... protect you from the hackers, err sorry crackers, er wackers, black hat, grey hat, white hat, red hat, tinky winky hat...
I have to correct you here. As anyone with a 2 year old and a video machine would know, Tinky Winky has a bag, not a hat. Dipsy is the one with the hat.
A far more accurate term, with only minimal political baggage, is "Open Source"
While the term "Open Source" is precise,
it has no meaning to the average (i.e. non-IT) person. On the other hand, "libre" conveys the
intended sense of the word "free" to the larger
subset of native English speakers who learnt a
bit of French at high school.
... is that there will always be top end compution engines that you cannot afford to buy... even if you saved all of that money by using a 56k modem instead of Internet 2. And there will alway be researchers who need orders of magnitude more compute cycles than they can afford to buy out-right.
Hmm. If it's a mere order of magnitude, why
can't the actual real internet scale up?
The current internet can't simply scale up by an
order of magnitude (or two) because communications
technology does not work like that. You simply
can't make a network switch run 10 times faster
by winding up the clock rate. Same for network
protocols.
Think of Internet 2 is a vehicle for doing
research into networks, protocols and the next
generation of communication intensive
applications. Things that are the forerunners
of the technology that will be used in 3 to
5 years time.
If compute power gets cheaper faster than
bandwidth, and since computers are pretty much
indifferent to where they are located, I can't
see how to formulate a sensible argument in that
vein.
Your premise is unrealistic, IMO.
Top end compute engines will always be vastly
more expensive than your average university
research group can afford to buy out-right.
There are many, R e.g. movies on demand,
net videophones, VR, simulations, etc.
Oh come on! The internet never has been the best way to send unimaginably large amounts information. It is about sending
sensible amounts information fast. Internet 2 just increases the value of "sensible" by an order of magnitude.
While we love to bash the telco's in Australia, you have to admit that they cannot afford to be too generous.
A large percentage of Australian network traffic is to or from an overseas site, typically the US. That traffic goes over new international cables, which (IIRC) cost in the order of a Billion
dollars or so to set up. Naturally the cable operators / investors
want to recoup their investment. Similarly, the telcos have invested
a packet in broadband infrastructure (including your cable modem), and they also need to pay dividends to their share holders.
The thing that hurts domestic broadband users is that the telcos
are currently trying to recoup investments from a relatively small
customer base. Hence $A59 for 3GB per month. IMO, this is
very short-sighted. Most potential customers will not bite at this
price, so with fewer customers (suckers) the investment doesn't
get paid off anyway.
Interestingly, high bandwidth internet users in Australia who
connect "directly" into a backbone have been slugged with
high usage charges for years. Local traffic (within a capital
city) is typically free, interstate traffic is at a low tariff, and
overseas traffic is at a much higher tariff. The bill for DSTC
(where I work) comes to hundreds of thousands of dollars
per year.
The fundamental problem is geography. It is a long way across
the bottom of Pacific, and there are not enough people in Australia
to spread the cost. Telecoms are always going to be relatively more
expensive in Australia.
You do realize, of course, that passwords are not the weakest link in computer security?
Users are
This is true, but not helpful. We can't get rid of users,
or "fix" them to make them work probably. Human nature
(laziness, carelessness, forgetfulness) is hard-wired.
What we can do is design our security systems so that they work
well (enough) in spite of the human nature. This means NOT using passwords as the sole means of user authentication. Authentication
measures based on biometrics (e.g. finger-prints, retina scans, etc)
or some physical token (e.g. a smart-card or a chip implanted in
your forehead:-)) are invulnerable to shoulder surfing and dumb
passwords. While they have vulnerabilities, they are significantly
less than those of passwords, especially when the measures
are used in combination.
Of course, if someone is holding a gun to the head of the user's
children, authentication is moot. Everything is relative... in both
senses:-)
Sometimes there's a certain... feeling... that you want to convey to the reader,
I get a a feeling of nervousness when I see overly "artistic" comments. Especially when I'm trying to maintain it. "What mind altering substance was he one when he wrote this???".
Is that the kind of feeling you are trying to convey?
In Go the rules say the game is over if both
players pass for 3 consecutive turns.
Nit pick: IIRC, the rule is 3 consecutive
passes...
The great difficulty in programming a computer
to play Go arises from the combinatorial
complexity of the game. (There are 19x19 points
on the board, each of which can be either empty
or contain a black or white stone with
relatively few invalid positions.)
Add to that it is difficult to estimate the
score, and hence difficult for a computer to
prune the game tree. Hence a brute-force
approach (as used by Chess programs) would
have to search a much deeper as well as
much wider tree of possibilities.
Both games have a strange aspect which
westerners and programmers find tricky to handle:
there are times when a game is over which the
rules do not define but leave up to the players
to agree.
I presume you refer to resigning and agreeing
to a draw? Go and Shogi are the same as Chess
in this respect. In all three, one player may
resign when he thinks he has lost. In Chess and
Shogi, the players can agree that the game is
drawn. (A draw is not normally possible in
competition Go because they normally use
fractional komi.)
