No, you're not. It gets on my tits as well. However, I suspect that the reason the author used this phrase has more to do with gramatical ignorance than deliberate malice.
"so-called" means (or used to mean) that the subject of the sentence is, in the opinion of the author, often incorrectly described. For example, when describing some 3rd world dictatorship you might write "..the so-called Democratic Republic of Umbongo" meaning that it is not realy democratic at all. However, I have noticed several occasions recently where authors have used "so-called" in relation to phrases which are accurate but unfamiliar either to themselves or their perceived readers.
So, either the author believes that Linux is not open-source but just called so (in which case he is ignorant) or he doesn't know the proper meaning of the phrase "so-called" (in which case he is also ignorant).
OTOH, many Slashdoters don't understand how to use a shift key or what the apostrophe is for, so perhaps we shouldn't complain too much.
Americans are regularly arrested in Russia for various crimes, mostly drug related.
Perhaps I didn't make myself clear. I didn't say that there would be a fuss if Russia arrested an American. I said (read my post carefully) that there would be a fuss if they were arrested for what they had done whilst they were still in the USA. Presumably the guys you are talking about are aledged to have broken Russian law by trying to smuggle drugs into Russia. They therefore committed the aledged offences on Russian soil. Clearly that is completely different to the Dmitry case.
For some time I've been thinking about the problem of having REAL computer security. I'm not a crypto expert, but at the end of the day it seems to me that the nub is that you need a good algorithm (these seem to exist) and you need to keep your secret key secret.
Now, I can run a secure version of Linux behind a decent firewall and keep my secret key on that, but what stops the feds from breaking into my house whilst I am at work a sniffing it straight off the hard drive. I could perhaps keep the key on a PDA or some sort of dongle and lug it around with me, but I could always be "mugged".
Bottom line. Is this IBM doo-hickey tamper resistant against the average thief or can it keep the feds at bay? As the DMCA (and forthcoming EUCD) makes more and more of us into potential felons this sort of issue is becoming increasingly relevant.
BTW, how much do they cost?
Russians seem a bit quiet?
on
Sklyarov Indicted
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
If a US citizen was arrested in Moscow for violating a Russian law whilst he was in the US then it would be the top story on CNN and Bush would be shouting down the phone at Mr Putin (spelling?).
Why isn't the reverse happening now? My girlfriends (who speaks Russian) tells me that the case is being covered in the Russian press, but its very much a 1/4 column on page 6 type of story. Perhaps Russia wants the big US corporations to invest in their country and doesn't want to upset them?
Anybody seen any comment from the Russian government?
Perhaps I am missing something here? If users don't like these extra links then they can remove the software. If they don't know how then they can either ask or go buy a book.
If it comes built into their OS then they can either put up with it or move to a free OS.
To see tonight's BBC Newsnight including coverage of the UK demo point RealPlayer here. Note that they only store the latest programme, so it will soon be overwritten and that the Dmitry item starts about 19 minutes in.
If your app is GUI, then your users are running i586/686 already.
I don't understand. KDE runs quite happily on my Alpha at home. Isn't that a GUI? Surely most people who put Linux onto their PPC based Macs use X? Its certainly easy to find all the XFree86 RPMS compiled for PPC.
I do hope you are not falling into the mindset which says one should only develop for the most common platform? If I believed that point of view, I would write my code for Windoze!!
I can see that Kylix is realy useful if you have a existing Delphi application which you want to port to Linux, but why would anyone want to use it for a new GPL app when it seems to limit your possible users?
If I write my GPL app using gcc, KDevelop etc then all Linux users stand a reasonable chance of being able to compile and run it. But with Kylix I seem to be limiting my users to those with i386 or possibly ia64 platforms. If I write a GPL program I want as many people as possible to be able to benefit from it. Isn't that the whole ethos of the open-source movement? Why should all those lovely people with PPCs, Alphas, S390s etc not be able to enjoy it as well? Or am I missing something here?
