With some things like water mains, telephone lines, rail network and roads you simply can't have multiple private companies running multiple lines in parrallel. It's not efficient and you will tend to get monopolies forming in each area as no company would want to move into an area where someone else already provides lines. With their advantage of already having the infrastructure a price war favours them and besides, a price war is a lose-lose for you and them, as is splitting the market.
Really for situations where there's a certain type of infrastructure from point A to point B there only needs to be 1 provider. That's where government makes sense. The ineffiency of the government is still better than having multiple providers running parralel lines.
I don't live in America but i've heard this is exactly what is happening with your telecom services. Each provider has a monopoly over a different area. No one wants to move into an area that's already serviced by someone else, having 2 services in 1 area makes it not worthwhile for both private companies. Compare to the Swedish Post and Telecom Agency who were on Slashdot a couple of days ago for offering 200Mbps services on the cheap. Swedens population density is lower than the US btw.
Many of us have seen a newbie programmer trying to access elements in a linked list as if it were an array. Iterating from the start of the list to the index that they actually want. It's an incredibly stupid thing and inefficient thing to do but you'd have to know the underlying data structure to realise that.
Well if the router is always on anyway why have the services only switch to the router when the computer goes to sleep? Why not have the services permanantly running on the router?
A lot of people run rtorrent on their WL-500g's and use an rtorrent front end on the PC. It works perfectly well. rTorrent continuosly downloads on the router and the front end transparantly displays information as if it was downloading locally. No moving of the service to have it running on the PC or embedded device is required.
Really this board in the article has no advantages over a bittorrent capable router that i can see. It only allows 1 computer to make use of the services on the embedded device, so you'd need 1 for each computer. It takes up 2 USB ports when really it already has connectivity to the computer via the LAN anyway so why the need for USB at all? It still requires the modem/router to be on to work, so it uses more power than just a bittorrent router. It doesn't work when the computer is in hibernate or off completely, only when in S3 or above. It doesn't have any other storage options but the SD-Card...
I could go on but you get the idea.
Here's something that hobyists have been doing for a long time. Get a router or NAS that can run Linux and put all the services you want on it. You now have something that works when your computer is completely powered down (not just in S3 sleep mode), requires no USB ports and if you really want to you can enable wake-on-LAN on your computer and have the same ability to remotely wake your computer with a particular network message as this board gives.
I agree, i don't get this arbitrary definition of what is and isn't civil disobedience.
Standing in front of a tank as was done in Tiananmen Square doesn't count as civil disobedience because the guy had to be dragged away kicking and screaming? (point 6). That's obviously not true. You can have civil disobedience and still fight when caught. Point 6 can be ruled straight out.
As for point 5. Simply the support or the act of civil disobedience should be public, not the individuals themselves. A million people wearing masks at a rally for an illegal political party is still in public and is still civil disobedience. Likewise a million people downloading a torrent is still public, the seeders/leachers recorded is still increased despite the individuals remaining anonymous. So point 5 doesn't apply to using torrents with Tor. The act of civil disobedience is still made public, the individuals are all that is anonymous.
As for points 7 and 10. Yes, i think everyone accepts they may be punished and you really should respect your fellow citizens rights as well as possible. I can't argue with that but is downloading something owned by a billionaire really breaking point 10?
If enough people do so, then either the laws will be repealed, or there will be too many people breaking the law it'll be untenable to prosecute everyone.
Or the third option which is what they do right now with many laws. They prosecute a handful of people, making extreme examples of them, giving them fines and penalties so large that their life is basically destroyed.
Saves having to arrest everyone and helps to force the majority to cower in fear of the unjust laws.
It's GPL not LGPL. Oracle really can't use any of that open source stuff unless the product they release is also open source.
For example I've just dealt with a Java app that connects to MySQL.
The MySQL Java connector (Connector/J 5.1) is part of our program. It isn't LGPL licensed, it's GPL. So it requires a license to use in a commercial closed source program. http://www.mysql.com/products/connector-j
Note the link to buy a commercial license on that page.
I really only spend 1% of my online time doing something productive.
Most of the time when coding i really don't need a reference or help, i just need to actually do the task at hand.
I cite this very post as an example of what i'm getting at.:P
The following seems to work to me (assume you are using a customisable DB filesystem like JLAN i mentioned above)...
