An interesting read, altogether. I know I'll be obsfucating my email adress when it goes on my website (not that the spammers won't figure that one out soon enough).
Still, notice that they received more than 10,000 emails... and more than 8,000 were spam. That's around 80% spam, and it includes the accounts that actually took some measure of protection against it. Naturally accounts that didn't bother to protect their email addresses got a much greater proportion of spam.
It's a shame we have to protect ourselves from what should be an open and valuable exchange. I know 80% spam would just swamp me altogether.
Wouldn't combining Project Gutenberg's freely available texts with Freenet's distributed storage be a great enhancement for both projects? Especially now that Freenet is stable enough to be considered viable for Gutenberg's purposes...
So far as I can tell, the k1dd13s don't care what you're running -- I get loads of Windows-specific attacks on my P100 Linux box. It's not even worth cracking. Heck, they probably don't even know how to get your fingerprint. Personally, I think they're spam cracking -- running the script on every IP they can find, knowing that if they ownzzor 0.01% of the machines they've gotten a return on their time investment.
What I really need is to run kids' software (Reader Rabbit, Putt-Putt Goes to the Moon, etc) without forcing the kid to start Wine first. Could this library Linux to recognize the binary as a Windows executable and run it through dynamic linking? Or is it only useful for porting the code?
I don't think he's trying to say that floppies would solve the imaging problem.
I think he's trying to say (in gov-speak): 1 Problems 1.1 Imaging: hardware varies too much 1.2 CDs: these machines often such so hard they don't even have CDs 2 Solutions 2.1 All machines have floppies, so get a floppy-based distribution
True, but we're building the fence out of predefined segments. Therefore, a square of perimeter 12 is built from 4 segments of length 3 each, and the equilateral triangle would be built from only 3 segments and have a total perimeter of 9.
Besides, we're defining the rest of the earth to be the "inside", so we want the area of the conventionally-enclosed area to be as small as possible.
A group of managers goes on their annual hunting trip. The hunting is good this season, and they get a record catch.
They load it all in the plane, but the pilot is nervous. He says, "The plane is overloaded. We'll never make it." But the managers assure him that everything will be fine. Despite his repeated warnings, they finally tell him that they will take the responsibility if anything happens.
The pilot begrudgingly taxies as far down the runway as he can, opens the throttle, and tries to take off. But there's just too much weight. He screams, "It's no use! We're gonna crash unless you dump some weight!" But the managers tell him to keep going, everything is fine.
Finally, the plane gets off the ground. But sure enough, it's too late. The plane can't clear the fence at the end of the runway and crashes to the ground. Amazingly, everyone survives.
The pilot limps out and says, "See?!? I told you it would never work! What a failure!" But the managers say, "Faliure? This was an astounding success! We got two meters higher than last year!"
I work on a government project using, and interfacing to, DII COE machines. They're all Sun/Solaris, and when you install the DII COE software you actually modify the kernel. Other DII COE software (called "segments") depends on the DII COE kernel. So I doubt Linux is going to get any real play for a while.
As far as security goes, I doubt the government will worry much about the bundled software; they generally disable everything they're not interested in and install their own segments for the functionality they need. While that does mean that the production systems probably won't have my favorite applications (because they haven't been ported to DII COE segments), at least my development systems can have what I want and still closely match the production systems. Heck, I could even develop at home.
That said, getting *any* version of Linux certified is great for me. I expect most of the Solaris segments will run with very little modification, so my development environment can very closely match my production environment. An the performance benefits I get from running on x86 hardware -- not to mention cost benefits -- will be phenomenal. (Given the recent revelations concerning Java and Solaris, running under a different OS is welcome as well, since a large part of our software is affected.) I might even get to use bash! And vim! (And emacs, for the heathens. Or your editor of choice.) And gcc!
I expect Linux will win its place in the DII COE hierarchy, and sooner rather than later. In fact, at least one very important DII COE segment is already adding Linux support. My job is about to get a whole lot easier.
When I was a Scout, the winning design was the same at every Derby: a wedge. I don't know why; it doesn't seem particularly aerodynamic or anything. It just was.
That said, I had two designs that nearly won. Both were destroyed (while in the lead) by poor construction before crossing the line. But here's the idea, in any case.
Design #1: Flexible body. When they come off the inclined slope, rigid cars lose a lot of energy in the sharp transition to nearly-level. Some of this energy can be detected as noise. To counteract this problem, I built my racer with a vertically flexible body. This was accomplished by sawing slits from the pine block until it could flex. Then I embedded fishing sinkers until the body weighed as much as possible. This was less than the max, because I didn't have much space left.
