And if you were a company 100% on Linux or some other Unix flavor, you think switching to MS would not be "terribly painful and difficult".
It's like this for any large company that does the most minor switch. OS switches are simply 10x more painfull. Try switching email clients, or email servers, or version control systems, or development environments... that's pain.
Also, once your hooked on MS, the only reason you want to get off that boat is generally because of $$$. Which is generally going to pay for you to switch to some other system. But you forget, most companies are completely satisfied with the MS desktop/server line and consider the expense an investment. And at many companies, this expenses is so small compared with their bottom line, the concept of switching in order to save money will not make business sense. If it works, and does what they want it to do, why switch?
"OK dear. I have to find it. Hang on, i have it written down, don't tell me. it's sea colon then that slash thingy, then documents, then another slash thingy, then family, then vacation... oh bugger forgot the slash, no wait, wrong slash...."
Did you folks see that screenshot of the "simple interface"? That thing looks more like the menus on my parents' satellite TV service than a computer interface. Note the preinstalled categories ("My TV," "My Music," etc.), as if "My Documents" and "My Computer" weren't bad enough
Imagine that, making the system as easy to use as a satellite TV system that YOUR parents can even use.
I've had some piss-poor lemonade in my times. Maybe that 5 dollar lemonade taste better? Maybe they spent more money on sugar, or use a cold filtering processes.....
What matters in the end, is what the user experiences. If they are refreshed, and enjoyed their 5 dollar experience, the so what if they are paying more? Thank god we aren't some poor socialist country where I have to sell my lemonade at cost in order to be a good comrade. Thank god I can make money off my countrymen, and attempt to rise above them through my own hard work (and it's hard, whether i invented lemonade or not, it's hard running the company).
Can't afford the 5 dollar lemonade? Feel left out? Stuck with drinking government issue, or homemade lemonade? Well then, this must be an incentive for you. Incentives are rare, so put it to good use.
It's no different then scheduling the MS Sales Reps to come in for their 1hr long presentation, 45mins after you schedule the Oracle guys to come in for their presentation.
The two end up meeting in the hall, and notice each-other. Within literally hours you get phone calls and email saying to the extent "We really want your business, and well beat anything they offered".
Linux has to be prepared for this. Don't expect companies to back down from Linux competition simply because Linux is free. And don't expect companies not to use Linux as a expendable pawn in negotiations for better rates from existing vendors.
Who cares? The patent office is nothing more than a glorified time-stamping and certification system. The most important job they do, is say "By giving you this number sir, i verify the date and time of when you submitted your patent".
Having something post marked by the mail service is almost as legally binding.
Everything else is, in the end, is up to the courts. Just because you have a patent doesn't mean you are free and clear. If there is prior-art, or the patent is too broad, or too obvious, the courts will smack you down and void your patent.
As for creating criminal penalties for these individuals and companies that patent like mad, no we shouldn't. Think about it, the best penalty is to let them keep giving non-refundable money to the government. We should raise the patent application process fees (while at the same time, creating some sort of young-Edison fund for inventors who can't afford it, but those should have peer review) and rape the big-companies and stupid-individuals for millions.
From about 1997 and on, PRO/E has been running significantly faster and cheaper on Intel/NT and Intel/Win2k/Nvidia.
In '97 i remeber moving 30 engineers from Indigo's and Octane's to a Wintel/NT platform (Dual p2s with oxygens)most were excited purely for being able to open excel spreadsheets, but many noticed the decreased render time.
Today, there's nothing nearly as cost competive and fast as Pro/E on dual P4 2.2's, Nvidia Quad4 and win2k.
I hear your sentiment and understand your 'BMW/Chey' analogy. I heard it from very specific engineers when I moved them off the SGI/Unix world. Honestly, it was maybe 2 out of the 30. They were of course the 'wizards' of the group. They knew all the tricks, and when the other 28 engineers couldn't figure out how to do something, they went to those 2. Lost files, common unix mistakes, hidden views, missing models... etc. We had the 2 guys keep a log of how oftern they helped out others. Over a 4 month period, they spent around 39% of their time helping others.
After moving to the NT that droped to 5% over a 4 month period.
It will always be as it was. Wizards love Unix, Joe Worker likes whatever is simple to use (Windows, Mac, whatever). I think they are both good, but hell if I'll ever give SUN another dime.