When you do a search you send a SELECT * FROM table_entries WHERE MD5_hashed_filename = encrypted_filename.
This returns an index to the encrypted database binary blob that contains that cluster that the file starts in.
When you want a listing of a directory you do a SELECT * FROM table_entries WHERE MD5_hashed_directory_name = encrypted_directory_name and get a result similar to above.
In the actual binary blob of the cluster there's a copy of the filename+directory string, file date etc. preceeding the data of the files and it is encrypted using a standard encryption algorithm rather than a hash.
You are storing 2 copies of each filename string, once in the file table and again in the binary blob but that isn't much considering the data of the filename string is peanuts compared to the data of the file itself.
This makes it rather quick to list directory contents (look up the entries for the directory in the MD5 hashed filetable then only decrypt the clusters that have data from that directory). It also makes it quick to search for files as well.
The clusters are each individually encrpyted but their size is well above the limit where someone can guess the block and thus extract the key.
JLAN is a java application that does just this.
It creates a filesystem that can be stored on a database and can be encrypted. That database can be remote or local. So all you need to do is pay a monthly fee for access to an online database and run JLAN.
Oh one thing i meant to add. You have to use SSH tunneling to get to the remote share. Not just because of security but also because Windows doesn't like using SMB on anything but the default port. It's only a minor inconvenience though.
Tutorial with help on SMB -> SSH tunneling http://kign.blogspot.com/2008/07/accessing-smb-shares-under-firewall.html
I use JLAN for this. I have a virtual private online server that i don't have root access to. So i can't install FUSE.
Instead i installed JLAN which is a user mode java application that stores your data either in a file, a set of files or in a database. I store the data in a database (my provider gives unlimited database access with the virtual private server subscription).
JLAN outputs the data as either an FTP, NFS or SMB share/filesytem. So it doesn't create a filesystem like FUSE does but it is still trivial to get to the data either directly (//myhost/myshare) or via a permanent share->drive mapping. This is why JLAN doesn't need to have admin permissions to insall a filesystem driver on the remote server.
It all works perfectly and it is GPLed these days.
One great use for this is that for ~$10 a month you can get a virtual private server with shell access and database access. The shell access is all you need to run JLAN (it is a user mode application). Setup JLAN to store files in a database encrypted and share out those files as an SMB share. Let all your trusted freinds know the address and you all have a filesystem you can easily access remotely that is encrypted for a very low cost. Another thing you can do with the shell access is run a torrent program and set the download path as the path of the JLAN shared drive. That way all your torrents are stored in that filesystem.
It isn't slow. In fact even with the database overhead of the filesystem i'm using it is still a faster than my 20mbps net connection. It is also blazingly fast to browse thanks to the database structure JLAN uses for the filesystem (the file table entries are in one area and typically get cached and the blobs of the actual data of the files are in another).
That question is actually what inspired communism. Karl Marx in his book Das Kapital explored the economics of a world where everything is created via automation. Basically he states modern capitalism can't work - you'd get all the wealth accumulating in the hands of those that own the automation plants. There'd be a massive class difference and those at the bottom won't be able to get the things they want despite the fact there is nearly no cost in producing them.
If you look at software you can see it coming true. It costs next to nothing to make copies of software. Despite the fact it costs nothing to make copies we don't give the poor all the software they want. Instead in a capitalist society we have companies such as Microsoft making billions in profit.
Karl Marx predicted the same thing would happen in a world with fully automated factories. People won't get goods they want despite the re-production costs being near zero.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941377
Only cause listed: "This problem occurs when the Xbox 360 console experiences a general hardware failure."
So the original warranty covers general hardware failures and Microsofts kb article acknowledges E74 as a general hardware failure.
So aren't they simply covering this under warranty because they have to?
Theoretically someone at my ISP could do exactly what Opera is doing. If Paypal can be re-encrypted and forwarded without any noticable difference to what the end user sees then it isn't Operas fault.
Anyone that's between you and the end-point can do the same re-encryption/re-encoding to give you a view of an end-page that is actually coming from a different server than what you expected. Meaning your passwords are going through someone else before going to the real site and the responses are going through someone else before coming back to you.
At least Opera is open about it. If you're frightened by what Opera can do here you shouldn't be on the Internet.
