the assumptoins seem to be that sarch results are randomlydistributed. But by teh very nature of search - a targeted and subjective request for information - that is clearly the wrong model. I don't se why the assumption that a 2x bigger index should return 2x more results for any query 1000.
A better test would be to see how much overlap there was between queries. Do the top 50 returns on queries (ofany size, not just imited to those with N 1000 returns) match? to wuithin what percentage?
no man, give poor Wil a break! He's been fighting hard to diversify beyond the box he was forced into as SuperGeekBRat. He's a good man and a decent actor in his own right who deserves a star-(trek) vehicle of his own.
If the franchise takes 5 years off, and comes back with new people at the helm (and not Berman or Braga - they had their chance, it's time for fresh blood), it might actually be something that can reignite fandom again.
Star Trek's roots are in social criticism, raw idealism, and triumphalism about the human spirit. There was very little of any of those themes in Star Trek series in recent years. A return to roots is neccessary, especially since the bar has been raised on production values (Battlestar Galactica), story arc writing (Babylon 5) and character development (Farscape).
Or, they could just hire Wil Wheaton as the next captain - playing a different character than Wesley Crusher, natch - give him a starship, and set him loose.
Just stop having episodes with Nazis. Or on historical Earth. Or both.
wait - a tsunami caused by rock splashing into the water? That wouldn't displace the ENTIRE water column from bed to surface the way the earthquake did. Why would this "invariably" cause a tsunami that could reach across the Atlantic? The amount of energy released in the earthquake was orders of magnitude higher because it was the potential energy of entire tectonic plates - a big island, even a efw billion tons of rock, isn't anywhere near massive enough to release that much raw energy. Propagating a wave across the Atlantic will take a lot more energy than propagating one across the Bay of Bengal.
articles like this are especially frustrating to MRI physics geeks like me, because there's a delicate balance bwteen wanting the media to help promote science, and watching helplessly as they mangle it into pure science fiction. The BOLD effect by which fMRI observes brain activity is orders of magnitude removed from the sensitivity of indivdual neuron measurements, and as other commentators have pointed out there's a real limit on what you can expect to understand about human thought processes using that tool.
I've actually started a blog devoted to megnetoic resonance imaging (http://refscan.blogspot.com/ and would like to invite anyone else interested in MRI to visit and comment. Our patron Saint is Magneto:)
you know, regardless of attempts to game the system, if every slashdot reader just linked to this slashdot story from their respective websites, then Slashdot would win easily with a standard PageRank. No amount of gaming the system can overtake sheer force of numbers. It's like the Howard Dean approach to raising money:)
I'm adding the following HTML link to my websites:
I hope it's open source. Maybe Linus will release it? I'm drowning under ten years of archives, spanning email clients from Eudora-Mac v1.0 to Thunderbird and almost everything in between. I'd love to have a cool program that could organizde my scatterred archives...
also there's this timeline of events, which is quite revealing:
History of this Advisory & Vendor Contact Log 2003-10-09 Initial version of this advisory 2003-10-09 Apple Computer notified 2003-10-09 Apple Computer confirmed receipt and forwarded to eng. team 2003-10-11 Minor edits, also added "Philosophical Issues" and "Path to Root" 2003-10-14 Apple Computer assigns specific point of contact 2003-10-14 Requested confirmation of issue with Apple Computer 2003-10-15 Apple Computer confirms issue (2003-10-24 Original deadline given to Apple for acknowledging issue) (2003-10-24 Mac OS X 10.3 is released with this known issue) (2003-10-28 Mac OS X 10.3 Security Update released, does not address issue) 2003-10-28 Requested update of fix status from Apple Computer 2003-10-28 Apple Computer proposes Nov. 3 fix date 2003-10-29 Apple Computer reneges on Nov. 3 date 2003-10-29 Requested fix in "2 or 3 weeks" from Apple Computer (2003-11-04 Mac OS X 10.3 Security Update released, does not address issue) (2003-11-15 Mac OS X 10.3.1 is released with this known issue) 2003-11-17 Requested update of fix status from Apple Computer 2003-11-18 Requested update of fix status from Apple Computer (2003-11-19 Mac OS X 10.3.1 Security Update released, does not address issue) 2003-11-19 Apple Computer replies "scheduled to go out in December's update" 2003-11-19 Deadline of Nov. 26 given to Apple Computer 2003-11-25 Minor edits, made "Path to Root" a little more work for the script kiddies 2003-11-26 Advisory issued (48 days after initial vendor notification)
It's worth noting however that there are FOUR definitions of "height" when used in ranking the world's tallest buildings:
Tip Height is defined as the vertical elevation from the base to the highest man-made part of the building, or any fixed attachment thereto, whichever is higher. This includes flagpoles, antennae, fences, cooling towers, signs, aircraft warning lights, and all kinds of chimneys. Mobile parts such as extendable signs may be included in the measurement as long as the variation of their heights is regular; in this case the maximum height shall constitute the tip height. Attachments such as flags, loose ropes or wires, and trees shall not be considered.
