Hello. You seem to have missed the point. You're still looking at people's skin color and the shape of their face. Stop it, you're embarassing yourself.
If there are any people in this world who aren't contributing to Free software due to the dearth of developers of the same race contributing to Free software, then they are afflicted with the same problem as you, that is, the inability to ignore race.
There are two reasons why race is still an issue. 1) There are still some overt racists, and 2) there are people like you who are covertly racist. We're all just people, dude. Get the fuck over it.
See, the problem with making a statement like that is that now we all know that Race makes a big difference to you. Those of us who have actually reached a higher plane of existence and learned to ignore peoples' race wouldn't even notice that there were Asians and Indians, let alone that there weren't any Africans
Microsoft's top-down, rigid control model is completely at odds with the way things are done with open source software. Furthermore, Microsoft is a business, and as such, its main goal is profit. Microsoft has been extremely profitable with its current business model, and it is quite clear that most open source-centric business models have not experienced that level of profit. It would therefore be a grave fiduciary misstep on Microsoft's part to deviate from its current business model.
A friend of mine does a lot of home recording. He records using a stereo microphone plugged into a minidisc player/recorder. Later, he plays the disc back into his computer and captures it to wav format, which he then mucks with using various tools (audigy comes to mind), and finally convert it to ogg and mp3. You can listen to some of it here. His stuff doesn't go through much production after it's recorded so a lot of it is very raw sounding, but if I read your question correctly, you've already got that part figured out and you're just looking for a way to get the sound waves into the computer. This works pretty well.
I've met -so many- linux zealots who can't back their claims of superiority with one fact, yet, they hate windows.. for no reason except the stereotypical "It crashes all the time!" and "Microsoft is a Facist Monopoly bent on world domination!". I forgot who said it, but i like him or her: "Open Source; Closed Minds".
'Tis unfortunate but true. I think a lot of people have latched onto the meme that Linux is a renegade upstart come to topple giants and have formed meager justifications that reflect that basis. These people don't think, they don't lead, and most of them don't write code. They're followers, and many followed Gates before they followed Linus.
Linux is a tool, licensed in a manner very different from similar tools... nothing more, nothing less. Like any tool it has strengths and weaknesses.
I have my reasons for choosing Linux and that's good enough for me. I used to use Windows. Here's why I switched to Linux:
The Windows design philosophy of ease-of-use presumes that the user fears complexity, can't understand complexity, and will run from complexity. The overriding factor in every Microsoft design decision is that the details must remain hidden, and often there is no way to discover them, even when it becomes necessary to do so in order to solve a problem. Contrast Linux: The Linux design philosophy of perform-hard-and-get-the-job-done presumes that the user wants to accomplish something, and the user will determine for him-/herself whether dealing with the complexity is more or less trouble than the end goal is worth.
The Microsoft business philosophy places Microsoft's profit ahead of all other considerations. This results in many bugs going unfixed when Microsoft decides that fixing them is more expensive than than the dent in customer satisfaction caused by buggy products. It also results in the licensing terms that dictate how and for what purposes the user may use a product. Contrast Free Software. The Free Software business philosophy does not exist in a collective form. It is each user deciding unilaterally what to do and how to do it. Many of them share their results. Some do not.
The Corporate production philosophy presumes that developers are few. This results in a mindset that solutions to problems are handed down from the developers to the users, and that the developers can't be bothered to cater to individual users, therefore the users may only get what they're given. Contrast Collectivism. The Collectivist production philosophy presumes that there are many developers. From each according to his ability, and to each according to his need. And it works because there is plenty to go around.
I have a set of tasks that I would like to perform using computers and I have chosen Linux over Windows because Linux is a better tool for my tasks. That and I like the philosophy.
If somebody else wants to use Linux simply because it's grassroots or because it's free($) then I say to each his own. Maybe along the way they'll discover that they're smart people who can solve their own problems, and that Microsoft was really holding them back. Who knows?
Likewise, if somebody wants to use Windows, and has reasons for doing so, then again I say to each his own.
Screaming 14 year olds, as is said, having pissing contests over l33tness
This is typical of most 14 year olds. Some 14 year olds happen to use Linux. They'll each grow up and eventually stop pissing in their own time, but the fact that a group of people with these characteristics exists is simply a feature of our world... or maybe it's a bug;-)
its better than sitting at work staring at the birds frying in the satellite transmitters on a slow day!
I really don't know why I spent so much time responding to an obvious troll, but it seems the moderators don't agree with me.
Because you want so badly for them to agree with you. Guess what. They're gone now. This article is dead and the moderators have moved on to today's killings.
Modulus ought to have similar running time to division. It's basically the same operation except for the last part where modulus returns the remainder and division returns the quotient. You could certainly implement modulus and division so that they're O(n), but I would be very surprised and a little pissed if there wasn't something better.