You could also argue that because this universe exists in a relatively low entropy state right now yet formed from a high entropy state, the second law simply can't be true when applied to the whole universe.
Just look at what people are currently doing with old C64s (8bit CPU @ 1Mhz and the same amount of RAM).
Word processing, web browsing, programming, reading electronic books, games, windowing os, etc.
Look if i'm going to get a laptop that uses ARM i'm not going to be able to run it off a small solar panel. I'm going to have to have a battery and charge it regularly, just not quite as regularly as an x86. If i'm going to be doing that i may as well just get an x86.
Yes that's microamps (@1.8-3.6V). Basically it could run off a small solar panel like your calculator does. The CPU runs at up to 18Mhz. This is more than enough for the word processors and tools we used years ago.
In my opinion this kind of thing above is exactly what the OLPC should have been. It would cost 10's of dollars and is exactly what we in the Western world has to learn on years ago.
1820 SpecInt marks. Well over 20 times the score of the x5570 in every category.
Of course the number of cores can be whatever the box maker wants it to be. So it's a stupid comparison. The only fair comparison is a per-core comparison.
Look i hate to be anal, but neither Intel nor AMD have been at the top of the SpecInt benchmark for a long time.
The stock IBM Power6 5.0Ghz CPU is the fastest CPU on the specint benchmark on a per-core basis (and before that it was the 4.7Ghz model of the same CPU that was the leader).
Slashdot Mirror
With some things like water mains, telephone lines, rail network and roads you simply can't have multiple private companies running multiple lines in parrallel. It's not efficient and you will tend to get monopolies forming in each area as no company would want to move into an area where someone else already provides lines. With their advantage of already having the infrastructure a price war favours them and besides, a price war is a lose-lose for you and them, as is splitting the market.
Really for situations where there's a certain type of infrastructure from point A to point B there only needs to be 1 provider. That's where government makes sense. The ineffiency of the government is still better than having multiple providers running parralel lines.
I don't live in America but i've heard this is exactly what is happening with your telecom services. Each provider has a monopoly over a different area. No one wants to move into an area that's already serviced by someone else, having 2 services in 1 area makes it not worthwhile for both private companies. Compare to the Swedish Post and Telecom Agency who were on Slashdot a couple of days ago for offering 200Mbps services on the cheap. Swedens population density is lower than the US btw.
Many of us have seen a newbie programmer trying to access elements in a linked list as if it were an array. Iterating from the start of the list to the index that they actually want. It's an incredibly stupid thing and inefficient thing to do but you'd have to know the underlying data structure to realise that.
For instance, one of my programming friends fit a 7K print driver into 5K by shifting (assembly language) execution one bit to the right.
Well if the router is always on anyway why have the services only switch to the router when the computer goes to sleep? Why not have the services permanantly running on the router?
A lot of people run rtorrent on their WL-500g's and use an rtorrent front end on the PC. It works perfectly well. rTorrent continuosly downloads on the router and the front end transparantly displays information as if it was downloading locally. No moving of the service to have it running on the PC or embedded device is required.
Really this board in the article has no advantages over a bittorrent capable router that i can see. It only allows 1 computer to make use of the services on the embedded device, so you'd need 1 for each computer. It takes up 2 USB ports when really it already has connectivity to the computer via the LAN anyway so why the need for USB at all? It still requires the modem/router to be on to work, so it uses more power than just a bittorrent router. It doesn't work when the computer is in hibernate or off completely, only when in S3 or above. It doesn't have any other storage options but the SD-Card...
I could go on but you get the idea.
Here's something that hobyists have been doing for a long time. Get a router or NAS that can run Linux and put all the services you want on it. You now have something that works when your computer is completely powered down (not just in S3 sleep mode), requires no USB ports and if you really want to you can enable wake-on-LAN on your computer and have the same ability to remotely wake your computer with a particular network message as this board gives.
I agree, i don't get this arbitrary definition of what is and isn't civil disobedience.
Standing in front of a tank as was done in Tiananmen Square doesn't count as civil disobedience because the guy had to be dragged away kicking and screaming? (point 6). That's obviously not true. You can have civil disobedience and still fight when caught. Point 6 can be ruled straight out.
