Moving from Windows to Linux means trainning every single user...</I>
Just tell them that tech support for BSODs and similiar windows-related trouble have ceased. They can switch, or pay for support themselves. Easy.
Convince the boss? Show how you need less support people to keep linux machines going. Training the users is a one-time task, keeping servers and workstations up is an ongoing one. And email-viruses just don't happen, and so on.
And what about political pressure? Say the US government doesn't like it. It can pressure Sealand to enact controls by threatening to block US business access to the haven
I don't think the prince would bow to political pressure. Sure - the data business might crumble, but does he care? The center isn't *his* business, merely some guy who hires space.
Basically, almost no privately owned data protection centers could withstand a direct physical attack. So, why does it matter that Havenco couldn't?
All other data centers are located in ordinary countries, protected by the police and the armed forces.
With a population of 8 or so, what kind of army/police/other security can they have? Don't worry about someone destroying the structure. Worry about something as simple as burglars.
Plundering the offshore datacenter might be interesting just for the selling the hardware. Selling secrets too is even more interesting.
Or someone might want to tap their wires. They could install their equipment by bribery - or by force.
You're talking about taking a tangible thing. Money. A stack of bills. Even though the banks computer is only a representation, the actual thing is REAL. If it were possible to COPY that money instead of take it, one could make the case that it isn't stealing.
Oh, so you have no problem with copying? Lets see. I break into the bank computer. Then I *copy* the balance of the rich guys account to my own. So I become a billionaire just like him. I don't take from anybody's accounts, I increase the total amount of money in the bank computer. (And fix the banks accounting so this doesn't show up as a mismatch.)
That's okay with you? Not with me. It has the same end effect as counterfeit money - reclessly increasing the supply of money lowers its value for everybody. No sane government let people do that.
You are incorrect. It would be more akin to borrowing the BOSS shirt of a friend and making a copy of it in your basement. You've refused to pay Hugo Boss for the time he took to design the original. You've refused to pay a big department store for one of the originals.
Wrong. He refused to pay for the original design, but he surely didn't cheat on the store, the transportation or the tax.
I can simply pay Hugo Boss for the privilege of copying their shirt design, and then legally save the money for transport etc. A store or transporter has no right - you can indeed refuse their services.
Any artists out to make a living isn't necessarily going to care that they're really popular and "the most downloaded" if nobody is buying their music and they're not making any money.
An artist making lots of (possibly freely downloadable) songs sees that 5 of them are among the most downloaded. This way he knows what songs to perform on his next concert in order to draw the most paying concert-goers.
Few-button mice tends to force the user to use "double-clicks", which is just as confusing as more buttons. It is also hard for people with slow hands, and has the potential of screwing up if the mouse slides during the double-click.
I didn't say that you couldn't. However, if arbitrary FTL signals are possible, then it'd be possible to set up paradoxical situations, according to SR.
This don't have to be a problem. You can think up paradoxes, but they may resolve in ways you don't expect.
Consider this example, using an electron instead of photons: | 1-----------X------2 | / | / | / |/T | / |/ 3 The electron is emitted at 1. 2 & 3 deflect it so it cross its own path at X. (Bending magnet, mirror, anything goes) So far, no problem.
Then we put a "time machine" at T, its job is to "pass on" the electron some time before it arrives. The paradox idea should be obvious: The electron completes the roundtrip early, arrives at X just in time to knock *itself* coming from 1 out of the path. So the electron from 1 misses the magnet at 2 completely, and isn't transported back in time, the knockout don't happen, and so on.
Paradox, except it won't happen. The electron coming from 3 won't knockout the (same) electron coming from 1 in a collision. It will repel it from a distance, before it hits. This means it will hit the magnet 2 slightly off the planned path, and emerge from 3 some more off the path. The off-path electron from 3 will pass the (same) electron from 1 at some distance, disturbing it slightly.
It takes more than a time-machine to stump the universe. Nature can deal with it, and I believe the more complicated paradox scenarios involving communicating humans etc. will resolve in similiar ways. Although predicting that may be much harder.
On the same vein, the egyptians had the hierographic writings which have lasted over 3,000 years - any 'modern days' records going to last that long? Nope..
Easy enough if you invest the same manpower in writing. But do you <I>want</I> all of todays writing to last?
Thinking about adding an alarm clock and bundle of candles for the trip back:-)</I>
Next to the little plastic bags with sugar?
Re:We don't burn books, we delete them
on
Fahrenheit 451
·
· Score: 1
Does anyone know where I can find the recipe to manufacture weapons grade plutonium?