Please understand that I have no problem with the existance of Kylix. One of our contractors has written a large propriatory application in Delphi, and now there is at least a chance that I might manage to persuade him to let me have a Linux version.
Sadly, monopoly isn't exactly the right word for the concept that I was trying to express, but it is the closest one that I can come up with. Sure, other people produce x86 chips. Maybe, one day other folk will make ia64 chips, but what if all microprocessors had to be ia64 compatible to be commercialy viable?
Even if lots of companies made them, consumers choice would still be restricted and that was what I meant by a monopoly. With just one viable architecture, the world would be denied access to potentialy useful inovations which broke compatibility. Examples....
128 bit processors
Funky vector processing systems (a la PPC)
Clockless processors (assuming such things could be made to work).
Totaly wild concepts that no-one has thought of yet
At the end of the day I want a choice of OS and a choice of architecture. Perhaps I am wierd.
This sort of things seems to me to be one of the great moral problems of Linux. The more we enable the use of closed source i386 only code the less incentive there is for the creation of equivalent open source (and thus cross platform) competitors. On the other hand, it would clearly be crazy to deliberately not develop simple working solutions to effectively force the creation cross platform equivalents.
Mind you, at the end of the day I am convinced that 90% of Linux users (and/. readers) complain about OS monopolies whilst not giving a damn about a potential platform monopoly. So perhaps it doesn't matter anyway.
$52 million US is not going to buy you a spaceport, so presumably the private sector is providing the the remaining funding. Anyone like to speculate on the total cost?
The day they allow people to radiate what they want on airplanes is the day I stay on the ground! We have reached a sorry state when people are prepared to risk their lives (and those of everyone else) just so that they can spend even more time gassing on their cell phones!
Sure, the chance of a cellphone actually causing an aircraft to crash are very remote, but when we design airplanes we don't allow even remote possibilities. There are numerous multiple redundant systems which would only ever be needed in very unlikely failure conditions, but if passengers found out that they were being removed then they would be very unhappy.
The proposed wireless LAN is a slightly different matter since 802.11 tends to use lower power than cellphones and it works at a higher frequency where there is less chance of coupling into the wiring. Finally, I imagine that the airline will provide their own LAN cards which they have tested to make absolutely sure that they meet the frequency and power specifications. How do you know that your cellphone hasn't developed a fault causing it to radiate significant amounts of power on non-cellphone frequencies? Perhaps it doesn't do it now, but maybe it will next time it gets knocked, or if the temperature changes? Perhaps it has a loose solder joint?
And as for it being the airlines responsibility to make their aircraft passenger proof. Well, maybe they should be proof against my 100W ham radio transmitter? Perhaps it should be safe for me to heat my own meals on board with a gas stove?
And if the FAA do give in and allow transmitters and one day an aircraft crashes and there is some evidence (but no proof) that a cellphone caused it. What will happen? Passengers (particularly but not exclusively American ones) will start sueing the airline, aircraft manufacturer, cellphone maker and the FAA. Pathetic!
Even if they stopped making regular books tomorrow, there are enough of them floating around in the world to keep me in reading matter for the rest of my life (I'm in my 30s).
I agree that there may be a problem for time dependent books (e.g. computer textbooks), but unless ebooks are free of odious restrictions I certainly won't be buying any novels in that format.
Does publishing the screen play mean they are not going to make the movie?
Well, if its made by any of the big hollywood film companies then none of us will be going to see it will we. You may recall that we are all boycotting the MPAA over the DeCCS case.
Why do we need to use solar panels at all? There are lots of other ways to convert sunlight to electricity which are both cheap and practical provided that you make them big enough.
Three that come to mind:
- Giant circular greenhouse with a huge tower in the middle. Air in the greenhouse gets hot and rushes up the tower which contains a turbine. Cool air enters round the edge. This works and there is a great big prototype somewhere in spain (anyone got any links?). You can grow crops in the green house except for the bit right in the middle where it gets a bit drafty.