As for point 5. Simply the support or the act of civil disobedience should be public, not the individuals themselves. A million people wearing masks at a rally for an illegal political party is still in public and is still civil disobedience. Likewise a million people downloading a torrent is still public, the seeders/leachers recorded is still increased despite the individuals remaining anonymous. So point 5 doesn't apply to using torrents with Tor. The act of civil disobedience is still made public, the individuals are all that is anonymous.
As for points 7 and 10. Yes, i think everyone accepts they may be punished and you really should respect your fellow citizens rights as well as possible. I can't argue with that but is downloading something owned by a billionaire really breaking point 10?
If enough people do so, then either the laws will be repealed, or there will be too many people breaking the law it'll be untenable to prosecute everyone.
Or the third option which is what they do right now with many laws. They prosecute a handful of people, making extreme examples of them, giving them fines and penalties so large that their life is basically destroyed.
Saves having to arrest everyone and helps to force the majority to cower in fear of the unjust laws.
It's GPL not LGPL. Oracle really can't use any of that open source stuff unless the product they release is also open source.
For example I've just dealt with a Java app that connects to MySQL.
The MySQL Java connector (Connector/J 5.1) is part of our program. It isn't LGPL licensed, it's GPL. So it requires a license to use in a commercial closed source program.
http://www.mysql.com/products/connector-j
Note the link to buy a commercial license on that page.
I really only spend 1% of my online time doing something productive.
:P
Most of the time when coding i really don't need a reference or help, i just need to actually do the task at hand.
I cite this very post as an example of what i'm getting at.
The following seems to work to me (assume you are using a customisable DB filesystem like JLAN i mentioned above)...
When you do a search you send a SELECT * FROM table_entries WHERE MD5_hashed_filename = encrypted_filename.
This returns an index to the encrypted database binary blob that contains that cluster that the file starts in.
When you want a listing of a directory you do a SELECT * FROM table_entries WHERE MD5_hashed_directory_name = encrypted_directory_name and get a result similar to above.
In the actual binary blob of the cluster there's a copy of the filename+directory string, file date etc. preceeding the data of the files and it is encrypted using a standard encryption algorithm rather than a hash.
You are storing 2 copies of each filename string, once in the file table and again in the binary blob but that isn't much considering the data of the filename string is peanuts compared to the data of the file itself.
This makes it rather quick to list directory contents (look up the entries for the directory in the MD5 hashed filetable then only decrypt the clusters that have data from that directory). It also makes it quick to search for files as well.
The clusters are each individually encrpyted but their size is well above the limit where someone can guess the block and thus extract the key.
JLAN is a java application that does just this.
It creates a filesystem that can be stored on a database and can be encrypted. That database can be remote or local. So all you need to do is pay a monthly fee for access to an online database and run JLAN.
Oh one thing i meant to add. You have to use SSH tunneling to get to the remote share. Not just because of security but also because Windows doesn't like using SMB on anything but the default port. It's only a minor inconvenience though.
Tutorial with help on SMB -> SSH tunneling
http://kign.blogspot.com/2008/07/accessing-smb-shares-under-firewall.html
I use JLAN for this. I have a virtual private online server that i don't have root access to. So i can't install FUSE.
Instead i installed JLAN which is a user mode java application that stores your data either in a file, a set of files or in a database. I store the data in a database (my provider gives unlimited database access with the virtual private server subscription).
JLAN outputs the data as either an FTP, NFS or SMB share/filesytem. So it doesn't create a filesystem like FUSE does but it is still trivial to get to the data either directly (//myhost/myshare) or via a permanent share->drive mapping. This is why JLAN doesn't need to have admin permissions to insall a filesystem driver on the remote server.
It all works perfectly and it is GPLed these days.
One great use for this is that for ~$10 a month you can get a virtual private server with shell access and database access. The shell access is all you need to run JLAN (it is a user mode application). Setup JLAN to store files in a database encrypted and share out those files as an SMB share. Let all your trusted freinds know the address and you all have a filesystem you can easily access remotely that is encrypted for a very low cost. Another thing you can do with the shell access is run a torrent program and set the download path as the path of the JLAN shared drive. That way all your torrents are stored in that filesystem.
It isn't slow. In fact even with the database overhead of the filesystem i'm using it is still a faster than my 20mbps net connection. It is also blazingly fast to browse thanks to the database structure JLAN uses for the filesystem (the file table entries are in one area and typically get cached and the blobs of the actual data of the files are in another).
