Hopefully this will not be too eagerly embraced by various 'youth organizations' and 'flight clubs'.
After all, in the US, encryption technology is STILL considered a munition. How would people in the surrounding countries (of Germany) feel if various para-military organizations - such as the Boy Scouts - started stockpiling munitions?
IMHO Germany has come a long way singe the 1930's, but I'm sure this is going to ruffle some feathers.
A professor (of CS) of mine told me about a similar problem he experienced with his ISP (SNET.net ??) when he tried to get an account for his Macintosh.
It turned out that the company policy discriminated against all but Win95/98 users, not for reasons of idealism or secret agreements with the Evil Empire, but rather...
No technicians were trained to set up anything but Windows PC's, and the ISP didn't want to invest in the needed training (a day or two for each tech, tops).
After climbing all the way up the ladder of leadership at the ISP, my professor finally talked to someone with brains, and got a reasonable answer of: "We'll train a group of techs and give the non-Win customers to them"
If this becomes a technological, rather then a legal, issue; what is to prevent the vigilante anti-M$ crackers (a'la Back Orifice) from issuing a remote shutdown flood for a software made by the company of their choice?
Given Microsoft's abysmal security, there are going to be many unhappy customers, ready to convert to the next best alternative (ahem! TUX) - one that does not implement a remote shutdown back-door.
On a totally unrelated note (heh), I'm sure that no self-respecting open source software would even come close to considering this path.
We're looking at something akin to the PIII-id. They just keep on cutting the branch they sit on, don't they?
X million annoyed AOL customers have the power to make AOL change that a few sysadms do not have
In the case of AOL, I have nothing but total agreement. But - allow me to wax off-topic for a moment to make this point:
If Microsoft were to adopt, excuse me, 'embrace and extend', this approach to leverage it's customer base against the DOJ in the ongoing suit, what would happen?
If M$ refused to support it's customer base until the suit is dismissed, claiming excessive resources are needed to continue it's case...
X million unhappy M$ users, beating down the Fed's door, would certainly make a point, no?
USENET has even less right to inconvenience all the MEE-TOOS at AOL, than M$ does to inconvenience it's own users. USENET is not the Internet police. No one is.
Slick looking 4 seater. Claims 20 MPG. Prototype cost ~$1mil to develop. Expected asking price for production model $60k. Needs FAA approval to be mass produced. Owner will need pilot's license to operate.
Recall the 'right hand rule' of forces and magnetism WRT the direction of current flow. If current flows in the direction of the thumb of the right hand, the magnetic field lines wrap around the wire in the direction of the fingers.
So given two wires there is an attractive force between them if the currents are co-directional, and a repulsive one if the currents are opposite.
It's been a long time, so I've forgotten what goes on with regular AC, but as I remember - this principle, with extremely high currents, extremely close proximity of wires, and alternation in currents at a quarter-phase, would generate unidirectional forces == motion of the whole assembly.
Not quite as sexy as folding space-time and blowing warp-bubbles, but not your vanilla friction or exhaust driven method either.
Excellent point. If we had such a thing as negative mass many of today's problems wouldn't be problems. We'd build airplanes out of 49% negative mass materials, and then having one fall out of the sky wouldn't be so tragic.
Negative energy, however, exists. The largest natural deposit I know of is in my office. Whatever energy I walk in with in the morning is almost immediatelly nullified by it.
Semi-seriously though, with respect to the paper: The difference between theory and practice is that in theory there is not difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is. Where is Zefram Cochrane when you need him?
Heard on the radio this morning, that the 6 billionth human is expected to be born in mid October. That's an awful lot of people on one mudball.
Now, with Dolly, or Polly, or however many clones we make - giving us a shot at immortality in the long run, how will we do this responsibly?
It only took a dozen years since we crossed the 5 billion population threshold to make another billion the old-fashioned way. Most of the earth's population is living in poor conditions. Buckminster Fuller proposed that the earth can easily support 10 billion people at luxurious quality of life, if we're responsible about it. We're not responsible.
