The FBI should have at least released an outline of how the system works. In doing so they would have staved off this lawsuit, or at least the emergency hearing without giving away enough information to compromise their supposed need for secrecy. Yes, the content of e-mails caught do need to remain secret, and would not have fallen under the Freedom of Information Act. However, the basics of how the system work did not. The training manuals for stakeouts, search and seizure, arrests, due force, etc have been release under Freedom of Information requests. The outline of how the system worked, should have been. For that matter even releasing the source code should have been possible, but probably too much to ask of the Justice Department.
While there are a few violence undertones, it is entirely text based so not a potential problem like a 3D shooter. But for learning/working with C programming. MUDs - Multi-User domains. They are social, interactive text based games written in C. They provide a good way to demonstrate TCP connections and programming. They are games that can be played and enjoyed by the students. Changes to the code can be seen, and bugs tracked down.
The largest of the MUD "tree" of games is the Diku and derivatives. Diku is the acronym for the Computer Science department at a Danish University in Copenhagen. It was a programming project there. Until 1994 or so, MUDs were almost entirely on.edu domain sites.
They are basic, but a good place to learn. Programmers for many top companies have learned in MUDs and some continue to work on MUDs in their spare time.
.us top level domain. There are several reasons why the.us TLD never caught on. They boil down to basically complexity. In the us, you are supposed to use something more specific than.us, you are supposed to use your state.us so for example ca.us, and each state is supposed to administer their section of the TLD. If that weren't enough some states require you to use the county as well. In almost all cases you are supposed to include either the city, or some kind of identifier such as k12 for schools and school districts, cc for community colleges, and more. The only groups using.us domains tend to be government entities. Here are a few examples:
This is the link of the day today on userfriendly.org. I thought the write up was strange because last I heard iD was working on a Doom III as their next project.
Of course the rending jaws could do some "real" damage.
The only people who would fight an IP law are people who want to pirate things. Sorry, it's the truth.
Actually CSS does not prevent the disk from being copied, it only prevents it from being played on some computers, and in some regions of the world. This is a global economy.
If somebody did a tape that could only be played on sony cassette players, or cassette players being licensed by Sony, how would you feel? Especially if your tape player was an Emerson or other brand, that didn't pay the fee. Even more appro, what if your stereo system was a custom system designed to get the highest fidelity possible.
1. It is occuring relatively close to the heart of Silicon Valley. This will help send a message to the valley. Now, could we get one scheduled in Hollywood? Hopefully with a few actors/directors to join in. Where are the usual "champions" of freedom from Hollywood? Rob Reiner, Spike Lee, etc.
2. It is taking place on the Berkeley campus. Many of the people who are running things in Hollywood and Silicon Valley, have roots in or looked up to the protest movement in Berkeley.
3. I don't normally agree with Berserkly. A lot of their "issue" coverage is non-issues, or blown out of proportion.
Man, I can't believe I actually agree with something Berkeley is doing.
One of the the things I have noticed about watching Russia that last several years is there is tendency to take their new found freedoms to extremes. Kind of like a teenager driving.
The company suspected of doing the spying is a private broadcast company which produces "news" shows similiar to Hard Copy.
Their Mafia is more violent, there politicians more corrupt in general, their journalists more invasive, or are they.
I did notice that the commentary tends to indicate that the calls they cite as being tapped are long distance calls. My understanding of Russia's infrastructure is that a lot of their long distance calls still go out over microwave transmission. Microwave transmissions are notoriously easy to snoop. It has long been rumored that the NSA satellites regular snooped on microwave transmissions. Curious enough, is they used to "calibrate" their equipment over friendly countries.
Xfree86 4.0 has several redesigns of the architecture of X because it is aimed at taking the desktop market.
Yes, should maybe be called something else, and use a 1.0 number because it is very different in a lot of respects.
