Come on, almost any industrialised nation, including many if not all countries in the EU, Japan, and others, could shoot the GPS system out of the sky within the first few hours of any war. These navigation systems only ever exist with the consent of other powerful nations.
Well, you have two options, one of which is intended to look similar to SQL, the other is closer to the existing C# syntax, either way - I think the syntax is fine, its subjective.
and at some level would it be neater to merely have a neat data access abstraction system than to alter the language?
I really don't think you can do the type inference that LINQ does without explicit support.
C# is strongly typed, Ruby and Python (not sure about Delphi) are dynamically typed. The difference is that with C# (and Java), the compiler can prevent all sorts of bugs that in Ruby and Python you will only encounter at run time.
You might think C# is moving away from being strongly typed with the new "var" construct, but you would be wrong. All types are still inferred and verified by the compiler.
As IDEs and compilers grow more powerful, I think people will start to realise that strongly typed languages can be just as easy to program in as dynamically typed, and you get the added benefit of more help from the compiler at spotting bugs.
It is exciting to see developments like this in C#, particularly stuff like LINQ (the inelegance of using SQL from within other languages has bugged me for quite some time).
Java's language features, by comparison to C#, seems to be moving along at a glacial pace, only recently getting features like foreach loops, and generics.
I personally prefer Java because of Eclipse, but Sun are really going to have to get a move on if Java is to remain competitive with C#.
One point of it is to allow you to use anonymous classes without having to declare them. Lets say you use LINQ to do a join between two tables - you can assign the result of the join to an implicitly typed variable and reference the fields, without having to give this new object type an actual name.
So (forgive screwy SQL-like syntax):
var result = select a.name as name, b.age as age from...; log("username is "+result.name+" of age "+result.age);
The variable result is a class which has fields "name" and "age", and we can refer to it without ever having to give this class an actual name. Now bear in mind that all of this is strongly typed and can be verified by the compiler.
As a Java programmer, it is exciting to see these developments in C#, it makes me wonder whether Java is destined to fall behind C# - it sure looks like that is happening....
You probably want to read the first three chapters, then, which cover standardizing your formats and naming conventions, so that things are easier to follow.
Indeed, the language positively encourages unreadability, but if you are stubbornly determined to write readable Perl, it is possible.
And it's possible to obfuscate crap in any language
Yeah, but at least some languages try to encourage readability, Perl is obfuscated by default.
Skype was soaring to popularity long before they introduced their "SkypeOut" functionality. Skype's real innovation was their NAT hole punching which meant that you didn't have to worry about fiddling with your firewall to get it to work, a major shortcoming of other VOIP apps.
That's obviously wrong because the Donkey network has a larger userbase than Kazaa.
As did BitTorrent for a while before they started to sue BitTorrent users - it takes time for them to shift their focus, but they will. If this isn't the explanation, then what is? Are you claiming that emule is somehow different to Kazaa in the ease with which users can be monitored by the RIAA? If so, please provide some evidence for this.
The inherent reason that anonymous P2P must be slow is because to make it anonymous there's heavy use of proxying, and because of this you are not only downloading the stuff you want, but also relaying unrelated data to other people.
Neither of those things necessarily mean that anonymous P2P must be slow, provided that the P2P network is designed properly. Even early versions of Freenet could support download speeds of over 90kbytes/sec, which is comparable to what can be achieved with modern non-anonymous P2P networks today.
The only reason the RIAA hasn't been suing emule users is that emule hasn't yet had a large enough userbase. Expect that to change very soon indeed.
Freenet is currently quite slow, but these problems should be rectified in the next version. There is no inherent reason that an anonymous P2P system must be slow.
Of course, you are correct that Freenet isn't about "file sharing", its about the free exchange of knowledge and information. If all you care about is getting free music, Freenet probably won't be well suited to your needs.
My (non-lawyer) understanding is that under current US case law, embedding someone else's content in your web page, even if it remains on their server, is considered a "performance" of their copyrighted work, which is indeed a violation of their copyright if you do it without their permission, as a copyright holder does have the right to limit where and how their work is performed.
You may have found something in 5 seconds, my point is that typically it takes longer, and even 5 seconds is ridiculous. If Google can search the entire internet in a few milliseconds, then why can't Spotlight search one hard disk in less than 5 seconds? I suspect you will find that the ratio of Google's processing power relative to the amount of stuff they index is much more of a challenge than that posed by a single modern computer searching a single modern hard disk.