With cloning of humans a not-too-distant possibilty (humor me) and the natural population increase rate itself increasing; I hope NASA is doing it's job.
-- It's all for nothing, unless we go to the stars.
It seems that people cry out about what most bothers them. It seems only natural.
People with the means to cry loudly, do so. Though having the means usually implies that their woes are not as dire as those of the ones who hurt too much to be heard.
A starving Ethiopian child can not be heard farther than earshot. And this is a tragedy.
An angst-ridden middle class American teenager, with access to the Internet can be heard world-wide.
Why do American kids cry out against their station in life more loudly than their European or Ausie counterparts? American kids are the result of the "ME" generation. It's all about them, it's all about being 'happy with who they are'. It's all about being 'special'. They lack the feeling of community and common welfare.
Now, I am not begrudging anyone their experience of the educational system being unfair and unpleasant. I too was a geek who didn't fit in - though by comparison to some, I was very fortunate. Certainly being beaten for being a geek will leave welts that last a lifetime. But laying on dirt, starving, is worse by far.
American teens are more out of touch with this than teens in other countries. The "American Dream" and "keeping up with the Joneses" tells them that if they don't have the BEST, they don't have it good. If they don't have it good, they then must have it bad.
We're all in need of the occasional reality check.
Having food is better than not - even if it is something we don't like. Having a home is better than not - even if ours is the only one on the block without the swimming pool. Having a job is better than not - even if the boss is a sadist and the guy in the next cubicle smells bad.
Unlike the starving Ethiopian or driven-out KosovAlbanian, we have choices people. We have options, and we define our context.
As for being a high-school reject, left home without a date on yet another Friday night... What better time than now to hack on some Linux code and start your own company. I wonder, had Jobs and Wozniak not made the Apple in their garage, would they have been the type to go an kill people?
...except Leonardo DiCaprio wasn't in "Growing Pains." He wasn't even around then.
Actually, he was. He made a brief appearance. I think he was the little misfortunate kid who stole from the Seaver's after Mike became friends with him. - Scary how that episode just rushed back to me.:)
As for his acting, we should all see him in "What's Eating Glibert Grape". He played the retarded little brother. [insert obligatory 'like in Titanic' joke here]
We've all gotten very accustomed to a democratic form of government here at/. Rob has been most accommodating to the pressures generated onto him by his viewing public.
Let's stop a minute to realize that George Lucas is NOT Rob Malda. Lucas has something in mind, and come hell or high water, he will tell us HIS story. If the studios couldn't bastardize HIS VISION, (except maybe that mitochlorian abomination and virgin-birth) then why should it be swayed by a bunch of whining geeks who have nothing better to do than contemplate the lineage of a fictitious character.
Lucas has a particular story in mind.
Anakin is destined to become Vader. He starts out as a sweet, innocent and exceptional kid, the seed of prophecy. What better way to turn him to the Dark Side than to make him a lover, to make him completely opposite of what he is to be. And then make his reasons for becoming the anti-thesis of his former self truly tragic. DiCaprio has played romantic characters before, and he's done a decent job judging by how all the teen girls swoon at his name. He'd be coming into familiar territory; he's being type-cast.
And what better way to make the audience feel for the character than to feel for the actor? And to his credit, DiCaprio has the looks of young Luke.
As for Jar Jar - to everything there is a reason. A HUGE part of Lucas' profit comes from toys. Kids buy toys. Kids like cute, goofy characters. Jar Jar is already the most marketed character of them all. There's a Jar Jar 3D adventure game for Krissakes!
Yes, the adults notice Maul and Jinn, and buy the 10$ book and discuss the philosophy of the Jedi over Cappuccino. But it's the kids who nag mom and dad to buy them the entire collection of action figures, all the coloring books and play-doh fun factories with the Jar Jar shaped cookie-cutters.
Like everyone else in the world, Lucas is in it for the money, and he's making it HIS way. More power to him, I say. And if you don't like it, don't go see the movie another dozen times.
If history is any indication, this is a Bad Thing. M$ is now infamous for writing Trojan Horse Software: 1. Clone a Good Thing to 'offer an alternative'. 2. 'Innovate' via extend and embrace. 3. Squelch the competition with rapid upgrade cycles and useless feature marathons.