-malakai
The M.I.N.U.M.A system is _NOT_ Autonomous
on
Robot Wars
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· Score: 2, Informative
The NY Time author and the submiter got it wrong. This system, based on the UCLA Engineering website, is simply designed to be a Mobile communication grid. This quote says it best:
"Minuteman will enable the Navy to bring fully networked force to the battlefield," Gerla said. "This will be the 'glue' that holds together supporting technologies such as mission planning, path planning, reasoning, decision making and distributed real-time computing and control."
These things are not designed to carry the bombs. That's for the X45A to do. And that, has a guy controlling it back in a bunker. He's the one using standard military protocol who makes the decision on friendlies or not-friendlies. And don't think a human in a cockpit or a bombing run has any better idea about what he's droping his bombs on. Either he's guided to the enemy, or he commits fratricide. Its the men with the plans, and the boys in the AWACS who are ultimately responsible some munition isn't droped on a friendly.
There is a top level project called "Intelligent Autonomous Agent Systems" of which this is part of. But there's nothing coming out of that which resembles T2 style aggresive AI controlled vehicles. Most of what they mean by autonomous, is the ability for the system to reconfigure itself if it loses an 'agent'. IE, and information node point. Another UAV could move from Group-A to Group-B to cover a lost eye-in-the-sky.
Although, I think there is room for truly autonmous agressive UAV. During desert storm, much of the day-day airborne offense took place in kill-boxes. They basically put a grid over the desert, and certain pilots or squadrons were told to destroy anything moving in grid X:Y. These boxes we're very much outside the 'Fire Support Coordination Line' meaning these air mission didn't need to be coordinated by someone on the ground. They were truly deep in enemy territory. When you run missions near troops the FSCL becomes the important factor. You can't target or shoot anything behind it (your computer won't let you either) Also, anything behind the FSCL requires a on-the-ground coordinator to give you the go ahead. I think we could see in 10 years roving aggresive UAVs that patrol grids and kill anything it finds in them. It's no different than what our pilots do now.
In fact, our humans pilots make mistake more than machines. There's famous video tape of an Apache captain taking out a Bradley and an M-113 at night, all capatured on his FLIR. He was providing FSCL support. His computer would not give him the green light to fire, he in fact had to override it in order to attack. His ground command did clear him for the shot verbally, telling them they had no vehicles in that area. There could be an argument that a mistake like that would not happen if it was a machine making the decision. I believe the real cause of that incident was the moving of the FSCL, and the airborne guys not getting the most recent FSCL coordinates (although his computer did have it).
it's touchscreen Quake III Arena that will get him killed. Anyone else notice that icon in the bottom left?
Also, someone teach this poor guy how to download Winamp skins. Because that default skin is just painful.
with a little ingenuity he could make a shifter-remote or steering wheel mountable remote and hooked it up to his system, utilizing max10 or some other serial line based remote control plug-in.
So does it look like neutrinos will lend themselves to a better communication medium then what we generally use now?
Seems like the ability to beam communication through the earth could have a big impact. Not to mention, seems like they would slip through water as easily as well. I assume size of the neutrion gun is the biggest hinderance?
I think the key point you're missing, is for anything to be controlled, it must be signed/certified.
Yes, if Company A or Person A signs/certifies a piece of intellectual property (be it some internal private corporate email/report, the schematics of a nucelear weapon, or a letter from Johnny's teachers marked Parents Eyes Only) then they should have the right to determine what is done with it.
This is no different then me locking up my corporate documents in a safe. If someone breaks in and steals those documents (copies and releases... whistle blows so to speak) I have legal recourse against them. However, that person may go to a DA, and present information or testimony at which point a judge my ordered my safe opened and the documents taken to be studied. The same is true with the DRM technologies.
If you want your information to be free, don't DRM it. But don't tell others they don't have the right to DRM their own works.
Keep this debate logically separated from whether RIAA is 'fair' or MS is 'fair', or even if the government is 'fair'. The only point here is should someone be able to create or transfer to digital media, private data that they can be guaranteed only X people will have Y priveleges with. Can't I build a CAR and ask you not to copy it piece by piece and give it to your friend? Can't I build a car and lease it to you, requiring you to return it? Can't I buy a car and rent it to you, allowing (legally) only you to drive it, and for said amount of time?
I don't get why physical objects have so many more rights then digital objects. Is it just because physical objects are much harder to reproduce? If we have the hypothetical star trek replicators, would the new slogan be "Objects want to be Free!"? Would it be legitmate to make copies of company physicall products and pass them around?
I'm amazed in this day in age, they are having a problem with asset management/tracking. Although it's underplayed in the interview, it seems as though the Informix Media 360 was a complete bust.