Physics books. There's no need to burn them, as the materials and processing is too expensive anyway.
<I>There has to be a line drawn on what information should be available.</I> I can think of no information so dangerous that this is the case. And if such information exists, even the censors shouldn't see it.
And thats breaking the encryption on dvds. Call it what you want, but its still illegal
Breaking dvd encryption and copying the content to my disk is *legal* where I live. I can make "backup copies" in any way or form I want. The redistribution of copies of copyrighted work is illegal of course.
Munitions include shells for heavy artillery and bombs, both of which you most definately are not allowed to own.
A quick glance at the constitution reveals no such restriction.... </I>
It really says people may bear *any* kind of arms? Or merely be armed? The latter doesn't stand in the way of regulation as long as some kind of weapon is legal. Knifes only, anyone?
We don't ban religious groups (see France and the Scientologists).
Depends on what you call a "religious group". Because they say they are? Many don't consider Scientologists a religious organization, merely a scheme to collect money.
What if the (illegal) mafia tried to call itself a religious organization?
Not so. This would be true if gaming was the *one* reason to use linux. It isn't. Linux users usually choose linux for reasons other than gaming, although they too may enjoy a game now and then. This is definitely possible with linux today.
Linux has some advantages over windows even when using games. Stability is one - you don't ever reboot because a buggy game crashed. You simply restart the game, and this happens lightning fast because most of it is still in disk cache.
Stability also means I can play cpu/screen intensive games while waiting for a 2-hour download to complete. The high network load will not slow down the game, and the cpu-intensive game won't slow down the download. Windows couldn't do this reliably years ago when I switched. I don't know about windows today, but you don't want to restart or delay a long download when paying per minute. And it is *so* irritating leaving the machine alone for a long while "just to be safe". That doesn't cut it once you're used to never ever worrying about what else the machine is doing.
And if communications isn't a problem, have you tried playing all sorts of games while waiting for a CD-burn to complete? Without worrying about crashes/delays ruining the CD?
(Yes, that's a good question: how does Linux handle DMA transfers from userland to PCI busmaster devices? Temporary buffers?)
No, why in the world would you want to use a temp buffer when the PCI bus-master can see the entre 32-bit memory range?
Drivers for PCI bus masters generally tell the PCI device to transfer to/from some physical address range. The userland app gives the driver a pointer to virtual memory. The driver convert this to a physical address by looking it up in the page tables - which is dead easy.
The driver may also have to cope with how a contigous range of virtual pages are broken up into scattered physical pages. This may, in the worst possible case, break IO requests into 4k chunks. It is usually not that bad though, and modern hardware have ways to get around it anyway.
Note that none of this gives linux any disadvantage whatsoever, as windows too uses the page tables. Well, unless you are running windows 3.0 in "standard mode" that is...
3D graphics is exceptional, since direct interaction with the hardware is required for acceptable speed. Both Win32 and the above X drivers provide just such a direct-rendering capability.
(essentially the X drivers let OpenGL functions act like system calls, rather than going through the X IPC mechanism like 2D drawing commands. On Windows *all* drawing is done this way) </I>
A self-contradiction. Using OpenGL system calls is not direct messing with hardware. It bypasses X for sure, so no networked display. But it still uses a system interface instead of accessing hardware.
This means OpenGL will work with any hardware as long as an OpenGL driver is provided for it. Using hardware directly would give you a game that works with one 3D-card only.
Games completely take over your system, when they run. Linux, being a true multitasking system, does not allow the game to have a completely free reign over system resources,
You can minimize the effects of this on a test by stopping all other programs. I.e. kill inetd, mail daemons and so on. True multitasking is not a problem when no other tasks run. This frees up some memory too.
..someone building a platform in international waters and running a bunch of high-speed i-net lines to it from several different countries and then offering free, anonymous access
Note that this don't guarantee free speech, your webpages are at the mercy of the owner of this installation instead of some government.
The problem is exactly the same - what if I want to publish something extremely nasty about the platform owner and/or his sponsors? Or publish "how to make a homing torpedo using junkyard parts."
They are probably not real idealists if they can raise money enough for such an operation.
Slashdot Mirror
Moving from Windows to Linux means trainning every single user ...</I>
Just tell them that tech support for BSODs and similiar windows-related trouble have ceased. They can switch, or pay for support themselves. Easy.
Convince the boss? Show how you need less support people to keep linux machines going. Training the users is a one-time task, keeping servers and workstations up is an ongoing one. And email-viruses just don't happen, and so on.
Nothing will perfectly import/export Word/Excel files.
