I'd guess rented Office suite is more useful
to Linux users. You only need it to convert
those pesky docs other people sent you into
some more standard format, at which point
you can use some other suite. With any luck
someone will figure out a scriptable way to
invoke Office as a filter and then your
occasional use of office would be minimal.
Even if it required switching to root, you
could possibly make it into a fairly secure
cron job (e.g. convert all.doc file collected
today into.bla, after you block all ports and
suspend all other processes).
I think you would betray people's trust by
logging _their_ internet usage. Thus it won't
be easy to find out when _your_ trust has been
broken. Besides, I assume you are worried about
legal liability. Thus if someone broke your
trust, and if you are liable under local law
and/or ordinances then changing policy may be
too late.
The numbers for web browsing you quote may
be real, as Linux is not ready for desktop
as most people will acknoledge. Pretty much
until Mozilla gets stable and polished
(way after 1.0 release), and some office suite
becomes the do-all ten-headed monster that
most people would be happy with, Linux will
not be leading on desktop. Of course it's
price will win converts even when such
choice of OS brings some discomfort to new user.
Most people do not care about free speech,
especially about software as a form of free
speech, but free as in free beer is a powerful
argument.
Lastly, out of curiosity: what was that study
you cited? Did the content of sites surveyed
have to do with technical stuff, pornography or
news? If not, the number of Linux users counted
would be further reduced.
Can you have Linux boot and work off of CD alone. I mean, no swap, no nothing, never alter any settings for any reason. Are there ISO images of such a beast?
Linux seems to be maturing to a point where Howtos are actually geared to the mainstream audience. It is nice to see basic Windows routines explained step by step.
I'd be cautious about buying computer equipment or software from Russia or former Soviet Union. It probably has embedded software to keep track of your HDD, and make your system available for back door attacks. Computers in FSU are considered to be of strategic importance and FSB has made many efforts to control the net and every aspect of computer business. Or maybe I'm just paranoid.
It is up to game designer to design levels that make aim bots and the like impractical. One way would be to overpopulate foggy areas so that shooting at an AI selected target would be an iffy proposition, as it would expose you to other beasts. Or design levels with "ghosts", which would make aim bots waste ammo on harmless images. I think that in this respect game design will always be designer's AI vs. cheaters' AI. If the well- funded industry cannot keep outdoing cheaters then that's too bad.
What is wrong with everything happening on same server, i.e. all rendering and game logic resides on the (trusted) server, and all you need is a display and network connection with high enough bandwidth. If we are talking about real time video streams over IP, then why not do games that way? Bandwidth is an issue but I think CPU time will not be so long as you can have a GPU per user, i.e. some massively parallel graphics card config for your server.
I think the world he is envisioning is one where cash is digital, i.e. you never turn it into real cash, just store it on your harddrive and buy stuff as you need it. To outside world this looks like barter trade. The problem of course is that this is not realistic model. Someone has to administer such a cash system, else I'll print as much money as I want and we got a whole new way to redistribute wealth. The administrator(s) has to be trusted, i.e. public, so then gov't can exert pressure on them to cease and desist and in any case they wouldn't be trusted anymore after dealing with gov't. Further, the admin of cash system has to be able to prevent counterfit ecash, so they must be able to find its source, so they can't be using Fling. This guy is confusing anarchy with libertarianism. Both are noble ideas but only the latter one is practical.
There is a saying: "if you want it done right, do it yourself". This was established way before computers, so it is a reflection of generic truth that your order and what you had in mind are different most of the time unless the order is simple enough not to be misunderstood. Thus, either digital assistants need to get way better than humans at understanding humans, or you'll still have to micromanage. Therefore, I think you item 2 is unrealistic and will result in computers that confuse average users by having a "will" of their own. Already many standard package update tools overwrite custom user programs with standard tree unless the user explicitly tells the computer not to touch that install. Either way the user does a lot of work themselves. I agree with item 3, and disagree with item 1. I believe that only human-complete AI can provide effective help to user. If you ever tried to buy a piece of, say, hardware that you forgot the name of, you know how "creative" people can get in describing their needs: "Uh, I need a thingie that consists of two parts, one is a standard bolt while the other looks like a bolt but has tap instead of thread - yeah that's right a sex bolt". In computer land it would sound like: "I want to have all this stuff to disappear and get all this stuff that used to be here but is now gone - yeah I want desktop 2". Once you raise user expectations it will not bring them satisfaction until the interface is human AI complete, and even then it may be a hard sell.
