The "utility check". It's a close cousin of the reality check. Let's do one. I honestly have no idea what a gDesklet or a Karamba is. What does it do? Will it help me do word-processing, development, web-browsing, or email any faster or more securely?
Same deal with our neighbor's big V-8 non pollution-controlled cars back in the 70s. When they were burning oil they would occasionally blow smoke rings while warming up. The family had 3 sons and the father and sons were always working on cars. I envied the whole Home Improvement-like quality of that family. They paid the penalty for being Real Men (TM) though. All 3 sons inherited their father's early onset male pattern baldness. I swear I'm not making this up.
This reminds me of a DIY vortex gun I saw in a kids science comic thingy when I was like... 13 or something.
Step 1. Get a sturdy cardboard box no more than 6 inches wide in any dimension. 6" by 6" square with 8-12" length is good. Something cylindrical like a Quaker Oats container might be even better.
Step 2. Cut out one end and stretch a balloon over it. Firmly tape or otherwise fasten the balloon over the end.
Step 3. (perhaps the trickiest part) Attach something to the center of the balloon so you can pull it back. IIRC, they suggested that you could use a brass notebook fastener and some tape to do this. The tricky part is not to tear the balloon.
Step 4. Cut a circular hole in the middle of the other side. I want to say it should be about a 3rd the "diameter" of the box. Certainly no larger than that.
To "fire" it, just pull back on the balloon and hold long enough for pressure to equalize (this happens almost instantly because the hole is pretty big). Then, release it in a SNAP! all at once.
It's been a long time, but I think they promised a curious puff of air could be felt by people 10 or 20 feet away if you did it right.
An afternoon of scrounging for parts, construction, and experimentation with your kids is probably a more valuable experience than just shelling out for a vortex gun with nasty smoke in it.
For extra credit and to find out if your kids are mechanicly inclined, encourage them to come up with a handle/trigger mechanism for the thing so it can be pointed like a real gun.
If your DIY version works, you can take the kids out for ice-cream and get some dry ice from the vendor. See if you can make your gun smoke with that. A fun afternoon and evening for the entire family!
As an introvert who hated parties, I eventually had a kind of epiphany: You only have to talk to one person, or at most a small "knot" of 3 or 4 people at a time. Did anybody else experience this?
First, it depends on whether or not *all* the taxpayers get to use the software. That means Public Domain or BSD, not GPL. As much as you might love the GPL, you can't deny it's unfair for those who follow the software ownership business model to be forced to pay taxes so that their business can be undermined. A PD or BSD release puts both GPL'd and proprietary projects on an even footing.
Second, it depends on whether or not the market is already providing the service. For example, a new government *NIX-based OS is hardly needed, what with all the companies producing such things in a seemingly endless variety. This applies for anything, not just software. The government should only provide a service when the market fails to provide the service, and the services is deemed necessary to the public good.
That said, the question is moot anyway. The government already sponsors free software. Google around and you'll see that grants specify that copyrighted material produced by grant recipients is "retained by the grantee, but must be published in a manner that allows others to benefit from the research" or something to that effect.
In the past, people slapped "academic use only" clauses on their software. Lately, they've been GPL'ing is a step in the right direction, but not quite all the way to PD/BSD.
It's understandable that researchers want to retain their rights, but when it comes to selling licenses under something other than GPL or academic use, there is a culture of $call pricing which really sucks.
You know $call pricing. That's where the cost of licensing is to call the researcher and negotiate some horrendous deal. Typicly, only corporations are invited into such a deal. A price schedule is never published. It's like dealing with embedded board manufacturers. Yuck.
I can understand why they want grantees to retain rights, but they should require the publication of a price schedule for non-GPL usage.
Now, if grantees had to PD or BSD their work, what would happen? There might be fewer grant applicants, which could be perceived as a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it. It's good if you're swinging the budget axe, and bad if you think there should be lots of research. However, with fewer grantees you could pay more to each grantee to offset the fact that they have less control over their work.
