I looked at using the whois db for my IP to city project, but rejected it because (a) it's forbidden [which was the most important reason, honest:-), and (b) the correlation between locations I did know and what was in the whois DB was pretty poor.
So I just depend on good folks like yourselves to fill in the data. I think that gets around the various patents that Quova etc. have got on populating a city/ip database as well:-)
Frankly I'd give it about 50% accuracy, and I'm approaching that without using it at all...
1) MS is *not* pledging to keep Java up-to-date on the Windows platform, which basically means that applets like mine (see sig) have to use Java 1.1 and nothing higher. Sure, people can download the Java plugin, and lots do, but more don't. On a casual visit to a website, no-one will go through the rigmarole of downloading and installing the latest Java, just to see your applet...
2) I'm a bit concerned about the "As a result of this agreement, Sun and Microsoft engineers will cooperate to allow identity information to be easily shared between Microsoft Active Directory and the Sun Java System Identity Server" part. The single-signon used to be limited to MS-only platforms, now it has the capability to reach into linux-server land:-(
If I were being really cynical, I might conclude that MS had spent $2B of it's ample reserves to purchase an extension of single-sign-on into unix (linux and solaris) territory at a time when Sun needed cash.
It might just slap the EU back into line a bit as well, considering that MS will *spend* $2B to *possibly get* an advantage. What was that fine again ? (Yes, I know about the other measures, but you can only respond with what you have, and MS has loads of cash)
The name implied to me that it is only vulnerabilities in Open Source programs/systems that will be tracked, but reading the FAQ it seems to be that the database itself is open-source, and the database covers all systems. I think they could have named it better.
I remember trying out WordPerfect 8 for Linux back when it was first released, and being shocked at just how awkward it was to use. The port had obviously just been a code-for-code translation from the original WP, and although experienced WP users would probably feel at home, it felt less attractive than writing in LaTeX to me!
I think Corel wants to expand their market share, not just port users across to a new OS; to do that, they need to compete with the others named (Staroffice, Openoffice) and not just turn up. IMHO Corel will have to have put a far nicer UI on top of their product before it'll get accepted by anyone not already a WP nut...
If WP9 was far superior to 8, then I apologise to Corel (and hope 'office does well) but I didn't even try 9 because of how awful 8 was. That's the danger in bringing an externally-developed product into a new marketplace - it needs to sing its own strengths whilst merging into the choir... Hopefully Corel has got it right - more competition can only strengthen all the players.
The BBC are running a separate 'this is true, honest' story, detailing other unlikely stories alongside... I like the fact that one of our railways cost more than a trip to the moon.
It's a truism within the London-based Post-production industry (pretty much all located within a square mile of Soho, central London) that the bandwidth of a bunch of RAID arrays in a transit van is pretty much unbeatable, even with the fast networks that post-houses have between themselves... transferring physical media used to be called 'sneakernet' when walking across the room, it's just been scaled up slightly:-)
I'm quite impressed that a pigeon can do 100km in 2.5 hours though, I had no idea they were *that* fast...
I think Bray has a good point. I think the vast majority of people who own 'modded' consoles have had them modded so they can hire a game from Blockbuster and pirate it. My PS2 is modded, and I used it for coding on before the PS2 linux kit and SPS2 came along (haven't used the mod-chip since), but I'm definitely the exception rather than the rule (well, if my circle of friends are anything to go by, anyway).
The flipside however is that it should be the act of piracy that is illegal, not the act of modifying your own (paid-for !) hardware. When a law is enacted, it should make provision for exceptions, and as far as I know the various copyright/IP/whatever laws don't do this for mod-chips. If the exceptions aren't there, it is percieved as a 'bad' law, and people are less likely to respect a 'bad' law...
As for the manufacturers staying ahead: whatever one man can do, another can undo. Until the entire console is a single chip, the traces to the storage devices are all encrypted, and the thing is hermetically sealed with cyanide gas within, people will find a way around the restrictions. The more the challenge, the more will try.
This is a great idea - a visualisation of the underlying data in a form far easier to recognise than the data itself. Humans tend to react better to visual stimuli (think a map vs a series of co-ordinates, and try to work out which location is farther away from you). Kudos to the authors for the inspiration.
This new idea tells us where we are in a better, easier-to-use way, and we like that. It can tell us where we can go/have been, and tracks the paths between these nodes on our cyberspatial plane [grin, sounds a bit OTT, but..]. Perhaps a cyberspatial compass combined with a cyberspatial GPS system. CPS perhaps:-)
It's also interesting to see that the 'cool idea' is something to aid the browsing experience, not to replace it. It seems we're happy with the idea of 'click here, go there', but want more intuitive or rememberable (is that a word?) cues for the journey itself...