Structural Height is defined as the vertical elevation from the base to the highest architectural or integral structural element of the building. This includes fixed sculptures, decorative and architectural spires, ornamental fences, parapets, balustrades, decorative beacons, masonry chimneys, and all other architecturally integral elements along with their pedestals.
Roof Height is defined as the vertical elevation from the base to the highest exterior portion of the shell enclosing the building's interior space. This excludes spires, parapets, and other protruding non-habitable elements. In the event of ambiguity between the enclosing "shell" and the projecting element, then the roof's thickness shall be established by setting its height 10 cm above the highest reach of inhabitable space inside the building.
Highest Occupied Floor Height is defined as the elevation from the base to the top of the floor slab of the highest occupiable interior level, excluding mechanical, storage, or stairway penthouses whose walls are set back from the perimeter of the highest non-mechanical floor. In the event that the floorplate is not of uniform level, then its height shall be defined as the median height taken across its entire area.
Until the Petronas Towers were built, the Sears Tower in Chicago held all four titles. Petronas displaced the Sears Tower only by virtue of an enormous spire, which was part of the architectural design but did not actually have usable space. Thus Petronas got a boost to its Structural height by virtue of its spire, but the Sears Tower actually remained the leader in Highest Occupied Floor, and Roof, and Tip. Unfortunately, Structural height is the one used in the public domain to assert the title of Tallest. You can see that the Sears was taller by far in every intuitive sense of the word by looking at this scale drawing. And the illustration actually omits the Sears' antennae masts.
yeah, i tried underlining the sentences to emphasise. Big mistake. next time I'll stick with talics.
Scelson is right
on
I, Spammer
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Scelson said he supports anti-spam legislation. But while committee members were clearly intrigued by his story, they gave little weight to his proposed solution: Pass a tough spam law, but then prevent any Internet provider from blocking e-mail from bulk marketers that abide by the law.
The Burns-Wyden bill would make it illegal for bulk mailers to forge their sending location, have deceptive subject lines or prevent users from removing their names from e-mail lists. Owners of networks would retain the ability to block mail, and the legislation gives Internet providers legal standing to hunt down and sue spammers.
(emphasis mine) I think it's a brilliant suggestion. If the Burns-Wyden bill is passed, then I can easily filter my mail to stop spam I don't want to see. I don't think that my ISPs should be blocking email that may be spam but follows these rules. The filters in Eudora and Outlook Express are powerful enough to stop all spam I am not interested in receiving if I know for a fact that the forged header problem vanishes. I think it's a great compromise.
ignoramus, it was their offices in KABUL that were bombed.
Al-Jazeera Kabul offices hit in US raid http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/ 165388 7.stm
The Kabul offices of the Arab satellite al-Jazeera channel have been destroyed by a US missile.
The Qatar-based satellite channel, which gained global fame for its exclusive access to Osama Bin Laden and the Taleban, announced that none of its staff had been wounded.
But al-Jazeera's managing director Mohammed Jasim al-Ali, told BBC News Online that the channel's 12 employees in Kabul were out of contact.
Mr Jasim would not speculate as to whether the offices were deliberately targeted, but said the location of the bureau was widely known by everyone, including the Americans.
Re:AlJazeera DNS and routing tampered with.
on
4l-j4z333ra 0wn3d
·
· Score: 1
from the netsys.com article:
According to our contact, it has reached the point where the backbone provider has been forced to blackhole the routes to their nameservers each time the ip and network has been changed almost as quickly as they are moved..
Wouldnt this account for the why primary and secondary DNS is unreachable? Not neccessarily censorship at the routing level, just network protection - a symptom of the DDoS.
if you value sound quality, DONT convert your MP3 files to OGG using these utilities!
Thats essentially twice-lossy-encoding your original data, its not a seamless conversion. By double encoding your files, you will have horrible sound quality.
If you want OGG files, encode them from WAV directly. If you have MP3 files but no WAV masters, then its far better to stick with the MP3 file format.
Whathappens to TiVo and other DVR boxen now? once analog is gone, and the HDTV digital tuner is embedded into the box, there's no access point to divert the data to a third-party box.
Everytime we see an example of the little guy getting threatened by the Big Evil, we Slashdotters have an orgy of analysis and in the end do absolutely nothing. Appeals to donate to the EFF are roundly issued but how many bother?
What Slashdot needs to do is have a Fund set up - basically, an Amazon click-to-pay or PayPal (or both) account setup on the front page. It shoudl be preset for $1 donations. Every time we have a YRO post on slashdot frontpage, the donate buttons shoudl be inserted into the comments page.
The idea is, make it EASY to donate, makie it quick, make the links impossible to miss and always appear in correct context. If I had such a link infront of me right now I'd click it.
Every time we see a case like this, we set up a fund and channel funds to the poor guy. And maybe Slashdot could channel a matching percentage to the EFF as a donation from teh advertising revenue.
There has to be a way to leverage the huge community numbers here into actual tangible pressure - and money is the best way.
Yahoo mail is excellent. And a Yahoo ID (which is the same thing) gives me excellent access to teh features that Yahoo provides - Yahoo is one of the most useful sites on the net.
Its worth 2 bucks a month. I drop more on donuts at Shipleys every week.