The software you get with a Mac Mini is worth the price alone - I love that everything works together so nicely. As a desktop environment it's much nicer that Windows XP.
I wasn't criticising OSX overall, I was more questioning the value of Tiger relative to Panther, the previous iteration of OSX. IMHO most of the new features either aren't very useful, or don't work very well.
I have been running Tiger since the day it came out, and I must say that I am not all that impressed by it.
Spotlight is really slow on my G4 Powerbook (1GB RAM), it can take 8 seconds to find what I am looking for. I don't see why it should take so long if everything is pre-indexed.
Dashboard isn't terribly useful either, its a nice gimmick, but I find myself using it very infrequently. The selection of Widgets is symptomatic of this, I mean, who really needs a countdown timer to the next episode of Battlestar Galactica just one keypress away at any moment?
Both Spotlight and Dashboard have gained reputations for slowing overall machine performance too.
I have yet to find a use for Automator, and from what I can see from the rather uninspiring selection of Automator Actions people have created, neither has anyone else. Its a nice idea, but in practice not a very useful one.
You can't really make any money in a decentralized system, which proves Google is still looking to captivate us because they have always been quite central.
All he is suggesting is that they implement the same openness for IM that Google did for webmail. Right now, Google Talk is analogous to a version of GMail that only allowed users to send email to other GMail users. He is not asking Google to be any less centralised with Google Talk than they already are with GMail.
Until I RTFA I didn't realise that inter-server communication was the really useful thing about Jabber. It looks like Google didn't either.
One reason Skype has been such a success is that they didn't try to use SIP, which while an open standard, is poorly equipped to deal with NATs and firewalls. There is no point in using an open protocol if it isn't well suited to the job, and from what I have seen, SIP isn't. To date, Skype is the only VOIP app that I have found to handle NATs and firewalls reliably.
It shouldn't be hard for someone to combine an open source voice codec like Speex with UDP NAT circumvention (which isn't hard to implement), and come up with an open source alternative to Skype. I am actually amazed that nobody has done this yet.
Information that "doesn't want to be free" is the kind that doesn't give anything meaningful to humanity at large or the kind that bring me to some harm if released.
What if it gives something meaningful to humanity, but it will also bring someone to some harm if released - the Windows source code, for example, or even Diebold's source code and internal emails?
I think you are oversimplifying. Tools which help to share information do not distinguish between "good" and "bad" information, they either share information freely, or they don't.
David Brin's Transparent Society, where everyone, including our government, is under equal scrutiny, is probably the only way forward for those who believe that information wants to be free.
Actually we address this. We are planning that messages will be encrypted such that it would be very difficult for your friends to see what you are requesting, this is called "onion routing". It isn't foolproof, one of your friends could theoretically get around it, but then they wouldn't be much of a friend:-)
Here is a formal abstract, and an informal "blog entry", both of which were part of the submissions material for the talk:
Abstract:
It has become apparent that the greatest threat toward the survival of
peer to peer, and especially file sharing, networks is the openness of
the peers themselves towards strangers. So called "darknets" - encrypted
networks where peers connect directly only to trusted friends - have
been suggested as a solution to this. Some, small-scale darknet
implementations such a Nullsofts WASTE have already been deployed, but
these share the problem that peers can only communicate within a small
neighborhood.
Utilizing the small world theory of Watts and Strogatz, Jon Kleinbergs
algorithmic observations, and our own experience from working with the
anonymous distributed data network Freenet, we explore methods of
using the dynamics of social networks to find scalable ways of
searching and routing in a darknet. We discuss how the results
indicating the human relationships really form a "small world", allow
for ways of restoring to the darknet the characteristics necessary for
efficient routing. We illustrate our methods with simulation results.
This is, to our knowledge, the first time a model for building peer to
peer networks that allow for both peer privacy and global
communication has been suggested. The deployment of such networks
would offer great opportunities for truly viable peer to peer
networks, and a very difficult challenge to their enemies.
Blog Entry:
I started the Freenet Project in 1998 with the goal of building a
network for truly free communication, and of all the things we have
learned since then, perhaps the most salient is that the biggest threats
to P2P networks come not from without, but from within the network
itself. This is something that the current file sharing networks are now
learning the hard way, with those organizations who wish to stop them
now infiltrating the networks to sue individual users for providing
certain files. And while Freenet has always been designed to protect the
identity and security of people who access and publish information from
attackers and prying eyes, it's design has never been able to protect
the identity of people who operate nodes in the network from one
another.