I can't imagine it was beyond their programmers prowess to create plug-ins or custom scripts that could save the media to a server under some GUID of a filename, and insert a row into a table someplace with the meta-data for that asset. A homegrown content management system is really simple with todays scripting/filesystems/XML. Hell you could throw out the database insert, and just write a filename.xml in the same directory, then harvest the information later.
I'm amazed they stumbled on this, and even more amazed they payed for the Informix product (didn't IBM buy them, and drop that product anyhow?).
Also, is it just me or does it seem like this CTO was 'released' at an odd time?
The Google Search Appliance starts at US $28k. Index Server comes as part of Win2k, and not in bulk would be a bout 1/28th the cost.
TCPA / Palladium Frequently Asked Questions
on
MS Palladium Patent
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· Score: 5, Interesting
This is a very scary paper. You think MS spews a lot of FUD, this papers is almost pure FUD.
First, this guy thinks a lot of himself:
The Palladium announcement appears to have been provoked by a paper I presented on the security issues relating to open source and free software at a conference on Open Source Software Economics in Toulouse on the 20th June
FUD
2. What does TCPA / Palladium do, in ordinary English?
Its obvious application is to embed digital rights management (DRM) technology in the PC. The less obvious implications include making it easier for application software vendors to lock in their users
Notice the bold FUD.
. So I won't be able to play MP3s on my PC any more?
With existing MP3s, you may be all right for some time. But in future, TCPA / Palladium will make it easier to sell music, movies, books and other content packaged so that people can play them on their PCs but not copy them.
Oh my, that sounds horrible. We could have a market finally for digital releases, one where I get my media, and the seller gets his money.
You might be allowed to lend your copy of some digital music to a friend, but then your own backup copy won't be playable until your friend gives you the main copy back.
Sounds fair. Keeps me from making 10 copies of this new movie and giving them to my friends.
Quite possibly you will not be able to lend music at all. (It looks likely that the music publisher will be able to make the rules - and to change them at will by remote control.)
And thus more speculation and FUD.
5. What else can TCPA and Palladium be used for?...For example, you might arrange that your soldiers can only create word processing documents marked at `confidential' or above, and that only a TCPA PC with a certificate issued by your own armed forces can read such a document. This is called `mandatory access control', and governments are keen on it. The Palladium announcement implies that the Microsoft product will support this. Once TCPA is widespread, corporations can do this too - and so, for that matter, can the Mafia. This can make life harder for spies, corporate whistle-blowers, and FBI agents alike
(though it is always possible that the FBI will get some kind of access to master keys)(FUD). A whistle-blower who emails a document to a journalist will achieve little, as the journalist's Fritz chip won't give him the key to decipher it.
OK, so now the open-source movement is AGAINST encryption/privacy? Does this mean PGP is bad now too? This sounds like technology I always assume US military intelligence organizations already use. I don't want a whistle-blower leaking confidential battlefield plans (we've seen it happen a lot in the last year). As for corporations, if a whistle-blower can't print, email, fax, save to disk some document, they'll find some other way to blow the whistle. This is a stupid argument as for why Palladium as a whole is bad.
10. OK, so TCPA stops kids ripping off music and will help companies keep data confidential. It
may help the Mafia too, but apart from the pirates, the industrial spies and the FBI, who has a problem with it?
I'm sure the FBI would love it if the Mafia started using DRM certs on their data. It'd be much easier to ask a judge for the rights to sieze and open documents certified by this certificate, then say to ad-hoc monitor possibly private data in an attempt to get to Mafia data. Note, it will never happen. Criminal elements will stay away from technology like DRM and pallidum.
A lot of companies stand to lose out. For example, the European smartcard industry
may be hurt, as the functions now provided by their products migrate into the Fritz chips in peoples' laptops, PDAs and third generation mobile phones. In fact, much of the information security industry may be upset if TCPA takes off.
Elmer FUD would be proud. I went and pulled the membership on the EUROSMART list, and I see a lot of overlap with TPCA. I guess they don't hate it that much.
11. How can TCPA be abused?
One of the worries is censorship (...) For example, the police could get an order against a specific pornographic picture of a child, and cause the policy servers to instruct all PCs under their control to search for it and notify them if it were found.
First, that's not censorship, that's search (and possibly seizure) and it's pure FUD to presume the government will push a button and search you hard-drives and then drag you down to the police station, for your dirty little picture. However, even if they did... this picture would have to be signed somehow, and under DRM protection. Not sure why a child pr0n peddler would take the time to DRM his pictures. And if you want to view that sick stuff, turn off the DRM system before you do it. Yes, it does have an off switch. While off, you can't use the apps in DRM mode, meaning you can't open DRM certified media.