- Mirrors like hugs bits if guttering which focus sunlight onto metal pipes with oil in. Oil gets very very hot, boils water, turbine etc. I believe that there are a number of plants like this working in the USA.
- Windmill. Sunlight heats ground, air rises, cold air rushes in and turns blades on great big fan up a tower. Quite a popular solution in many parts of the world.
I predict that all of these solutions will be substantially cheaper than this stupid space power idea until long after all of us are dead.
List of large man made objects in space:
- International space station
- Ummm
List of large man made objects on earth:
- Empire state building
- Super-tankers
- Pyramids
- etc etc etc
It's not difficult to find large areas of land for collecting solar energy. What do you imagine is in the sahara desert? Well, basically there is a great heap of nothing and lots of sunlight. Yes, there's no people, but running electricty through some cables to europe would still be heaps cheaper than this stupid space idea. And you need lots of room for the receiving antenna anyway.
Re:So this guy wants to be taken serious?
on
2600 v. Ford Motors
·
· Score: 2
I don't see the problem:
At the end of the day, its about perception. Let me try to explain.
It is possible that I might be able to explain the merits of the DeCSS case to a disinterested party such as my mother. However, if she discovered that the person behind DeCSS was also creating web sites with expletives in their names then she would conclude that Corley was a foul mouthed yob who doesn't deserve her support. I agree that this conclusion has no legal validity, but it is how very many ordinary people think. Also remember that although judges are supposed to consider cases purely of objective legal grounds, anyone who believes that they are not influenced by their personal feelings towards the plaintifs needs a reality check.
Why do you think that of all the sites containing DeCSS the MPAA went after 2600? Just go to www.2600.org and have a look at it. Can you conceive of a site better designed to offend the average judge. The MPAA know that once they have won against 2600, it will be much easier to move on to more difficult targets like university professors.
Now, I am sure that DeCSS and F***GeneralMotors are both cases of great merit (although the latter does strike me as being remarkably juvenile). But I can't help feeling that the former would be better off if they were being fought by different people.
Here in the UK we have just had our census and as in Australia and New Zealand there was a question on religion. Interestingly, the instructions on the front of the form said (paraphrasing) "It is a criminal offence to give a false answer to any question except for number 11 on religion.
So, I wrote in "Linux". After all, we have a diety (Linus), a satan figure (Gates), rituals (compiling the kernel) and wars (KDE/Gnome).
Hitchhiker enthusiasts may be interested to know that Pocket Essentials have just published a new book about the Hitchhiker's Guide phenomenon.
This is only the second book about HHGG (the first is out of print), and is a slim scholarly work providing full details and commentary of every manifestation of the genre from the original BBC radio series to bizarre stage versions in foreign languages.
Disclaimer: I am related to the author. Before making this post I gave considerable thought to the potential insensitivity of appearing to use this very sad news to promote my brother's book. I can only say that I was very sorry to hear this sad news on the radio today and hope that my brother's book will encourage others to enjoy some of Douglas Adams' wonderful non-HHGG work (which it also covers).
I tried to read the specification, but cypto isn't my field and I found it hard going. So can I ask a simple question of those who do understand.
Suppose that I don't want to watch any copy protected media (I don't own a television or any DVDs). Will it be possible for an open source operating system (e.g. Linux) to use this sort of display hardware for standard web surfing, coding, word processing etc or will these monitors only work if you have a closed source driver containing the crypto keys?
...in the real world might not the methodology of the article produce a better responsiveness for the same bandwidth?
Well, it is certainly true that the simple frequency division approach is rather inefficient with "fits and starts" signals. So it is probably true that this pulse scheme would be an improvement in that case. However, TDMA and CDMA also provide this advantage which is one reason why they are used in the very "fits and starts" world of cellphones. It is not clear to me how much of an advantage (if any) an UWB solution would provide over these. Answering that question will require a lot of detailed system analysis.