The Direct Rendering for hardware 3D accelerators is NEEDED if we are going to take the desktop market for Linux. Without being able to play the latest Quake mod at 120 fps, or the latest Sports game the same way, we won't get the pimple faced mainstream suburban teenager to want to go to Linux.
Since this is hardware located on the motherboard, don't look for it in the desktop too soon, unless Rambus licensing fees drive it.
Since it is on the motherboard it would probably require support at the bios level. Also because it has its own caching system, it may only work with certain CPU chips, maybe, maybe not.
The key to its adoption is if IBM prices low enough it could take the wind out of RAMBUS's sails.
The speed could be slower than current ram, but if the compression chip is fastest enough, because the data is being read and wrote into the chip compressed it could effectively double ram transfer rates. The bottleneck would be the compression chip.
My point was the fact that you don't have to physically sign, therefore is a implied license like many software licenses. Those licenses are the ones that are part of the concern of privacy groups. Like the little caveat in the Windows license that allows them to modify the software at any time, modify the terms of the license, and absolves them of any harm caused by their software.
However if one license is struck down the rights are returned to the original owner. For example if a contract between a record label and an artist is struck down for being too restrictive, illegal, etc. The copyright for the work returns to the artist. Similiar with the GPL and the programmer.
If the GPL is struck down, the rights return to the original writer. That would mean that EVERY coder who worked on the project would own their individual snippets.
Also if the GPL is struck down it could present a precedent for striking down the restrictions of the gated communities that take the copyright from the presenter. It could also have ramifications for corporate programmers on payroll.
A simple revision that would address these concerns is having the license include the provision that rights to all code issued under the GPL are assigned to the FSF.
The article states that the name is not named so that they can still try to work out a resolution. If you name names before you file your run a chance of being sued for libel or defamation if you don't file. If they name names they would have to file ASAP. That could prevent them being able to settle before it goes to court.
The article also explains that the inserting of code into a closed source project could be a simple mistake. Anything under the GPL is public information. A coder may see a snippet in a newsgroup or a web page that is covered under the GPL, and not remember seeing it six months down the road and use a very simliar, derivative solution in a closed source project WITHOUT remembering that he had seen it in GPL source.
My understanding is the BSD allows derivative works to be copyrighted and distributed as closed source in binary only.
While the GPL requires it to remain open and be provided with source. You can charge to distribute it on physical media(CD, DVD, floppy, etc), but it must be available for download.
As broadband becomes more prevalent the requirement that it be available for download could be the most constraining to most companies. Most people still get their "free" OS via physical media such as a CD. That preserves a revenue stream for those companies. However if you can download and make your own cd in less than an hour, why drive to the store to buy it?
The GPL is a good thing, but whether or not it stands up to court is entirely another. The GPL is a license that you don't have to physically sign. If it loses on that basis, online privacy may still win in the long run, at the expense of "free" software.
I use "free" in brackets to represent free as in freedom
if you caught it far enough away from Lunar orbit, a few tenths of a degree would do the job easily. Even inside Lunar orbit, a matter of a degree or two could get it to 'skip' off the atmosphere.
1st it would be very difficult to accurately predict an asteroid outside of Earth's orbit.
2nd it would have to be a very large missile to reach said rock
3rd it would take a lot of fuel to move said rock even the 1/10th of a degree you are talking about
We are talking about a asteroid that is HUGE by most of our terrestrial references. We are talking the size of a good size building. It takes a lot of energy to overcome its momentum. Imaging trying to deflect a 6 story office building dropping on you, even if by a tenth of a degree or so.
With the uncertainities in the universe we would have to be VERY careful. Even assuming you have the fuel and means to push it, how would you be certain you deflected it the right direction?
I was just reading the press release on QWest and they have hit up to 160 Giga Bps!! Using something they called Dense-Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM).
Of course that just sounds like some kind of compression system.
True. There a lot of items with similiar profit margins.
Nike Shoes, for example.
Some other people have pointed out the licensing fees are around $.01-02 per meg or so. Given the way the price is that can mean about $.25/meg for the licensing by the time it gets to retail.