Recently Oskar, who was one of the original contributors to the project
and who is now working on his PhD in Mathematics, and I have been
discussing the mathematical mechanics behind large scale networks. As a
part of this discussion it dawned on us, that because science now
believes that human relationships really do form a "small world"
(between any two of us, there are only six degrees of separation), with
the right algorithms it should be possible to find data fast even in a
network where peers only ever talk to peers that they already know and
trust. We believe our methods for doing this provide to key to making
peer-to-peer networks that are both dark and searchable: secure and
efficient. For those who wish to constrain the free flow of information,
such networks could be the biggest nightmare of all...
The article doesn't really discuss it, but the core innovation being presented in the Defcon talk was a design for a scalable darknet. This is interesting and new because current darknets, such as Waste, don't scale. They typically consist of small isolated groups of small numbers of people.
This new design for Freenet is different, it is a globally scalable invite-only Darknet. Oskar Sandberg and Ian Clarke have developed a method to route messages through a "fixed links" P2P network in a scalable way. This is non-trivial as most scalable P2P search algorithms (such as that previously employed in Freenet, and other Distributed HashTable algorithms) rely on being able to choose which peers are connected to each-other. Its like trying to create signposts for a gigantic maze in an entirely decentralised way.
We hope to make a paper describing this available through the Freenet website in the next few days.
Why is a non-US citizen more deserving of an income than a US citizen. Is a US citizen more of a human than they are?
Don't you see how you devalue yourself if you assert that the only thing that can protect your job is protectionism?
Let me be blunt. If an Indian, or an Eastern European can do your job better than you can for less than you can, then they deserve your job more than you do.
If you want to explain why that shouldn't be the case, then please do, but I challenge you to do-so without restort to racism of one form or another.
Slashdot Mirror
Come on, almost any industrialised nation, including many if not all countries in the EU, Japan, and others, could shoot the GPS system out of the sky within the first few hours of any war. These navigation systems only ever exist with the consent of other powerful nations.
You might think C# is moving away from being strongly typed with the new "var" construct, but you would be wrong. All types are still inferred and verified by the compiler.
As IDEs and compilers grow more powerful, I think people will start to realise that strongly typed languages can be just as easy to program in as dynamically typed, and you get the added benefit of more help from the compiler at spotting bugs.
Java's language features, by comparison to C#, seems to be moving along at a glacial pace, only recently getting features like foreach loops, and generics.
I personally prefer Java because of Eclipse, but Sun are really going to have to get a move on if Java is to remain competitive with C#.
So (forgive screwy SQL-like syntax):
The variable result is a class which has fields "name" and "age", and we can refer to it without ever having to give this class an actual name. Now bear in mind that all of this is strongly typed and can be verified by the compiler.As a Java programmer, it is exciting to see these developments in C#, it makes me wonder whether Java is destined to fall behind C# - it sure looks like that is happening....
Skype was soaring to popularity long before they introduced their "SkypeOut" functionality. Skype's real innovation was their NAT hole punching which meant that you didn't have to worry about fiddling with your firewall to get it to work, a major shortcoming of other VOIP apps.
Freenet is currently quite slow, but these problems should be rectified in the next version. There is no inherent reason that an anonymous P2P system must be slow.
Of course, you are correct that Freenet isn't about "file sharing", its about the free exchange of knowledge and information. If all you care about is getting free music, Freenet probably won't be well suited to your needs.
My (non-lawyer) understanding is that under current US case law, embedding someone else's content in your web page, even if it remains on their server, is considered a "performance" of their copyrighted work, which is indeed a violation of their copyright if you do it without their permission, as a copyright holder does have the right to limit where and how their work is performed.
You may have found something in 5 seconds, my point is that typically it takes longer, and even 5 seconds is ridiculous. If Google can search the entire internet in a few milliseconds, then why can't Spotlight search one hard disk in less than 5 seconds? I suspect you will find that the ratio of Google's processing power relative to the amount of stuff they index is much more of a challenge than that posed by a single modern computer searching a single modern hard disk.
Spotlight is really slow on my G4 Powerbook (1GB RAM), it can take 8 seconds to find what I am looking for. I don't see why it should take so long if everything is pre-indexed.
