Notice I didn't way they're invincible. I said they have a good formula for nibbling away at markets that makes them look that way. As long as they keep taking small bites, they "leverage their monopoly," and are darned close to invincible, though.
Laying over and playing dead, like their competitors of the past isn't the answer. But neither is getting rolled over, kicking and fighting. The answer is to have a smarter battle plan, recognizing their strengths and weaknesses.
I HATE putting it this way. "Battle Plan" Perhaps that's what I dislike most about Microsoft. They engender this attitude in others, because they are continually at war.
I normally don't write Micro$oft, but in this case I was trying to get across, "Big, Bad, American company with lots of Money." I tried to use it only in that one context, I believe you'll see I use 's' in other places.
It is real. Unfortunately, take a look at history. With only a few exceptions, every time Microsoft loses a market battle, they come back stronger, only to lose, again. Eventually they come back and win.
Then (and here's the history for you) the competition lays over and dies. Again, with only a few exceptions, (not universal, but darned close) every time Microsoft wins, they win for good.
To be more concrete and less pessimistic about it, we have to hope Open Source and Linux fit into the exception side of that. But in order to do so, one must look at exactly what Microsoft is really doing. Whenever they pick one of these battles, it tends to be 'near' their core competence. Even though they lose several times, they've got the deep pockets to keep at it. When they finally win, it is close enough to their core to quickly become part of the body, instead of an extension. Kind of growing by engulfing markets, like an amoeba.
They are generally smart enough to not attempt something too far from their core. The few times they have ventured too far are when they've been stymied. Quicken and Talisman, to name two. Incidentally, once.net becomes real, MS can toast Quicken at will. Then consider what the X-Box portends, beside entry into the lucrative gaming market and a route beyond the static PC business.
It's now becoming apparent that there are at least three fronts on the battle with Linux and Open Source. First is legal, with patents and the like. Next is web services, essentially negating the positive values Unix (and clones) bring to the web of mere reliability by raising the bar on base function. That way Unix no longer 'meets requirements' because it is missing thise 'essential' Win-services, no matter what the reliability. Finally, consolidate those web services with the desktop - the focus of.net, bringing the new territory 'into the fold' and making it immune to assault - Microsoft Forever.
Perhaps this is the real tragedy of Java, because in many respects it formed the underpinnings of competition to.net. Instead, Microsoft learned from the problems of Java, in addition to attacking it, so that.net has emerged stronger in its first existence, however vaprous.
The real question is how the Open Source community should respond. You can quote me on this one, if we simply stand behind reliability and laugh at Microsoft's security holes and crashes, WE ARE TOAST.
We need a better response to Microsoft. IMHO part of the process will be "Walling them off in the US." There are several factors in our favor here, one of the foremost being other countries' distrust of the US-based Micro$oft Corporation. Second is the MS revenue model, putting them beyond reach of the third world, where the bulk of the growth is going to occur.
So as a US citizen, I suspect I must advocate not wasting a lot of time on unique requirements of our market. Please fight the battles in South America, in Europe, in Asia, in Australia. They are *much* more important to Linux and Open Source. I suspect in the USA it now pivots around the release of Windows XP as a litmus test. If the courts allow it to happen as-is, Microsoft will feel it a green light to do anything they want, and the genie will be back out of the bottle that has been partially constraining it for a few years, now.
Yes, Virginia, they sky IS falling. There are simply too many defunct companies who failed to heed the warning for us to fail to heed it this time.
Re:But what happens *after* the exploit?
on
Windows in 2020
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· Score: 2
I've heard that WinNT and 2k have good underlying security capabilities. That's why I added the 'default' in there, and was careful to reflect the learning of Linux distros with respect to their default installations.
You're right, BIND, sendmail, Apache, etc have had troubles, and have fixed them. But Microsoft should also not be on their own isolated learning curve. They should have seen the BIND, sendmail, and Apache problems and solutions, and incorporated appropriate fixes for their own products.
So yes, I can criticize their stupidity, because apparently they didn't learn from history.
It seems to me that in this whole debate, we need to make clear the difference between COPYright and ACCESSright. That's the real rub about the DMCA, it legally transforms copyright into accessright, and gives the copyright holder new controls not previously granted.
It is supposedly about preventing unauthorized copying. But in reality does little to prevent it and puts the publishing industries in the driver's seat in a new way.
The REAL fear here is if we get to the point where all 'media player devices' (not necessarily related to Microsoft media player) play only DMCA-encumbered media - where you can't even play non-access-controlled media if you wanted to. Then free speech and discourse necessary for democracy are in deep trouble.