So true, and this holds for Microsoft's own products as well. Version incompatibilities, different installations, and so on.
Fortunately, not all offices need to exchange word documents with others. These will be the first ms-free ones.
And what about political pressure? Say the US government doesn't like it. It can pressure Sealand to enact controls by threatening to block US business access to the haven
I don't think the prince would bow to political pressure. Sure - the data business might crumble, but does he care? The center isn't *his* business, merely some guy who hires space.
Basically, almost no privately owned data protection centers could withstand a direct physical attack. So, why does it matter that Havenco couldn't?
All other data centers are located in ordinary countries, protected by the police and the armed forces.
With a population of 8 or so, what kind of army/police/other security can they have? Don't worry about someone destroying the structure. Worry about something as simple as burglars.
Plundering the offshore datacenter might be interesting just for the selling the hardware. Selling secrets too is even more interesting.
Or someone might want to tap their wires. They could install their equipment by bribery - or by force.
You're talking about taking a tangible thing. Money. A stack of bills. Even though the banks computer is only a representation, the actual thing is REAL. If it were possible to COPY that money instead of take it, one could make the case that it isn't stealing.
Oh, so you have no problem with copying? Lets see. I break into the bank computer. Then I *copy* the balance of the rich guys account to my own. So I become a billionaire just like him. I don't take from anybody's accounts, I increase the total amount of money in the bank computer. (And fix the banks accounting so this doesn't show up as a mismatch.)
That's okay with you? Not with me. It has the same end effect as counterfeit money - reclessly increasing the supply of money lowers its value for everybody. No sane government let people do that.
You are incorrect. It would be more akin to borrowing the BOSS shirt of a friend and making a copy of it in your basement. You've refused to pay Hugo Boss for the time he took to design the original. You've refused to pay a big department store for one of the originals.
Wrong. He refused to pay for the original design, but he surely didn't cheat on the store, the transportation or the tax.
I can simply pay Hugo Boss for the privilege of copying their shirt design, and then legally save the money for transport etc. A store or transporter has no right - you can indeed refuse their services.
if it creates the same (once again within some small percentage) sonic "fingerprint."
Bleah. Add some seconds of noise before the real song then. Or first verse of some free song.
Any artists out to make a living isn't necessarily going to care that they're really popular and "the most downloaded" if nobody is buying their music and they're not making any money.
An artist making lots of (possibly freely downloadable) songs sees that 5 of them are among the most downloaded. This way he knows what songs to perform on his next concert in order to draw the most paying concert-goers.
Few-button mice tends to force the user to use "double-clicks", which is just as confusing as more buttons. It is also hard for people with slow hands, and has the potential of screwing up if the mouse slides during the double-click.
More buttons don't have these problem.
Trying this with a single photon instead of a pulse containing many could be interesting.
I didn't say that you couldn't. However, if arbitrary FTL signals are possible, then it'd be possible to set up paradoxical situations, according to SR.
/T
This don't have to be a problem. You can think up paradoxes, but they may resolve in ways you don't expect.
Consider this example, using an electron instead of photons:
|
1-----------X------2
| /
| /
| /
|
| /
|/
3
The electron is emitted at 1. 2 & 3 deflect it so it cross its own path at X. (Bending magnet, mirror, anything goes) So far, no problem.
Then we put a "time machine" at T, its job is to "pass on" the electron some time before it arrives. The paradox idea should be obvious: The electron completes the roundtrip early, arrives at X just in time to knock *itself* coming from 1 out of the path. So the electron from 1 misses the magnet at 2 completely, and isn't transported back in time, the knockout don't happen, and so on.
Paradox, except it won't happen. The electron coming from 3 won't knockout the (same) electron coming from 1 in a collision. It will repel it from a distance, before it hits. This means it will hit the magnet 2 slightly off the planned path, and emerge from 3 some more off the path. The off-path electron from 3 will pass the (same) electron from 1 at some distance, disturbing it slightly.
It takes more than a time-machine to stump the universe. Nature can deal with it, and I believe the more complicated paradox scenarios involving communicating humans etc. will resolve in similiar ways. Although predicting that may be much harder.
The problem they mentioned was the inability to process the signal received quick enough
No problem. Lets use a lightyear of cesium - plenty of time to process the signal.
On the same vein, the egyptians had the hierographic writings which have lasted over 3,000 years - any 'modern days' records going to last that long? Nope..
Easy enough if you invest the same manpower in writing. But do you <I>want</I> all of todays writing to last?
The advantage of fewer pins is killed by needing much higher frequency to maintain bandwidth.