12. Scary stuff. But can't you just turn it off?
Sure - one feature of TCPA is that the user can always turn it off. But then your TCPA-enabled applications won't work, or won't work as well. It will be like switching from Windows to Linux nowadays;
Oh my god. It's at this point I have to stop reading this horrible FUD..er FAQ. Disable DRM, and the DRM enabled functionality in DRM enabled apps will cease to work, the apps will continue to work. Sure, you can't open your ULTRA-7 security level report, that the NSA sent to you, but theres good reason for that. Turn back on the trust management, and then open that report. And what's with saying it's like switching from Windows to Linux? First, what the fook is wrong with linux bitch? and second, that makes no sense!
I honestly went to this FAQ to try and see both sides of the Palladium debate. But this FAQ is a borderline paranoia conspiracy rant. It hurts the anti-palladium side more than helps. Stick to the facts, dissect it like a Vulcan would. Show me logical arguments, and keep your emotion and fear out of it.
These guys were definitely sampling the elephant hormones. This is typical of a type-a on Steroids...
I had a friend who would get like this. Feel the need to punch holes in walls, faces...etc. When he cut off the 'roids, he wasn't nearly as a sadistic.
Someone hurry up and create some hardware less than 150 bucks that provides WiFi routing/relay/hub/proxy support. Plug and play, auto-discovery and routing with nearby networks (wirless and connected). So we can all start building an actual web of connected networks.
Design Tip: SQL Based Scheduling Systems
on
Timetabling Algorithms?
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· Score: 2, Informative
I've written SQL based scheduling systems a number of different ways. I think all my previous designs had major annoyances in them compared to this: SQL Based Scheduling Systems
Note, I haven't used this system (yet) but I enjoy the elegance of the bit-field query.
From the windows machine, you can query LDAP directly using ADSI OLE DB provider, or the OLEDB LDAP driver.
ie, you can do this: 'SELECT attribute1, attribute2 FROM "LDAP://Servern:port" WHERE blah = "Person" AND Class= "user"' You can use SQL dialect or LDAP type dialect.
You don't have to get into hooking up your LDAP servers into Active Directory. 3 years ago I was using OLEDB to query Netscape Enterprise LDAP servers.Works the same as if you're querying Active Directory.
Also, with SQL 7x and greater, you can 'link' to a LDAP server, and then hit it like an other SQL Data source.
Re:Are we rewriting science history today?
on
Reactor at Earth's Core?
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· Score: 2, Informative
Come on, did you read the article?
The existing Dynamo theory doesn't properly explain why the Earth's magnetic field has varying power levels and periodically shuts down.
This theory properly explains for that, as well as answers some questions about why helium-3 and helium4 isotopes are being found in deep-source volcanic lava rock.
The theory for why it periodically shuts down is quite interesting. I wonder if this theory of how this reactor works couldn't help produce better artificial reactors. Nature/evolution seems to have (if all the data pans out) created a very efficient (over-efficient if it's really a breeder) reactor.
Funny thing about that, Linux and other Unix OS's actually had the biggest GIF/JPEG vulnerability to date. It was in all Netscape's prior to 4.77, and it allowed javascript to be embedded in comments of GIF89a/JPEG and executed. GIF/JPEG comment vulnerability in Netscape
Good thing this wasn't widely deployed around the world, or bought by millions during Christmas time. Having a small marketshare does offer a lot of "protection". Most virii writers are going for a large impact.
You don't know what you are talking about and have obviously never administerd a DNS domain
You shouldn't make ASSumptions. I'm well versed in the architecture and protocols (both political and computational) of DNS.
It is not some farm on the veld that can be seized by a bunch of rent-seeking criminals -.za is not propertery
.za is property. It's a ccTLD, which according to IANA defers to ISO 3166-1 on what constitutes a country and what doesn't. You 'rent-seeking criminals' are a freely elected government in a democratic state. IANA and the . root-servers can not get involved when a government wants control over it's ccTLD. If that government coorosponds to the 3166-1 owner of the alpha country code, case over. If they do embargo.za and it's new gov't run and subsidized agency, they set a dangerous precedent. Will internet embargos go up around China's.CN next time they piss off human right advocates or free speech fanatics? It's up to the citizens in those countries to change their process from the INSIDE OUT. Embargos rarely do what you expect them to. Look back on history for more info.