I don't realy want to get into a long technical discussion about antenna design since it is a big subject. But, in summary, any antenna defined by clear physical dimensions tend to be narrow band (for example a dipole which clearly is primarily defined by a single measureable length). To make a good wideband antenna you need to find a structure defined more by angles. At this point I realy need diagrams. I suggest that you stroll over to Tecom's wideband antennas
catalogue and look at some of the pictures (some are sadly hidden by radomes, but there are some reasonable examples).
For a simple wideband design like a conical log spiral the lowest frequency is a function of how big you make the big end (limted by cost and obvious size constraints) and the highest frequency depends on how small you can make the pointed bit (limited by power handling, ruggedness and how good your soldering is).
Fractal antennas are based on the same premisse that if you can't quite pin down how big your antenna is then is must be wideband, but instead of trying to make an antenna defined purely by angles you have lots of dimensions from big to very small and everything inbetween. There is nothing wrong with this concept and it works. The problem is that it doesn't do anything about the basic laws of physics so the benefits you get over more conventional wideband designs are not very great.
Fractal antennas are not dead and indeed a mate of mine from Loughborough university is presenting a paper at an ESA
conference on this very subject in just a few weeks time.
Slashdot Mirror
No, you're not. It gets on my tits as well. However, I suspect that the reason the author used this phrase has more to do with gramatical ignorance than deliberate malice.
"so-called" means (or used to mean) that the subject of the sentence is, in the opinion of the author, often incorrectly described. For example, when describing some 3rd world dictatorship you might write "..the so-called Democratic Republic of Umbongo" meaning that it is not realy democratic at all. However, I have noticed several occasions recently where authors have used "so-called" in relation to phrases which are accurate but unfamiliar either to themselves or their perceived readers.
So, either the author believes that Linux is not open-source but just called so (in which case he is ignorant) or he doesn't know the proper meaning of the phrase "so-called" (in which case he is also ignorant).
OTOH, many Slashdoters don't understand how to use a shift key or what the apostrophe is for, so perhaps we shouldn't complain too much.
Perhaps I didn't make myself clear. I didn't say that there would be a fuss if Russia arrested an American. I said (read my post carefully) that there would be a fuss if they were arrested for what they had done whilst they were still in the USA. Presumably the guys you are talking about are aledged to have broken Russian law by trying to smuggle drugs into Russia. They therefore committed the aledged offences on Russian soil. Clearly that is completely different to the Dmitry case.
Now, I can run a secure version of Linux behind a decent firewall and keep my secret key on that, but what stops the feds from breaking into my house whilst I am at work a sniffing it straight off the hard drive. I could perhaps keep the key on a PDA or some sort of dongle and lug it around with me, but I could always be "mugged".
Bottom line. Is this IBM doo-hickey tamper resistant against the average thief or can it keep the feds at bay? As the DMCA (and forthcoming EUCD) makes more and more of us into potential felons this sort of issue is becoming increasingly relevant.
BTW, how much do they cost?
Why isn't the reverse happening now? My girlfriends (who speaks Russian) tells me that the case is being covered in the Russian press, but its very much a 1/4 column on page 6 type of story. Perhaps Russia wants the big US corporations to invest in their country and doesn't want to upset them?
Anybody seen any comment from the Russian government?
If it comes built into their OS then they can either put up with it or move to a free OS.
In either case, why should I have any sympathy?
To see tonight's BBC Newsnight including coverage of the UK demo point RealPlayer here. Note that they only store the latest programme, so it will soon be overwritten and that the Dmitry item starts about 19 minutes in.
I don't understand. KDE runs quite happily on my Alpha at home. Isn't that a GUI? Surely most people who put Linux onto their PPC based Macs use X? Its certainly easy to find all the XFree86 RPMS compiled for PPC.
