What it sounds like it's supposed to do is digest the compounds that the bacteria secrete to allow films of them to enclose a surface or an area. Like the surface of your teeth (to pick perhaps the most common example for people to be aware of). Once they can't stick together, they can't exchange signals that say, e.g., how numerous they are. Bacterial action frequently changes drastically when the population density increases. Also, if the film is dissolved, then they will have a harder time sticking to their target. A good thing from our point of view.
OTOH, if this isn't topically applied, it sounds like it could create a rather extreme form of diarrhea.
Sorry, but that's not honest. Apple may make old versions obsolete at a horrendous rate, but the hardware is (was?) very good. I've got one of the iMacs with a arm on a pedestal. Got it about OSX 10.1, possibly 10.0, and it's still working. Keyboard and all.
Unfortunately, they've changed their EULA to something that I can't accept, so no more Apples for me.
The place where I immediately saw this being applied was in multiprocessor systems. Short distance. Admittedly, 3 inches is still a bit short, but was that mentioned as a transmission distance limit? I don't think so.
This might make a dynamite system bus for a multi-computer system. It would probably reach between motherboards. It may not really be "Infinilink", but then neither was the bus that was given that name.
If it's mice you're controlling, then a cat can be a good choice. But if it's rats, a terrier is a better choice. Unfortunately, most of the ones that are good ratters are also noisy at strangers...and de-barking is cruel. If you get a terrier puppy (check the breed habits...or ancestry habits) then you can usually train it to be friendly to strangers...basically by getting it to accept large numbers of people while it's still young. But this means raising a puppy, and that *IS* a lot of work. Also it needs to live on the premises at night, but litter boxes for dogs are much less satisfactory.
In any case, you don't want the litter box in the server room. This means that the server room has to be open at night. Think carefully about this!
Dogs and cats work much better in a domestic or rural situation than in a normal office environment. See if you can instead seal means of ingress and egress that the rodents are using. (Someone suggested plugging holes with polyurethane. Well, some sort of plastic may be a very good idea. Also carefully check the Air passageways. Most of them are large enough for many kinds of rodent. If you can limit the i/o so that you only need to deal with rodents currently resident, then traps and poisons are probably a good choice...especially traps. Dead rats stink very noticeably.
If you can't block them off from entering from outside...then you have a MUCH more difficult problem.
P.S.: Another animal that's been used with success against rats and mice is snakes. King snakes would be a good choice here. They are relatively easy to care for. Their problem is that they don't like to stay in one area when you let them out to hunt. Accustom them over a prolonged period that they can find suitable food and water in one particular place before you let them hunt at night. That might work. I'm no expert...so talk to one before you decide.
OK...but for some purposes "security" in software is a bad idea. Sometimes the overhead would kill you. In such cases the appropriate step to take is to site the machine away from the network with only secure gates for access.
E.g., I'm running MSWind95 on one machine. I keep it unplugged from the internet. But I need it, as I depend (still, sigh!) on some applications that only run properly on MSWind95. So I OH DEFINITELY keep it unplugged from the internet.
Well, that example of an insecure system didn't prove the overhead, but it showed one way to secure it. For the overhead, thing of a job that runs as a lot of threads on several different processors, where synchronization is a problem already, and you already don't have enough CPU cycles. In that case you pick one machine as the dedicated I/O processor for external communication. Internally you don't implement security...you worry more about task synchronization. And how to avoid accidentally writing into another routines memory, while still sharing chunks of "blackboard" memory.
Security is implemented at predesigned "choke points", but in most of the system you're just worried about bug removal.
You'll note that I haven't made any mention here of either Open Source or closed source. Those terms are irrelevant. The reason that Open Source tends to be better is that it's generally designed to be good, with appearance being an afterthought, as opposed to closed source, which is designed to look good. Anything except the appearance of closed source is presumed to be non-observable. And non-observables are like a pig in a poke. Open Source is letting the cat out of the bag. Everything becomes an observable.
Given the way votes are counted, they ARE unelectable. Even Teddy Roosevelt couldn't break through that barrier.