Fark.com has a brilliant model whereby users can pay a fee to see ALL stories submitted to the site, not just those approved for frontpage. I think this is a brilliant idea that would work even better on Slashdot and make a TON of money. I know I'd pay 20/year for it.
There's a good review of this idea and discussion of how it might apply to Slashdot here.
To get an idea of what this would be like, look at the preview.
given your experience with this, i'd like to ask you a question. Would this work: setting up a dedicated Win XP machine, but making it a loner (no internet connection) ?
The idea being to create a beautiful home-media/office processing/printing/soho superduper workstation, without any of the Big Brither aspects. For internet access, use the slimmed down Win 2000 machine and share files between the two using Network Neighborhood.
By giving us superficially accessable functionality, they distract us from the underlying task/goal... we have let the practical issues of computers blind us from the larger motivations - computers have become a world and a justification unto themselves... rather than more complicated solutions which is what we're getting, we really need simpler ones that get the job done.
what rubbish! This is pure FUD. Define "the job" that needs to get done. The Job IS Betsy in Accounting.
Give a concrete example of these mystical "larger motivations". What underlying task/goal have we been distracted from. Saving the world? World peace? end poverty?
computers are just tools. Like a hammer. As far as I can tell, its precisely that complexity of computers that let us get the job done - otherwise the world be LESS complex today, not more, as computers have increased in complexity from the stone-age CLI days.
Thank you for replying, and I apologise for confrontational tone. Part of your complaint is the oversimplification of computing - a thesis I share - which was why when I saw "Top 10 Fallacies" I reacted viscerally.
That said, I still disagree with almost everything you said:)
After 14 years of programming with C++, I still do not consider myself an expert. After more than twenty years as a computing professional, I still only know a tiny part of what there is to know about computing.
Note that you listed the title of the hypothetical book as "Teach Yourself C++ in 14 easy lessons" - NOT "Become a C++ Expert in 14 easy lessons". You CAN learn enough C++ in 14 easy lessons to become quite good enough to become proficient enough to do tasks at hand. And in teh course of doing those tasks, you learn more as you go. That's how I taught myself C, Perl, HTML, CSS, and PhP. And I'm a physicist (of mediocre skill), not a CS guy.
The analogy to brain surgery is simply wrong. There is simply no comparison. My objection to this fallacy is the implicit equivalence. You never addressed my point that brain surgery puts lives at risk - and keep in mind that computing, like science, is based on deductive reasoning and logic. Brain surgery on the other hand is a skill requiring copius memorization, fine motor control, and intensive training unlike anything you will find in CS. Its delusional to compare them.
one last comment on this point. You said that "computing" (as a large field) is just as complex as brain surgery, and invoked the time for degree qualification as proof. Let me point out that your Fallacy equated C++ with Brain Surgery, not Computing with Brain Surgery. For the record, Brain surgery requires 4 years of med school, a SIX year residency, and optionally a three year fellowship:
http://www.utmb.edu/surgery/Educat.htm
Fallacy 2: Computers Allow People to Do things They Could Not Do Otherwise
It takes a lot more than a good word processor to create a good document. Creating a good document requires two things:
- Domain (in this case, typesetting) knowledge.
- my word processor was unable to provide that content
Unlike word processors of the past, today typesetting is in fact almost ludicrously easy compared to the past. Word comes with templates that are professionally designed, for legal, academic, office, and personal tasks (including a cool template for a Thesis which I modified for my own use). TO address each of the specific examples you gave, Word's templates already have correct kerning, layout, and choice of sans-vs-serif (font styles). With third party software like Endnote and MathType you have biblio and math features correctly done the right way according to all professional standards, with barely any effort at all (nothing comes close to these products on the Free Software side, btw). Spelling and grammar are a function of your education from middle school, and are not the fault of your computing platform or software, its unfair for you to take it to task.
as for content, aren't you the one complaining that software does too much and that graduates have too much hand holding? Why do you want software to do your spelling and grammar for you? isnt it the responsibility of the user to do the content, or do you want your software to provide that to? its not clear what your problem is in this regard. Typewriters and Emacs suffer eth same problem as Word XP in this regard - and thats a good thing. Software is just a tool.
Fallacy 3: Computers Increase Productivity
What I pointed out here is that our programs have become feature-rich to the point where they completely overwhelm their users. Have a close look at the average word processor and multitude of feature that are in there.
Have you used the software packages you are complaining about recently? Word 2000 onwards have "simplified" menus that only show the most common tasks - te ones that are used 90% of the time. The rich feature set is hidden from the user unti they actually want to access them. The Paperclip is actually a clever way for users to do more complex tasks because it allows natural language query. There are more man hours going in to commercial software usability on the closed-source side than I think the free software advocates realise, let alone acknowledge. I think this is a myth propagated by free software advocates which is simply untrue.
as for displacement behavior, thats a self-discipline issue. If you can quite actual studies correlating increase in behavior with the increase in software feature sets as a CAUSAL relationship, then you will make me question my position. Note that just because A increases at the same time as B increases does NOT mean A caused B. The economy increased during the 90's and so did sexual activity among adolescents. That doesnt mean teen's sex drives fueled American capitalism. Invoking displacement is just a cop out, unless you can furnish actual data. Im not saying tha data doesnt exist, but no one will accept a part of your thesis based on teh assumption that its true. Burden of proof.. btw you and I both are throwing around percentages (5%, 90%, etc) but it would be instructive to actually have real data. That data exists, by the people who actually use it - Microsoft and Apple, especially.