Is it theirs because they somehow own such TLD? Are they entitled to it? Just because they can make money out of it means they have to regulate it?
Hello? It's their alpha COUNTRY CODE. Yes, they are entitled to it. It's a computer-age born national symbol. They can do what they want with it, just like they can do what they want with their numeric telephone Country Code.
Read up on their South Africa's interesting policies on Aids
irrelevant.
...example of uninformed (and hopefully unenforceable) legislation that governments...
According to you, and again, irrelevant.
For example you would not be able to change sub-domains to.za domain without government approval
I read their bill, and this wasn't the intent behind the law. What they are looking to do is make Government chartered sub-domains. For example, *.gov.za *.co.za...etc. A Common practice for ccTLDs being we (the US) have a monopoly on TLD Gov.
In any case, my point still stands. It is their country, and their country code. They are ELECTED representatives. IANA can not start using what power it has to chaste a countries freely elected political part anymore than it can chaste a communistic country use of their CC and the Internet.
ICANN better get used to situations like this. Putting up an electronic embargo around a domain name should never be an option for ICANN. What are they going to do next, pull China's TLD because of human rights abuse?
First of, this is a democratically elected government with a formal bill making process, all of which has been followed. It's not ICANN or the readers of/. job to tell another country what formal process to use in administering their TLD. I don't care what RFC exists that dictates this, it means nothing. Honestly, to the people involved in this who are so upset they were not consulted...blah..blah..blah: Get over yourselves. This sort of political manuvering happens everyday in large corporations. Threatening to cause a blackout if the bill is passed only proves their point. I also have to say, I find it insane currently this has been done by one unpaid party with no formal/legal binding to the country. What if this Mike Lawerence guy was smacked by a bus? Who's his backup? Who knows what he knows? And so they started their own redelgation process, but the DoC Sun Tzu'd them and came at them with the sun behind their back. Who cares, give it to the Gov't. It's theirs anyhow. They'll figure it out. If they spend 12million (whatever currency) on it, you have something to campaign with when you go for the Chairmens job. That's the way it works.
Stop acting like the dorky network administer who's pissed off his little department LAN has been absorbed by Corp IT, and he's no longer _GOD_.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh please.
And if you were a company 100% on Linux or some other Unix flavor, you think switching to MS would not be "terribly painful and difficult".
It's like this for any large company that does the most minor switch. OS switches are simply 10x more painfull. Try switching email clients, or email servers, or version control systems, or development environments... that's pain.
Also, once your hooked on MS, the only reason you want to get off that boat is generally because of $$$. Which is generally going to pay for you to switch to some other system. But you forget, most companies are completely satisfied with the MS desktop/server line and consider the expense an investment. And at many companies, this expenses is so small compared with their bottom line, the concept of switching in order to save money will not make business sense. If it works, and does what they want it to do, why switch?
-malakai
THE NERVE OF THEM!
-malakai
Not all lemonade taste the same.
I've had some piss-poor lemonade in my times. Maybe that 5 dollar lemonade taste better? Maybe they spent more money on sugar, or use a cold filtering processes.....
What matters in the end, is what the user experiences. If they are refreshed, and enjoyed their 5 dollar experience, the so what if they are paying more? Thank god we aren't some poor socialist country where I have to sell my lemonade at cost in order to be a good comrade. Thank god I can make money off my countrymen, and attempt to rise above them through my own hard work (and it's hard, whether i invented lemonade or not, it's hard running the company).
Can't afford the 5 dollar lemonade? Feel left out? Stuck with drinking government issue, or homemade lemonade? Well then, this must be an incentive for you. Incentives are rare, so put it to good use.
-malakai
It's no different then scheduling the MS Sales Reps to come in for their 1hr long presentation, 45mins after you schedule the Oracle guys to come in for their presentation.
The two end up meeting in the hall, and notice each-other. Within literally hours you get phone calls and email saying to the extent "We really want your business, and well beat anything they offered".
Linux has to be prepared for this. Don't expect companies to back down from Linux competition simply because Linux is free. And don't expect companies not to use Linux as a expendable pawn in negotiations for better rates from existing vendors.
This is after all, how the free market works.
-malakai
Who cares? The patent office is nothing more than a glorified time-stamping and certification system. The most important job they do, is say "By giving you this number sir, i verify the date and time of when you submitted your patent".
Having something post marked by the mail service is almost as legally binding.