Performance of Design #1: slow off the line, due to its lightweight nature. Smooth through the transition, leaping into the lead. Broke in two halfway to the finish line. Build yours a little stronger than I did.
Design #2: Take advantage of rotational inertia. Because the wheels are rotating so quickly, they contain a lot of energy. The more mass, the more energy. I built a wing-shaped body out of the lightest wood I could obtain: balsa. I packed the wheels, roughly equally, with soldering wire and glue until the entire assembly reached the max weight.
Performance of Design #2: Neck-and-neck off the line. Even to the transition. Then my opponent's wedge simply coasted, while the inertially enhanced wheels of my design pushed my car to a substantial lead. Three car-lengths short of the finish line, a nail axle came loose. The wheel finished in first place. The car flipped off the track. I recommend super-gluing your axles in place.
Good luck!
Re:Total transparency for us; total privacy for po
on
David Brin on Privacy
·
· Score: 2
Mod parent up, mod parent up, mod parent up!
The parent post actually seems to understand what Brin is talking about. It is almost a perfect response (almost exactly what I was about to write).
Approximately 1,250 comments are unrelated in substance to United States v. Microsoft
or the RPFJ (though they were sent to the address for public comments and may or may
not mention the RPFJ in their "subject" line).
A small number of these submissions are simply advertisements or, in at least one
case, pornography. The United States proposes not to publish such submissions
or to provide them as part of its filing to the Court.
Rexx is actually a platform-neutral scripting language; it was included on OS/2, I believe. I was thinking of trying to release a Linux version, but it was too big a project for me.
Rexx itself is no great shakes. The integration was the beautiful thing: every decent program exposed its internal functions to ARexx, even the Video Toaster. It's that integration that would be so marvelous on Linux.
The nicest thing about the Amiga, that no one has mentioned yet, was the extensive integration with a scripting language. ARexx was a Rexx variant that allowed developers to expose the internal functions of their programs, and it was a joy. That integration was worth learning a new syntax for.
An example: I loved doing animation and putting them onto tape. By hand, this involved running each frame through Art Department Professional to resize, deinterlace, and change bit depth; then hitting the "Append" button in my Personal Animation Recorder and adding the changed frame (fields) to an animation.
I wrote an ARexx program that started ADPro and PAR, then waited for new frames to show up in a directory as they were rendered. It would press the appropriate buttons to load the image in ADPro, manipulate it, and save it to disk, then do the same to have the PAR add it to the animation. If I had a serial VCR, it could even have recorded the thing when I was through.
That kind of integration was marvelous. Everything had it. You could automate the most amazing tasks. It was like getting a little command-line utility for every function of a monstrously complex program's GUI. It would be nice to have in Linux; the closest we've got now is Gimp scripting.
I think you could make money by charging for the binaries and giving away the source. The GPL doesn't say you can't, and in fact only states that the source has to be available -- not even included on the media.
I'm a programmer by trade, and there have been many times I've decided not to download a program simply because it would have to be compiled. For the vast majority of the world, that's way too much effort. Sell 'em the binaries.
I imagine a Buy-nary Public License that would say, "Compiled binary versions of The Program are available for sale through The Company. You may not distribute binary versions of The Program. If you distribute binaries which are modifications or derivatives of The Program, you must charge at least 10% more than The Company charges for The Program." Along with the normal GPL language, of course. When someone fixes a bug, writes an expansion, or includes a new feature, The Company could even pay them from the funds collected so far.
Look at it this way: even if everyone downloads the source for free and compiles it, you'll have contributed to increasing the average computer knowledge of the world.
In the work I do (government simulation), "hardened" and "ruggedized" refer to hardware. "Hardened" means the hardware has been modified to withstand an attack, and "ruggedized" means the hardware has been modified to withstand the rtough use a soldier in the field might provide.
It seems kinda silly to apply the terms to software, but that's the way it goes.
No problem here. The supplied link goes to the business section.
Of course, I'm browsing without Javascript. Maybe that makes a difference. Perhaps they're those damn click-through ads, and you need Javascript to run them?
Slashdot Mirror
Considering that "Scratch" is one of Satan's old monikers, I think we've finally found the real connection to their demon logo.
Sure, FreeBSD from Scratch. It all makes sense now.