Yeah, MSIE for Linux will be a slick product, but it will only compile with the M$libc libs, and as root - so kiss your competitive alternative bye-bye. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if it required us to compile a 'special' driver right into the kernel.
Why exactly are we spending tens of billions of dollars bombing some country nobody heard about before this fiasco?
It's the government's way of teaching us geography. It's good for the economy, it keeps the teachers from getting too rich, and it makes for good press.
I think most Americans would see a major cyber-warfare hit as a pleasant "vacation from all this B.S....."
I beg to disagree. I think Americans - myself included - would be very unhappy and frustrated if a foreign power deprived them of their God given, inalienable right to entertainment and time-wasting.
Consider how frustrated we become when the Cable goes out. How we scramble around, looking for something to do, when the power goes out. Most of us can't even share our frustration in that context, because our portable phones and email are out too.
If Information Warfare ever came to the U.S. of A, it would have a very demoralizing effect on the general population. It would undermine the populus' faith in it's government - after all, if the Iraqi's can take out CableTV, nothing is sacred??
We might even be forced to read a book, or [gasp!] talk to our families!!
"I don't call that a full embrace of the open source model," he added. "On the other hand, we're trying to understand what it is that really brings the benefit."
No, it's not a 'full embrace', a 'full embrace' is a choke-hold, and open source is a slippery little bugger.
Let's not forget, while we pat each other on the backs to celebrate the victory of open source over the tyranical Microsoft, that M$ did a lot of thinking about Digital Research, Lotus, Netscape...
The odds of caring about H. Stern's review...
on
More Star Wars Hype
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· Score: 1
...are about the same as the odds of successfully navigating an asteroid field.:)
After all, the man gets impressed by a skank throating a 3-foot kielbasa, and compares penis sizes on the air.
cyberspace is multi-dimensional
on
Infinite Space
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· Score: 1
Any astro/quantum-physicists out there care to chime in?
Excellent point. Like attracts like, where information is concerned.
So let's look at it in multiple dimensions. On one plane you have my concept of information coaggulating into clumps based on mass/density; on a perpendicular plane there's your rebuttal of 'charged' information - attracting the like and repelling the unlike (except there's degrees of charge here)..
So what we end up with is globs of information, polarized by value, with the additional 'spin' or 'color' or 'flavor' (or some other QUARKiness) to differentiate among the various interest-groups.
Ultimately, I think we'll end up with weather prediction methods being folded into the discussion. An apparently chaotic system on the detail level, but with a superlative order which derives from the miniscule disorder. The flap of a butterfly wing that feeds the jet-stream draws another analog with my frequenting/. because there are too many ads on CNN.COM.:)
Good point, but re: value
on
Infinite Space
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· Score: 1
The purchase of a reputation then is really no different than the purchase of a product.
If I go out and spend a fortune on an exotic car, and promptly wrap it around a tree, it becomes worthless. If I maneuver myself to the head of a prestigious company, and bankrupt it, it's reputation becomes a memory.
Likewise, if I buy a car from a reputable company - and pay accordingly, but the car has a design flaw and so actions of the parent devalue it...
Identity seems to equate to property on this plane, virtual, actual or whatever.
No, I think he meant it. :)
on
Infinite Space
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· Score: 1
I'm pretty sure, judging by the backlash that always follows from a Katz article, that he intentionally poked at the testosterone driven crown.
Personally, I thought it was quite the zinger. I must remember it for the next staff meeting.:)
Slashdot Mirror
JBuilder2, and it's new 3.0 version, are the slickest Java development environments I've seen for the PC.
The Solaris JBuilder is supposed to be pure Java itself, and therefore easily portable to other machines and OSes (read Linux)..
Well, it was a nice idea. I guess so thought Microsoft. So long Borland - it's been a pleasure.
Here is a link. And another, and another. Funky!
Hopefully this will not be too eagerly embraced by various 'youth organizations' and 'flight clubs'.