Thinking about adding an alarm clock and bundle of candles for the trip back :-)</I>
Next to the little plastic bags with sugar?
Does anyone know where I can find the recipe to manufacture weapons grade plutonium?
Physics books. There's no need to burn them, as the materials and processing is too expensive anyway.
<I>There has to be a line drawn on what information should be available.</I>
I can think of no information so dangerous that this is the case. And if such information exists, even the censors shouldn't see it.
And thats breaking the encryption on dvds. Call it what you want, but its still illegal
Breaking dvd encryption and copying the content to my disk is *legal* where I live. I can make "backup copies" in any way or form I want. The redistribution of copies of copyrighted work is illegal of course.
There is NO SUCH THING as an unbreakable code in reality.
One-time pads are unbreakable. The messages an army (or drug ring, or whatever) need to operate are short - usually only a few lines per message.
A single cdrom can hold pads for over a million messages, and of course all your units have a different one.
Munitions include shells for heavy artillery and bombs, both of which you most definately are not allowed to own.
A quick glance at the constitution reveals no such restriction.... </I>
It really says people may bear *any* kind of arms? Or merely be armed? The latter doesn't stand in the way of regulation as long as some kind of weapon is legal. Knifes only, anyone?
We don't ban religious groups (see France and the Scientologists).
Depends on what you call a "religious group". Because they say they are? Many don't consider Scientologists a religious organization, merely a scheme to collect money.
What if the (illegal) mafia tried to call itself a religious organization?
into the ground, before this'll make a splash.
Not so. This would be true if gaming was the *one* reason to use linux. It isn't. Linux users usually choose linux for reasons other than gaming, although they too may enjoy a game now and then. This is definitely possible with linux today.
Linux has some advantages over windows even when using games. Stability is one - you don't ever reboot because a buggy game crashed. You simply restart the game, and this happens lightning fast because most of it is still in disk cache.
Stability also means I can play cpu/screen intensive games while waiting for a 2-hour download to complete. The high network load will not slow down the game, and the cpu-intensive game won't slow down the download. Windows couldn't do this reliably years ago when I switched. I don't know about windows today, but you don't want to restart or delay a long download when paying per minute. And it is *so* irritating leaving the machine alone for a long while "just to be safe". That doesn't cut it once you're used to never ever worrying about what else the machine is doing.
And if communications isn't a problem, have you tried playing all sorts of games while waiting for a CD-burn to complete? Without worrying about crashes/delays ruining the CD?
(Yes, that's a good question: how does Linux handle DMA transfers from userland to PCI busmaster devices? Temporary buffers?)
No, why in the world would you want to use a temp buffer when the PCI bus-master can see the entre 32-bit memory range?
Drivers for PCI bus masters generally tell the PCI device to transfer to/from some physical address range. The userland app gives the driver a pointer to virtual memory. The driver convert this to a physical address by looking it up in the page tables - which is dead easy.
The driver may also have to cope with how a contigous range of virtual pages are broken up into scattered physical pages. This may, in the worst possible case, break IO requests into 4k chunks. It is usually not that bad though, and modern hardware have ways to get around it anyway.
Note that none of this gives linux any disadvantage whatsoever, as windows too uses the page tables. Well, unless you are running windows 3.0 in "standard mode" that is...
3D graphics is exceptional, since direct interaction with the hardware is required for acceptable speed. Both Win32 and the above X drivers provide just such a direct-rendering capability.
(essentially the X drivers let OpenGL functions act like system calls, rather than going through the X IPC mechanism like 2D drawing commands. On Windows *all* drawing is done this way) </I>
A self-contradiction. Using OpenGL system calls is not direct messing with hardware. It bypasses X for sure, so no networked display. But it still uses a system interface instead of accessing hardware.
This means OpenGL will work with any hardware as long as an OpenGL driver is provided for it. Using hardware directly would give you a game that works with one 3D-card only.
Games completely take over your system, when they run. Linux, being a true multitasking system, does not allow the game to have a completely free reign over system resources,
You can minimize the effects of this on a test by stopping all other programs. I.e. kill inetd, mail daemons and so on. True multitasking is not a problem when no other tasks run. This frees up some memory too.
..someone building a platform in international waters and running a bunch of high-speed i-net lines to it from several different countries and then offering free, anonymous access
Note that this don't guarantee free speech, your webpages are at the mercy of the owner of this installation instead of some government.
The problem is exactly the same - what if I want to publish something extremely nasty about the platform owner and/or his sponsors? Or publish "how to make a homing torpedo using junkyard parts."
They are probably not real idealists if they can raise money enough for such an operation.