Note: the rules for Go say that unless one
player resigns, both players have to agree
that the game is over. If one player thinks
game is not over, he/she continues making
moves... which the other player may ignore.
In Japanese rules, you lose points by making
moves that your opponent ignores. In Chinese
rules it make no difference.
The difficulty is not for westerners per se. It
is more a problem for novices who don't know how
to judge that a position is lost. This
applies equally to Go, Shogi, Chess and many other
complex games with a binary outcome.
I agree that it is difficult for a game playing
program to know when to resign or offer a draw.
But it usually doesn't matter. Who cares if the
computer is "impolite" for not resigning?:-)
I'm strongly tempted to mail copies of these patents to my congressman with a letter saying, simply, "The patent office is broken. Fix it."
If you really want to get your congressman's attention, patent "Method to increase votes by distribution of porcine products", then email him that!:-)
What does this have to do with Afghanistan??
on
Lunar Power
·
· Score: 1
Look at the picture caption. It reads:
A U.S. soldier scans the horizon as the moon rises behind him in Kandahar, Afghanistan. A physicist claims solar energy reflected from the moon could provide endless clean energy for Earth. (John Moore/AP Photo)
Sheesh, where do they find these idiot journalists / editors?
... or are they likely to be stricken out as "hearsay" because they do not very strictly address what the court wants to hear?
IANAL, but "hearsay" evidence is when a witness reports evidence that is second hand (or more). For example, when if a witness says that someone told him that "such and such" happened, that is hearsay.
This evidence may ultimately be ruled by the Judge to be irrelevant, but it is unlikely to be hearsay evidence, given Tieman's position.
This could be instrumental in clearing up some of the rampant wireless network security problems that have hit the net lately. Build
the exterior of the building out of this stuff, and conventional materials inside. No more drive-bys.
I think you'd need to do more than just use conductive concrete. Wouldn't you also need to put RF screens on all external windows and doors? What about the roof / roof cavity?
I worked in a screened building once, and I remember it had windows you couldn't open and ugly mesh screens on all of them.
The later SKIM work at Cambridge University Computer Lab was done by William Stoye and supervised by Arthur Norman. Some technical reports are apparently still available from the Laboratory. Look for reports written by W. Stoye.
Bill\'s PhD was on an operating system for the SKIM-2 (I think) machine. IIRC, he even ported his clone of WordStar to SKIM. The port was called FrogStar because it was reputed to be the most totally evil editor in the entire universe:-).
From the IBM article, it appears that the Linux scheduler must calculate a goodness number for each thread, and find the "most good" thread. This is clearly O(n) where n is the nos of threads. The IRIX approach is one way to make this faster, but its not clear how well it would work when there are lots of threads that have roughly equal goodness when they are runnable... as would happen with the benchmark in question. I expect that IRIX would need to run the lower level scheduler a lot more often than in a "typical" mix of threads/processes.
Slashdot Mirror
And a term that has roughly the right meaning (like "libre") is better than either.
I rest my case. (My arm hurts
I have to correct you here. As anyone with a 2 year old and a video machine would know, Tinky Winky has a bag, not a hat. Dipsy is the one with the hat.
While the term "Open Source" is precise, it has no meaning to the average (i.e. non-IT) person. On the other hand, "libre" conveys the intended sense of the word "free" to the larger subset of native English speakers who learnt a bit of French at high school.
What I was trying to say ...
... even if you saved all of that money
... is that there will always be top end
compution engines that you cannot afford to
buy
by using a 56k modem instead of Internet 2.
And there will alway be researchers who need
orders of magnitude more compute cycles than
they can afford to buy out-right.
The current internet can't simply scale up by an order of magnitude (or two) because communications technology does not work like that. You simply can't make a network switch run 10 times faster by winding up the clock rate. Same for network protocols.
Think of Internet 2 is a vehicle for doing research into networks, protocols and the next generation of communication intensive applications. Things that are the forerunners of the technology that will be used in 3 to 5 years time.
Your premise is unrealistic, IMO.
Top end compute engines will always be vastly more expensive than your average university research group can afford to buy out-right. There are many, R e.g. movies on demand, net videophones, VR, simulations, etc.
Oh come on! The internet never has been the best way to send unimaginably large amounts information. It is about sending sensible amounts information fast. Internet 2 just increases the value of "sensible" by an order of magnitude.
Internet 2 beats FedEx in latency hands down!
A large percentage of Australian network traffic is to or from an overseas site, typically the US. That traffic goes over new international cables, which (IIRC) cost in the order of a Billion dollars or so to set up. Naturally the cable operators / investors want to recoup their investment. Similarly, the telcos have invested a packet in broadband infrastructure (including your cable modem), and they also need to pay dividends to their share holders.
The thing that hurts domestic broadband users is that the telcos are currently trying to recoup investments from a relatively small customer base. Hence $A59 for 3GB per month. IMO, this is very short-sighted. Most potential customers will not bite at this price, so with fewer customers (suckers) the investment doesn't get paid off anyway.