After all, in the US, encryption technology is STILL considered a munition. How would people in the surrounding countries (of Germany) feel if various para-military organizations - such as the Boy Scouts - started stockpiling munitions?
IMHO Germany has come a long way singe the 1930's, but I'm sure this is going to ruffle some feathers.
[/paranoid]
A professor (of CS) of mine told me about a similar problem he experienced with his ISP (SNET.net ??) when he tried to get an account for his Macintosh.
It turned out that the company policy discriminated against all but Win95/98 users, not for reasons of idealism or secret agreements with the Evil Empire, but rather...
No technicians were trained to set up anything but Windows PC's, and the ISP didn't want to invest in the needed training (a day or two for each tech, tops).
After climbing all the way up the ladder of leadership at the ISP, my professor finally talked to someone with brains, and got a reasonable answer of: "We'll train a group of techs and give the non-Win customers to them"
-- Submitted for your consideration.
Legal and ethical issues aside...
If this becomes a technological, rather then a legal, issue; what is to prevent the vigilante anti-M$ crackers (a'la Back Orifice) from issuing a remote shutdown flood for a software made by the company of their choice?
Given Microsoft's abysmal security, there are going to be many unhappy customers, ready to convert to the next best alternative (ahem! TUX) - one that does not implement a remote shutdown back-door.
On a totally unrelated note (heh), I'm sure that no self-respecting open source software would even come close to considering this path.
We're looking at something akin to the PIII-id. They just keep on cutting the branch they sit on, don't they?
X million annoyed AOL customers have the power to make AOL change that a few sysadms do not have
In the case of AOL, I have nothing but total agreement. But - allow me to wax off-topic for a moment to make this point:
If Microsoft were to adopt, excuse me, 'embrace and extend', this approach to leverage it's customer base against the DOJ in the ongoing suit, what would happen?
If M$ refused to support it's customer base until the suit is dismissed, claiming excessive resources are needed to continue it's case...
X million unhappy M$ users, beating down the Fed's door, would certainly make a point, no?
USENET has even less right to inconvenience all the MEE-TOOS at AOL, than M$ does to inconvenience it's own users. USENET is not the Internet police. No one is.
For those interested:
SkyCar homepage.
Slick looking 4 seater.
Claims 20 MPG.
Prototype cost ~$1mil to develop.
Expected asking price for production model $60k.
Needs FAA approval to be mass produced.
Owner will need pilot's license to operate.
Way back when I took Physics:
Recall the 'right hand rule' of forces and magnetism WRT the direction of current flow.
If current flows in the direction of the thumb of the right hand, the magnetic field lines wrap around the wire in the direction of the fingers.
So given two wires there is an attractive force between them if the currents are co-directional, and a repulsive one if the currents are opposite.
It's been a long time, so I've forgotten what goes on with regular AC, but as I remember - this principle, with extremely high currents, extremely close proximity of wires, and alternation in currents at a quarter-phase, would generate unidirectional forces == motion of the whole assembly.
Not quite as sexy as folding space-time and blowing warp-bubbles, but not your vanilla friction or exhaust driven method either.
Kirk-Star, you out there to clarify this?
Excellent point. If we had such a thing as negative mass many of today's problems wouldn't be problems. We'd build airplanes out of 49% negative mass materials, and then having one fall out of the sky wouldn't be so tragic.
Negative energy, however, exists. The largest natural deposit I know of is in my office. Whatever energy I walk in with in the morning is almost immediatelly nullified by it.
Semi-seriously though, with respect to the paper:
The difference between theory and practice is that in theory there is not difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is. Where is Zefram Cochrane when you need him?
I just thought I'd add this to the gene blender.
Heard on the radio this morning, that the 6 billionth human is expected to be born in mid October. That's an awful lot of people on one mudball.
Now, with Dolly, or Polly, or however many clones we make - giving us a shot at immortality in the long run, how will we do this responsibly?
It only took a dozen years since we crossed the 5 billion population threshold to make another billion the old-fashioned way.
Most of the earth's population is living in poor conditions.
