 1
Too bad. Then why the comment about 'getting off your holy stool', if you admit the BSD design is cleaner, and you didn't give BSD a chance to shine?
I made the remark because the guy was zealous. Just look at the title of his message.
Do they have kernel modules in any of the *BSDs? Its really a usefull feature for higher level kernel programing. Its pretty nice to be able to dynamically change what hardware the kernel supports as well.
Slashdot Mirror
The Romans ultimately accepted Christianity, while the Jews have not accepted Christ as the messiah. Who would you expect history to blame?
Are you citing the bible on this issue? The trinity idea was an addendum, including Christ's divine lineage.
Or considered "insightful" for that matter. How can such hackneyed statement be considered insightful.
People knew how to get along prior. Christ was executed because he was an insurrectionist in the first colony to rebel against the Roman empire. Last I heard, treason was not looked upon so well in the United States.
Statements like these degrade the level of civilization achieved in the ancient world. I wish a prominent pagan culture had survived so views like this wouldn't be so mainstream.
Yup, that accounts for the mass disinterest in Go and Chess.
My friend tells me that in Australlian Universities, Chess clubs have a strong following, and not necessarily just geeks! Apparently it's common to get smashed while playing chess. It makes it that much more entertaining.
I assume you're not a Tetris fan.
I enjoy most types of games, honestly. I was never very good at tetris though. I enjoy "Bust a Move" a fair amount.
I never said that abstract games weren't rewarding. I just claim that they are harder to appreciate and enjoy right of the bat. It's a challenge to make an abstract game that is involving! I'm sure you've noticed in puzzle games it has become the norm to put a small character in the bottom corner who will get hurt if you don't win. They are there so your actions have meaning and you can relate to the game.
Games and reality are two different things, not in competition with eachother. Both provide an entertaining challenge. The whole simulation thing isn't necessarily for recreating the feeling of snowboarding. It is an attempt to make games that the player can relate to. Games which are too abstract are harder to enjoy. If anything, I think of playing a simulation more like watching a little dude in a simplified world with stuff that is remotely similar to ours.
2.1.2 Browsing the Code
Generally, related operations are clustered together in the same file and there is not much copulation between modules.
I hope the discovery channel will do a special on copulating modules some day. I've seen module coupling but no copulation yet.
Johaness Kepler came up with his 3 laws which govern planetary motion or motion along an elipse due to gravity really. He needed to verify that his laws were correct but he didn't have the data to back up his claims. He knew an individual, Tycho Brahe, who had the data but was quite insistant on not giving it to Kepler. Kepler just wated for the dude to die (hehe, "waited") and then stole the data.
I wonder if the guy who died wanted the data to go away with him. I wonder if he thought he deleted the last remaining copys. I wonder if the stuff is just historical data.
Was this guy really just an independant expert who had no tie to the data?
Enough conspiracy theories, but I hope the people who decide to help out are wise enough to ask before they do the work.
Ralph Nader
P.O. Box 19312, Washington, DC 20036
James Love
Consumer Project on Technology
P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036
http://www.cptech.org
June 4, 2002
Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr., Director
Office of Management and Budget
Executive Office Building
17th Street & Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, D C 20503
RE: Procurement policy and competition and security in software markets
Dear Mr. Director:
We are writing to follow up a topic from our April 8, 2002 meeting. Can the federal government use its purchasing power to solve issues concerning security and competition in the software market? As you know, Microsoft has an astounding market share for desktop operating systems and office productivity software. The Department of Justice is spending years in court trying to restrain very modest elements of Microsoft's monopoly abuses. There are serious problems with the Microsoft monopoly, including those associated with harm to innovation, security, and pricing. We request the following information to advance constructive deliberations on this subject:
1. Approximately how much money has the federal government spent each of the past seven years to license MS Windows for the client platforms?
2. Are there estimates of the percent of federal client PC operating systems and word processing and other office productivity products that are licensed from Microsoft? Is this market share increasing or decreasing?
3. How much money would it cost the federal government to purchase outright the code to the components of a high quality office productivity package, including the basic functions of word processing, spreadsheets, presentation graphics and email clients?
4. Does the lack of competition in client software markets create security risks for federal agencies? For example, does a "monoculture" make the federal government more vulnerable to computer viruses or to unauthorized access to federal computers?
5. Would it be easier to manage security concerns if client software was open in terms of the source code?
USE OF PROCUREMENT TO PROMOTE COMPETITION
6. OMB should consider if Microsoft should be required (as a matter of procurement policy) to fully disclose the file formats of its office productivity and multimedia programs, so that the data created in such programs could be reliably read by non-Microsoft software.
7. OMB should consider a cost benefit analysis to determine whether dominant software providers should make their source code public, in order to enhance interoperability with products offered by smaller competitors.
8. OMB should consider if limits on the number of purchases from any one firm would enhance competition for PC operating systems and office productivity tools, and if such enhanced competition would have significant benefits in terms of licensing fees.
9. We note that limits on market shares are feasible to implement in the client area, because Apple has a very good PC operating system, and both Corel and IBM have quite functional products for word processing and other office productivity tools, that suffer primarily because of interoperability issues with Microsoft's products. If there existed more demand, Linux office productivity tools might find a market, or new operating systems like the BeOS might become more important alternatives, particularly if file formats were more transparent and interoperable.