At least, I got a message from worldpay earlier this afternoon that their server were being affected, but I've not noticed anything myself. Most of the UK's internet traffic goes through LInX anyway, which is pretty damn secure, so I'd be surprised to see any real IP issues, even if BT are in a bit of a pickle...
Given the crap nature of 99% of current music, either Aussies have *really* bad taste, or the quantity of crap being rained from above must have gone through the roof...
The BBC is supposed to have a reputation for fair and even-handedness, they report the facts, not opinion; they draw conclusions based on fact, not supposition; reports are strongly topical. On this basis, and this alone, it is a worldwide-respected news source.
If you read the article, then right at the end, there's an underhand indictment of the Canadian PM due to a sponsorship slush fund. This has no place in an article on boolean algebra. It's also a bit loose about the definition of truth-tables. A simple dual-property table (colour/shape for example) could have illustrated the point far better.
It's depressing:-(
And to bring this more on-topic... Why when someone does ground-breaking work in a new field, does some later plod (ie: someone who *didn't* do the ground-breaking work) say something like 'There are major flaws in Boole's work that have come to light over the years... Boole did not recognize the difference between the consequences of an equation and the solution of an equation. This mistake might seem like a technicality, but it mars a lot of Boole's thinking'. Idiot.
[appropriate department for it to come from, though:-]
Despite the warnings about only 2-body maths being used in the applet, it's too tempting not to run it forwards and backwards a bit just to see... It turns out the closest approach would have been roughly a week before it was noticed on Dec 8th 2003, at 0.0455 AU or ~6,807,000 km. A fair old distance:-)
I guess it's not too often you get your own asteroid orbiting, but this is still going to be a looong way away for a lot of the time. Maybe when it does get close though, we can send something up to it - beats the hell out of going out to the Oort cloud, even if you do find a few planets along the way:-)
Strange, how it's far easier (at least for me) to see that the sketched black/white drawing is a fox than the coloured rendered version - I thought the coloured version was simply abstract until I saw the sketch:-)
There was a story on/. just recently where the USA was attempting to add DMCA-like clauses in order for a trade agreement to go ahead... Don't get me wrong here - there's nothing wrong with a country trying to get as much as it can from any international deal, it's just that I loath the DMCA and its kin...
Apart from the wheely mouse (which I think HP invented), I can't think of *any* technologies that Microsoft got into early on. They missed TCP/IP, networking in general, the net (and the browser), etc.
Of their successes, with the honorable exception of their OS (copied from DR and then Apple) and their office suites (which they copied from, was it Lotus?), it's all been dubious business practices... Very successful company though they are, they are in no way innovative. Innovative isn't necessary for a monopolist position, and in fact is a bad business strategy - you might waste loads of cash, and you've got nothing to lose by preserving the status quo...
... of catering only to the pay-for market. If IBM can bundle a no-cost distribution, why should they pay even token fees to Redhat to bundle their version of Linux as the IBM-blessed version? It's not as though IBM can't support any linux they care to. Hell, they're just about the only company that could support them *all* [grin]
Or, perhaps it's payback time. Novell were very supportive of IBM in the SCO debacle. Perhaps this is IBM saying thankyou. Wouldn't it be ironic if SCO's actions were what caused Linux to become an even stronger corporate presence:-)
There are things that wireless is great for, but they basically come down to an "is it a pain or impossible to run wire here instead" decision. Mass broadcast is a possible other reason. Running a wire to most people's houses is pretty easy - you probably already have electricity, phone, gas, water, sewage, etc. etc. It's about time the internet connection was treated the same as any other utility.
The frequency spectrum is a finite resource (cf: Shannon), we ought to conserve it like you conserve water in a desert (unless you're in Vegas, of course...). Once you've used it, it's gone, and if we have to start using Terahertz waves because the rest is used up, well don't say I didn't warn you... (Terahertz waves penetrate the outer layer of clothing, allowing people to 'see through' clothes to the body beneath, all you'd need would be a portable screen/aerial and....)
Microsoft claims that it should not be fined at all because it did not know its behaviour would breach EU law.
Right. Of course they didn't know. They just set up shop in a different country and assumed that US law would prevail. What's wrong with that ? (Hint: lots!)