Buckminster Fuller proposed that the earth can easily support 10 billion people at luxurious quality of life, if we're responsible about it.
We're not responsible.
With cloning of humans a not-too-distant possibilty (humor me) and the natural population increase rate itself increasing; I hope NASA is doing it's job.
-- It's all for nothing, unless we go to the stars.
It seems that people cry out about what most bothers them. It seems only natural.
People with the means to cry loudly, do so. Though having the means usually implies that their woes are not as dire as those of the ones who hurt too much to be heard.
A starving Ethiopian child can not be heard farther than earshot. And this is a tragedy.
An angst-ridden middle class American teenager, with access to the Internet can be heard world-wide.
Why do American kids cry out against their station in life more loudly than their European or Ausie counterparts? American kids are the result of the "ME" generation. It's all about them, it's all about being 'happy with who they are'. It's all about being 'special'. They lack the feeling of community and common welfare.
Now, I am not begrudging anyone their experience of the educational system being unfair and unpleasant. I too was a geek who didn't fit in - though by comparison to some, I was very fortunate. Certainly being beaten for being a geek will leave welts that last a lifetime. But laying on dirt, starving, is worse by far.
American teens are more out of touch with this than teens in other countries. The "American Dream" and "keeping up with the Joneses" tells them that if they don't have the BEST, they don't have it good. If they don't have it good, they then must have it bad.
We're all in need of the occasional reality check.
Having food is better than not - even if it is something we don't like.
Having a home is better than not - even if ours is the only one on the block without the swimming pool.
Having a job is better than not - even if the boss is a sadist and the guy in the next cubicle smells bad.
Unlike the starving Ethiopian or driven-out KosovAlbanian, we have choices people. We have options, and we define our context.
As for being a high-school reject, left home without a date on yet another Friday night... What better time than now to hack on some Linux code and start your own company. I wonder, had Jobs and Wozniak not made the Apple in their garage, would they have been the type to go an kill people?
...except Leonardo DiCaprio wasn't in "Growing Pains." He wasn't even around then.
:)
Actually, he was. He made a brief appearance. I think he was the little misfortunate kid who stole from the Seaver's after Mike became friends with him. - Scary how that episode just rushed back to me.
As for his acting, we should all see him in "What's Eating Glibert Grape". He played the retarded little brother. [insert obligatory 'like in Titanic' joke here]
Folks,
/. Rob has been most accommodating to the pressures generated onto him by his viewing public.
We've all gotten very accustomed to a democratic form of government here at
Let's stop a minute to realize that George Lucas is NOT Rob Malda. Lucas has something in mind, and come hell or high water, he will tell us HIS story. If the studios couldn't bastardize HIS VISION, (except maybe that mitochlorian abomination and virgin-birth) then why should it be swayed by a bunch of whining geeks who have nothing better to do than contemplate the lineage of a fictitious character.
Lucas has a particular story in mind.
Anakin is destined to become Vader. He starts out as a sweet, innocent and exceptional kid, the seed of prophecy. What better way to turn him to the Dark Side than to make him a lover, to make him completely opposite of what he is to be. And then make his reasons for becoming the anti-thesis of his former self truly tragic. DiCaprio has played romantic characters before, and he's done a decent job judging by how all the teen girls swoon at his name. He'd be coming into familiar territory; he's being type-cast.
And what better way to make the audience feel for the character than to feel for the actor? And to his credit, DiCaprio has the looks of young Luke.
As for Jar Jar - to everything there is a reason. A HUGE part of Lucas' profit comes from toys. Kids buy toys. Kids like cute, goofy characters. Jar Jar is already the most marketed character of them all. There's a Jar Jar 3D adventure game for Krissakes!
Yes, the adults notice Maul and Jinn, and buy the 10$ book and discuss the philosophy of the Jedi over Cappuccino. But it's the kids who nag mom and dad to buy them the entire collection of action figures, all the coloring books and play-doh fun factories with the Jar Jar shaped cookie-cutters.
Like everyone else in the world, Lucas is in it for the money, and he's making it HIS way. More power to him, I say. And if you don't like it, don't go see the movie another dozen times.