And later on you complain about UI issues - here you are complaining that there are too many widgets and too much functionality. So whats the solution? Are you recommending command line interfaces to stripped down software? And then you'll claim that such software makes users MORE productive? I sincerely believe that you have never used closed-source software in a business or academic environment, or you'd realise how absurd this idea is. If you have a coherent vision of what software Should Be Like, then present that.
Computers DO increase productivity. Your arguments to the contrary are anecdotal, invoke scientific claims that you havent substantiated, and reflect an ignorance of the actual software itself which you could mitigate by sitting down and trying it out.
Fallacy 4: Programs Help Their Users
So, does this mean that we all should do the same thing? Two (or many) wrongs make one right? I don't think so.
You'll have to find a non-capitalist market to pursue yoru ideal economic theory behind software marketing, because its just not realistic here. Consumers are more saavy than you realize. And your complaint is really that users are being marketed to with features they dont use - an allegation you have no data to support, aside from anecdotal evidence. The current M$ advertising scheme for XP is actually brilliant and its what consumers want.
Fallacy 5: If It's Graphical, It's Easy
The GUI I get with Windows does not make me a sysadmin... and the GUI does not make being a sysadmin intrinsically easier.
I'm way faster producing text draft with vi than with Word or Frame. As a text input and editing program, it is far less efficient than something like vi or emacs.
I never claimed that a GUI makes you a sysadmin, or that a GUI being a sysadmin easier. I said that you dont NEED To have sysadmin-level familiarity with your OS to be able to perform complex tasks, if you use a GUI. A GUI simplifies certain tasks that are too complex for an average user in a CLI environment.
Also, you second point illustrates yoru lack of experience with word processors. 90% of the time I edit text in Word, I dont even touch the mouse. If you use Word in "View: Normal" mode you will see exactly why (try it out). Text draft is just as easy in Word as it is in vi or emacs because the keyboard shortcuts to manipulate text blocks exist there also. The only vi functionality i sometimes wish for in word is dd and xx, but I cant get that almost as quickly by doing home-shift-up-arrow-delete. If you want to quibble about number of keystrokes, youre setting yourself up for a emacs-vs-vi flamewar, not a word-vs-free software one!
I use vi whenever i open a terminal. I use Word for all document creation. I wouldnt use word to browse mailboxes or edit config files, but I would be equally foolish to use vi or emacs for word processing. Theres simply no comparison. The graphical nature of Word makes it imensely more powerful for word-processing applications (which include both text entry as well as layout).
I accept your word on the Paperclip issue. My apology to you for insinuation otherwise. You do know that you can turn the paperclip off, right?
Fallacy 6: Computers are Getting Faster
I never said that everything was slower today.
didnt you? "We have come along and destroyed all the gains we have made in hardware.". ALL the gains? Fallacy, computers ARE getting faster? These are strong statements. If you are now qualifying them, then you should edit your thesis accordingly with the appropriate qualifiers. In fact, computers ARE faster and the end user sees this manifest as increased power and functionality, as well as non-negligible speed. True the hardware requirements keep going up, but so does feature set. Remember back in Win 3.1 when you had to load a TCP/IP stack as third party software called "winsock" ? Remember before Win NT when "multitasking" met "close down your app to run another one or crash your pc" ?
Your C++ compiler issue might simply be too much linking. Why dont you write the exact same code and use the exact same compiler on two systems, and then try the test again? And were the compilers writter ten years ago really better than the ones today? Are there really no additional features today that you think are worth including?
sure, lots of software is bloated code. And lots isnt. That has ALWAYS been teh case - I have seen FORTRAN code dating back to the 70's that was ten times longer than it needed to be.
Fallacy 7: Programs are Getting Better
I think whether programs are getting better depends largely on the perspective of a particular person.
Programs are getting more and more complex to use, harder to install, harder to uninstall, harder to keep up-to-date, are prone to virus infection, force me to keep buying bigger hardware all the time, often make it impossible to transfer customization to another computer running the same program, etc, etc
now thats a reasonable statement, which disagrees with your original Fallacy statement.
The litany of complainst you invoked above are NOT universal. And many of these problems are in fact masked from the end user. If you look at software today with an honest appraisal and in a real business environment (assuming a competent IT department also) you will find that most of these complaints are just anti-M$-derived FUD.
anecdotal reminisces about DOS are one thing, but dont really serve the point one way or another.
I apologise for calling your anecdote about the infalted word document a lie. I thought you were quoting as truth a myth you heard from someone else, not that this was your actual direct experience. Still, since you cant document or reproduce the anecdote, you have to admit its more likely that the problem was in something you did (such as turn on font embedding or somesuch) while you were tinkering around rather than a normal state of affairs. It is incendiary for you to insinuate that this is a routine occurrence (which you certainly did your best to imply).