An interesting read, altogether. I know I'll be obsfucating my email adress when it goes on my website (not that the spammers won't figure that one out soon enough).
Still, notice that they received more than 10,000 emails... and more than 8,000 were spam. That's around 80% spam, and it includes the accounts that actually took some measure of protection against it. Naturally accounts that didn't bother to protect their email addresses got a much greater proportion of spam.
It's a shame we have to protect ourselves from what should be an open and valuable exchange. I know 80% spam would just swamp me altogether.
Wouldn't combining Project Gutenberg's freely available texts with Freenet's distributed storage be a great enhancement for both projects? Especially now that Freenet is stable enough to be considered viable for Gutenberg's purposes...
So far as I can tell, the k1dd13s don't care what you're running -- I get loads of Windows-specific attacks on my P100 Linux box. It's not even worth cracking. Heck, they probably don't even know how to get your fingerprint. Personally, I think they're spam cracking -- running the script on every IP they can find, knowing that if they ownzzor 0.01% of the machines they've gotten a return on their time investment.
What I really need is to run kids' software (Reader Rabbit, Putt-Putt Goes to the Moon, etc) without forcing the kid to start Wine first. Could this library Linux to recognize the binary as a Windows executable and run it through dynamic linking? Or is it only useful for porting the code?
I don't think he's trying to say that floppies would solve the imaging problem.
I think he's trying to say (in gov-speak):
1 Problems
1.1 Imaging: hardware varies too much
1.2 CDs: these machines often such so hard they don't even have CDs
2 Solutions
2.1 All machines have floppies, so get a floppy-based distribution
Judebert
Rats! Why didn't I think of that?
True, but we're building the fence out of predefined segments. Therefore, a square of perimeter 12 is built from 4 segments of length 3 each, and the equilateral triangle would be built from only 3 segments and have a total perimeter of 9.
Besides, we're defining the rest of the earth to be the "inside", so we want the area of the conventionally-enclosed area to be as small as possible.
They load it all in the plane, but the pilot is nervous. He says, "The plane is overloaded. We'll never make it." But the managers assure him that everything will be fine. Despite his repeated warnings, they finally tell him that they will take the responsibility if anything happens.
The pilot begrudgingly taxies as far down the runway as he can, opens the throttle, and tries to take off. But there's just too much weight. He screams, "It's no use! We're gonna crash unless you dump some weight!" But the managers tell him to keep going, everything is fine.
Finally, the plane gets off the ground. But sure enough, it's too late. The plane can't clear the fence at the end of the runway and crashes to the ground. Amazingly, everyone survives.
The pilot limps out and says, "See?!? I told you it would never work! What a failure!" But the managers say, "Faliure? This was an astounding success! We got two meters higher than last year!"
This is my candidate for +1 Terrible.
Wouldn't three sections of fence be better? A triangle is the polygon with the least number of sides...
As far as security goes, I doubt the government will worry much about the bundled software; they generally disable everything they're not interested in and install their own segments for the functionality they need. While that does mean that the production systems probably won't have my favorite applications (because they haven't been ported to DII COE segments), at least my development systems can have what I want and still closely match the production systems. Heck, I could even develop at home.
That said, getting *any* version of Linux certified is great for me. I expect most of the Solaris segments will run with very little modification, so my development environment can very closely match my production environment. An the performance benefits I get from running on x86 hardware -- not to mention cost benefits -- will be phenomenal. (Given the recent revelations concerning Java and Solaris, running under a different OS is welcome as well, since a large part of our software is affected.) I might even get to use bash! And vim! (And emacs, for the heathens. Or your editor of choice.) And gcc!
I expect Linux will win its place in the DII COE hierarchy, and sooner rather than later. In fact, at least one very important DII COE segment is already adding Linux support. My job is about to get a whole lot easier.
When I was a Scout, the winning design was the same at every Derby: a wedge. I don't know why; it doesn't seem particularly aerodynamic or anything. It just was.
That said, I had two designs that nearly won. Both were destroyed (while in the lead) by poor construction before crossing the line. But here's the idea, in any case.
Design #1: Flexible body. When they come off the inclined slope, rigid cars lose a lot of energy in the sharp transition to nearly-level. Some of this energy can be detected as noise. To counteract this problem, I built my racer with a vertically flexible body. This was accomplished by sawing slits from the pine block until it could flex. Then I embedded fishing sinkers until the body weighed as much as possible. This was less than the max, because I didn't have much space left.