Actually, they used patent law, not the DMCA. But Windows Media Player support was ripped out of an Open Source player many months ago, after legal notice to the author by Microsoft.
I'm also sure the DMCA will be one more tool in their arsenal.
But what happens *after* the exploit?
on
Windows in 2020
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· Score: 4, Insightful
After Code Red, the WinBox is rooted.
Even when the next Apache exploit is found, it only gains access as the user "apache", and even that will frequently be in a chroot jail.
Security is not a firewall.
Security is not a bug-free program.
Security is not even a set of procedures.
Security is a process, and encompasses all of the above. Security also realizes that accidents happen, and attempts to minimize the aftereffects.
That is one place Windows falls down, there is inadequate system partitioning. IIS and its bevy of extensions run with Admin authority. No dedicated accounts, no chroot jails, etc. At least not by default.
Default security has been pretty bad on Linux, but gets better all the time. Furthermore, there are releases geared toward the server business that are much tighter, by default.
His tools consist of whatever software is provided by his employer, whatever tools he brings to the job, and his wits and skills.
If chasing down a kernel bug is what it takes to keep the network running, then that's what it takes. I would hope and expect that he didn't do this in a vacuum, and consulted with kernel developers somewhere in the process.
Being able to say, "I tweaked the kernel and fixed the problem." isn't the point. Nor is saying, "It's Microsoft's problem, and a fix is due tomorrow/next week/next month."
The point is that the network is up, and because the Source was available, he could apply all of his wits and skills to the task. Without the Source, he's working with fewer resources.
Now THERE'S an old personal computer. I used to want one as a kid, back when I couldn't scrape up the $6.00 for one, and my parents thought that anything like that made of plastic and rubber bands wasn't worth getting for their son.
> Sun got an injunction to stop Microsoft distributing Java
Ummmm, IIRC, the injunction was against distributing something and calling it Java that wasn't really Java. To me that means, that Microsoft certainly could have distributed a true Java that conformed to standards, and was indeed, "Java". But they chose not to conform to this particular standard that they didn't control. Don't forget that "Java" is a Registered Trademark, and while I may also believe that Sun should move Java to a standards body, for the moment they MUST aggressively defend a trademark, or lose it.
IANAL, but IMHO Microsoft could have distributed Java with WinXP. It's just Microsoft-Embrace-Extend-Extinguish-and-call-it "Java" that they can't.
> If compute power hits a stable plateau in 10, 20, 100 years, whatever, then the cost of compute power will also roughly become a constant number
>of dollars per clock cycle (or peta-clock cycle).
IMHO, we're very close to this point, if not there already. But in a different way. Consider this an economic limit, not a technological one. We can keep shrinking chips, but it keeps getting more and more expensive to do so.
The first hint came with the sub-$1000 computer. Prior to that, a top-end PC was about $2000-$3000, with a lower priced PC about $1500-$2000. We kept buying all the power we could afford. But with the sub-$1000 computer a class of users began buying all the power they NEEDED, and let the cost ride down. More expensive PCs became the tools of gamers and technical use, and Microsoft was the only force pushing basic compute power upward.
I'd like to upgrade to a 1.5 GHz Palomino this Fall, about my normal schedule, but times are tight, so I'm probably going to pass for another year. (Maybe a Hammer, then!) And to look seriously at it, my K6-3 does just about everything I ask of it. Star Trek Elite Force runs great, RealMyst was lackluster, though.
The/. story after this is about all messages being imbedded in Pi.
Which reminds me of what I believe was a Poul Anderson story, titled "Blip" or "Bleep" or "Bzzzt", or something like that.
In essence, they had an FTL communications method which always had a burst of static at the start of every message. At some point, our hero (in law enforcement) starts getting crime tips and information about his organization's activities that are supposed to be secret.
It turns out that the static burst contains ALL messages ever transmitted this way: past, present, and future, merely time-compressed into a brief burst of noise. Our heroine (the previously unknown party) decompressed this burst and began reading them, sending the tips to our hero.
Of some interest was that some of the messages were perfectly legible, but could not be understood for lack of cultural or scientific references. Our hero heard a call for help from the far future, but couldn't understand either the distress or what form help might be.
Kind of like fishing for messages in the digits of Pi.
Much comment has been made about the boring characters of ST:TNG, and about how they talk their enemies to death. But there's something fundamental here:
Presently, we are not fit to play with the toys we have, let alone the ones we are developing.
It's by the skin of our teeth that we survived the 50's and 60' without nuclear holocaust. Not to mention the times around the KAL007 incident, when according to some reports, Cherynenko (sp?) was within 15 seconds of pushing the Big Red Button. We haven't really gotten into more dangerous toys yet, like biologicals and nanotech.