If history is any indication, this is a Bad Thing. M$ is now infamous for writing Trojan Horse Software:
1. Clone a Good Thing to 'offer an alternative'.
2. 'Innovate' via extend and embrace.
3. Squelch the competition with rapid upgrade cycles and useless feature marathons.
Yeah, MSIE for Linux will be a slick product, but it will only compile with the M$libc libs, and as root - so kiss your competitive alternative bye-bye. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if it required us to compile a 'special' driver right into the kernel.
So people like this won't be able to patent queues, stacks, if-then-else and do-while constructs... Vowels...
My name is Roman, I forbid you to use MY numerals!
Why exactly are we spending tens of billions of dollars bombing some country nobody heard about before this fiasco?
It's the government's way of teaching us geography. It's good for the economy, it keeps the teachers from getting too rich, and it makes for good press.
I think most Americans would see a major cyber-warfare hit as a pleasant "vacation from all this B.S. ...."
I beg to disagree. I think Americans - myself included - would be very unhappy and frustrated if a foreign power deprived them of their God given, inalienable right to entertainment and time-wasting.
Consider how frustrated we become when the Cable goes out. How we scramble around, looking for something to do, when the power goes out. Most of us can't even share our frustration in that context, because our portable phones and email are out too.
If Information Warfare ever came to the U.S. of A, it would have a very demoralizing effect on the general population. It would undermine the populus' faith in it's government - after all, if the Iraqi's can take out CableTV, nothing is sacred??
We might even be forced to read a book, or [gasp!] talk to our families!!
This story didn't say anything the first time it was on the CNN homepage. Why should now be different?
Here's the techie synopsis:
The CIA is authorized to investigate means of distabilizing the Milosevic government.
Nothing cyber, nothing tech, nothing new.
I mean, MY GOD MAN!!
I'd have to cruise on 3 hours a night for several nights, fo that bean and weiner thing to get a smirk.
Now where's that recipe for Zima Jello - sort of a JelloShot, but tinggly, and you can have a whole bunch of it.
"I don't call that a full embrace of the open source model," he added. "On the other hand, we're trying to understand what it is that really brings the benefit."
No, it's not a 'full embrace', a 'full embrace' is a choke-hold, and open source is a slippery little bugger.
Let's not forget, while we pat each other on the backs to celebrate the victory of open source over the tyranical Microsoft, that M$ did a lot of thinking about Digital Research, Lotus, Netscape...
...are about the same as the odds of successfully navigating an asteroid field. :)
After all, the man gets impressed by a skank throating a 3-foot kielbasa, and compares penis sizes on the air.
Any astro/quantum-physicists out there care to chime in?
/. because there are too many ads on CNN.COM. :)
Excellent point. Like attracts like, where information is concerned.
So let's look at it in multiple dimensions.
On one plane you have my concept of information coaggulating into clumps based on mass/density; on a perpendicular plane there's your rebuttal of 'charged' information - attracting the like and repelling the unlike (except there's degrees of charge here)..
So what we end up with is globs of information, polarized by value, with the additional 'spin' or 'color' or 'flavor' (or some other QUARKiness) to differentiate among the various interest-groups.
Ultimately, I think we'll end up with weather prediction methods being folded into the discussion. An apparently chaotic system on the detail level, but with a superlative order which derives from the miniscule disorder. The flap of a butterfly wing that feeds the jet-stream draws another analog with my frequenting
The purchase of a reputation then is really no different than the purchase of a product.
If I go out and spend a fortune on an exotic car, and promptly wrap it around a tree, it becomes worthless. If I maneuver myself to the head of a prestigious company, and bankrupt it, it's reputation becomes a memory.
Likewise, if I buy a car from a reputable company - and pay accordingly, but the car has a design flaw and so actions of the parent devalue it...
Identity seems to equate to property on this plane, virtual, actual or whatever.
I'm pretty sure, judging by the backlash that always follows from a Katz article, that he intentionally poked at the testosterone driven crown.
:)
Personally, I thought it was quite the zinger. I must remember it for the next staff meeting.