Another quote:
"In the EU's judgment, Microsoft must refrain from using any commercial, technological or contractual terms that would have the effect of "rendering the unbundled version of Windows less attractive or performing. In particular, it must not give PC manufacturers a discount conditional on their buying Windows together with the Windows Media player."
Well, no wonder they're going to appeal, that removes 90% of their business practice!
If you look at the XDirectFB screenshots you can see what it looks like using the DirectFB X-server:-) The server has the ability to make windows transparent/opaque by degree as focus is lost/gained or hidden/shown. Very nice:-)
If this gets the go-ahead (and if it's open source), it'll be even nicer. The DirectFB X-server is still a standard 2-D environment, with all that entails. I can't see much use for attaching sticky notes to the "backs" of windows, but I'm sure someone will come up with one:-)
Xilinx have silicon with embedded PowerPC processors, BlockRam (chunks of pre-generated SRAM) and huge swathes of FPGA cells and interconnect. The chips have other abilities too - built-in 18-bit multipliers and communications channges (10 Gbps/channel, 20 channels!). All very cool stuff. Very expensive too:-(
I'm sort of surprised there aren't more FPGA-hackers than there appears to be. It's not hard to learn verilog (very similar to C), and despite what most FPGA designers will tell you, as long as you keep your mind focused on 'everything happens in parallel', a decent programmer can produce good FPGA code too. The start kits (300,000 gates, about enough for a hardware JPEG core and maybe a network MAC) are cheap (100 or so), and designing a processor is a pretty simple operation, and immensely gratifying:-)
I predict a TOWERing failure if it's launched over here, after all, it'd be far too easy to confuse with the Royal Linea GE, and Queenie gets all upset when people start abusing the Royal name:-)
Want to really annoy your competition ? Do the same thing actually on a google search page - just make it "search" 1000 times for words that bring up your competitions 'adwords' box, then "click" the adwords link. Google then bills your competitor for the maximum (s)he specified per day/week/month and, bonus!, your competitor then drops down the rankings for which google Adword to display...
Random words mixed in with the key ones, random delays between searches, random User-Agent, etc., etc. Seems like it would be easy to do, and hard to track...
Slashdot Mirror
I looked at using the whois db for my IP to city project, but rejected it because (a) it's forbidden [which was the most important reason, honest
So I just depend on good folks like yourselves to fill in the data. I think that gets around the various patents that Quova etc. have got on populating a city/ip database as well
Frankly I'd give it about 50% accuracy, and I'm approaching that without using it at all...
Simon
... because I could have sworn that 'Sun and Microsoft Settled Litigation' yesterday...
Looks like it loses 400 million dollars a day though, so pretty soon Sun'll be paying a huge wad of cash over to Bill...
Simon
1) MS is *not* pledging to keep Java up-to-date on the Windows platform, which basically means that applets like mine (see sig) have to use Java 1.1 and nothing higher. Sure, people can download the Java plugin, and lots do, but more don't. On a casual visit to a website, no-one will go through the rigmarole of downloading and installing the latest Java, just to see your applet...
2) I'm a bit concerned about the "As a result of this agreement, Sun and Microsoft engineers will cooperate to allow identity information to be easily shared between Microsoft Active Directory and the Sun Java System Identity Server" part. The single-signon used to be limited to MS-only platforms, now it has the capability to reach into linux-server land
If I were being really cynical, I might conclude that MS had spent $2B of it's ample reserves to purchase an extension of single-sign-on into unix (linux and solaris) territory at a time when Sun needed cash.
It might just slap the EU back into line a bit as well, considering that MS will *spend* $2B to *possibly get* an advantage. What was that fine again ? (Yes, I know about the other measures, but you can only respond with what you have, and MS has loads of cash)
Simon the cynic.
The name implied to me that it is only vulnerabilities in Open Source programs/systems that will be tracked, but reading the FAQ it seems to be that the database itself is open-source, and the database covers all systems. I think they could have named it better.
Simon
I remember trying out WordPerfect 8 for Linux back when it was first released, and being shocked at just how awkward it was to use. The port had obviously just been a code-for-code translation from the original WP, and although experienced WP users would probably feel at home, it felt less attractive than writing in LaTeX to me!
I think Corel wants to expand their market share, not just port users across to a new OS; to do that, they need to compete with the others named (Staroffice, Openoffice) and not just turn up. IMHO Corel will have to have put a far nicer UI on top of their product before it'll get accepted by anyone not already a WP nut...