Of course when considering the price vs. cost. You have to consider the cost at manufacturer or the cost to the retailer? The cost to make it is very low. However intermediate distributers = higher cost. Most companies selling direct don't drop the prices because they sell a very small percentage direct and don't want to upset their channel partners.
Costs that get factored into the chip price are R&D for the next replacement, transportation (mostly via ship in special sealed containers from Taiwan), packaging which can range from an anti-static bag to complex, middleman costs, and retail markup.
Don't get me wrong, I would love to have RAM at $.25/meg. I would love to, my system would have 512 MB just because I could.
On the subject of middleman, what do you get when you take the middleman and marketing execs out of Windows? Linux.
I can remember when a friend of mine purchased 1 meg of ram for $150 dollars. This was in 1991.
I can remember when it broke the $100/meg barrier.
I can remember when it broke the $50.meg barrier. I bought four megs of RAM.
Now that it is in the $1/meg range, I bought 128 megs
Thing about what it costs now, and will cost if Rambus succeeds. They will have their day in the spotlight, and then they will be replaced with the next technology.
If they succeed I see DDR staying in th $3-5/meg range for a while, but eventually it will have to come down to compete.
Doubleclick can be quite insidious in how they collect information. However, if they are not sharing that information with the government, it may not technically violate federal law.
The information may not ever actually exist on Federal Servers.
Of course I don't like anybody, government, organization, or indivuals collecting the info either.
Of course I am well aware that the information is out there already, that doesn't make it right.
On the California State Income Tax return there is a section for you to pay tax on all mail order purchases. This includes mail order purchases by internet, phone, or mailing in an order form.
The Federal Laws seem to be designed to prevent the e-commerce sites extra paper work. However, audits like this tend to make it seem like that with a little work the e-commerce sites could collect the relevant sales tax and save an audit headache.
We don't need another stinking programing language, but another solid language would be good.
There is always room for diversity in computers. Opensource is built on diversity. However, I don't Microsoft can pull off a decent programming language.
This could be another tactic. If they "open" up this new language, they may use it as a poster child to say we can play nice. Look at c#...
Summary, I will never trust Microsoft
If you do a little homework you will find that the codemorphing makes it x86 processor compatible to make it compatible with Linux, Windows, Be, BSD, etc. However, the chip is actually a CISC processor. It would be possible to do a modified kernel that works directly. Maybe that is part of the mobile Linux that Linus is working on....
x86 compatibility just means it will run the same code as 486, Pentium's etc. The press releases say that it also has MMX support.
Slashdot Mirror
The FBI should have at least released an outline of how the system works. In doing so they would have staved off this lawsuit, or at least the emergency hearing without giving away enough information to compromise their supposed need for secrecy.
Yes, the content of e-mails caught do need to remain secret, and would not have fallen under the Freedom of Information Act.
However, the basics of how the system work did not. The training manuals for stakeouts, search and seizure, arrests, due force, etc have been release under Freedom of Information requests. The outline of how the system worked, should have been. For that matter even releasing the source code should have been possible, but probably too much to ask of the Justice Department.
While there are a few violence undertones, it is entirely text based so not a potential problem like a 3D shooter. But for learning/working with C programming. MUDs - Multi-User domains. They are social, interactive text based games written in C. They provide a good way to demonstrate TCP connections and programming. They are games that can be played and enjoyed by the students. Changes to the code can be seen, and bugs tracked down.
.edu domain sites.
The largest of the MUD "tree" of games is the Diku and derivatives. Diku is the acronym for the Computer Science department at a Danish University in Copenhagen. It was a programming project there. Until 1994 or so, MUDs were almost entirely on
They are basic, but a good place to learn. Programmers for many top companies have learned in MUDs and some continue to work on MUDs in their spare time.
Of course, this will probably be used more by the amateur spy/peep show crowd, than anything truly useful.
I can just see it, dear where's the camera? It was just here, before I gave that nice kid a stick of gum.