It would be interesting to see how many grantees are actually selling their work anyway. I bet a lot of stuff is just sitting there at Universities, getting stale, because it was easier for people to roll their own than deal with $call pricing. Either that, or the researchers left academe and went to work for industry. That's a waste, and obviously not a public good.
1. Moratorium on Software and Business Method patents aka, S&BM (which coincidently also stands for S*** and Bowel Movements). 2. Reduce filing fees to zero so that the USPTO no longer generates revenue. That would give the government an incentive to reduce USPTO instead of expanding it. 3. Alternatively, impose fees only on rejected patents. That would give them an incentive to reject as many patents as possible, while still passing a few reasonable patents so that corporations are willing to take the chance.
Any one of these measures would restore sanity, but I don't see it happening under a strong partisan administration from either side of the aisle. God send us another Theodore Roosevelt!
...that many of the people on Slashdot who think "the people" should own all the source code fail to realize that "the people" own all the armed forces. Yes. That's right.
We The People through our elected representatives hold the "code" to all deadly force originating from within the US.
We The People decide what the protocols are for using that force.
We The People decide which forks are the official version.
We The People have decided that it is in our best interest to have one and only one DeadlyForceObject in the program.
The proposed addition of AnarchistDeadlyForceClass, and the desire to instantiate objects of said class was considered and soundly rejected by We The People. It was determined that it would create file-format confusion, as well as causing havoc on the network.
In other words, trying to form an alternative military for the purpose of overthrowing the current sovereign nation ain't too bright.
Most successful revolutionaries form peaceful political organizations first, or form them in parallel with a militant wing so that they can deny connections with the militants.
The political aspect of the "anarchist" and "anti capitalist" movements in the US has virtually no popular support. If that ever changes, we will be in a sorry state.
"Remember, fascism and a police state doesn't come all at once, it comes piece by piece. How far will we allow it go until we are all locked up in concentration camps."
Well, if history is any lesson... this guy will use his time in prison to write about his struggle. Then when he gets out he'll fall into the welcome arms of his supporters, form a political party with no respect for the institutions of the old Republic, and exploit an opportunity to sieze power.
So. To answer your question, how far will we let it go? Until guys like this actually start to look like a reasonable alternative to the current Republic. You didn't ask how long, but I'll throw that in as a bonus: 1933-1923=10 years.
No. The prefix thanato is for words pertaining to death.
Wow! Closing In On Mechanical HDs
on
4Gb CF Card Announced
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
My primary drive is 8 GB. Windows uses only half of it (other half is BSD). Yes, I have another drive in there too. Obviously, I don't store a lot of music and video. The point is, it's looking more and more realistic for at least some users like myself to have totally solid-state PCs. Quiet PC nirvanna; just around the corner.
Interpretation has fantastic potential for real-time "what happens if I change this line" type stuff because an interpreter can cull large portions of the program. Of course, this issue will eventually be rendered moot by storage that works as fast as memory, allowing recompiles to happen in less than 1/24th of a second for all but the largest programs. If recompiles happen that quickly, you get a suitable "frame rate" and the algorithmic advantage of the interpreter is overcome by brute force.
So, if forced to choose, build only the compiler because technological progress will eventually moot the interpreter.
An interesting side note: I've been told that when gcc was designed, existing C compilers wouldn't run on smaller computers because they created parse-trees in memory. gcc was more memory efficient, which enabled it to run on more humble machines. However, the design of gcc is more difficult to modify and doesn't easily produce optimized code. These days, storing a parse-tree in memory is no problem for anybody. Whether this is true about gcc or not, it illustrates an important point: If you choose a design without considering where technology will be in the future, you could get hog-tied to code that was designed to overcome a temporary problem.
Oh, and the guy with the other thread who was talking about GUIs? Make sure you can easily write a visual builder using the API. Then, make sure you can load the code for the visual builder into the visual builder. In other words, write a self-building visual builder. That would rock!
Self-compiling is considered the acid test for a compiler. It should be likewise for a visual builder.