I argue that we have to improve as a species, or give up our more dangerous toys. (or 'damage' ourselves out of that capability, or go extinct.) From another perspective, giving up some Power because you acknowledge that you lack the Wisdom to properly wield it, is another step on the road to attaining the Wisdom needed.
You mean like Coke/Pepsi, where they essentially agreed to divide the market, and either acquired everyone else, or drove them out of business. Then what pretense of competition left is according to their own "gentlemen's rules". They probably insist that they are competing fiercely, but I might argue that it's more like a fencing match with masks, padding, and the little balls on the tips of the foils.
Even better, take this into the political activism-type space. Send your virus into Evil Corporatist Inc, and have it start broadcasting junk off of hard drives all over the place. EVERYBODY gets the damaging evidence. Plus imbed it in the body, don't make it an attachment.
I followed the X33 for years on the construction-floor web cam, and followed the discussion for years in the sci.space.* newsgroups. I realize the folks there are pessimists about anything but their own orbital access scheme, but there are a few objective considerations:
The X33 was a prototype vehicle, not meant to be manned. Nor did it have any payload capacity, to speak of. It's payload capacity pretty much was its avionics bay.
Then the composite LH2 tank failed its tests, and they went to a backup plan of Aluminum LH2 tanks, reducing the payload capacity further.
Besides, the X33 was a 1/3 scale test vehicle, and it was never certain exactly how to scale it up to the full-sized Venture Star. I guess perhaps you could make the X33 into an unmanned bomber, but given its miniscule payload capacity, isn't it closer to a mirv'ed ICBM, and don't we have those, already?
Then again, what's the point of an orbital bomber? A craft has to be designed for stealth, you can't fit it in, afterward. Besides, anything would be visible during boost phase, and then you've got a line to follow it, so there are no surprises. Plus even a guided bomb (as others mention) would take so LONG to arrive.
Isn't a cruise missile more cost-effective?
Sounds to me like project leaders grasping at any possible straw to keep their baby alive. (Actually, I approve of this one. I just hope the baby is born, and finds its way back into civilian space.)
I guess I didn't really address your point - sorry about that. The RIAA stuff really isn't about the DMCA - yet, and that's what I was griping about.
You're right, the law is being mightily broken. But let's take a look at some fundamentals behind it. Let's take a medium that is SOOOOOO cheap that it's the chosen mailing tool of AOL. No longer do we get our 3.5" disks in the mail from AOL, reformat them, and make real use. Now they send us CDs. I'm under the impression that a stamped mass-produced CD costs on the order of 5 or 10 cents. This product is placed into a jewel box of similar cost, and sold for $16. This markup might even exceed Microsoft! Don't forget that that price really isn't covering royalties, for the most part, either. Read "Courtney Love Does the Math" for information about how much (or little) most artists get from the sales of CDs. That $15.80 is almost entirely profit, marketing, advertising, retail, etc.
In most situations, we have competition that brings prices down. In the recorded music industry we have the RIAA. I presume it has and still does fulfilled good functions. (The RIAA curve compensation curve in old phono preamps, to name one.) But in an open and competitive market, I have no idea how a price-to-cost ratio like exists on CDs can exist without some sort of price-fixing. I know about 'perceived value' being used to justify higher prices than cassettes when the costs are much lower. But normally market prices 'adjust' these things, and here they just aren't.
IMHO, the piracy exists largely because people perceive that they are being ripped off. Maybe they shouldn't trade anyway, and be law abiding citizens. I would cite the videotape piracy when tapes were $80, compared to after it dropped down to $20. Whenever there is WIDESPREAD crime, it's worth a look at the law behind it. Right now we have music sharing and the War On Drugs. Back in the 1920s it was Prohibition.
You're right, the record companies are being wronged. But I suspect they're just as much in the wrong by maintaining artificially high prices by
No, the mess that is the balance between the rights of copyright holders and information consumers.
Read the Constitution. Read Thomas Jefferson. If the DMCA were only about protection from illegal copying, it wouldn't be so bad.
The problem is the meter that the DMCA allows between the media you "bought" and your eyeballs and ears. The MESS is the access control, not any sort of copy control.
The publishing industry, be it text, music, or whatever, used to be in the business of making information available to the market.
That has changed, because the Internet is far more efficient at that.
The publishing industry is now in the business of manufacturing scarcity, controlling access to that information. This is a fundamental paradigm change. Their present business model depends on their controlling access to 'their' information, and no business likes to change business models.