Dashboard isn't terribly useful either, its a nice gimmick, but I find myself using it very infrequently. The selection of Widgets is symptomatic of this, I mean, who really needs a countdown timer to the next episode of Battlestar Galactica just one keypress away at any moment?
Both Spotlight and Dashboard have gained reputations for slowing overall machine performance too.
I have yet to find a use for Automator, and from what I can see from the rather uninspiring selection of Automator Actions people have created, neither has anyone else. Its a nice idea, but in practice not a very useful one.
Until I RTFA I didn't realise that inter-server communication was the really useful thing about Jabber. It looks like Google didn't either.
It shouldn't be hard for someone to combine an open source voice codec like Speex with UDP NAT circumvention (which isn't hard to implement), and come up with an open source alternative to Skype. I am actually amazed that nobody has done this yet.
I think you are oversimplifying. Tools which help to share information do not distinguish between "good" and "bad" information, they either share information freely, or they don't.
David Brin's Transparent Society, where everyone, including our government, is under equal scrutiny, is probably the only way forward for those who believe that information wants to be free.
Actually we address this. We are planning that messages will be encrypted such that it would be very difficult for your friends to see what you are requesting, this is called "onion routing". It isn't foolproof, one of your friends could theoretically get around it, but then they wouldn't be much of a friend :-)
Abstract:
It has become apparent that the greatest threat toward the survival of peer to peer, and especially file sharing, networks is the openness of the peers themselves towards strangers. So called "darknets" - encrypted networks where peers connect directly only to trusted friends - have been suggested as a solution to this. Some, small-scale darknet implementations such a Nullsofts WASTE have already been deployed, but these share the problem that peers can only communicate within a small neighborhood.
Utilizing the small world theory of Watts and Strogatz, Jon Kleinbergs algorithmic observations, and our own experience from working with the anonymous distributed data network Freenet, we explore methods of using the dynamics of social networks to find scalable ways of searching and routing in a darknet. We discuss how the results indicating the human relationships really form a "small world", allow for ways of restoring to the darknet the characteristics necessary for efficient routing. We illustrate our methods with simulation results.
This is, to our knowledge, the first time a model for building peer to peer networks that allow for both peer privacy and global communication has been suggested. The deployment of such networks would offer great opportunities for truly viable peer to peer networks, and a very difficult challenge to their enemies.
Blog Entry:
I started the Freenet Project in 1998 with the goal of building a network for truly free communication, and of all the things we have learned since then, perhaps the most salient is that the biggest threats to P2P networks come not from without, but from within the network itself. This is something that the current file sharing networks are now learning the hard way, with those organizations who wish to stop them now infiltrating the networks to sue individual users for providing certain files. And while Freenet has always been designed to protect the identity and security of people who access and publish information from attackers and prying eyes, it's design has never been able to protect the identity of people who operate nodes in the network from one another.
Recently Oskar, who was one of the original contributors to the project and who is now working on his PhD in Mathematics, and I have been discussing the mathematical mechanics behind large scale networks. As a part of this discussion it dawned on us, that because science now believes that human relationships really do form a "small world" (between any two of us, there are only six degrees of separation), with the right algorithms it should be possible to find data fast even in a network where peers only ever talk to peers that they already know and trust. We believe our methods for doing this provide to key to making peer-to-peer networks that are both dark and searchable: secure and efficient. For those who wish to constrain the free flow of information, such networks could be the biggest nightmare of all...
This new design for Freenet is different, it is a globally scalable invite-only Darknet. Oskar Sandberg and Ian Clarke have developed a method to route messages through a "fixed links" P2P network in a scalable way. This is non-trivial as most scalable P2P search algorithms (such as that previously employed in Freenet, and other Distributed HashTable algorithms) rely on being able to choose which peers are connected to each-other. Its like trying to create signposts for a gigantic maze in an entirely decentralised way.
We hope to make a paper describing this available through the Freenet website in the next few days.
-Ian
Violence is American, sex and nakedness are both rather... um... French.
I wonder who Slashdot is going to back in this legal battle?!
Don't you see how you devalue yourself if you assert that the only thing that can protect your job is protectionism?
Let me be blunt. If an Indian, or an Eastern European can do your job better than you can for less than you can, then they deserve your job more than you do.
If you want to explain why that shouldn't be the case, then please do, but I challenge you to do-so without restort to racism of one form or another.
A friend of my GF was standing in line... I really don't deserve these tickets, I practically got them by accident (although I ain't giving them up ;)