Those figures aren't surprising. It's a little glider. I doubt it can stall like a regular glider and come to a momentary standstill, but still it has to have some kind of stall characteristic which usually means it can be slowed down quite a bit before it starts dropping like a rock again. Also, he had to have pulled a parachute at the end. That's what's really pulling down the average. Also, maybe he has to pull a chute or else it's a glide and not a dive. If this becomes popular, you just know that at least two obscure organizations will spend a lot of time writing regulations and bylaws, arguing about what's certified, etc.
Word on the street is that at some schools, there are even more powerful computers tracking the students. From time-to-time, these computers are brought together in a closed-door kind of LAN party. There, information about the students is exhchanged and processed, and determinations are made as to whether or not the student is doing OK or if remedial action is necessary. IIRC, they call the computers "brains" and the meetings are "parent-teacher conferences". Very spooky.
I would never use the "code is law" analogy because I don't agree with it. Protocols and file formats are law. Code is just the source for agents that either conform to or disobey the laws.
Now, I admit that within the context of a voting machine the "code is law" analogy is compelling; but in most other contexts it isn't. HTTP is like law, but a web browser is more like a citizen.
The "code is law" argument is also somewhat of a slogan for those who advocate all source being Open Source. I don't agree with that either. Yes, the file formats and protocols should be open, but all kinds of "citizens" should be allowed to use them.
Have you ever tried to explain "source" to a politician? I have. Let me tell you. Just getting them over that hurdle is tough enough. Most of them are lawyers, and for some reason lawyers tend not to care much about tech. Sure there are exceptions, but I can't help but get the impression that most lawyers would still be using quills and ink if they could get away with it.
So. When you go to policitians with this issue and say "The system should be Open Source so someone can perform a security audit" what they hear is "Our special interest group has an opinion about how the system should work". Really. I don't see any way around this problem either. We could sit around and wait for the public school system run by these politicians to produce lawyers who aren't computer and science illiterate, except of course that by now most of the politicians are products of that very same system!
I see a positive feedback loop here, which like all positive feedback loops tends to create instability. Now... how many politicians have the background to understand that analogy?
This is part of a trend. Everybody thought China would be this wide open market. All these people were salivating at the prospect of a billion customers. They all forgot that China is so big that they are likely to muster the ability to do it themselves. The same thing has already happened with cell phones.
This also reminds me of a conversation I had in the early 90s with a room-mate who was an avid Free Trader. Me: "Why are we compromising our principles with China. We don't need them". Him: "We don't need them? They don't need us!". Me: "That's loser talk!". Him: "You're hopelessly backward and provincial...".
In retrospect, we were probably both right; at least on the first exchange. We don't need China. They don't need us. Sheesh! Why is Slashdot such a dog lately. It won't let me preview posts...
Maybe C coders just don't cotton to "meetups". Maybe newer languages are more likely to give rise to such things. Mayber newer technologies give rise to such things. Trying to have a C "meetup" today might be a lot like trying to re-create the Homebrew Computer Club or Woodstock.
Of course hardware hacking and Jimi Hendrix music still attract a lot of people. They just don't attract them in the same way.
Slashdot Mirror
The "utility check". It's a close cousin of the reality check. Let's do one. I honestly have no idea what a gDesklet or a Karamba is. What does it do? Will it help me do word-processing, development, web-browsing, or email any faster or more securely?
If not, it fails my personal utility check.
My space heater is 100% efficient, so sure, why not?
Oh... you wanted useful energy conversion.
Same deal with our neighbor's big V-8 non pollution-controlled cars back in the 70s. When they were burning oil they would occasionally blow smoke rings while warming up. The family had 3 sons and the father and sons were always working on cars. I envied the whole Home Improvement-like quality of that family. They paid the penalty for being Real Men (TM) though. All 3 sons inherited their father's early onset male pattern baldness. I swear I'm not making this up.
This reminds me of a DIY vortex gun I saw in a kids science comic thingy when I was like... 13 or something.