I do hope you are not falling into the mindset which says one should only develop for the most common platform? If I believed that point of view, I would write my code for Windoze!!
If I write my GPL app using gcc, KDevelop etc then all Linux users stand a reasonable chance of being able to compile and run it. But with Kylix I seem to be limiting my users to those with i386 or possibly ia64 platforms. If I write a GPL program I want as many people as possible to be able to benefit from it. Isn't that the whole ethos of the open-source movement? Why should all those lovely people with PPCs, Alphas, S390s etc not be able to enjoy it as well? Or am I missing something here?
Please understand that I have no problem with the existance of Kylix. One of our contractors has written a large propriatory application in Delphi, and now there is at least a chance that I might manage to persuade him to let me have a Linux version.
Even if lots of companies made them, consumers choice would still be restricted and that was what I meant by a monopoly. With just one viable architecture, the world would be denied access to potentialy useful inovations which broke compatibility. Examples....
At the end of the day I want a choice of OS and a choice of architecture. Perhaps I am wierd.
Mind you, at the end of the day I am convinced that 90% of Linux users (and /. readers) complain about OS monopolies whilst not giving a damn about a potential platform monopoly. So perhaps it doesn't matter anyway.
$52 million US is not going to buy you a spaceport, so presumably the private sector is providing the the remaining funding. Anyone like to speculate on the total cost?
Sure, the chance of a cellphone actually causing an aircraft to crash are very remote, but when we design airplanes we don't allow even remote possibilities. There are numerous multiple redundant systems which would only ever be needed in very unlikely failure conditions, but if passengers found out that they were being removed then they would be very unhappy.
The proposed wireless LAN is a slightly different matter since 802.11 tends to use lower power than cellphones and it works at a higher frequency where there is less chance of coupling into the wiring. Finally, I imagine that the airline will provide their own LAN cards which they have tested to make absolutely sure that they meet the frequency and power specifications. How do you know that your cellphone hasn't developed a fault causing it to radiate significant amounts of power on non-cellphone frequencies? Perhaps it doesn't do it now, but maybe it will next time it gets knocked, or if the temperature changes? Perhaps it has a loose solder joint?
And as for it being the airlines responsibility to make their aircraft passenger proof. Well, maybe they should be proof against my 100W ham radio transmitter? Perhaps it should be safe for me to heat my own meals on board with a gas stove?
And if the FAA do give in and allow transmitters and one day an aircraft crashes and there is some evidence (but no proof) that a cellphone caused it. What will happen? Passengers (particularly but not exclusively American ones) will start sueing the airline, aircraft manufacturer, cellphone maker and the FAA. Pathetic!
I agree that there may be a problem for time dependent books (e.g. computer textbooks), but unless ebooks are free of odious restrictions I certainly won't be buying any novels in that format.
Well, if its made by any of the big hollywood film companies then none of us will be going to see it will we. You may recall that we are all boycotting the MPAA over the DeCCS case.
I must declare an interest by admitting that my brother is the author.
Three that come to mind:
- Giant circular greenhouse with a huge tower in the middle. Air in the greenhouse gets hot and rushes up the tower which contains a turbine. Cool air enters round the edge. This works and there is a great big prototype somewhere in spain (anyone got any links?). You can grow crops in the green house except for the bit right in the middle where it gets a bit drafty.
- Mirrors like hugs bits if guttering which focus sunlight onto metal pipes with oil in. Oil gets very very hot, boils water, turbine etc. I believe that there are a number of plants like this working in the USA.
- Windmill. Sunlight heats ground, air rises, cold air rushes in and turns blades on great big fan up a tower. Quite a popular solution in many parts of the world.
I predict that all of these solutions will be substantially cheaper than this stupid space power idea until long after all of us are dead.