The quote from article you referenced says: "We could imagine, for example, a dialog in which the user makes a free-form request, the computer responds with a list of possible tasks that seem to match the request, and both engage in a dialog to focus on the request the user actually intended. " So they propose a souped up MS paperclip. Thanks but no thanks.
Uh, the size of these "microbots" is huge. Something that is a quarter of a millimiter in size will not navigate capillary blood or lymph paths. Also, AFAIU these bots still need direct electrical contacts, so they can't be remotely directed or controlled, so I doubt your cancer cure idea is close at hand.
The edited words don't just contain names but also other info, like which newspaper behaved in which way. It is unlikely that the Times editor himself would know which names and passages to edit out. It follows that higher up people with access to other classified info were involved. Thus it appears to be a deliberate leak, so I'd say blame the source of the leak, not just its publishers.
I do not suppose their actions will cause these people, their graves or their families any trouble. However, the mere fact of association with America will.
Ok, we are not musicians, we are physicists but we are probably even more sensitive to noise than any studio. We face this problem as well. The answer to your needs is the acoustic room. They are cheap ($20K-$60K) and they do a great job with sound isolation, so long as you do not install air conditioning in the room itself. If you want a taste of what an acoustic room can do, go for a hearing check to a decent hospital. They'll put you in an acoustic room and feed you sounds. Make sure the room you have installed has insulated floor as well as walls and ceiling. Hope this helps.
Reverse engineering a format tailor made for a specific application to a point where even upgrades to said application break format compatibility may be futile or a waste of resources. What is needed, IMHO, is an education campaign to use RTF for file exchange. If a few big corporations adopt a policy of only accepting RTF files for communications and only generating RTF files for communications, then it may start propagating in the corporate world. The only reason I think this is realistic is because there is clear financial insentive to do so for everyone except MS itself.
They are not a fraud. They really do have a claim to independence, however flimsy it may be. Still, they are only a bit more real than the Kingdom of Talossa whose official ethnic food is Taco Bell.
I do not see your sarcasm. While I do not download or distribute pirated info, software, songs or books, it is mostly because finding what I want takes too long. I value my time enough to go to a well ordered place and buy what I want. That having said, I do believe that information of any and all sorts should be free. Nicely presented information (CD with some paper intro, nicely bound books, software with manuals etc) has value, but pure information can be duplicated at virtually no cost hence it should have no cost attached to it. I accept having to pay for ease of finding info and for nice package but all other payments are ripoff. There may be a need to compensate content creators but not at the expense of the consumer.
But you can only patent something for one year after you pubically disclose it or begin sale of product. So anything from early nineties and before should do as prior art.
Plenty of people love to work on their boats, cars etc and have precision machining equipment at home. As for material choice, gold is expensive, whereas copper is not. Gold plating your piece may be a good idea to prevent oxidation.
If you are going to such lengths as lapping then why not just machine the plate and heatsink yourself as one piece? And while you are at it, why not make it out of copper which is better than aluminum at heat conduction (use annealed copper - it is soft enough to conform to the insides of your processor quite well)?
/. doesn't do line justification, so I have to edit it manually so it kindof looks formatted but I don't care enough to do a good job. So it's a combination of UI sucking air and me being lazy.
The system has some config structure. It should be able to answer "how do I do..." type of questions without tech support calls. Stop living in the days of man pages. You need natural language querying. Again, a good UI cannot be done without good AI.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd guess rented Office suite is more useful .doc file collected
.bla, after you block all ports and
to Linux users. You only need it to convert
those pesky docs other people sent you into
some more standard format, at which point
you can use some other suite. With any luck
someone will figure out a scriptable way to
invoke Office as a filter and then your
occasional use of office would be minimal.