Step 1. Get a sturdy cardboard box no more than 6 inches wide in any dimension. 6" by 6" square with 8-12" length is good. Something cylindrical like a Quaker Oats container might be even better.
Step 2. Cut out one end and stretch a balloon over it. Firmly tape or otherwise fasten the balloon over the end.
Step 3. (perhaps the trickiest part) Attach something to the center of the balloon so you can pull it back. IIRC, they suggested that you could use a brass notebook fastener and some tape to do this. The tricky part is not to tear the balloon.
Step 4. Cut a circular hole in the middle of the other side. I want to say it should be about a 3rd the "diameter" of the box. Certainly no larger than that.
To "fire" it, just pull back on the balloon and hold long enough for pressure to equalize (this happens almost instantly because the hole is pretty big). Then, release it in a SNAP! all at once.
It's been a long time, but I think they promised a curious puff of air could be felt by people 10 or 20 feet away if you did it right.
An afternoon of scrounging for parts, construction, and experimentation with your kids is probably a more valuable experience than just shelling out for a vortex gun with nasty smoke in it.
For extra credit and to find out if your kids are mechanicly inclined, encourage them to come up with a handle/trigger mechanism for the thing so it can be pointed like a real gun.
If your DIY version works, you can take the kids out for ice-cream and get some dry ice from the vendor. See if you can make your gun smoke with that. A fun afternoon and evening for the entire family!
As an introvert who hated parties, I eventually had a kind of epiphany: You only have to talk to one person, or at most a small "knot" of 3 or 4 people at a time. Did anybody else experience this?
First, it depends on whether or not *all* the taxpayers get to use the software. That means Public Domain or BSD, not GPL. As much as you might love the GPL, you can't deny it's unfair for those who follow the software ownership business model to be forced to pay taxes so that their business can be undermined. A PD or BSD release puts both GPL'd and proprietary projects on an even footing.
Second, it depends on whether or not the market is already providing the service. For example, a new government *NIX-based OS is hardly needed, what with all the companies producing such things in a seemingly endless variety. This applies for anything, not just software. The government should only provide a service when the market fails to provide the service, and the services is deemed necessary to the public good.
That said, the question is moot anyway. The government already sponsors free software. Google around and you'll see that grants specify that copyrighted material produced by grant recipients is "retained by the grantee, but must be published in a manner that allows others to benefit from the research" or something to that effect.
In the past, people slapped "academic use only" clauses on their software. Lately, they've been GPL'ing is a step in the right direction, but not quite all the way to PD/BSD.
It's understandable that researchers want to retain their rights, but when it comes to selling licenses under something other than GPL or academic use, there is a culture of $call pricing which really sucks.
You know $call pricing. That's where the cost of licensing is to call the researcher and negotiate some horrendous deal. Typicly, only corporations are invited into such a deal. A price schedule is never published. It's like dealing with embedded board manufacturers. Yuck.
I can understand why they want grantees to retain rights, but they should require the publication of a price schedule for non-GPL usage.
Now, if grantees had to PD or BSD their work, what would happen? There might be fewer grant applicants, which could be perceived as a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it. It's good if you're swinging the budget axe, and bad if you think there should be lots of research. However, with fewer grantees you could pay more to each grantee to offset the fact that they have less control over their work.
It would be interesting to see how many grantees are actually selling their work anyway. I bet a lot of stuff is just sitting there at Universities, getting stale, because it was easier for people to roll their own than deal with $call pricing. Either that, or the researchers left academe and went to work for industry. That's a waste, and obviously not a public good.
So. Is Free Software a Public Good? It depends.
Drastic reform in the uspto is necessary
Amen brother.
1. Moratorium on Software and Business Method patents aka, S&BM (which coincidently also stands for S*** and Bowel Movements). 2. Reduce filing fees to zero so that the USPTO no longer generates revenue. That would give the government an incentive to reduce USPTO instead of expanding it. 3. Alternatively, impose fees only on rejected patents. That would give them an incentive to reject as many patents as possible, while still passing a few reasonable patents so that corporations are willing to take the chance.