What a load of old rubbish
List of large man made objects in space:
- International space station
- Ummm
List of large man made objects on earth:
- Empire state building
- Super-tankers
- Pyramids
- etc etc etc
It's not difficult to find large areas of land for collecting solar energy. What do you imagine is in the sahara desert? Well, basically there is a great heap of nothing and lots of sunlight. Yes, there's no people, but running electricty through some cables to europe would still be heaps cheaper than this stupid space idea. And you need lots of room for the receiving antenna anyway.
Working link to mummy article
At the end of the day, its about perception. Let me try to explain.
It is possible that I might be able to explain the merits of the DeCSS case to a disinterested party such as my mother. However, if she discovered that the person behind DeCSS was also creating web sites with expletives in their names then she would conclude that Corley was a foul mouthed yob who doesn't deserve her support. I agree that this conclusion has no legal validity, but it is how very many ordinary people think. Also remember that although judges are supposed to consider cases purely of objective legal grounds, anyone who believes that they are not influenced by their personal feelings towards the plaintifs needs a reality check.
Why do you think that of all the sites containing DeCSS the MPAA went after 2600? Just go to www.2600.org and have a look at it. Can you conceive of a site better designed to offend the average judge. The MPAA know that once they have won against 2600, it will be much easier to move on to more difficult targets like university professors.
Now, I am sure that DeCSS and F***GeneralMotors are both cases of great merit (although the latter does strike me as being remarkably juvenile). But I can't help feeling that the former would be better off if they were being fought by different people.
So, I wrote in "Linux". After all, we have a diety (Linus), a satan figure (Gates), rituals (compiling the kernel) and wars (KDE/Gnome).
This is only the second book about HHGG (the first is out of print), and is a slim scholarly work providing full details and commentary of every manifestation of the genre from the original BBC radio series to bizarre stage versions in foreign languages.
Disclaimer: I am related to the author. Before making this post I gave considerable thought to the potential insensitivity of appearing to use this very sad news to promote my brother's book. I can only say that I was very sorry to hear this sad news on the radio today and hope that my brother's book will encourage others to enjoy some of Douglas Adams' wonderful non-HHGG work (which it also covers).
Suppose that I don't want to watch any copy protected media (I don't own a television or any DVDs). Will it be possible for an open source operating system (e.g. Linux) to use this sort of display hardware for standard web surfing, coding, word processing etc or will these monitors only work if you have a closed source driver containing the crypto keys?
Well, it is certainly true that the simple frequency division approach is rather inefficient with "fits and starts" signals. So it is probably true that this pulse scheme would be an improvement in that case. However, TDMA and CDMA also provide this advantage which is one reason why they are used in the very "fits and starts" world of cellphones. It is not clear to me how much of an advantage (if any) an UWB solution would provide over these. Answering that question will require a lot of detailed system analysis.
Well done!
I don't realy want to get into a long technical discussion about antenna design since it is a big subject. But, in summary, any antenna defined by clear physical dimensions tend to be narrow band (for example a dipole which clearly is primarily defined by a single measureable length). To make a good wideband antenna you need to find a structure defined more by angles. At this point I realy need diagrams. I suggest that you stroll over to Tecom's wideband antennas catalogue and look at some of the pictures (some are sadly hidden by radomes, but there are some reasonable examples).
For a simple wideband design like a conical log spiral the lowest frequency is a function of how big you make the big end (limted by cost and obvious size constraints) and the highest frequency depends on how small you can make the pointed bit (limited by power handling, ruggedness and how good your soldering is).
Fractal antennas are based on the same premisse that if you can't quite pin down how big your antenna is then is must be wideband, but instead of trying to make an antenna defined purely by angles you have lots of dimensions from big to very small and everything inbetween. There is nothing wrong with this concept and it works. The problem is that it doesn't do anything about the basic laws of physics so the benefits you get over more conventional wideband designs are not very great.
Fractal antennas are not dead and indeed a mate of mine from Loughborough university is presenting a paper at an ESA conference on this very subject in just a few weeks time.