If WP9 was far superior to 8, then I apologise to Corel (and hope 'office does well) but I didn't even try 9 because of how awful 8 was. That's the danger in bringing an externally-developed product into a new marketplace - it needs to sing its own strengths whilst merging into the choir... Hopefully Corel has got it right - more competition can only strengthen all the players.
Simon.
Of course, it ought to have ended:
:-)
Soviet sergeant: Silence, cappitalist pig! Those anglobastards witll suffer for their fowl crime!
Simon
The BBC are running a separate 'this is true, honest' story, detailing other unlikely stories alongside... I like the fact that one of our railways cost more than a trip to the moon.
Only in the UK...
Simon
It's a truism within the London-based Post-production industry (pretty much all located within a square mile of Soho, central London) that the bandwidth of a bunch of RAID arrays in a transit van is pretty much unbeatable, even with the fast networks that post-houses have between themselves... transferring physical media used to be called 'sneakernet' when walking across the room, it's just been scaled up slightly
I'm quite impressed that a pigeon can do 100km in 2.5 hours though, I had no idea they were *that* fast...
Simon
I think Bray has a good point. I think the vast majority of people who own 'modded' consoles have had them modded so they can hire a game from Blockbuster and pirate it. My PS2 is modded, and I used it for coding on before the PS2 linux kit and SPS2 came along (haven't used the mod-chip since), but I'm definitely the exception rather than the rule (well, if my circle of friends are anything to go by, anyway).
The flipside however is that it should be the act of piracy that is illegal, not the act of modifying your own (paid-for !) hardware. When a law is enacted, it should make provision for exceptions, and as far as I know the various copyright/IP/whatever laws don't do this for mod-chips. If the exceptions aren't there, it is percieved as a 'bad' law, and people are less likely to respect a 'bad' law...
As for the manufacturers staying ahead: whatever one man can do, another can undo. Until the entire console is a single chip, the traces to the storage devices are all encrypted, and the thing is hermetically sealed with cyanide gas within, people will find a way around the restrictions. The more the challenge, the more will try.
Simon
This is a great idea - a visualisation of the underlying data in a form far easier to recognise than the data itself. Humans tend to react better to visual stimuli (think a map vs a series of co-ordinates, and try to work out which location is farther away from you). Kudos to the authors for the inspiration.
This new idea tells us where we are in a better, easier-to-use way, and we like that. It can tell us where we can go/have been, and tracks the paths between these nodes on our cyberspatial plane [grin, sounds a bit OTT, but..]. Perhaps a cyberspatial compass combined with a cyberspatial GPS system. CPS perhaps
It's also interesting to see that the 'cool idea' is something to aid the browsing experience, not to replace it. It seems we're happy with the idea of 'click here, go there', but want more intuitive or rememberable (is that a word?) cues for the journey itself...
Simon
At least, I got a message from worldpay earlier this afternoon that their server were being affected, but I've not noticed anything myself. Most of the UK's internet traffic goes through LInX anyway, which is pretty damn secure, so I'd be surprised to see any real IP issues, even if BT are in a bit of a pickle ...
Simon
Given the crap nature of 99% of current music, either Aussies have *really* bad taste, or the quantity of crap being rained from above must have gone through the roof...
Simon
So that's ok then... Doesn't actually alter the criticism, though...
:-((
I was reading a BBC news page when writing the reply... Oh well, too much lager
Simon
The BBC is supposed to have a reputation for fair and even-handedness, they report the facts, not opinion; they draw conclusions based on fact, not supposition; reports are strongly topical. On this basis, and this alone, it is a worldwide-respected news source.
:-(
... Boole did not recognize the difference between the consequences of an equation and the solution of an equation. This mistake might seem like a technicality, but it mars a lot of Boole's thinking'. Idiot.
:-]
If you read the article, then right at the end, there's an underhand indictment of the Canadian PM due to a sponsorship slush fund. This has no place in an article on boolean algebra. It's also a bit loose about the definition of truth-tables. A simple dual-property table (colour/shape for example) could have illustrated the point far better.