Any one of these measures would restore sanity, but I don't see it happening under a strong partisan administration from either side of the aisle. God send us another Theodore Roosevelt!
...that many of the people on Slashdot who think "the people" should own all the source code fail to realize that "the people" own all the armed forces. Yes. That's right.
We The People through our elected representatives hold the "code" to all deadly force originating from within the US.
We The People decide what the protocols are for using that force.
We The People decide which forks are the official version.
We The People have decided that it is in our best interest to have one and only one DeadlyForceObject in the program.
The proposed addition of AnarchistDeadlyForceClass, and the desire to instantiate objects of said class was considered and soundly rejected by We The People. It was determined that it would create file-format confusion, as well as causing havoc on the network.
In other words, trying to form an alternative military for the purpose of overthrowing the current sovereign nation ain't too bright.
Most successful revolutionaries form peaceful political organizations first, or form them in parallel with a militant wing so that they can deny connections with the militants.
The political aspect of the "anarchist" and "anti capitalist" movements in the US has virtually no popular support. If that ever changes, we will be in a sorry state.
"Remember, fascism and a police state doesn't come all at once, it comes piece by piece. How far will we allow it go until we are all locked up in concentration camps."
Well, if history is any lesson... this guy will use his time in prison to write about his struggle. Then when he gets out he'll fall into the welcome arms of his supporters, form a political party with no respect for the institutions of the old Republic, and exploit an opportunity to sieze power.
So. To answer your question, how far will we let it go? Until guys like this actually start to look like a reasonable alternative to the current Republic. You didn't ask how long, but I'll throw that in as a bonus: 1933-1923=10 years.
If the code was never sold, you may be able to pick up the "corporate shell" for a very reasonable price, and claim ownership.
I've heard of this happening on occasion for other reasons (e.g., somebody liked the company name and/or logo).
Why just get the source code, when you can get any proprietary fonts, logos, letterheads, and other junk as well.
Of course the shell might still have liabilities and other hassles, and of course... wait for it...
IANAL
Get a lawyer.
My crappy ISP hasn't routed worth a d*** lately. I'm not previewing this post.
What a shame. The poor write-cycle life seems like a solveable problem though. Isn't the technology magnetic, just like a HD?
Maybe I'll just need to get a spool of copper wire, some ferrite, a needle, and enough free time to fab myself some core. :)
this terrible that 30 years old, not very good architecture now gained a pass into the 21'st century
Yeah. Those monolithic *NIX kernels have got to go.
I'd say more, but I've got to disconnect and pull all the copper wire out of my house right now.
No. The prefix thanato is for words pertaining to death.
My primary drive is 8 GB. Windows uses only half of it (other half is BSD). Yes, I have another drive in there too. Obviously, I don't store a lot of music and video. The point is, it's looking more and more realistic for at least some users like myself to have totally solid-state PCs. Quiet PC nirvanna; just around the corner.
If it gets Slashdotted, will somebody please post a mirror?
I have a theory that ice cream eaters don't care about fat. Will somebody give me lots of money to confirm that theory?
Better yet, it should do both!
Interpretation has fantastic potential for real-time "what happens if I change this line" type stuff because an interpreter can cull large portions of the program. Of course, this issue will eventually be rendered moot by storage that works as fast as memory, allowing recompiles to happen in less than 1/24th of a second for all but the largest programs. If recompiles happen that quickly, you get a suitable "frame rate" and the algorithmic advantage of the interpreter is overcome by brute force.
So, if forced to choose, build only the compiler because technological progress will eventually moot the interpreter.
An interesting side note: I've been told that when gcc was designed, existing C compilers wouldn't run on smaller computers because they created parse-trees in memory. gcc was more memory efficient, which enabled it to run on more humble machines. However, the design of gcc is more difficult to modify and doesn't easily produce optimized code. These days, storing a parse-tree in memory is no problem for anybody. Whether this is true about gcc or not, it illustrates an important point: If you choose a design without considering where technology will be in the future, you could get hog-tied to code that was designed to overcome a temporary problem.