Pluto is Roman name for Hades, the god of the Underworld.
www.davis.k12.ut.us A School District in Utah
www.dcn.davis.ca.us A small non-profit ISP that includes the city in their domain name. In Davis, CA
www.city.davis.ca.us The City of Davis, CA
www.washtenaw.cc.mi.us A Community college in Michigan.
Having had an e-mail address at a similiar domain as above a lot of people get confused on it, and it can be a mess.
Only until somebody trademarks example.[net|com|org] and sues under the DMCA to get those names.
Of course the rending jaws could do some "real" damage.
Actually CSS does not prevent the disk from being copied, it only prevents it from being played on some computers, and in some regions of the world. This is a global economy.
If somebody did a tape that could only be played on sony cassette players, or cassette players being licensed by Sony, how would you feel? Especially if your tape player was an Emerson or other brand, that didn't pay the fee. Even more appro, what if your stereo system was a custom system designed to get the highest fidelity possible.
1. It is occuring relatively close to the heart of Silicon Valley. This will help send a message to the valley. Now, could we get one scheduled in Hollywood? Hopefully with a few actors/directors to join in. Where are the usual "champions" of freedom from Hollywood? Rob Reiner, Spike Lee, etc.
2. It is taking place on the Berkeley campus. Many of the people who are running things in Hollywood and Silicon Valley, have roots in or looked up to the protest movement in Berkeley.
3. I don't normally agree with Berserkly. A lot of their "issue" coverage is non-issues, or blown out of proportion.
Man, I can't believe I actually agree with something Berkeley is doing.
One of the the things I have noticed about watching Russia that last several years is there is tendency to take their new found freedoms to extremes. Kind of like a teenager driving.
The company suspected of doing the spying is a private broadcast company which produces "news" shows similiar to Hard Copy.
Their Mafia is more violent, there politicians more corrupt in general, their journalists more invasive, or are they.
I did notice that the commentary tends to indicate that the calls they cite as being tapped are long distance calls. My understanding of Russia's infrastructure is that a lot of their long distance calls still go out over microwave transmission. Microwave transmissions are notoriously easy to snoop. It has long been rumored that the NSA satellites regular snooped on microwave transmissions. Curious enough, is they used to "calibrate" their equipment over friendly countries.
Mind if I calibrate this bug in your office?
Yes, should maybe be called something else, and use a 1.0 number because it is very different in a lot of respects.
The Direct Rendering for hardware 3D accelerators is NEEDED if we are going to take the desktop market for Linux. Without being able to play the latest Quake mod at 120 fps, or the latest Sports game the same way, we won't get the pimple faced mainstream suburban teenager to want to go to Linux.
Since it is on the motherboard it would probably require support at the bios level. Also because it has its own caching system, it may only work with certain CPU chips, maybe, maybe not.
The key to its adoption is if IBM prices low enough it could take the wind out of RAMBUS's sails.
The speed could be slower than current ram, but if the compression chip is fastest enough, because the data is being read and wrote into the chip compressed it could effectively double ram transfer rates. The bottleneck would be the compression chip.
My point was the fact that you don't have to physically sign, therefore is a implied license like many software licenses. Those licenses are the ones that are part of the concern of privacy groups. Like the little caveat in the Windows license that allows them to modify the software at any time, modify the terms of the license, and absolves them of any harm caused by their software.
However if one license is struck down the rights are returned to the original owner. For example if a contract between a record label and an artist is struck down for being too restrictive, illegal, etc. The copyright for the work returns to the artist. Similiar with the GPL and the programmer.
If the GPL is struck down, the rights return to the original writer. That would mean that EVERY coder who worked on the project would own their individual snippets.
Also if the GPL is struck down it could present a precedent for striking down the restrictions of the gated communities that take the copyright from the presenter. It could also have ramifications for corporate programmers on payroll.
A simple revision that would address these concerns is having the license include the provision that rights to all code issued under the GPL are assigned to the FSF.