Fallacy 8: Programmers are Getting Better
My thesis is that CS graduates are, on average, less qualified today than they used to be, especially when it comes to lower abstraction levels, such as hardware principles or assembly language, and theoretical computing, such as compiler construction or complexity analysis.
In your first response above, you mentioned that CS is a vast and complex field. Let me assure you that JR Rutherford had a greater nmastery of physics in proportion to the entire field at eth time than Hawking does today. As any field grows, the amount that any one person can master remains constant in its size, but decreases in proportion to the sum total.
It is great you could man troff but its not a big deal that CS graduates are learning HTML. Some CS graduates will focus on web infrastructure and others will focus on kernel hacking. Dongt underestimate teh value of a didactic education as compared to experience from the field - didactic learning formalizes and compresses the information and knowledge into a very short time frame. You can learn more HTML in a semester trhan you can in a year of hacking on your own, because the HTML class wont end with tables and frames. In a class you can cover advanced topics like XML, DTD defs, server-side scripting, client scripting, CSS, etc. That makes the difference between "My FIrst Geocities Page" and a true professional website.
And if you know that you want to focus on web infrastructure, why should you take a course on computational theory, any more than someone who wants to focus on planetary sciences needs to take an entire class on astrophysical computation? Or do a surgery residency if you just want to practice pediatrics?
Its a sign of maturation for the CS field. Embrace it, and get used to it. Its good for the CS industry, because specialization increases the knowledge boundary.
We routinely ask programmers (especially graduates) to do things they are in no way qualified to do.
doesnt this contradict teh "man troff" anecdote you gave? Are computer professionals expected to learn things on their own or not?
this has been a fun conversation, and I appreciatee your taking the time. I didnt even finish responding to all your fallacies last time around, and im afraid ive spent too long on this round already. But maybe we can continue the conversation over mail if you are inclined. I look forward to meeting you again on slashdot fora:)
those are hardly "consumer" applications, though. You can always write code that brings ANYTHING to its knees, even the most hypothetical super cluster possible within the limits of heat theory and quantum mechanics. But the argument that the story put forth is that normal everyday programs run slower, which is simply not true.
Slashdot Mirror
the assumptoins seem to be that sarch results are randomlydistributed. But by teh very nature of search - a targeted and subjective request for information - that is clearly the wrong model. I don't se why the assumption that a 2x bigger index should return 2x more results for any query 1000.
A better test would be to see how much overlap there was between queries. Do the top 50 returns on queries (ofany size, not just imited to those with N 1000 returns) match? to wuithin what percentage?
no man, give poor Wil a break! He's been fighting hard to diversify beyond the box he was forced into as SuperGeekBRat. He's a good man and a decent actor in his own right who deserves a star-(trek) vehicle of his own.
If the franchise takes 5 years off, and comes back with new people at the helm (and not Berman or Braga - they had their chance, it's time for fresh blood), it might actually be something that can reignite fandom again.
Star Trek's roots are in social criticism, raw idealism, and triumphalism about the human spirit. There was very little of any of those themes in Star Trek series in recent years. A return to roots is neccessary, especially since the bar has been raised on production values (Battlestar Galactica), story arc writing (Babylon 5) and character development (Farscape).
Or, they could just hire Wil Wheaton as the next captain - playing a different character than Wesley Crusher, natch - give him a starship, and set him loose.
Just stop having episodes with Nazis. Or on historical Earth. Or both.
friction still wins. Waves are damped - pun intended!
wait - a tsunami caused by rock splashing into the water? That wouldn't displace the ENTIRE water column from bed to surface the way the earthquake did. Why would this "invariably" cause a tsunami that could reach across the Atlantic? The amount of energy released in the earthquake was orders of magnitude higher because it was the potential energy of entire tectonic plates - a big island, even a efw billion tons of rock, isn't anywhere near massive enough to release that much raw energy. Propagating a wave across the Atlantic will take a lot more energy than propagating one across the Bay of Bengal.
articles like this are especially frustrating to MRI physics geeks like me, because there's a delicate balance bwteen wanting the media to help promote science, and watching helplessly as they mangle it into pure science fiction. The BOLD effect by which fMRI observes brain activity is orders of magnitude removed from the sensitivity of indivdual neuron measurements, and as other commentators have pointed out there's a real limit on what you can expect to understand about human thought processes using that tool.
:)
I've actually started a blog devoted to megnetoic resonance imaging (http://refscan.blogspot.com/ and would like to invite anyone else interested in MRI to visit and comment. Our patron Saint is Magneto
you know, regardless of attempts to game the system, if every slashdot reader just linked to this slashdot story from their respective websites, then Slashdot would win easily with a standard PageRank. No amount of gaming the system can overtake sheer force of numbers. It's like the Howard Dean approach to raising money :)
I'm adding the following HTML link to my websites:
nigritude ultramarine
join me! and Slashdot shall prevail!