> After all, the net was created hippies with no strong profit mentality.
And it's now being taken over by advertisers and media moguls, and the pioneers are being driven underground into things like FreeNet, and trying to figure out how to keep it hidden and unblocked.
Believe it or not, we WANT this to onerous, we WANT this to be draconian.
We WANT this to be SO OBNOXIOUS that Joe Sixpak's representatives and senators get the message and do something about the DMCA.
The whole mess caused by the DMCA is only going to get better if it first gets worse - enough worse to rise to the consciousness of the general population - and their elected congressmen.
Perhaps Intel didn't design the P4 for Rambus from the get-go, but it was designed as a bandwidth-hungry chip. While the P4 has been reviewed and analyzed to death, and indications of its merit seem to be on a perpetual see-saw, a few things seem to be objectively emerging.
First off, the P4 is strongest when streaming and when the new SSE2 stuff is being used.
Second, the P4 is clearly bandwidth-hungry, and knows how to use it. This goes hand-in-hand with the first point.
Now a little more controversial, there have been some reports that on non-streaming problems, in other words, away from its design peak, the P4 is bandwidth-wasteful. In other words, the P4 needs the bandwith to run well, whether it's really needed or not. Between the cache line size and prefetch pattern, the P4 just needs lots of bandwidth. It is well mated to Rambus. It may also suffer badly without Rambus, or at least that much bandwidth.
I'll be curious to see benchmarks of:
P4+Rambus
P4+Intel SDR SDRAM
P4+Intel DDR SDRAM
P4+non-Intel SDR SDRAM
P4+non-Intel DDR SDRAM
From what I've heard on various performance websites, the Intel/Rambus contract forbade them from fielding a non-Rambus solution with > 1GB/s bandwidth. One could look at PC133 and say it was a violation, but I suspect one could finesse that by saying that you can never in practice achieve the peak. I believe the rest of this has been reported as waiting for certain contract provisions to expire. I don't know the details, only the same rumors as everyone else.
I'd love to see a Big Can added to or positioned near the ISS. Almost as good would be the TransHab or even the plain old Hab module. But for my 'final assembly' suggestion, we need a can that can be split and resealed. Perhaps simplified if it's a 5psi O2 environment like Apollo, and you would still need an airlock to get in.
I liked the X33 design point. It just seemed that a lot of factors worked together for it, it's just that too many of them were so innovative. The thing that bugged me about the Delta Clipper was having to launch with your landing fuel. I just don't really like the concept of landing fuel at all on a planet with an atmosphere, much less sacrificing launch capacity for it.
On a sci.space newsgroup, there was a fairly good analysis about the differential cost of space travel and government contracts. Essentially, if government contractors get more efficient, the government gives them less money for a launch. Therefore they're better off with a bigger operation, so it's counter to their best interests to improve launch cost incrementally. And a true breakthrough is going to take too much money to survive today's bottom-line quarterly-statment mentality.
This reminds me of the "enterprising young men" in New York City who come up to cars stopped at traffic lights and begin washing the windows, then obstruct the car and demand payment for services rendered.
Seriously, if I were Adobe I'd retain a different German law firm to sue these guys for "endangering Adobe's good name."
One of these days I'll pick it up, again. As I said, it's not thrown out. (That would be a waste)
On a side note, but a more underlying one... Purity can be good, but must be tempered with some sense of reality. In my day job of engineering I try to walk that balance. On the one side, you try to make sure your work has sound theoretical underpinnings, and would hold water in the textbook fashion. On the other side, there's Einstein's quote about mathematics and reality, and the need to realize that a 'theoretically perfect' engineering solution probably wouldn't work in the real world.
I suspect this is as true in politics and other pursuits as it is in engineering. If Zubrin hates waste, he can hate a non-Shuttle-C space station all he wants, until it's on-orbit. As soon as it's up there, no matter how much the process may have been hated, it's a waste not to use it where appropriate.
I agree that the current ISS staffing and mission is completely absurd. But it's the most expensive collection we've ever put up, and to let it fail/fall has political repercussions that would probably kill USA non-military manned space activity in my lifetime. (I agree the long term may be different, but I have to be concerned about the progress I get to see.) We should focus on what the best use we can make of what is up there.
I also thought the X33 was a rather interesting design point. From what I can see, NOTHING in the way of SSTO would possibly survive the committee of public opinion, considering what I've seen in the sci.space.* newsgroups. Everyone has their pet project ideas, and the only thing they hate worse than any of the others is anything contracted by NASA or done by current big-aerospace.