Even if it required switching to root, you
could possibly make it into a fairly secure
cron job (e.g. convert all
today into
suspend all other processes).
I think you would betray people's trust by
logging _their_ internet usage. Thus it won't
be easy to find out when _your_ trust has been
broken. Besides, I assume you are worried about
legal liability. Thus if someone broke your
trust, and if you are liable under local law
and/or ordinances then changing policy may be
too late.
The numbers for web browsing you quote may
be real, as Linux is not ready for desktop
as most people will acknoledge. Pretty much
until Mozilla gets stable and polished
(way after 1.0 release), and some office suite
becomes the do-all ten-headed monster that
most people would be happy with, Linux will
not be leading on desktop. Of course it's
price will win converts even when such
choice of OS brings some discomfort to new user.
Most people do not care about free speech,
especially about software as a form of free
speech, but free as in free beer is a powerful
argument.
Lastly, out of curiosity: what was that study
you cited? Did the content of sites surveyed
have to do with technical stuff, pornography or
news? If not, the number of Linux users counted
would be further reduced.
Can you have Linux boot and work off of
CD alone. I mean, no swap, no nothing,
never alter any settings for any reason.
Are there ISO images of such a beast?
Linux seems to be maturing to a point where
Howtos are actually geared to the mainstream
audience. It is nice to see basic Windows
routines explained step by step.
I'd be cautious about buying computer
equipment or software from Russia or
former Soviet Union. It probably has
embedded software to keep track of your
HDD, and make your system available for
back door attacks. Computers in FSU are
considered to be of strategic importance
and FSB has made many efforts to control
the net and every aspect of computer business.
Or maybe I'm just paranoid.
It is up to game designer to design levels
that make aim bots and the like impractical.
One way would be to overpopulate foggy areas
so that shooting at an AI selected target
would be an iffy proposition, as it would
expose you to other beasts. Or design levels
with "ghosts", which would make aim bots waste
ammo on harmless images. I think that
in this respect game design will always be
designer's AI vs. cheaters' AI. If the well-
funded industry cannot keep outdoing cheaters
then that's too bad.
What is wrong with everything happening on same
server, i.e. all rendering and game logic
resides on the (trusted) server, and all you
need is a display and network connection with
high enough bandwidth. If we are talking about
real time video streams over IP, then why not
do games that way? Bandwidth is an issue but I
think CPU time will not be so long as you can have
a GPU per user, i.e. some massively parallel
graphics card config for your server.
I think the world he is envisioning
is one where cash is digital, i.e. you
never turn it into real cash, just
store it on your harddrive and buy stuff
as you need it. To outside world this looks
like barter trade.
The problem of course is that this is not
realistic model. Someone has to administer
such a cash system, else I'll print as much
money as I want and we got a whole new way
to redistribute wealth. The administrator(s)
has to be trusted, i.e. public, so then
gov't can exert pressure on them to cease and
desist and in any case they wouldn't be trusted
anymore after dealing with gov't.
Further, the admin of cash system has to be able
to prevent counterfit ecash, so they must be
able to find its source, so they can't be using
Fling.
This guy is confusing anarchy with libertarianism.
Both are noble ideas but only the latter one is
practical.
There is a saying: "if you want it done right,
do it yourself". This was established way before
computers, so it is a reflection of generic
truth that your order and what you had in mind
are different most of the time unless the
order is simple enough not to be misunderstood.
Thus, either digital assistants need to get way
better than humans at understanding humans, or
you'll still have to micromanage. Therefore, I
think you item 2 is unrealistic and will result
in computers that confuse average users by having
a "will" of their own. Already many standard
package update tools overwrite custom user
programs with standard tree unless the user
explicitly tells the computer not to touch
that install. Either way the user does a lot of
work themselves.
I agree with item 3, and disagree with item 1.