Winner take all is the stupidest method of counting votes that could possibly be considered democratic. ALL of the other methods that I've heard of are superior. Personally I prefer Condorcet, but Instant-Runoff is easier to explain, and does have it's points.
(Sorry, I've just thought of a stupider one: Pure consensus, requiring unanimity for election. I've seen it in use in small groups. Even small groups are likely to go into paralysis with that system.)
Well, my wife runs a pretty small business, and recently several of her largest clients have told her that they expect to be forced to stop paying her soon, because of loosing their jobs. This is about half of her income (NOT after expenses). I'd say that's a bit serious. And a noticeable change for the worse.
Also, if you've been following recent posts at all you'll have noticed that the number of/. posters who have recently lost their jobs (or at least mention things indicating such) is way up.
So I'd have to say, yes. Things have definitely changed recently. And in the user group that I go to, people are being quite quiet about their jobs. This is also unusual, and bodes ill things to come. So yes, things have changed recently.
To claim otherwise requires that one be totally unobservant.
Well, they get the advantage that I don't by any. Does that help?
I truly despise DRM, and will not willingly pay for any product that includes it. If this means the only DVDs I buy are Linux distros, so be it. (And it has meant that. I just presume that DVDs come DRM encumbered, so I don't even look at them.)
One thing to remember is that this private school is allowed to select which students it will teach. And if the students don't behave appropriately, it can drop them.
Another thing to remember is that if the parents pay that much for a kid to attend a school, they are very motivated to see that the kid does well.
A third thing to remember is that most students going to a private school have parents who went to college. And value education.
Neither of the first two apply to most public schools, and the third criterion only applies to some of the children in the school.
Public schools are supposed to educate everyone. They can't refuse to teach you just because you are disruptive. And they may well not be able to expel you without proof of extremely disruptive behavior. I've heard of cases where a teacher was physically threatened by the parent for verbally disciplining the child.
Mind you, I wouldn't want to attend as a student even less than I would want to be a teacher. Students who do well are liable to physical attack. This is all second-hand, but I've heard of so many separate cases that I can't dismiss it. Perhaps your area is better. But then around here also used to be better.
Schools need to be able to expel disruptive students...but then what do you do with them? Field labor is all I can think of. And that means extensive busing. Or quartering them away from home. (Tempting, but itself subject to lots of vicious abuse.)
Infrastructure of various kinds is a good choice for stimulus spending. It's often a good investment in the future as well as being a way of getting buying power into the citizenry.
Note that I said "into the citizenry". This means that such stimulus should be strictly limited...probably in ways of which the WTO would not approve. But if we're going to be spending for stimulus, then that means that local sources are necessary for it to have the intended effect. That means that the government should "buy american". Including buying american labor. And american components. That means that even when one needs to pay a premium to get an american made part, that's still what the government should get. (Of course, that means that you need LOTS of quality control inspectors to ensure that you aren't being sold garbage at inflated prices.)
All parts of what I've mentioned count as parts of a "stimulus package" that would benefit the country. This is true even if what is built is military equipment, but railroads are obviously more beneficial. And extremely low pollution cars. And renewable energy plants. Etc.
It's not at all clear that giving money in the form of tax cuts for the wealthy and powerful benefits anyone at all except the very few most wealthy and most powerful. For the mass of individuals it merely ensures that their money is worth less. It benefits the normal person only to the extent that the increased money available is spent on locally produced goods. (Where local and benefit have about the same radius.) And if people don't have as much money, then they won't spend as much...without going bankrupt.
Which specific business functionality do you have in mind? I admit there are some. (Tax software comes to mind.) But if you aren't specific I can't be certain that you are being stupid, and must merely presume that.
There are reasons to choose MSWind. Some are even valid. I have a MSWind95 machine that I keep isolated from the net. But there aren't very many. And the ones that I most commonly hear about are just people being stupid and prejudiced.
Found one in Oakland/Berkeley, CA area. Costs around the same as DSL, claims to be faster, symmetric, and with static IPs.
Didn't check any further. (I live in a valley, but their coverage map said they covered this area. I bet they need an on-site check to determine, though. Whether they cover or not depends on where their transmitter is. [Even cell phone coverage is spotty.])