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Notice I didn't way they're invincible. I said they have a good formula for nibbling away at markets that makes them look that way. As long as they keep taking small bites, they "leverage their monopoly," and are darned close to invincible, though.
Laying over and playing dead, like their competitors of the past isn't the answer. But neither is getting rolled over, kicking and fighting. The answer is to have a smarter battle plan, recognizing their strengths and weaknesses.
I HATE putting it this way. "Battle Plan" Perhaps that's what I dislike most about Microsoft. They engender this attitude in others, because they are continually at war.
I normally don't write Micro$oft, but in this case I was trying to get across, "Big, Bad, American company with lots of Money." I tried to use it only in that one context, I believe you'll see I use 's' in other places.
>Let's get real.
.net becomes real, MS can toast Quicken at will. Then consider what the X-Box portends, beside entry into the lucrative gaming market and a route beyond the static PC business.
.net, bringing the new territory 'into the fold' and making it immune to assault - Microsoft Forever.
.net. Instead, Microsoft learned from the problems of Java, in addition to attacking it, so that .net has emerged stronger in its first existence, however vaprous.
It is real. Unfortunately, take a look at history. With only a few exceptions, every time Microsoft loses a market battle, they come back stronger, only to lose, again. Eventually they come back and win.
Then (and here's the history for you) the competition lays over and dies. Again, with only a few exceptions, (not universal, but darned close) every time Microsoft wins, they win for good.
To be more concrete and less pessimistic about it, we have to hope Open Source and Linux fit into the exception side of that. But in order to do so, one must look at exactly what Microsoft is really doing. Whenever they pick one of these battles, it tends to be 'near' their core competence. Even though they lose several times, they've got the deep pockets to keep at it. When they finally win, it is close enough to their core to quickly become part of the body, instead of an extension. Kind of growing by engulfing markets, like an amoeba.
They are generally smart enough to not attempt something too far from their core. The few times they have ventured too far are when they've been stymied. Quicken and Talisman, to name two. Incidentally, once
It's now becoming apparent that there are at least three fronts on the battle with Linux and Open Source. First is legal, with patents and the like. Next is web services, essentially negating the positive values Unix (and clones) bring to the web of mere reliability by raising the bar on base function. That way Unix no longer 'meets requirements' because it is missing thise 'essential' Win-services, no matter what the reliability. Finally, consolidate those web services with the desktop - the focus of
Perhaps this is the real tragedy of Java, because in many respects it formed the underpinnings of competition to
The real question is how the Open Source community should respond. You can quote me on this one, if we simply stand behind reliability and laugh at Microsoft's security holes and crashes, WE ARE TOAST.
We need a better response to Microsoft. IMHO part of the process will be "Walling them off in the US." There are several factors in our favor here, one of the foremost being other countries' distrust of the US-based Micro$oft Corporation. Second is the MS revenue model, putting them beyond reach of the third world, where the bulk of the growth is going to occur.
So as a US citizen, I suspect I must advocate not wasting a lot of time on unique requirements of our market. Please fight the battles in South America, in Europe, in Asia, in Australia. They are *much* more important to Linux and Open Source. I suspect in the USA it now pivots around the release of Windows XP as a litmus test. If the courts allow it to happen as-is, Microsoft will feel it a green light to do anything they want, and the genie will be back out of the bottle that has been partially constraining it for a few years, now.
Yes, Virginia, they sky IS falling. There are simply too many defunct companies who failed to heed the warning for us to fail to heed it this time.
I've heard that WinNT and 2k have good underlying security capabilities. That's why I added the 'default' in there, and was careful to reflect the learning of Linux distros with respect to their default installations.
You're right, BIND, sendmail, Apache, etc have had troubles, and have fixed them. But Microsoft should also not be on their own isolated learning curve. They should have seen the BIND, sendmail, and Apache problems and solutions, and incorporated appropriate fixes for their own products.
So yes, I can criticize their stupidity, because apparently they didn't learn from history.
It seems to me that in this whole debate, we need to make clear the difference between COPYright and ACCESSright. That's the real rub about the DMCA, it legally transforms copyright into accessright, and gives the copyright holder new controls not previously granted.
It is supposedly about preventing unauthorized copying. But in reality does little to prevent it and puts the publishing industries in the driver's seat in a new way.
The REAL fear here is if we get to the point where all 'media player devices' (not necessarily related to Microsoft media player) play only DMCA-encumbered media - where you can't even play non-access-controlled media if you wanted to. Then free speech and discourse necessary for democracy are in deep trouble.
Too late.
Actually, they used patent law, not the DMCA. But Windows Media Player support was ripped out of an Open Source player many months ago, after legal notice to the author by Microsoft.