I believe that only human-complete AI can provide
effective help to user. If you ever tried to buy
a piece of, say, hardware that you forgot the
name of, you know how "creative" people can get
in describing their needs: "Uh, I need a thingie
that consists of two parts, one is a standard
bolt while the other looks like a bolt but has
tap instead of thread - yeah that's right a
sex bolt". In computer land it would sound like:
"I want to have all this stuff to disappear and
get all this stuff that used to be here but is
now gone - yeah I want desktop 2". Once you raise
user expectations it will not bring them
satisfaction until the interface is human AI
complete, and even then it may be a hard sell.
The quote from article you referenced says:
"We could imagine, for example, a dialog in which
the user makes a free-form request, the computer
responds with a list of possible tasks that seem
to match the request, and both engage in a dialog
to focus on the request the user actually
intended. "
So they propose a souped up MS paperclip. Thanks
but no thanks.
Uh, the size of these "microbots" is huge.
Something that is a quarter of a millimiter
in size will not navigate capillary blood
or lymph paths. Also, AFAIU these bots still
need direct electrical contacts, so they can't
be remotely directed or controlled, so I
doubt your cancer cure idea is close at hand.
The edited words don't just contain names
but also other info, like which newspaper
behaved in which way. It is unlikely that
the Times editor himself would know which
names and passages to edit out. It follows
that higher up people with access to other
classified info were involved. Thus it
appears to be a deliberate leak, so I'd say
blame the source of the leak, not just its
publishers.
I do not suppose their actions will cause
these people, their graves or their
families any trouble. However, the mere fact
of association with America will.
Ok, we are not musicians, we are physicists but
we are probably even more sensitive to noise
than any studio. We face this problem as well.
The answer to your needs is the acoustic room.
They are cheap ($20K-$60K) and they do a great
job with sound isolation, so long as you do not
install air conditioning in the room itself.
If you want a taste of what an acoustic room
can do, go for a hearing check to a decent
hospital. They'll put you in an acoustic room
and feed you sounds.
Make sure the room you have installed has
insulated floor as well as walls and ceiling.
Hope this helps.
Reverse engineering a format tailor made for
a specific application to a point where even
upgrades to said application break format
compatibility may be futile or a waste of
resources.
What is needed, IMHO, is an education campaign
to use RTF for file exchange. If a few big
corporations adopt a policy of only accepting
RTF files for communications and only generating
RTF files for communications, then it may start
propagating in the corporate world. The only
reason I think this is realistic is because there
is clear financial insentive to do so for everyone
except MS itself.
They are not a fraud. They really do have a
claim to independence, however flimsy it may be.
Still, they are only a bit more real than the
Kingdom of Talossa whose official ethnic food
is Taco Bell.
I do not see your sarcasm. While I do
not download or distribute pirated info,
software, songs or books, it is mostly
because finding what I want takes too long.
I value my time enough to go to a well
ordered place and buy what I want.
That having said, I do believe that information
of any and all sorts should be free. Nicely
presented information (CD with some paper intro,
nicely bound books, software with manuals etc)
has value, but pure information can be duplicated
at virtually no cost hence it should have no cost
attached to it. I accept having to pay for ease
of finding info and for nice package but all
other payments are ripoff. There may be a need to
compensate content creators but not at the
expense of the consumer.
You can't even play MP3's on this
thing. Who would need it?
But you can only patent something for
one year after you pubically disclose it
or begin sale of product. So anything
from early nineties and before should do as
prior art.
Plenty of people love to work on their
boats, cars etc and have precision
machining equipment at home. As for
material choice, gold is expensive,
whereas copper is not. Gold plating
your piece may be a good idea to
prevent oxidation.
If you are going to such lengths as lapping
then why not just machine the plate and
heatsink yourself as one piece? And while
you are at it, why not make it out of copper
which is better than aluminum at heat
conduction (use annealed copper - it is
soft enough to conform to the insides of your
processor quite well)?
Is there a good HOWTO on blocking ads?
/. doesn't do line justification, so I have
to edit it manually so it kindof looks formatted
but I don't care enough to do a good job. So
it's a combination of UI sucking air and
me being lazy.
The system has some config structure. It should
be able to answer "how do I do..." type of
questions without tech support calls. Stop
living in the days of man pages. You need
natural language querying. Again, a good UI
cannot be done without good AI.