Anyone who knows about this and leaves installed any Google webapp is basically asking for it.
Sorry if you find those apps useful. They are also inherently treacherous. They inherently give power over your data and your computer to a third party. You can trust them only to the extent that you trust that third party. I suppose you could run them from a separate unprivileged account and not put anything sensitive through them...but once you're doing that, then using them is so much hassle that you might as well not bother.
If I start being too bothered I'll take steps. So far I've just declined to install Flash, but I could install some of the other options. Adblock, noscript, etc.
So far I've only encountered a very few intrusive ads, and I've declined to revisit such sites. But other steps are possible.
I'm not certain that I'm willing to accept that his motives were what he proclaims them as being. It's still possible that his actions might have the effect he claims to be trying to achieve.
Maybe.
To me it seems equally likely to scare people away. But they'll remember that Bill Gates claims to oppose malaria. Actually they'll remember that he does, whether it's true or not.
I hope you are aware that it doesn't make you look particularly intelligent.
Personally I despise Mr. Gates, and am inherently suspicious of all his actions and decisions, but to me this looks like an image-building stunt. And also as if it might have some redeeming consciousness-raising value. That's much higher that I value almost anything I've ever previously heard of him as doing. (Sorry, faint praise is all I can muster.)
Yeah. It looks like a stupid stunt, and arguably illegal. It's still not as bad as most things I heard of him doing.
P.S.: Lyme disease is spread by a kind of tick. (A very small black one.) And most ticks, even of the right species, don't carry it. If you have deer in your area, though, you probably need to worry about it. Antibiotics are a cure if you catch it in time, and the symptoms are blatant. So if you get a tick bite, watch for them. Better yet, have a doctor or medical tech remove the tick. They'll send it in to a lab to be tested.
I don't think he ever had those "good intentions". I have only his word for it, and he's a notorious liar. To me that sounds like something his PR department hoked up. It's essentially meaningless in any part of it that you can check.
You might want to look up "The year without a summer". Practically nobody in the US knew why, but a volcano in the Pacific wiped out their crops. (It did worse closer, but I live in the US.)
Volcanos ARE ecological disasters. Sometimes worse than you can imagine. Look up the last time the Yellowstone volcano exploded. It devastated North America from ocean to ocean. Of course, that was a long time ago, and no humans were alive. But it's started looking a bit frisky recently...and experts are uncertain as to just what that portends. Some have gone so far as to say...(approx.)"Well, it's been long enough that it will probably go off any millennium now. And those tremors looks suspicious." A friend estimates that if it does go off I'm in more danger from the tsunami that it will set off than from any more direct effects. I don't know whether he's correct or not. In that case, however, Europe and Asia can expect a pair or three years without a summer, and the tsunami will still be severe in Australia and Africa. But we won't have to worry about global warming for a very long time.
I feel that what he wants would be more nearly served by the BSD, LGPL, or MIT licenses.
Public Domain isn't what anyone except an anonymous donor wants. If one is talking about an exchange protocol, that's one of the typical uses of the BSD license.
P.S.: If you're at all serious, trademark the name. I know that you probably can't afford to mount the required defensive lawsuits, but it keeps someone else from trademarking it against you.
N.B.: I Am Not A Lawyer. Slashdot is a good place to review your options, but it's not a legal reference. And neither am I.
To an extent I agree with you. The problem is the tremendous range of things that get called porn...all the way down to a woman nursing her child.
Porn, apparently, is anything that bothers someone somewhere that has any connection however remote to sex.
I'd be much more in favor of saying that children shouldn't be exposed to violence. That wouldn't work either, but it would make as much sense.
FWIW, banning the road-runner cartoons for excessive violence is just stupid. STUPID!! Some people seem to think that censorship is the answer to everything. They ban cartoons, but don't stop wars. Which is more violent?
Slashdot Mirror
What it sounds like it's supposed to do is digest the compounds that the bacteria secrete to allow films of them to enclose a surface or an area. Like the surface of your teeth (to pick perhaps the most common example for people to be aware of). Once they can't stick together, they can't exchange signals that say, e.g., how numerous they are. Bacterial action frequently changes drastically when the population density increases. Also, if the film is dissolved, then they will have a harder time sticking to their target. A good thing from our point of view.