I'm also sure the DMCA will be one more tool in their arsenal.
After Code Red, the WinBox is rooted.
Even when the next Apache exploit is found, it only gains access as the user "apache", and even that will frequently be in a chroot jail.
Security is not a firewall.
Security is not a bug-free program.
Security is not even a set of procedures.
Security is a process, and encompasses all of the above. Security also realizes that accidents happen, and attempts to minimize the aftereffects.
That is one place Windows falls down, there is inadequate system partitioning. IIS and its bevy of extensions run with Admin authority. No dedicated accounts, no chroot jails, etc. At least not by default.
Default security has been pretty bad on Linux, but gets better all the time. Furthermore, there are releases geared toward the server business that are much tighter, by default.
His job is to keep the network running.
His tools consist of whatever software is provided by his employer, whatever tools he brings to the job, and his wits and skills.
If chasing down a kernel bug is what it takes to keep the network running, then that's what it takes. I would hope and expect that he didn't do this in a vacuum, and consulted with kernel developers somewhere in the process.
Being able to say, "I tweaked the kernel and fixed the problem." isn't the point. Nor is saying, "It's Microsoft's problem, and a fix is due tomorrow/next week/next month."
The point is that the network is up, and because the Source was available, he could apply all of his wits and skills to the task. Without the Source, he's working with fewer resources.
Now THERE'S an old personal computer. I used to want one as a kid, back when I couldn't scrape up the $6.00 for one, and my parents thought that anything like that made of plastic and rubber bands wasn't worth getting for their son.
> Sun got an injunction to stop Microsoft distributing Java
Ummmm, IIRC, the injunction was against distributing something and calling it Java that wasn't really Java. To me that means, that Microsoft certainly could have distributed a true Java that conformed to standards, and was indeed, "Java". But they chose not to conform to this particular standard that they didn't control. Don't forget that "Java" is a Registered Trademark, and while I may also believe that Sun should move Java to a standards body, for the moment they MUST aggressively defend a trademark, or lose it.
IANAL, but IMHO Microsoft could have distributed Java with WinXP. It's just Microsoft-Embrace-Extend-Extinguish-and-call-it "Java" that they can't.
> If compute power hits a stable plateau in 10, 20, 100 years, whatever, then the cost of compute power will also roughly become a constant number
>of dollars per clock cycle (or peta-clock cycle).
IMHO, we're very close to this point, if not there already. But in a different way. Consider this an economic limit, not a technological one. We can keep shrinking chips, but it keeps getting more and more expensive to do so.
The first hint came with the sub-$1000 computer. Prior to that, a top-end PC was about $2000-$3000, with a lower priced PC about $1500-$2000. We kept buying all the power we could afford. But with the sub-$1000 computer a class of users began buying all the power they NEEDED, and let the cost ride down. More expensive PCs became the tools of gamers and technical use, and Microsoft was the only force pushing basic compute power upward.
I'd like to upgrade to a 1.5 GHz Palomino this Fall, about my normal schedule, but times are tight, so I'm probably going to pass for another year. (Maybe a Hammer, then!) And to look seriously at it, my K6-3 does just about everything I ask of it. Star Trek Elite Force runs great, RealMyst was lackluster, though.
Actually I'm sure it is...
/. story after this is about all messages being imbedded in Pi.
The
Which reminds me of what I believe was a Poul Anderson story, titled "Blip" or "Bleep" or "Bzzzt", or something like that.
In essence, they had an FTL communications method which always had a burst of static at the start of every message. At some point, our hero (in law enforcement) starts getting crime tips and information about his organization's activities that are supposed to be secret.
It turns out that the static burst contains ALL messages ever transmitted this way: past, present, and future, merely time-compressed into a brief burst of noise. Our heroine (the previously unknown party) decompressed this burst and began reading them, sending the tips to our hero.
Of some interest was that some of the messages were perfectly legible, but could not be understood for lack of cultural or scientific references. Our hero heard a call for help from the far future, but couldn't understand either the distress or what form help might be.
Kind of like fishing for messages in the digits of Pi.
Much comment has been made about the boring characters of ST:TNG, and about how they talk their enemies to death. But there's something fundamental here:
Presently, we are not fit to play with the toys we have, let alone the ones we are developing.
It's by the skin of our teeth that we survived the 50's and 60' without nuclear holocaust. Not to mention the times around the KAL007 incident, when according to some reports, Cherynenko (sp?) was within 15 seconds of pushing the Big Red Button. We haven't really gotten into more dangerous toys yet, like biologicals and nanotech.