You know, I have yet to see Windows XP other than in its packing on a shelf at a store. Or in ads of various stripes. It kind of reminds me of when Windows 98 came out and I didn't see it actually running until about six months later. When I finally did, it wasn't impressive in the least. Not that it needs to be impressive, it is just an operating system after all, but for all those people who were running Windows 95, I couldn't see anything in Windows 98 worth the price of upgrading. I expect to have approximately the same experience when I finally see a running XP system.
Where is the `incorrect' moderation option? Or `clueless poster' option?
People find this very hard to believe, but factorization is easy. The problem is that it can take a long time when the number your factoring is sufficiently large.
Think about the brute force factorization algorithm. Write it down, in fact. And now analyze it. You'll find that given a positive integer n to factor, the algorithm runs in O(n) time.
The reason cryptosystems based on factorization are thought to be safe is because we can choose arbitrarily large values of n and we presume that there is no more efficient way to factor integers. Now, if someone were to find a way to factor integers faster than O(n), we could still keep increasing n but that alone might not be sufficient. In any case, factorization is not an NP problem.
Although in some twisted fashion you can see it as being linear regarding the number to be factored
How is that so twisted? I think declaring a number's "size" to be equal to the number of digits needed to represent it is twisted. Number base and number of digits is purely cosmetic. Suppose I've got 32 bits of data that represent a number which is the composite of two primes. What do I know about those two primes before I do any calculations at all? They're both less than the number in my 32 bits. So the fact that it fits in 32 bits is pretty irrelevant to the algorithm. It's the number itself that matters.
Remember that speed is normally expressed in terms of the size of the input. It only takes log n bits to represent n.
Obviously when we're talking about computers, we can assume certain things, like that binary numbers will be used, but factorization is mathematics, not computers. You have to remember that in mathematics, you can slide the number base around and represent a given number using arbitrarily few digits. How do you write 1592 in base 1592? It's written like this: 10. So measuring the "size" of the number you're trying to factor by counting its digits is completely arbitrary. But since the integers are ordinal, we don't have to play this stupid "How should we measure this?" game. Integers measure themselves.
Remember, it's easy to factor a number. It can take an aweful long time, though, if your number is big.
Here's the brute force method for factorization that we all know and love:
Pick a positive integer, n. That's your input. Now, for each positive integer i less than n, find n % i. If that's 0, then i is a factor of n. That's a loop of n iterations which guarantees (hence it's an algorithm) that you'll find all the factors of n. And it's O(n).
Actually you only need to check up to the square root of n if you divide and test to see whether the result is an integer, because in that case you're finding factors two at a time and all the factors greater than the square root will be found by the time you get to the square root. Whether or not it's actually faster depends on implementation. Modulus and testing for 0 may or may not be more than half as fast as dividing and testing for an integer.
Crypto algorithms are strong for other reasons. Factoring primes is not a difficult problem... the fastest known solution is already O(n), the reason it's time consuming is that you can choose arbitrarily large values of n, in which case, you need to do better than O(n) in order to effectively break it. One time pads are another thing altogether. There is no algorithm of any order that can break a proper OTP (note that an improper OTP, i.e. one who's pad is not truly random or who pad is reused could be cracked). Other algorithms are based on other principles, but in any case, most are based on mathematically difficult or impossible problems, not computationally difficult ones.
The expense and trouble of tracking the owner down would probably cancel any monetary damage I might sue for.
I agree. The effort and expense required for one person to prove that a spam came from a particular source and violated a particular law is probably enough to cancel the benefit of winning the case. However, the spam likely went to thousands of people within the jurisdiction of that particular law, and the source and violation need only be proven once. If a dozen recipients sued together and were each awarded some payback by the court, then the cost of the case is pitted against twelve times anyone's individual award. The problem is organizing the recipients into a group.
IANAL... but this looks very similar to the "where do I owe taxes" question. Basically, with online purchases, you owe sales tax in the state where your ass is. I would expect the ass doctrine to apply to spam law as well.
I was thinking more in terms of isolationist mentality, actually, but you are correct insofar as the fact that the U.S. is the only one of those four nations which has imposed it's laws on a non-resident foreign citizen.
The U.S. legislature is composed entirely of Americans. It is well known that a rather high percentage of Americans ignore the fact that there is a world outside the United States (except when it comes crashing into us). Hence, one may conclude by admittedly oversimplified logic that a high percentage of legislators also suffer from this sort of ignorance, and furthermore, that when the world on the other side of the border comes across, that they will want to push it out.
Back in August I decided to give Debian a try. I downloaded the apt and dpkg SRPMs from Connectiva and installed them on my Red Hat 7.0 system. It took a bit of shoe horning to get them in, but I made it happen and they worked.