10. We also note that Microsoft's permitted market share could be both a carrot and a stick the government could use to address Microsoft's efforts to resolve interoperability issues with rival software products. A determination that Microsoft was sabotaging rival products or refusing to disclose interface information to rival software makers could be the basis for a lower cap on the dominant firm's market share.
11. OMB should also consider if dominant office productivity tools, including word processing, spreadsheets and presentation graphics, should be required to provide high quality ports to other operating systems, including platforms such as Linux or the BeOS. Such a policy could be enforced by having a sliding scale for the permitted market share, depending upon the number of operating systems the product would support.
BUY VERSUS LEASE
12. OMB should undertake a cost benefit analysis to compare the benefits from the following two strategies:
a. Licensing office productivity tools from Microsoft,
b. Buying outright the code for office productivity products, and releasing that code into the public domain.
13. In undertaking the studies above, OMB should also consider the savings to the public, for example, the benefits of reduced expenditures on older software tools that are often upgraded only to overcome interoperability problems deliberately created by Microsoft as an "incentive" to upgrade software licenses.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
The federal government spends billions of dollars on software purchases from one company that is continually raising prices, making its products incompatible with previous versions in order to force upgrades, deliberately creating interoperability problems with would-be competitors, and is well known for engaging in many other anticompetitive practices. Would a business that was spending this much money be such a passive consumer?
We would like to meet with your staff to discuss these or other uses of federal procurement policy to reduce waste and promote competition.
Sincerely,
Ralph Nader
James Love
Porters should be as respected as other programers.
Honestly this is more like worshiping a band for doing a nice cover because whoever ports the software isn't necessarily known just for the software they ported. They might have some original code somewhere.
Having everyone worship their own pet people would do the world good. Distribute the support! Why should 5 key developers get ALL the attention.
If your worshiping anything not out of fear for being stuck in some firey pit, it's all dandy from my point of view.
I believe the simplest way to do this would be to use the ptrace(2) system call. You can specify that a process should be stopped before any
system calls are made and then inspect the registers to see what the arguments to the system call are. This would naturally result in extra context switching every time a system call is made, but it is very simple and keeps the added complexity outside of the kernel.
This isn't a really novel project as it has allready been done by David Wagner and Tal Garfinkel. I highly recommend people read the Janus paper located at the bottom of this page. They did something very similar although it uses some funny Solaris /proc interface hack. Notice that the paper presents the exact same idea for isolating web browsers. This Systrace mechanism seems a bit more complete though.
Anybody else astounded by the parallels?
Pretty soon computers will not have off buttons either.
The games run at the same fps with both HDTVs and standard televisions. I believe the game cube does not take advantage of higher resolutions when using an HDTV either. With an HDTV the only benefit is that the picture is progressive rather than interlaced. Some one noticing this jumped to the conclusion that one interlaced frame is the same as 1/2 af a progressive frame so they called it 30fps. Its a silly statement. By the same logic your PS2's "fluid" 60fps is 30 as well.
You will definately not be the first person Alex Chiu revives from the dead! Aha! You posted as an AC so we couldn't identify you... very clever. We'll find out who you are. All we have to do is put two magnets on your head. They will repell eachother if your not a believer.
Its suprising for someone to be able to get an emulator for a product before they can buy it. The statement wasn't meant to say "only people in the us can make emulators."
I cannot comment on the scientific validity of the story, but alternative energy sources are intrinsically interesting to me, at least.
What scientific validity? Do we expect you to give us a proof that such technology is possible? NO, so shut up! If your an editor for Slashdot then it is implied that you wouldn't know. It's "intrinsically" interesting to you? By nature you are interested in alternate energy sources? Thats a load of crap... Intrinsically all I'm interested in is food, women, and tickling my noggen. I don't think anyone has any innate understanding of fuels.
You are not talking to your buddy. Thousands of people read slashdot. You shouldn't be saying something that has no purpose to anyone.
The comment reeks of artificial yellow #5. Slashdot editors are idiots for the little comments they have to make. No matter what they say... clearly they are trying to look technical and gain respect.
Regardless, you should have tripwire or something running anyway
That is not a solution to the problem... nor does it lessen the severety of the thing. That "anyway" above is a pretty damn cocky statement. It would be more productive to simply warn people that they should have tripwire installed.
Funny ... even though noone seems to read the articles, they get slashdoted.... how comes?
A lot of people read the articles, and never submit comments... the problem is with the people who don't read the article and then comment on it
>24 images * 10MB/image = 240MB = 2013.27 Mbit who ever said it was being done in one second?
if Linux kept ipf, then there would be no end to several BSD folks criticism about how Linux just steels code.
I see a great difference between the way I approached the problem and the way he did. My responses have been geared more towards finding the truth. His were of unconditional fanatacism. I'm still distressed by the way the BSD folk downplay Linux, however I am seriously considering installing FreeBSD. A lot of the software I run comes from BSD anyhow. I have one outstanding migration issue however.
a good os vs linux
Thats the kinda FUD that steers me away.
Too bad. Then why the comment about 'getting off your holy stool', if you admit the BSD design is cleaner, and you didn't give BSD a chance to shine?
I made the remark because the guy was zealous. Just look at the title of his message.
Do they have kernel modules in any of the *BSDs? Its really a usefull feature for higher level kernel programing. Its pretty nice to be able to dynamically change what hardware the kernel supports as well.