Everything else is, in the end, is up to the courts. Just because you have a patent doesn't mean you are free and clear. If there is prior-art, or the patent is too broad, or too obvious, the courts will smack you down and void your patent.
As for creating criminal penalties for these individuals and companies that patent like mad, no we shouldn't. Think about it, the best penalty is to let them keep giving non-refundable money to the government. We should raise the patent application process fees (while at the same time, creating some sort of young-Edison fund for inventors who can't afford it, but those should have peer review) and rape the big-companies and stupid-individuals for millions.
-malakai
From about 1997 and on, PRO/E has been running significantly faster and cheaper on Intel/NT and Intel/Win2k/Nvidia.
In '97 i remeber moving 30 engineers from Indigo's and Octane's to a Wintel/NT platform (Dual p2s with oxygens)most were excited purely for being able to open excel spreadsheets, but many noticed the decreased render time.
Today, there's nothing nearly as cost competive and fast as Pro/E on dual P4 2.2's, Nvidia Quad4 and win2k.
I hear your sentiment and understand your 'BMW/Chey' analogy. I heard it from very specific engineers when I moved them off the SGI/Unix world. Honestly, it was maybe 2 out of the 30. They were of course the 'wizards' of the group. They knew all the tricks, and when the other 28 engineers couldn't figure out how to do something, they went to those 2. Lost files, common unix mistakes, hidden views, missing models... etc. We had the 2 guys keep a log of how oftern they helped out others. Over a 4 month period, they spent around 39% of their time helping others.
After moving to the NT that droped to 5% over a 4 month period.
It will always be as it was. Wizards love Unix, Joe Worker likes whatever is simple to use (Windows, Mac, whatever). I think they are both good, but hell if I'll ever give SUN another dime.
-malakai
There is a top level project called "Intelligent Autonomous Agent Systems" of which this is part of. But there's nothing coming out of that which resembles T2 style aggresive AI controlled vehicles. Most of what they mean by autonomous, is the ability for the system to reconfigure itself if it loses an 'agent'. IE, and information node point. Another UAV could move from Group-A to Group-B to cover a lost eye-in-the-sky.
Although, I think there is room for truly autonmous agressive UAV. During desert storm, much of the day-day airborne offense took place in kill-boxes. They basically put a grid over the desert, and certain pilots or squadrons were told to destroy anything moving in grid X:Y. These boxes we're very much outside the 'Fire Support Coordination Line' meaning these air mission didn't need to be coordinated by someone on the ground. They were truly deep in enemy territory. When you run missions near troops the FSCL becomes the important factor. You can't target or shoot anything behind it (your computer won't let you either) Also, anything behind the FSCL requires a on-the-ground coordinator to give you the go ahead. I think we could see in 10 years roving aggresive UAVs that patrol grids and kill anything it finds in them. It's no different than what our pilots do now.
In fact, our humans pilots make mistake more than machines. There's famous video tape of an Apache captain taking out a Bradley and an M-113 at night, all capatured on his FLIR. He was providing FSCL support. His computer would not give him the green light to fire, he in fact had to override it in order to attack. His ground command did clear him for the shot verbally, telling them they had no vehicles in that area. There could be an argument that a mistake like that would not happen if it was a machine making the decision. I believe the real cause of that incident was the moving of the FSCL, and the airborne guys not getting the most recent FSCL coordinates (although his computer did have it).
-malakai
it's touchscreen Quake III Arena that will get him killed. Anyone else notice that icon in the bottom left?
Also, someone teach this poor guy how to download Winamp skins. Because that default skin is just painful.
with a little ingenuity he could make a shifter-remote or steering wheel mountable remote and hooked it up to his system, utilizing max10 or some other serial line based remote control plug-in.
-malakai
So does it look like neutrinos will lend themselves to a better communication medium then what we generally use now?
Seems like the ability to beam communication through the earth could have a big impact. Not to mention, seems like they would slip through water as easily as well. I assume size of the neutrion gun is the biggest hinderance?
-malakai
I think the key point you're missing, is for anything to be controlled, it must be signed/certified.
Yes, if Company A or Person A signs/certifies a piece of intellectual property (be it some internal private corporate email/report, the schematics of a nucelear weapon, or a letter from Johnny's teachers marked Parents Eyes Only) then they should have the right to determine what is done with it.
This is no different then me locking up my corporate documents in a safe. If someone breaks in and steals those documents (copies and releases... whistle blows so to speak) I have legal recourse against them. However, that person may go to a DA, and present information or testimony at which point a judge my ordered my safe opened and the documents taken to be studied. The same is true with the DRM technologies.