OTOH, if this isn't topically applied, it sounds like it could create a rather extreme form of diarrhea.
Sorry, but that's not honest. Apple may make old versions obsolete at a horrendous rate, but the hardware is (was?) very good. I've got one of the iMacs with a arm on a pedestal. Got it about OSX 10.1, possibly 10.0, and it's still working. Keyboard and all.
Unfortunately, they've changed their EULA to something that I can't accept, so no more Apples for me.
The place where I immediately saw this being applied was in multiprocessor systems. Short distance. Admittedly, 3 inches is still a bit short, but was that mentioned as a transmission distance limit? I don't think so.
This might make a dynamite system bus for a multi-computer system. It would probably reach between motherboards. It may not really be "Infinilink", but then neither was the bus that was given that name.
Because you haven't been looking?
If it's mice you're controlling, then a cat can be a good choice. But if it's rats, a terrier is a better choice. Unfortunately, most of the ones that are good ratters are also noisy at strangers...and de-barking is cruel. If you get a terrier puppy (check the breed habits...or ancestry habits) then you can usually train it to be friendly to strangers...basically by getting it to accept large numbers of people while it's still young. But this means raising a puppy, and that *IS* a lot of work. Also it needs to live on the premises at night, but litter boxes for dogs are much less satisfactory.
In any case, you don't want the litter box in the server room. This means that the server room has to be open at night. Think carefully about this!
Dogs and cats work much better in a domestic or rural situation than in a normal office environment. See if you can instead seal means of ingress and egress that the rodents are using. (Someone suggested plugging holes with polyurethane. Well, some sort of plastic may be a very good idea. Also carefully check the Air passageways. Most of them are large enough for many kinds of rodent. If you can limit the i/o so that you only need to deal with rodents currently resident, then traps and poisons are probably a good choice...especially traps. Dead rats stink very noticeably.
If you can't block them off from entering from outside...then you have a MUCH more difficult problem.
P.S.: Another animal that's been used with success against rats and mice is snakes. King snakes would be a good choice here. They are relatively easy to care for. Their problem is that they don't like to stay in one area when you let them out to hunt. Accustom them over a prolonged period that they can find suitable food and water in one particular place before you let them hunt at night. That might work. I'm no expert...so talk to one before you decide.
OK...but for some purposes "security" in software is a bad idea. Sometimes the overhead would kill you. In such cases the appropriate step to take is to site the machine away from the network with only secure gates for access.
E.g., I'm running MSWind95 on one machine. I keep it unplugged from the internet. But I need it, as I depend (still, sigh!) on some applications that only run properly on MSWind95. So I OH DEFINITELY keep it unplugged from the internet.
Well, that example of an insecure system didn't prove the overhead, but it showed one way to secure it. For the overhead, thing of a job that runs as a lot of threads on several different processors, where synchronization is a problem already, and you already don't have enough CPU cycles. In that case you pick one machine as the dedicated I/O processor for external communication. Internally you don't implement security...you worry more about task synchronization. And how to avoid accidentally writing into another routines memory, while still sharing chunks of "blackboard" memory.
Security is implemented at predesigned "choke points", but in most of the system you're just worried about bug removal.
You'll note that I haven't made any mention here of either Open Source or closed source. Those terms are irrelevant. The reason that Open Source tends to be better is that it's generally designed to be good, with appearance being an afterthought, as opposed to closed source, which is designed to look good. Anything except the appearance of closed source is presumed to be non-observable. And non-observables are like a pig in a poke. Open Source is letting the cat out of the bag. Everything becomes an observable.
Given the way votes are counted, they ARE unelectable. Even Teddy Roosevelt couldn't break through that barrier.
Winner take all is the stupidest method of counting votes that could possibly be considered democratic. ALL of the other methods that I've heard of are superior. Personally I prefer Condorcet, but Instant-Runoff is easier to explain, and does have it's points.
(Sorry, I've just thought of a stupider one: Pure consensus, requiring unanimity for election. I've seen it in use in small groups. Even small groups are likely to go into paralysis with that system.)