Oh, and the guy with the other thread who was talking about GUIs? Make sure you can easily write a visual builder using the API. Then, make sure you can load the code for the visual builder into the visual builder. In other words, write a self-building visual builder. That would rock!
Self-compiling is considered the acid test for a compiler. It should be likewise for a visual builder.
Unless it's a small adjustment, say... 0.01 or 0.05 dB. Then they're exactly the same!
...as Kobe Bryant is to TV News.
CSound going Open Source is to Slashdot as Afghanistan is to TV News.
$evil_company is to Slashdot as $(kidnapping_involving_white_girl | rape_involving_Black_sports_figure) is to TV News.
$truly_interesting_tech_news is to Slashdot as $foreign_news is to TV news.
As an antidote to regular TV news, try BBC world or Google news. As an antidote to Slashdot? I dunno, else I'd not be here.
Those figures aren't surprising. It's a little glider. I doubt it can stall like a regular glider and come to a momentary standstill, but still it has to have some kind of stall characteristic which usually means it can be slowed down quite a bit before it starts dropping like a rock again. Also, he had to have pulled a parachute at the end. That's what's really pulling down the average. Also, maybe he has to pull a chute or else it's a glide and not a dive. If this becomes popular, you just know that at least two obscure organizations will spend a lot of time writing regulations and bylaws, arguing about what's certified, etc.
Word on the street is that at some schools, there are even more powerful computers tracking the students. From time-to-time, these computers are brought together in a closed-door kind of LAN party. There, information about the students is exhchanged and processed, and determinations are made as to whether or not the student is doing OK or if remedial action is necessary. IIRC, they call the computers "brains" and the meetings are "parent-teacher conferences". Very spooky.
I would never use the "code is law" analogy because I don't agree with it. Protocols and file formats are law. Code is just the source for agents that either conform to or disobey the laws.
Now, I admit that within the context of a voting machine the "code is law" analogy is compelling; but in most other contexts it isn't. HTTP is like law, but a web browser is more like a citizen.
The "code is law" argument is also somewhat of a slogan for those who advocate all source being Open Source. I don't agree with that either. Yes, the file formats and protocols should be open, but all kinds of "citizens" should be allowed to use them.
Have you ever tried to explain "source" to a politician? I have. Let me tell you. Just getting them over that hurdle is tough enough. Most of them are lawyers, and for some reason lawyers tend not to care much about tech. Sure there are exceptions, but I can't help but get the impression that most lawyers would still be using quills and ink if they could get away with it.
So. When you go to policitians with this issue and say "The system should be Open Source so someone can perform a security audit" what they hear is "Our special interest group has an opinion about how the system should work". Really. I don't see any way around this problem either. We could sit around and wait for the public school system run by these politicians to produce lawyers who aren't computer and science illiterate, except of course that by now most of the politicians are products of that very same system!
I see a positive feedback loop here, which like all positive feedback loops tends to create instability. Now... how many politicians have the background to understand that analogy?
This is part of a trend. Everybody thought China would be this wide open market. All these people were salivating at the prospect of a billion customers. They all forgot that China is so big that they are likely to muster the ability to do it themselves. The same thing has already happened with cell phones.
This also reminds me of a conversation I had in the early 90s with a room-mate who was an avid Free Trader. Me: "Why are we compromising our principles with China. We don't need them". Him: "We don't need them? They don't need us!". Me: "That's loser talk!". Him: "You're hopelessly backward and provincial...".
In retrospect, we were probably both right; at least on the first exchange. We don't need China. They don't need us. Sheesh! Why is Slashdot such a dog lately. It won't let me preview posts...
Maybe C coders just don't cotton to "meetups". Maybe newer languages are more likely to give rise to such things. Mayber newer technologies give rise to such things. Trying to have a C "meetup" today might be a lot like trying to re-create the Homebrew Computer Club or Woodstock.
Of course hardware hacking and Jimi Hendrix music still attract a lot of people. They just don't attract them in the same way.