If you want your information to be free, don't DRM it. But don't tell others they don't have the right to DRM their own works.
Keep this debate logically separated from whether RIAA is 'fair' or MS is 'fair', or even if the government is 'fair'. The only point here is should someone be able to create or transfer to digital media, private data that they can be guaranteed only X people will have Y priveleges with. Can't I build a CAR and ask you not to copy it piece by piece and give it to your friend? Can't I build a car and lease it to you, requiring you to return it? Can't I buy a car and rent it to you, allowing (legally) only you to drive it, and for said amount of time?
I don't get why physical objects have so many more rights then digital objects. Is it just because physical objects are much harder to reproduce? If we have the hypothetical star trek replicators, would the new slogan be "Objects want to be Free!"? Would it be legitmate to make copies of company physicall products and pass them around?
I'm amazed in this day in age, they are having a problem with asset management/tracking. Although it's underplayed in the interview, it seems as though the Informix Media 360 was a complete bust.
I can't imagine it was beyond their programmers prowess to create plug-ins or custom scripts that could save the media to a server under some GUID of a filename, and insert a row into a table someplace with the meta-data for that asset. A homegrown content management system is really simple with todays scripting/filesystems/XML. Hell you could throw out the database insert, and just write a filename.xml in the same directory, then harvest the information later.
I'm amazed they stumbled on this, and even more amazed they payed for the Informix product (didn't IBM buy them, and drop that product anyhow?).
Also, is it just me or does it seem like this CTO was 'released' at an odd time?
-malakai
The Google Search Appliance starts at US $28k. Index Server comes as part of Win2k, and not in bulk would be a bout 1/28th the cost.
First, this guy thinks a lot of himself: FUD Notice the bold FUD. Oh my, that sounds horrible. We could have a market finally for digital releases, one where I get my media, and the seller gets his money. Sounds fair. Keeps me from making 10 copies of this new movie and giving them to my friends. And thus more speculation and FUD. OK, so now the open-source movement is AGAINST encryption/privacy? Does this mean PGP is bad now too? This sounds like technology I always assume US military intelligence organizations already use. I don't want a whistle-blower leaking confidential battlefield plans (we've seen it happen a lot in the last year). As for corporations, if a whistle-blower can't print, email, fax, save to disk some document, they'll find some other way to blow the whistle. This is a stupid argument as for why Palladium as a whole is bad. I'm sure the FBI would love it if the Mafia started using DRM certs on their data. It'd be much easier to ask a judge for the rights to sieze and open documents certified by this certificate, then say to ad-hoc monitor possibly private data in an attempt to get to Mafia data.
Note, it will never happen. Criminal elements will stay away from technology like DRM and pallidum. Elmer FUD would be proud. I went and pulled the membership on the EUROSMART list, and I see a lot of overlap with TPCA. I guess they don't hate it that much. First, that's not censorship, that's search (and possibly seizure) and it's pure FUD to presume the government will push a button and search you hard-drives and then drag you down to the police station, for your dirty little picture. However, even if they did... this picture would have to be signed somehow, and under DRM protection. Not sure why a child pr0n peddler would take the time to DRM his pictures. And if you want to view that sick stuff, turn off the DRM system before you do it. Yes, it does have an off switch. While off, you can't use the apps in DRM mode, meaning you can't open DRM certified media. Oh my god. It's at this point I have to stop reading this horrible FUD..er FAQ. Disable DRM, and the DRM enabled functionality in DRM enabled apps will cease to work, the apps will continue to work. Sure, you can't open your ULTRA-7 security level report, that the NSA sent to you, but theres good reason for that. Turn back on the trust management, and then open that report. And what's with saying it's like switching from Windows to Linux? First, what the fook is wrong with linux bitch? and second, that makes no sense!
I honestly went to this FAQ to try and see both sides of the Palladium debate. But this FAQ is a borderline paranoia conspiracy rant. It hurts the anti-palladium side more than helps. Stick to the facts, dissect it like a Vulcan would. Show me logical arguments, and keep your emotion and fear out of it.
-malakai
Using XML to describe XML simply makes sense. DTD's are antiquated, and I can't even transform against them for meta-meta-data tasks.
These guys were definitely sampling the elephant hormones. This is typical of a type-a on Steroids...
I had a friend who would get like this. Feel the need to punch holes in walls, faces...etc. When he cut off the 'roids, he wasn't nearly as a sadistic.
....wtf is this country coming to.