Well, my wife runs a pretty small business, and recently several of her largest clients have told her that they expect to be forced to stop paying her soon, because of loosing their jobs. This is about half of her income (NOT after expenses). I'd say that's a bit serious. And a noticeable change for the worse.
Also, if you've been following recent posts at all you'll have noticed that the number of /. posters who have recently lost their jobs (or at least mention things indicating such) is way up.
So I'd have to say, yes. Things have definitely changed recently. And in the user group that I go to, people are being quite quiet about their jobs. This is also unusual, and bodes ill things to come. So yes, things have changed recently.
To claim otherwise requires that one be totally unobservant.
Well, they get the advantage that I don't by any. Does that help?
I truly despise DRM, and will not willingly pay for any product that includes it. If this means the only DVDs I buy are Linux distros, so be it. (And it has meant that. I just presume that DVDs come DRM encumbered, so I don't even look at them.)
One thing to remember is that this private school is allowed to select which students it will teach. And if the students don't behave appropriately, it can drop them.
Another thing to remember is that if the parents pay that much for a kid to attend a school, they are very motivated to see that the kid does well.
A third thing to remember is that most students going to a private school have parents who went to college. And value education.
Neither of the first two apply to most public schools, and the third criterion only applies to some of the children in the school.
Public schools are supposed to educate everyone. They can't refuse to teach you just because you are disruptive. And they may well not be able to expel you without proof of extremely disruptive behavior. I've heard of cases where a teacher was physically threatened by the parent for verbally disciplining the child.
Mind you, I wouldn't want to attend as a student even less than I would want to be a teacher. Students who do well are liable to physical attack. This is all second-hand, but I've heard of so many separate cases that I can't dismiss it. Perhaps your area is better. But then around here also used to be better.
Schools need to be able to expel disruptive students...but then what do you do with them? Field labor is all I can think of. And that means extensive busing. Or quartering them away from home. (Tempting, but itself subject to lots of vicious abuse.)
Infrastructure of various kinds is a good choice for stimulus spending. It's often a good investment in the future as well as being a way of getting buying power into the citizenry.
Note that I said "into the citizenry". This means that such stimulus should be strictly limited...probably in ways of which the WTO would not approve. But if we're going to be spending for stimulus, then that means that local sources are necessary for it to have the intended effect. That means that the government should "buy american". Including buying american labor. And american components. That means that even when one needs to pay a premium to get an american made part, that's still what the government should get. (Of course, that means that you need LOTS of quality control inspectors to ensure that you aren't being sold garbage at inflated prices.)
All parts of what I've mentioned count as parts of a "stimulus package" that would benefit the country. This is true even if what is built is military equipment, but railroads are obviously more beneficial. And extremely low pollution cars. And renewable energy plants. Etc.
It's not at all clear that giving money in the form of tax cuts for the wealthy and powerful benefits anyone at all except the very few most wealthy and most powerful. For the mass of individuals it merely ensures that their money is worth less. It benefits the normal person only to the extent that the increased money available is spent on locally produced goods. (Where local and benefit have about the same radius.) And if people don't have as much money, then they won't spend as much...without going bankrupt.
Which specific business functionality do you have in mind? I admit there are some. (Tax software comes to mind.) But if you aren't specific I can't be certain that you are being stupid, and must merely presume that.
There are reasons to choose MSWind. Some are even valid. I have a MSWind95 machine that I keep isolated from the net. But there aren't very many. And the ones that I most commonly hear about are just people being stupid and prejudiced.
That requires buying new hardware. Not in the budget. Much easier to justify an expensive consultant.
Besides, they may have some custom software that doesn't run under OSX. (Which excuse also works against Linux, BSD, etc.)
If they can't take away your right to use the name you've chosen and invested in, then it's a benefit that not trademarking doesn't supply.
Found one in Oakland/Berkeley, CA area. Costs around the same as DSL, claims to be faster, symmetric, and with static IPs.
Didn't check any further. (I live in a valley, but their coverage map said they covered this area. I bet they need an on-site check to determine, though. Whether they cover or not depends on where their transmitter is. [Even cell phone coverage is spotty.])