It's depressing
And to bring this more on-topic... Why when someone does ground-breaking work in a new field, does some later plod (ie: someone who *didn't* do the ground-breaking work) say something like 'There are major flaws in Boole's work that have come to light over the years
[appropriate department for it to come from, though
Simon
Despite the warnings about only 2-body maths being used in the applet, it's too tempting not to run it forwards and backwards a bit just to see... It turns out the closest approach would have been roughly a week before it was noticed on Dec 8th 2003, at 0.0455 AU or ~6,807,000 km. A fair old distance :-)
:-)
I guess it's not too often you get your own asteroid orbiting, but this is still going to be a looong way away for a lot of the time. Maybe when it does get close though, we can send something up to it - beats the hell out of going out to the Oort cloud, even if you do find a few planets along the way
Simon
Strange, how it's far easier (at least for me) to see that the sketched black/white drawing is a fox than the coloured rendered version - I thought the coloured version was simply abstract until I saw the sketch :-)
:-)
Who needs computers - bring back sketchpads
Simon
There was a story on /. just recently where the USA was attempting to add DMCA-like clauses in order for a trade agreement to go ahead... Don't get me wrong here - there's nothing wrong with a country trying to get as much as it can from any international deal, it's just that I loath the DMCA and its kin...
Simon.
Apart from the wheely mouse (which I think HP invented), I can't think of *any* technologies that Microsoft got into early on. They missed TCP/IP, networking in general, the net (and the browser), etc.
Of their successes, with the honorable exception of their OS (copied from DR and then Apple) and their office suites (which they copied from, was it Lotus?), it's all been dubious business practices... Very successful company though they are, they are in no way innovative. Innovative isn't necessary for a monopolist position, and in fact is a bad business strategy - you might waste loads of cash, and you've got nothing to lose by preserving the status quo...
So it's just pure 100% Balmer, again...
Simon
Or, perhaps it's payback time. Novell were very supportive of IBM in the SCO debacle. Perhaps this is IBM saying thankyou. Wouldn't it be ironic if SCO's actions were what caused Linux to become an even stronger corporate presence
Simon
There are things that wireless is great for, but they basically come down to an "is it a pain or impossible to run wire here instead" decision. Mass broadcast is a possible other reason. Running a wire to most people's houses is pretty easy - you probably already have electricity, phone, gas, water, sewage, etc. etc. It's about time the internet connection was treated the same as any other utility.
The frequency spectrum is a finite resource (cf: Shannon), we ought to conserve it like you conserve water in a desert (unless you're in Vegas, of course...). Once you've used it, it's gone, and if we have to start using Terahertz waves because the rest is used up, well don't say I didn't warn you... (Terahertz waves penetrate the outer layer of clothing, allowing people to 'see through' clothes to the body beneath, all you'd need would be a portable screen/aerial and
Simon
Right. Of course they didn't know. They just set up shop in a different country and assumed that US law would prevail. What's wrong with that ? (Hint: lots!)
Another quote:
Well, no wonder they're going to appeal, that removes 90% of their business practice!
Simon.
If you look at the XDirectFB screenshots you can see what it looks like using the DirectFB X-server :-) The server has the ability to make windows transparent/opaque by degree as focus is lost/gained or hidden/shown. Very nice :-)
:-)
If this gets the go-ahead (and if it's open source), it'll be even nicer. The DirectFB X-server is still a standard 2-D environment, with all that entails. I can't see much use for attaching sticky notes to the "backs" of windows, but I'm sure someone will come up with one
Simon
Xilinx have silicon with embedded PowerPC processors, BlockRam (chunks of pre-generated SRAM) and huge swathes of FPGA cells and interconnect. The chips have other abilities too - built-in 18-bit multipliers and communications channges (10 Gbps/channel, 20 channels!). All very cool stuff. Very expensive too :-(
:-)
I'm sort of surprised there aren't more FPGA-hackers than there appears to be. It's not hard to learn verilog (very similar to C), and despite what most FPGA designers will tell you, as long as you keep your mind focused on 'everything happens in parallel', a decent programmer can produce good FPGA code too. The start kits (300,000 gates, about enough for a hardware JPEG core and maybe a network MAC) are cheap (100 or so), and designing a processor is a pretty simple operation, and immensely gratifying
Just my thoughts,
Simon
I predict a TOWERing failure if it's launched over here, after all, it'd be far too easy to confuse with the Royal Linea GE, and Queenie gets all upset when people start abusing the Royal name :-)
Simon
Want to really annoy your competition ? Do the same thing actually on a google search page - just make it "search" 1000 times for words that bring up your competitions 'adwords' box, then "click" the adwords link. Google then bills your competitor for the maximum (s)he specified per day/week/month and, bonus!, your competitor then drops down the rankings for which google Adword to display...
Random words mixed in with the key ones, random delays between searches, random User-Agent, etc., etc. Seems like it would be easy to do, and hard to track...
Simon.