I hope it's open source. Maybe Linus will release it? I'm drowning under ten years of archives, spanning email clients from Eudora-Mac v1.0 to Thunderbird and almost everything in between. I'd love to have a cool program that could organizde my scatterred archives ...
also there's this timeline of events, which is quite revealing:
History of this Advisory & Vendor Contact Log
2003-10-09 Initial version of this advisory
2003-10-09 Apple Computer notified
2003-10-09 Apple Computer confirmed receipt and forwarded to eng. team
2003-10-11 Minor edits, also added "Philosophical Issues" and "Path to Root"
2003-10-14 Apple Computer assigns specific point of contact
2003-10-14 Requested confirmation of issue with Apple Computer
2003-10-15 Apple Computer confirms issue
(2003-10-24 Original deadline given to Apple for acknowledging issue)
(2003-10-24 Mac OS X 10.3 is released with this known issue)
(2003-10-28 Mac OS X 10.3 Security Update released, does not address issue)
2003-10-28 Requested update of fix status from Apple Computer
2003-10-28 Apple Computer proposes Nov. 3 fix date
2003-10-29 Apple Computer reneges on Nov. 3 date
2003-10-29 Requested fix in "2 or 3 weeks" from Apple Computer
(2003-11-04 Mac OS X 10.3 Security Update released, does not address issue)
(2003-11-15 Mac OS X 10.3.1 is released with this known issue)
2003-11-17 Requested update of fix status from Apple Computer
2003-11-18 Requested update of fix status from Apple Computer
(2003-11-19 Mac OS X 10.3.1 Security Update released, does not address issue)
2003-11-19 Apple Computer replies "scheduled to go out in December's update"
2003-11-19 Deadline of Nov. 26 given to Apple Computer
2003-11-25 Minor edits, made "Path to Root" a little more work for the script kiddies
2003-11-26 Advisory issued (48 days after initial vendor notification)
Until the Petronas Towers were built, the Sears Tower in Chicago held all four titles. Petronas displaced the Sears Tower only by virtue of an enormous spire, which was part of the architectural design but did not actually have usable space. Thus Petronas got a boost to its Structural height by virtue of its spire, but the Sears Tower actually remained the leader in Highest Occupied Floor, and Roof, and Tip. Unfortunately, Structural height is the one used in the public domain to assert the title of Tallest. You can see that the Sears was taller by far in every intuitive sense of the word by looking at this scale drawing. And the illustration actually omits the Sears' antennae masts.
yeah, i tried underlining the sentences to emphasise. Big mistake. next time I'll stick with talics.
(emphasis mine) I think it's a brilliant suggestion. If the Burns-Wyden bill is passed, then I can easily filter my mail to stop spam I don't want to see. I don't think that my ISPs should be blocking email that may be spam but follows these rules. The filters in Eudora and Outlook Express are powerful enough to stop all spam I am not interested in receiving if I know for a fact that the forged header problem vanishes. I think it's a great compromise.
ignoramus, it was their offices in KABUL that were bombed.
Al-Jazeera Kabul offices hit in US raid
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia
from the netsys.com article:
Wouldnt this account for the why primary and secondary DNS is unreachable? Not neccessarily censorship at the routing level, just network protection - a symptom of the DDoS.
if you value sound quality, DONT convert your MP3 files to OGG using these utilities!
Thats essentially twice-lossy-encoding your original data, its not a seamless conversion. By double encoding your files, you will have horrible sound quality.
If you want OGG files, encode them from WAV directly. If you have MP3 files but no WAV masters, then its far better to stick with the MP3 file format.
Whathappens to TiVo and other DVR boxen now? once analog is gone, and the HDTV digital tuner is embedded into the box, there's no access point to divert the data to a third-party box.
Everytime we see an example of the little guy getting threatened by the Big Evil, we Slashdotters have an orgy of analysis and in the end do absolutely nothing. Appeals to donate to the EFF are roundly issued but how many bother?
What Slashdot needs to do is have a Fund set up - basically, an Amazon click-to-pay or PayPal (or both) account setup on the front page. It shoudl be preset for $1 donations. Every time we have a YRO post on slashdot frontpage, the donate buttons shoudl be inserted into the comments page.
The idea is, make it EASY to donate, makie it quick, make the links impossible to miss and always appear in correct context. If I had such a link infront of me right now I'd click it.
Every time we see a case like this, we set up a fund and channel funds to the poor guy. And maybe Slashdot could channel a matching percentage to the EFF as a donation from teh advertising revenue.
There has to be a way to leverage the huge community numbers here into actual tangible pressure - and money is the best way.
Yahoo mail is excellent. And a Yahoo ID (which is the same thing) gives me excellent access to teh features that Yahoo provides - Yahoo is one of the most useful sites on the net.
Its worth 2 bucks a month. I drop more on donuts at Shipleys every week.
Fark.com has a brilliant model whereby users can pay a fee to see ALL stories submitted to the site, not just those approved for frontpage. I think this is a brilliant idea that would work even better on Slashdot and make a TON of money. I know I'd pay 20/year for it.
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There's a good review of this idea and discussion of how it might apply to Slashdot here
To get an idea of what this would be like, look at the preview.
given your experience with this, i'd like to ask you a question. Would this work: setting up a dedicated Win XP machine, but making it a loner (no internet connection) ?