I argue that we have to improve as a species, or give up our more dangerous toys. (or 'damage' ourselves out of that capability, or go extinct.) From another perspective, giving up some Power because you acknowledge that you lack the Wisdom to properly wield it, is another step on the road to attaining the Wisdom needed.
You mean like Coke/Pepsi, where they essentially agreed to divide the market, and either acquired everyone else, or drove them out of business. Then what pretense of competition left is according to their own "gentlemen's rules". They probably insist that they are competing fiercely, but I might argue that it's more like a fencing match with masks, padding, and the little balls on the tips of the foils.
Imagine a sort of RIAA for soft drinks.
Why not a new form of industrial espionage?
Even better, take this into the political activism-type space. Send your virus into Evil Corporatist Inc, and have it start broadcasting junk off of hard drives all over the place. EVERYBODY gets the damaging evidence. Plus imbed it in the body, don't make it an attachment.
Call it "No Secrets".
I followed the X33 for years on the construction-floor web cam, and followed the discussion for years in the sci.space.* newsgroups. I realize the folks there are pessimists about anything but their own orbital access scheme, but there are a few objective considerations:
The X33 was a prototype vehicle, not meant to be manned. Nor did it have any payload capacity, to speak of. It's payload capacity pretty much was its avionics bay.
Then the composite LH2 tank failed its tests, and they went to a backup plan of Aluminum LH2 tanks, reducing the payload capacity further.
Besides, the X33 was a 1/3 scale test vehicle, and it was never certain exactly how to scale it up to the full-sized Venture Star. I guess perhaps you could make the X33 into an unmanned bomber, but given its miniscule payload capacity, isn't it closer to a mirv'ed ICBM, and don't we have those, already?
Then again, what's the point of an orbital bomber? A craft has to be designed for stealth, you can't fit it in, afterward. Besides, anything would be visible during boost phase, and then you've got a line to follow it, so there are no surprises. Plus even a guided bomb (as others mention) would take so LONG to arrive.
Isn't a cruise missile more cost-effective?
Sounds to me like project leaders grasping at any possible straw to keep their baby alive. (Actually, I approve of this one. I just hope the baby is born, and finds its way back into civilian space.)
I guess I didn't really address your point - sorry about that. The RIAA stuff really isn't about the DMCA - yet, and that's what I was griping about.
You're right, the law is being mightily broken. But let's take a look at some fundamentals behind it. Let's take a medium that is SOOOOOO cheap that it's the chosen mailing tool of AOL. No longer do we get our 3.5" disks in the mail from AOL, reformat them, and make real use. Now they send us CDs. I'm under the impression that a stamped mass-produced CD costs on the order of 5 or 10 cents. This product is placed into a jewel box of similar cost, and sold for $16. This markup might even exceed Microsoft! Don't forget that that price really isn't covering royalties, for the most part, either. Read "Courtney Love Does the Math" for information about how much (or little) most artists get from the sales of CDs. That $15.80 is almost entirely profit, marketing, advertising, retail, etc.
In most situations, we have competition that brings prices down. In the recorded music industry we have the RIAA. I presume it has and still does fulfilled good functions. (The RIAA curve compensation curve in old phono preamps, to name one.) But in an open and competitive market, I have no idea how a price-to-cost ratio like exists on CDs can exist without some sort of price-fixing. I know about 'perceived value' being used to justify higher prices than cassettes when the costs are much lower. But normally market prices 'adjust' these things, and here they just aren't.
IMHO, the piracy exists largely because people perceive that they are being ripped off. Maybe they shouldn't trade anyway, and be law abiding citizens. I would cite the videotape piracy when tapes were $80, compared to after it dropped down to $20. Whenever there is WIDESPREAD crime, it's worth a look at the law behind it. Right now we have music sharing and the War On Drugs. Back in the 1920s it was Prohibition.
You're right, the record companies are being wronged. But I suspect they're just as much in the wrong by maintaining artificially high prices by
No, the mess that is the balance between the rights of copyright holders and information consumers.
Read the Constitution. Read Thomas Jefferson. If the DMCA were only about protection from illegal copying, it wouldn't be so bad.
The problem is the meter that the DMCA allows between the media you "bought" and your eyeballs and ears. The MESS is the access control, not any sort of copy control.
The publishing industry, be it text, music, or whatever, used to be in the business of making information available to the market.
That has changed, because the Internet is far more efficient at that.
The publishing industry is now in the business of manufacturing scarcity, controlling access to that information. This is a fundamental paradigm change. Their present business model depends on their controlling access to 'their' information, and no business likes to change business models.