Anyone who knows about this and leaves installed any Google webapp is basically asking for it.
Sorry if you find those apps useful. They are also inherently treacherous. They inherently give power over your data and your computer to a third party. You can trust them only to the extent that you trust that third party. I suppose you could run them from a separate unprivileged account and not put anything sensitive through them...but once you're doing that, then using them is so much hassle that you might as well not bother.
If I start being too bothered I'll take steps. So far I've just declined to install Flash, but I could install some of the other options. Adblock, noscript, etc.
So far I've only encountered a very few intrusive ads, and I've declined to revisit such sites. But other steps are possible.
I'm not certain that I'm willing to accept that his motives were what he proclaims them as being. It's still possible that his actions might have the effect he claims to be trying to achieve.
Maybe.
To me it seems equally likely to scare people away. But they'll remember that Bill Gates claims to oppose malaria. Actually they'll remember that he does, whether it's true or not.
OK, that's what you want to say.
I hope you are aware that it doesn't make you look particularly intelligent.
Personally I despise Mr. Gates, and am inherently suspicious of all his actions and decisions, but to me this looks like an image-building stunt. And also as if it might have some redeeming consciousness-raising value. That's much higher that I value almost anything I've ever previously heard of him as doing. (Sorry, faint praise is all I can muster.)
Yeah. It looks like a stupid stunt, and arguably illegal. It's still not as bad as most things I heard of him doing.
P.S.: Lyme disease is spread by a kind of tick. (A very small black one.) And most ticks, even of the right species, don't carry it. If you have deer in your area, though, you probably need to worry about it. Antibiotics are a cure if you catch it in time, and the symptoms are blatant. So if you get a tick bite, watch for them. Better yet, have a doctor or medical tech remove the tick. They'll send it in to a lab to be tested.
I don't think he ever had those "good intentions". I have only his word for it, and he's a notorious liar. To me that sounds like something his PR department hoked up. It's essentially meaningless in any part of it that you can check.
You might want to look up "The year without a summer". Practically nobody in the US knew why, but a volcano in the Pacific wiped out their crops. (It did worse closer, but I live in the US.)
Volcanos ARE ecological disasters. Sometimes worse than you can imagine. Look up the last time the Yellowstone volcano exploded. It devastated North America from ocean to ocean. Of course, that was a long time ago, and no humans were alive. But it's started looking a bit frisky recently...and experts are uncertain as to just what that portends. Some have gone so far as to say...(approx.)"Well, it's been long enough that it will probably go off any millennium now. And those tremors looks suspicious." A friend estimates that if it does go off I'm in more danger from the tsunami that it will set off than from any more direct effects. I don't know whether he's correct or not. In that case, however, Europe and Asia can expect a pair or three years without a summer, and the tsunami will still be severe in Australia and Africa. But we won't have to worry about global warming for a very long time.
I thought that even though you lost to right to sue someone over the use of it, you still couldn't reasonably be sued for using it. OTOH IANAL.
I feel that what he wants would be more nearly served by the BSD, LGPL, or MIT licenses.
Public Domain isn't what anyone except an anonymous donor wants. If one is talking about an exchange protocol, that's one of the typical uses of the BSD license.
P.S.: If you're at all serious, trademark the name. I know that you probably can't afford to mount the required defensive lawsuits, but it keeps someone else from trademarking it against you.
N.B.: I Am Not A Lawyer. Slashdot is a good place to review your options, but it's not a legal reference. And neither am I.
To an extent I agree with you. The problem is the tremendous range of things that get called porn...all the way down to a woman nursing her child.
Porn, apparently, is anything that bothers someone somewhere that has any connection however remote to sex.
I'd be much more in favor of saying that children shouldn't be exposed to violence. That wouldn't work either, but it would make as much sense.
FWIW, banning the road-runner cartoons for excessive violence is just stupid. STUPID!! Some people seem to think that censorship is the answer to everything. They ban cartoons, but don't stop wars. Which is more violent?
Never lived on a farm, did you. Yet through most of history most families did. And also lived in single room huts.
Exposure to sex isn't harmful to children. I have no idea why some people think it is.