The idea being to create a beautiful home-media/office processing/printing/soho superduper workstation, without any of the Big Brither aspects. For internet access, use the slimmed down Win 2000 machine and share files between the two using Network Neighborhood.
is there a flaw in this plan?
what rubbish! This is pure FUD. Define "the job" that needs to get done. The Job IS Betsy in Accounting.
Give a concrete example of these mystical "larger motivations". What underlying task/goal have we been distracted from. Saving the world? World peace? end poverty?
computers are just tools. Like a hammer. As far as I can tell, its precisely that complexity of computers that let us get the job done - otherwise the world be LESS complex today, not more, as computers have increased in complexity from the stone-age CLI days.
in your (extreme) example, sloppy physics and dose calculations were the problem, not "sloppy programming".
There's also a decent article on business2.com
http://www.business2.com/articles/web/print/0,165
Michi,
Thank you for replying, and I apologise for confrontational tone. Part of your complaint is the oversimplification of computing - a thesis I share - which was why when I saw "Top 10 Fallacies" I reacted viscerally.
That said, I still disagree with almost everything you said
Note that you listed the title of the hypothetical book as "Teach Yourself C++ in 14 easy lessons" - NOT "Become a C++ Expert in 14 easy lessons". You CAN learn enough C++ in 14 easy lessons to become quite good enough to become proficient enough to do tasks at hand. And in teh course of doing those tasks, you learn more as you go. That's how I taught myself C, Perl, HTML, CSS, and PhP. And I'm a physicist (of mediocre skill), not a CS guy.
The analogy to brain surgery is simply wrong. There is simply no comparison. My objection to this fallacy is the implicit equivalence. You never addressed my point that brain surgery puts lives at risk - and keep in mind that computing, like science, is based on deductive reasoning and logic. Brain surgery on the other hand is a skill requiring copius memorization, fine motor control, and intensive training unlike anything you will find in CS. Its delusional to compare them.
one last comment on this point. You said that "computing" (as a large field) is just as complex as brain surgery, and invoked the time for degree qualification as proof. Let me point out that your Fallacy equated C++ with Brain Surgery, not Computing with Brain Surgery. For the record, Brain surgery requires 4 years of med school, a SIX year residency, and optionally a three year fellowship:
http://www.utmb.edu/surgery/Educat.htm
Unlike word processors of the past, today typesetting is in fact almost ludicrously easy compared to the past. Word comes with templates that are professionally designed, for legal, academic, office, and personal tasks (including a cool template for a Thesis which I modified for my own use). TO address each of the specific examples you gave, Word's templates already have correct kerning, layout, and choice of sans-vs-serif (font styles). With third party software like Endnote and MathType you have biblio and math features correctly done the right way according to all professional standards, with barely any effort at all (nothing comes close to these products on the Free Software side, btw). Spelling and grammar are a function of your education from middle school, and are not the fault of your computing platform or software, its unfair for you to take it to task.
as for content, aren't you the one complaining that software does too much and that graduates have too much hand holding? Why do you want software to do your spelling and grammar for you? isnt it the responsibility of the user to do the content, or do you want your software to provide that to? its not clear what your problem is in this regard. Typewriters and Emacs suffer eth same problem as Word XP in this regard - and thats a good thing. Software is just a tool.
Have you used the software packages you are complaining about recently? Word 2000 onwards have "simplified" menus that only show the most common tasks - te ones that are used 90% of the time. The rich feature set is hidden from the user unti they actually want to access them. The Paperclip is actually a clever way for users to do more complex tasks because it allows natural language query. There are more man hours going in to commercial software usability on the closed-source side than I think the free software advocates realise, let alone acknowledge. I think this is a myth propagated by free software advocates which is simply untrue.
as for displacement behavior, thats a self-discipline issue. If you can quite actual studies correlating increase in behavior with the increase in software feature sets as a CAUSAL relationship, then you will make me question my position. Note that just because A increases at the same time as B increases does NOT mean A caused B. The economy increased during the 90's and so did sexual activity among adolescents. That doesnt mean teen's sex drives fueled American capitalism. Invoking displacement is just a cop out, unless you can furnish actual data. Im not saying tha data doesnt exist, but no one will accept a part of your thesis based on teh assumption that its true. Burden of proof.. btw you and I both are throwing around percentages (5%, 90%, etc) but it would be instructive to actually have real data. That data exists, by the people who actually use it - Microsoft and Apple, especially.
And later on you complain about UI issues - here you are complaining that there are too many widgets and too much functionality. So whats the solution? Are you recommending command line interfaces to stripped down software? And then you'll claim that such software makes users MORE productive? I sincerely believe that you have never used closed-source software in a business or academic environment, or you'd realise how absurd this idea is. If you have a coherent vision of what software Should Be Like, then present that.
Computers DO increase productivity. Your arguments to the contrary are anecdotal, invoke scientific claims that you havent substantiated, and reflect an ignorance of the actual software itself which you could mitigate by sitting down and trying it out.