> After all, the net was created hippies with no strong profit mentality.
And it's now being taken over by advertisers and media moguls, and the pioneers are being driven underground into things like FreeNet, and trying to figure out how to keep it hidden and unblocked.
OK folks, this is GOOD NEWS.
Believe it or not, we WANT this to onerous, we WANT this to be draconian.
We WANT this to be SO OBNOXIOUS that Joe Sixpak's representatives and senators get the message and do something about the DMCA.
The whole mess caused by the DMCA is only going to get better if it first gets worse - enough worse to rise to the consciousness of the general population - and their elected congressmen.
Perhaps Intel didn't design the P4 for Rambus from the get-go, but it was designed as a bandwidth-hungry chip. While the P4 has been reviewed and analyzed to death, and indications of its merit seem to be on a perpetual see-saw, a few things seem to be objectively emerging.
First off, the P4 is strongest when streaming and when the new SSE2 stuff is being used.
Second, the P4 is clearly bandwidth-hungry, and knows how to use it. This goes hand-in-hand with the first point.
Now a little more controversial, there have been some reports that on non-streaming problems, in other words, away from its design peak, the P4 is bandwidth-wasteful. In other words, the P4 needs the bandwith to run well, whether it's really needed or not. Between the cache line size and prefetch pattern, the P4 just needs lots of bandwidth. It is well mated to Rambus. It may also suffer badly without Rambus, or at least that much bandwidth.
I'll be curious to see benchmarks of:
P4+Rambus
P4+Intel SDR SDRAM
P4+Intel DDR SDRAM
P4+non-Intel SDR SDRAM
P4+non-Intel DDR SDRAM
From what I've heard on various performance websites, the Intel/Rambus contract forbade them from fielding a non-Rambus solution with > 1GB/s bandwidth. One could look at PC133 and say it was a violation, but I suspect one could finesse that by saying that you can never in practice achieve the peak. I believe the rest of this has been reported as waiting for certain contract provisions to expire. I don't know the details, only the same rumors as everyone else.
I'd love to see a Big Can added to or positioned near the ISS. Almost as good would be the TransHab or even the plain old Hab module. But for my 'final assembly' suggestion, we need a can that can be split and resealed. Perhaps simplified if it's a 5psi O2 environment like Apollo, and you would still need an airlock to get in.
I liked the X33 design point. It just seemed that a lot of factors worked together for it, it's just that too many of them were so innovative. The thing that bugged me about the Delta Clipper was having to launch with your landing fuel. I just don't really like the concept of landing fuel at all on a planet with an atmosphere, much less sacrificing launch capacity for it.
On a sci.space newsgroup, there was a fairly good analysis about the differential cost of space travel and government contracts. Essentially, if government contractors get more efficient, the government gives them less money for a launch. Therefore they're better off with a bigger operation, so it's counter to their best interests to improve launch cost incrementally. And a true breakthrough is going to take too much money to survive today's bottom-line quarterly-statment mentality.
on the Internet.
This reminds me of the "enterprising young men" in New York City who come up to cars stopped at traffic lights and begin washing the windows, then obstruct the car and demand payment for services rendered.
Seriously, if I were Adobe I'd retain a different German law firm to sue these guys for "endangering Adobe's good name."
One of these days I'll pick it up, again. As I said, it's not thrown out. (That would be a waste)
On a side note, but a more underlying one... Purity can be good, but must be tempered with some sense of reality. In my day job of engineering I try to walk that balance. On the one side, you try to make sure your work has sound theoretical underpinnings, and would hold water in the textbook fashion. On the other side, there's Einstein's quote about mathematics and reality, and the need to realize that a 'theoretically perfect' engineering solution probably wouldn't work in the real world.
I suspect this is as true in politics and other pursuits as it is in engineering. If Zubrin hates waste, he can hate a non-Shuttle-C space station all he wants, until it's on-orbit. As soon as it's up there, no matter how much the process may have been hated, it's a waste not to use it where appropriate.
I agree that the current ISS staffing and mission is completely absurd. But it's the most expensive collection we've ever put up, and to let it fail/fall has political repercussions that would probably kill USA non-military manned space activity in my lifetime. (I agree the long term may be different, but I have to be concerned about the progress I get to see.) We should focus on what the best use we can make of what is up there.
I also thought the X33 was a rather interesting design point. From what I can see, NOTHING in the way of SSTO would possibly survive the committee of public opinion, considering what I've seen in the sci.space.* newsgroups. Everyone has their pet project ideas, and the only thing they hate worse than any of the others is anything contracted by NASA or done by current big-aerospace.
Really, it's a sad situation.