Performance of Design #1: slow off the line, due to its lightweight nature. Smooth through the transition, leaping into the lead. Broke in two halfway to the finish line. Build yours a little stronger than I did.
Design #2: Take advantage of rotational inertia. Because the wheels are rotating so quickly, they contain a lot of energy. The more mass, the more energy. I built a wing-shaped body out of the lightest wood I could obtain: balsa. I packed the wheels, roughly equally, with soldering wire and glue until the entire assembly reached the max weight.
Performance of Design #2: Neck-and-neck off the line. Even to the transition. Then my opponent's wedge simply coasted, while the inertially enhanced wheels of my design pushed my car to a substantial lead. Three car-lengths short of the finish line, a nail axle came loose. The wheel finished in first place. The car flipped off the track. I recommend super-gluing your axles in place.
Good luck!
Mod parent up, mod parent up, mod parent up!
The parent post actually seems to understand what Brin is talking about. It is almost a perfect response (almost exactly what I was about to write).
Every time the privacy thing comes up, I say the same thing, and I'll say it again here:
I have no problem with being watched as long as the public gets to watch the police.
Usually I have to post the link to the first chapter of Brin's Transparent Society, but I don't think that will be necessary this time.
Having just had my wisdom teeth removed, I can't argue with #1. Novacaine is the most important advance in human history, ever.
From the above link, http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f9900/9946.pdf (emphasis mine).
Rexx is actually a platform-neutral scripting language; it was included on OS/2, I believe. I was thinking of trying to release a Linux version, but it was too big a project for me.
Rexx itself is no great shakes. The integration was the beautiful thing: every decent program exposed its internal functions to ARexx, even the Video Toaster. It's that integration that would be so marvelous on Linux.
The nicest thing about the Amiga, that no one has mentioned yet, was the extensive integration with a scripting language. ARexx was a Rexx variant that allowed developers to expose the internal functions of their programs, and it was a joy. That integration was worth learning a new syntax for.
An example: I loved doing animation and putting them onto tape. By hand, this involved running each frame through Art Department Professional to resize, deinterlace, and change bit depth; then hitting the "Append" button in my Personal Animation Recorder and adding the changed frame (fields) to an animation.
I wrote an ARexx program that started ADPro and PAR, then waited for new frames to show up in a directory as they were rendered. It would press the appropriate buttons to load the image in ADPro, manipulate it, and save it to disk, then do the same to have the PAR add it to the animation. If I had a serial VCR, it could even have recorded the thing when I was through.
That kind of integration was marvelous. Everything had it. You could automate the most amazing tasks. It was like getting a little command-line utility for every function of a monstrously complex program's GUI. It would be nice to have in Linux; the closest we've got now is Gimp scripting.
I think you could make money by charging for the binaries and giving away the source. The GPL doesn't say you can't, and in fact only states that the source has to be available -- not even included on the media.
I'm a programmer by trade, and there have been many times I've decided not to download a program simply because it would have to be compiled. For the vast majority of the world, that's way too much effort. Sell 'em the binaries.
I imagine a Buy-nary Public License that would say, "Compiled binary versions of The Program are available for sale through The Company. You may not distribute binary versions of The Program. If you distribute binaries which are modifications or derivatives of The Program, you must charge at least 10% more than The Company charges for The Program." Along with the normal GPL language, of course. When someone fixes a bug, writes an expansion, or includes a new feature, The Company could even pay them from the funds collected so far.
Look at it this way: even if everyone downloads the source for free and compiles it, you'll have contributed to increasing the average computer knowledge of the world.
Worth a shot.
Well, with a long day, and time and space being linked... perhaps you've got the right speed for your subjective reality.
I've got a cold, and my time-sense is distorted. You've definitely got the right speed for my reality.
Too bad the moderators won't get the reference. I nearly spit soda through my nose! You deserve to be modded up.
As my friend Virtros suggests, don't use your mouse in a microwave!
In the work I do (government simulation), "hardened" and "ruggedized" refer to hardware. "Hardened" means the hardware has been modified to withstand an attack, and "ruggedized" means the hardware has been modified to withstand the rtough use a soldier in the field might provide.
It seems kinda silly to apply the terms to software, but that's the way it goes.
No problem here. The supplied link goes to the business section.
Of course, I'm browsing without Javascript. Maybe that makes a difference. Perhaps they're those damn click-through ads, and you need Javascript to run them?