You'll have to find a non-capitalist market to pursue yoru ideal economic theory behind software marketing, because its just not realistic here. Consumers are more saavy than you realize. And your complaint is really that users are being marketed to with features they dont use - an allegation you have no data to support, aside from anecdotal evidence. The current M$ advertising scheme for XP is actually brilliant and its what consumers want.
I never claimed that a GUI makes you a sysadmin, or that a GUI being a sysadmin easier. I said that you dont NEED To have sysadmin-level familiarity with your OS to be able to perform complex tasks, if you use a GUI. A GUI simplifies certain tasks that are too complex for an average user in a CLI environment.
Also, you second point illustrates yoru lack of experience with word processors. 90% of the time I edit text in Word, I dont even touch the mouse. If you use Word in "View: Normal" mode you will see exactly why (try it out). Text draft is just as easy in Word as it is in vi or emacs because the keyboard shortcuts to manipulate text blocks exist there also. The only vi functionality i sometimes wish for in word is dd and xx, but I cant get that almost as quickly by doing home-shift-up-arrow-delete. If you want to quibble about number of keystrokes, youre setting yourself up for a emacs-vs-vi flamewar, not a word-vs-free software one!
I use vi whenever i open a terminal. I use Word for all document creation. I wouldnt use word to browse mailboxes or edit config files, but I would be equally foolish to use vi or emacs for word processing. Theres simply no comparison. The graphical nature of Word makes it imensely more powerful for word-processing applications (which include both text entry as well as layout).
I accept your word on the Paperclip issue. My apology to you for insinuation otherwise. You do know that you can turn the paperclip off, right?
didnt you? "We have come along and destroyed all the gains we have made in hardware.". ALL the gains? Fallacy, computers ARE getting faster? These are strong statements. If you are now qualifying them, then you should edit your thesis accordingly with the appropriate qualifiers. In fact, computers ARE faster and the end user sees this manifest as increased power and functionality, as well as non-negligible speed. True the hardware requirements keep going up, but so does feature set. Remember back in Win 3.1 when you had to load a TCP/IP stack as third party software called "winsock" ? Remember before Win NT when "multitasking" met "close down your app to run another one or crash your pc" ?
Your C++ compiler issue might simply be too much linking. Why dont you write the exact same code and use the exact same compiler on two systems, and then try the test again? And were the compilers writter ten years ago really better than the ones today? Are there really no additional features today that you think are worth including?
sure, lots of software is bloated code. And lots isnt. That has ALWAYS been teh case - I have seen FORTRAN code dating back to the 70's that was ten times longer than it needed to be.
now thats a reasonable statement, which disagrees with your original Fallacy statement.
The litany of complainst you invoked above are NOT universal. And many of these problems are in fact masked from the end user. If you look at software today with an honest appraisal and in a real business environment (assuming a competent IT department also) you will find that most of these complaints are just anti-M$-derived FUD.
anecdotal reminisces about DOS are one thing, but dont really serve the point one way or another.
I apologise for calling your anecdote about the infalted word document a lie. I thought you were quoting as truth a myth you heard from someone else, not that this was your actual direct experience. Still, since you cant document or reproduce the anecdote, you have to admit its more likely that the problem was in something you did (such as turn on font embedding or somesuch) while you were tinkering around rather than a normal state of affairs. It is incendiary for you to insinuate that this is a routine occurrence (which you certainly did your best to imply).
In your first response above, you mentioned that CS is a vast and complex field. Let me assure you that JR Rutherford had a greater nmastery of physics in proportion to the entire field at eth time than Hawking does today. As any field grows, the amount that any one person can master remains constant in its size, but decreases in proportion to the sum total.
It is great you could man troff but its not a big deal that CS graduates are learning HTML. Some CS graduates will focus on web infrastructure and others will focus on kernel hacking. Dongt underestimate teh value of a didactic education as compared to experience from the field - didactic learning formalizes and compresses the information and knowledge into a very short time frame. You can learn more HTML in a semester trhan you can in a year of hacking on your own, because the HTML class wont end with tables and frames. In a class you can cover advanced topics like XML, DTD defs, server-side scripting, client scripting, CSS, etc. That makes the difference between "My FIrst Geocities Page" and a true professional website.
And if you know that you want to focus on web infrastructure, why should you take a course on computational theory, any more than someone who wants to focus on planetary sciences needs to take an entire class on astrophysical computation? Or do a surgery residency if you just want to practice pediatrics?
Its a sign of maturation for the CS field. Embrace it, and get used to it. Its good for the CS industry, because specialization increases the knowledge boundary.
doesnt this contradict teh "man troff" anecdote you gave? Are computer professionals expected to learn things on their own or not?
this has been a fun conversation, and I appreciatee your taking the time. I didnt even finish responding to all your fallacies last time around, and im afraid ive spent too long on this round already. But maybe we can continue the conversation over mail if you are inclined. I look forward to meeting you again on slashdot fora
Regards
Aziz Poonawalla
those are hardly "consumer" applications, though. You can always write code that brings ANYTHING to its knees, even the most hypothetical super cluster possible within the limits of heat theory and quantum mechanics. But the argument that the story put forth is that normal everyday programs run slower, which is simply not true.