That question is actually what inspired communism. Karl Marx in his book Das Kapital explored the economics of a world where everything is created via automation. Basically he states modern capitalism can't work - you'd get all the wealth accumulating in the hands of those that own the automation plants. There'd be a massive class difference and those at the bottom won't be able to get the things they want despite the fact there is nearly no cost in producing them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Kapital
I'm not a communist at all but in a way i don't think Marx was wrong. He was just a little early.
If you look at software you can see it coming true. It costs next to nothing to make copies of software. Despite the fact it costs nothing to make copies we don't give the poor all the software they want. Instead in a capitalist society we have companies such as Microsoft making billions in profit.
Karl Marx predicted the same thing would happen in a world with fully automated factories. People won't get goods they want despite the re-production costs being near zero.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941377
Only cause listed: "This problem occurs when the Xbox 360 console experiences a general hardware failure."
So the original warranty covers general hardware failures and Microsofts kb article acknowledges E74 as a general hardware failure.
So aren't they simply covering this under warranty because they have to?
Theoretically someone at my ISP could do exactly what Opera is doing. If Paypal can be re-encrypted and forwarded without any noticable difference to what the end user sees then it isn't Operas fault.
Anyone that's between you and the end-point can do the same re-encryption/re-encoding to give you a view of an end-page that is actually coming from a different server than what you expected. Meaning your passwords are going through someone else before going to the real site and the responses are going through someone else before coming back to you.
At least Opera is open about it. If you're frightened by what Opera can do here you shouldn't be on the Internet.
Oh i'm sure some of them could block it out.
You could also argue that because this universe exists in a relatively low entropy state right now yet formed from a high entropy state, the second law simply can't be true when applied to the whole universe.
On the other hand he may come up with a game like Deus Ex.
Just look at what people are currently doing with old C64s (8bit CPU @ 1Mhz and the same amount of RAM).
Word processing, web browsing, programming, reading electronic books, games, windowing os, etc.
Look if i'm going to get a laptop that uses ARM i'm not going to be able to run it off a small solar panel. I'm going to have to have a battery and charge it regularly, just not quite as regularly as an x86. If i'm going to be doing that i may as well just get an x86.
I'd like to see a laptop maker go to the extreme. eg. Try taking an MSP430 CPU and put it into a small laptop with a big passive LCD and a nice keyboard.
http://focus.ti.com/docs/prod/folders/print/msp430f5437.html
Stats
Ultralow Power Consumption
* Active Mode (AM): 165 ÂA/MHz at 8 MHz
* Standby Mode (LPM3 RTC Mode): 2.60 ÂA
* Off Mode (LPM4 RAM Retention): 1.69 ÂA
* Shutdown Mode (LPM5): 0.1 ÂA
Yes that's microamps (@1.8-3.6V). Basically it could run off a small solar panel like your calculator does. The CPU runs at up to 18Mhz. This is more than enough for the word processors and tools we used years ago.
In my opinion this kind of thing above is exactly what the OLPC should have been. It would cost 10's of dollars and is exactly what we in the Western world has to learn on years ago.
Well if you really want to play that game here's the power6 64-core benchmark.
http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/res2008q2/cpu2006-20080407-04058.html
1820 SpecInt marks. Well over 20 times the score of the x5570 in every category.
Of course the number of cores can be whatever the box maker wants it to be. So it's a stupid comparison. The only fair comparison is a per-core comparison.
I said on a per-core basis!
The Xeon X5570 is a quad core machine!
Look i hate to be anal, but neither Intel nor AMD have been at the top of the SpecInt benchmark for a long time.
The stock IBM Power6 5.0Ghz CPU is the fastest CPU on the specint benchmark on a per-core basis (and before that it was the 4.7Ghz model of the same CPU that was the leader).
http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/res2008q2/cpu2006-20080407-04057.html
Search for: IBM Power 595 (5.0 GHz, 1 core)
Which is telling considering it's made on a larger process than the fastest x86 (the i7). It really shows there's room for improvement if you ditch the x86 instruction set.
I was thinking that. The Larrabees vector unit looks like it could just replace SSE entirely.
Which does raise a question - will Intel keep SSE if it adds in the Larrabee vector unit as yet another legacy feature? I'm guessing it will (sigh).