The article also explains that the inserting of code into a closed source project could be a simple mistake. Anything under the GPL is public information. A coder may see a snippet in a newsgroup or a web page that is covered under the GPL, and not remember seeing it six months down the road and use a very simliar, derivative solution in a closed source project WITHOUT remembering that he had seen it in GPL source.
While the GPL requires it to remain open and be provided with source. You can charge to distribute it on physical media(CD, DVD, floppy, etc), but it must be available for download.
As broadband becomes more prevalent the requirement that it be available for download could be the most constraining to most companies. Most people still get their "free" OS via physical media such as a CD. That preserves a revenue stream for those companies. However if you can download and make your own cd in less than an hour, why drive to the store to buy it?
The GPL is a good thing, but whether or not it stands up to court is entirely another. The GPL is a license that you don't have to physically sign. If it loses on that basis, online privacy may still win in the long run, at the expense of "free" software.
I use "free" in brackets to represent free as in freedom
1st it would be very difficult to accurately predict an asteroid outside of Earth's orbit.
2nd it would have to be a very large missile to reach said rock
3rd it would take a lot of fuel to move said rock even the 1/10th of a degree you are talking about
We are talking about a asteroid that is HUGE by most of our terrestrial references. We are talking the size of a good size building. It takes a lot of energy to overcome its momentum. Imaging trying to deflect a 6 story office building dropping on you, even if by a tenth of a degree or so.
With the uncertainities in the universe we would have to be VERY careful. Even assuming you have the fuel and means to push it, how would you be certain you deflected it the right direction?
Of course that just sounds like some kind of compression system.
Nike Shoes, for example.
Some other people have pointed out the licensing fees are around $.01-02 per meg or so. Given the way the price is that can mean about $.25/meg for the licensing by the time it gets to retail.
Of course when considering the price vs. cost. You have to consider the cost at manufacturer or the cost to the retailer? The cost to make it is very low. However intermediate distributers = higher cost. Most companies selling direct don't drop the prices because they sell a very small percentage direct and don't want to upset their channel partners.
Costs that get factored into the chip price are R&D for the next replacement, transportation (mostly via ship in special sealed containers from Taiwan), packaging which can range from an anti-static bag to complex, middleman costs, and retail markup.
Don't get me wrong, I would love to have RAM at $.25/meg. I would love to, my system would have 512 MB just because I could.
On the subject of middleman, what do you get when you take the middleman and marketing execs out of Windows? Linux.
I can remember when it broke the $100/meg barrier.
I can remember when it broke the $50.meg barrier. I bought four megs of RAM.
Now that it is in the $1/meg range, I bought 128 megs
Thing about what it costs now, and will cost if Rambus succeeds. They will have their day in the spotlight, and then they will be replaced with the next technology.
If they succeed I see DDR staying in th $3-5/meg range for a while, but eventually it will have to come down to compete.
The information may not ever actually exist on Federal Servers.
Of course I don't like anybody, government, organization, or indivuals collecting the info either.
Of course I am well aware that the information is out there already, that doesn't make it right.
The Federal Laws seem to be designed to prevent the e-commerce sites extra paper work. However, audits like this tend to make it seem like that with a little work the e-commerce sites could collect the relevant sales tax and save an audit headache.
We don't need another stinking programing language, but another solid language would be good. There is always room for diversity in computers. Opensource is built on diversity. However, I don't Microsoft can pull off a decent programming language. This could be another tactic. If they "open" up this new language, they may use it as a poster child to say we can play nice. Look at c#... Summary, I will never trust Microsoft
If you do a little homework you will find that the codemorphing makes it x86 processor compatible to make it compatible with Linux, Windows, Be, BSD, etc. However, the chip is actually a CISC processor. It would be possible to do a modified kernel that works directly. Maybe that is part of the mobile Linux that Linus is working on.... x86 compatibility just means it will run the same code as 486, Pentium's etc. The press releases say that it also has MMX support.