Someone hurry up and create some hardware less than 150 bucks that provides WiFi routing/relay/hub/proxy support. Plug and play, auto-discovery and routing with nearby networks (wirless and connected). So we can all start building an actual web of connected networks.
I've written SQL based scheduling systems a number of different ways. I think all my previous designs had major annoyances in them compared to this:
SQL Based Scheduling Systems
Note, I haven't used this system (yet) but I enjoy the elegance of the bit-field query.
Good luck,
-malakai
Just look at how rainy the set of Blade Runner is. Or was it it Philip K. Dick....
From the windows machine, you can query LDAP directly using ADSI OLE DB provider, or the OLEDB LDAP driver.
ie, you can do this:
'SELECT attribute1, attribute2 FROM "LDAP://Servern:port" WHERE blah = "Person" AND Class= "user"'
You can use SQL dialect or LDAP type dialect.
You don't have to get into hooking up your LDAP servers into Active Directory. 3 years ago I was using OLEDB to query Netscape Enterprise LDAP servers.Works the same as if you're querying Active Directory.
Also, with SQL 7x and greater, you can 'link' to a LDAP server, and then hit it like an other SQL Data source.
Come on, did you read the article?
The existing Dynamo theory doesn't properly explain why the Earth's magnetic field has varying power levels and periodically shuts down.
This theory properly explains for that, as well as answers some questions about why helium-3 and helium4 isotopes are being found in deep-source volcanic lava rock.
The theory for why it periodically shuts down is quite interesting. I wonder if this theory of how this reactor works couldn't help produce better artificial reactors. Nature/evolution seems to have (if all the data pans out) created a very efficient (over-efficient if it's really a breeder) reactor.
-malakai
Funny thing about that, Linux and other Unix OS's actually had the biggest GIF/JPEG vulnerability to date. It was in all Netscape's prior to 4.77, and it allowed javascript to be embedded in comments of GIF89a/JPEG and executed.
GIF/JPEG comment vulnerability in Netscape
Good thing this wasn't widely deployed around the world, or bought by millions during Christmas time. Having a small marketshare does offer a lot of "protection". Most virii writers are going for a large impact.
I'm well versed in the architecture and protocols (both political and computational) of DNS.
You 'rent-seeking criminals' are a freely elected government in a democratic state. IANA and the . root-servers can not get involved when a government wants control over it's ccTLD. If that government coorosponds to the 3166-1 owner of the alpha country code, case over.
If they do embargo
Will internet embargos go up around China's
It's up to the citizens in those countries to change their process from the INSIDE OUT.
Embargos rarely do what you expect them to. Look back on history for more info.
-Malakai
Hello? It's their alpha COUNTRY CODE. Yes, they are entitled to it. It's a computer-age born national symbol. They can do what they want with it, just like they can do what they want with their numeric telephone Country Code.
-malakai
irrelevant.
According to you, and again, irrelevant.
I read their bill, and this wasn't the intent behind the law. What they are looking to do is make Government chartered sub-domains. For example, *.gov.za *.co.za...etc. A Common practice for ccTLDs being we (the US) have a monopoly on TLD Gov.
In any case, my point still stands. It is their country, and their country code. They are ELECTED representatives. IANA can not start using what power it has to chaste a countries freely elected political part anymore than it can chaste a communistic country use of their CC and the Internet.
-malakai
ICANN better get used to situations like this. Putting up an electronic embargo around a domain name should never be an option for ICANN. What are they going to do next, pull China's TLD because of human rights abuse?
/. job to tell another country what formal process to use in administering their TLD. I don't care what RFC exists that dictates this, it means nothing. Honestly, to the people involved in this who are so upset they were not consulted...blah..blah..blah: Get over yourselves.
First of, this is a democratically elected government with a formal bill making process, all of which has been followed. It's not ICANN or the readers of
This sort of political manuvering happens everyday in large corporations. Threatening to cause a blackout if the bill is passed only proves their point. I also have to say, I find it insane currently this has been done by one unpaid party with no formal/legal binding to the country. What if this Mike Lawerence guy was smacked by a bus? Who's his backup? Who knows what he knows?
And so they started their own redelgation process, but the DoC Sun Tzu'd them and came at them with the sun behind their back. Who cares, give it to the Gov't. It's theirs anyhow. They'll figure it out. If they spend 12million (whatever currency) on it, you have something to campaign with when you go for the Chairmens job. That's the way it works.
Stop acting like the dorky network administer who's pissed off his little department LAN has been absorbed by Corp IT, and he's no longer _GOD_.
-malakai