Interestingly, high bandwidth internet users in Australia who connect "directly" into a backbone have been slugged with high usage charges for years. Local traffic (within a capital city) is typically free, interstate traffic is at a low tariff, and overseas traffic is at a much higher tariff. The bill for DSTC (where I work) comes to hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
The fundamental problem is geography. It is a long way across the bottom of Pacific, and there are not enough people in Australia to spread the cost. Telecoms are always going to be relatively more expensive in Australia.
This is true, but not helpful. We can't get rid of users, or "fix" them to make them work probably. Human nature (laziness, carelessness, forgetfulness) is hard-wired.
What we can do is design our security systems so that they work well (enough) in spite of the human nature. This means NOT using passwords as the sole means of user authentication. Authentication measures based on biometrics (e.g. finger-prints, retina scans, etc) or some physical token (e.g. a smart-card or a chip implanted in your forehead :-)) are invulnerable to shoulder surfing and dumb
passwords. While they have vulnerabilities, they are significantly
less than those of passwords, especially when the measures
are used in combination.
Of course, if someone is holding a gun to the head of the user's children, authentication is moot. Everything is relative ... in both
senses :-)
you want to convey to the reader,
I get a a feeling of nervousness when I see overly
"artistic" comments. Especially when I'm trying
to maintain it. "What mind altering substance
was he one when he wrote this???".
Is that the kind of feeling you are trying to
convey?
CDC 6000 assembler program whose only comment read:
Nit pick: IIRC, the rule is 3 consecutive passes ...
The great difficulty in programming a computer to play Go arises from the combinatorial complexity of the game. (There are 19x19 points on the board, each of which can be either empty or contain a black or white stone with relatively few invalid positions.)
Add to that it is difficult to estimate the score, and hence difficult for a computer to prune the game tree. Hence a brute-force approach (as used by Chess programs) would have to search a much deeper as well as much wider tree of possibilities.
I presume you refer to resigning and agreeing to a draw? Go and Shogi are the same as Chess in this respect. In all three, one player may resign when he thinks he has lost. In Chess and Shogi, the players can agree that the game is drawn. (A draw is not normally possible in competition Go because they normally use fractional komi.)
Note: the rules for Go say that unless one player resigns, both players have to agree that the game is over. If one player thinks game is not over, he/she continues making moves ... which the other player may ignore.
In Japanese rules, you lose points by making
moves that your opponent ignores. In Chinese
rules it make no difference.
The difficulty is not for westerners per se. It is more a problem for novices who don't know how to judge that a position is lost. This applies equally to Go, Shogi, Chess and many other complex games with a binary outcome.
I agree that it is difficult for a game playing program to know when to resign or offer a draw. But it usually doesn't matter. Who cares if the computer is "impolite" for not resigning? :-)
If you really want to get your congressman's attention, patent "Method to increase votes by distribution of porcine products", then email him that! :-)
Look at the picture caption. It reads:
A U.S. soldier scans the horizon as the moon rises behind
him in Kandahar, Afghanistan. A physicist claims solar
energy reflected from the moon could provide endless
clean energy for Earth. (John Moore/AP Photo)
Sheesh, where do they find these idiot journalists / editors?
... before global warming melts all of the ice.
Just think, they could set a world record for driving from New York to Paris that would last
for a thousand years or so.
IANAL, but "hearsay" evidence is when a witness reports evidence that is second hand (or more). For example, when if a witness says that someone told him that "such and such" happened, that is hearsay.
This evidence may ultimately be ruled by the Judge to be irrelevant, but it is unlikely to be hearsay evidence, given Tieman's position.
This could be instrumental in clearing up some of the rampant wireless network security problems that have hit the net lately. Build
the exterior of the building out of this stuff, and conventional materials inside. No more drive-bys.
I think you'd need to do more than just use conductive concrete. Wouldn't you also need to put RF screens on all external windows and doors? What about the roof / roof cavity?
I worked in a screened building once, and I remember it had windows you couldn't open and ugly mesh screens on all of them.
I'm not saying that you should always do this, but in many cases the long term outcome is much better if you can get rid of the crap.
The later SKIM work at Cambridge University Computer Lab was done by William Stoye and supervised by Arthur Norman. Some technical reports are apparently still available from the Laboratory. Look for reports written by W. Stoye.
:-).
Bill\'s PhD was on an operating system for the SKIM-2 (I think) machine. IIRC, he even ported his clone of WordStar to SKIM. The port was called FrogStar because it was reputed to be the most totally evil editor in the entire universe
-- Steve
I think I guana throw up. :-)
I'm not an OS kernel expert ... but ...
... as would happen with the benchmark in question. I expect that IRIX would need to run the lower level scheduler a lot more often than in a "typical" mix of threads/processes.
From the IBM article, it appears that the Linux scheduler must calculate a goodness number for each thread, and find the "most good" thread. This is clearly O(n) where n is the nos of threads. The IRIX approach is one way to make this faster, but its not clear how well it would work when there are lots of threads that have roughly equal goodness when they are runnable