Then I went into the/etc/apt directory and pointed everything at the Debian archives instead of Connectiva. At first I tried to just aim it at ftp.redhat.com and update my 7.0 install, but apt and the Red Hat archive didn't like each other. Anyway, I ran apt-get update and got the Debian lists, then was able (with a lot of manual this-and-that that I really should have documented) to apt-get dist-upgrade into Debian stable without rebooting.
Since I was dialing up at the time, it took a while, like a week or so, just to download it all. Once I got everything installed, I let it run for a while for shits and giggles. For a period of almost a month, I had a couple of virtual consoles logged in, a couple displaying Debian's/etc/issue and a couple displaying Red Hat's/etc/issue. Then I decided to do the kernel, too, and rebooted.
I'm still finding a bit of Red Hat cruft now and then. Oh well.
You're changing the "1 month", "2 month", "3 month", "1 year", etc thing, right? That changes the start date. The end date is always the current date.
By selecting 3 months, you're looking at a comparison since Sept 8. That's pretty close to the day the planes hit, which we could reasonably call a low point for most stocks. It was certainly a low for RHAT.
That model isn't viable in the long term. Whether or not it is a good model or not is also debatable, but let's just stick to viability...
First of all, the model obviously discourages trolling and other "down-mod" behavior. A few people might be willing to go pay-per-troll, but most will just vacate the premesis in favor of some other weblog. Therefore income from trolls will tend toward epsilon.
Epsilon won't be enough to pay for the upward moderations on genuinely deserving comments. There are plenty of them as it is.
So, in the long run, the pay/earn-per-mod scenario becomes a money pit for slashdot. It simply isn't viable.
Ironically, many of them are the same people who replace their car every three to five years, get the oil changed every 3000 miles, gas up every few hundred miles, pay a considerable sum of money monthly "in case shit," etc. How much effort is it to run a program (up2date) once every week or two and just let it do what it does? I would venture that it's considerably less effort than these same people put into their other complex machinery.
Slashdot Mirror
Hello. You seem to have missed the point. You're still looking at people's skin color and the shape of their face. Stop it, you're embarassing yourself.
If there are any people in this world who aren't contributing to Free software due to the dearth of developers of the same race contributing to Free software, then they are afflicted with the same problem as you, that is, the inability to ignore race.
There are two reasons why race is still an issue. 1) There are still some overt racists, and 2) there are people like you who are covertly racist. We're all just people, dude. Get the fuck over it.
See, the problem with making a statement like that is that now we all know that Race makes a big difference to you. Those of us who have actually reached a higher plane of existence and learned to ignore peoples' race wouldn't even notice that there were Asians and Indians, let alone that there weren't any Africans
Microsoft's top-down, rigid control model is completely at odds with the way things are done with open source software. Furthermore, Microsoft is a business, and as such, its main goal is profit. Microsoft has been extremely profitable with its current business model, and it is quite clear that most open source-centric business models have not experienced that level of profit. It would therefore be a grave fiduciary misstep on Microsoft's part to deviate from its current business model.
A friend of mine does a lot of home recording. He records using a stereo microphone plugged into a minidisc player/recorder. Later, he plays the disc back into his computer and captures it to wav format, which he then mucks with using various tools (audigy comes to mind), and finally convert it to ogg and mp3. You can listen to some of it here. His stuff doesn't go through much production after it's recorded so a lot of it is very raw sounding, but if I read your question correctly, you've already got that part figured out and you're just looking for a way to get the sound waves into the computer. This works pretty well.
I've met -so many- linux zealots who can't back their claims of superiority with one fact, yet, they hate windows.. for no reason except the stereotypical "It crashes all the time!" and "Microsoft is a Facist Monopoly bent on world domination!". I forgot who said it, but i like him or her: "Open Source; Closed Minds".
'Tis unfortunate but true. I think a lot of people have latched onto the meme that Linux is a renegade upstart come to topple giants and have formed meager justifications that reflect that basis. These people don't think, they don't lead, and most of them don't write code. They're followers, and many followed Gates before they followed Linus.
Linux is a tool, licensed in a manner very different from similar tools... nothing more, nothing less. Like any tool it has strengths and weaknesses.
I have my reasons for choosing Linux and that's good enough for me. I used to use Windows. Here's why I switched to Linux:
I have a set of tasks that I would like to perform using computers and I have chosen Linux over Windows because Linux is a better tool for my tasks. That and I like the philosophy.
If somebody else wants to use Linux simply because it's grassroots or because it's free($) then I say to each his own. Maybe along the way they'll discover that they're smart people who can solve their own problems, and that Microsoft was really holding them back. Who knows?
Likewise, if somebody wants to use Windows, and has reasons for doing so, then again I say to each his own.
Screaming 14 year olds, as is said, having pissing contests over l33tness
This is typical of most 14 year olds. Some 14 year olds happen to use Linux. They'll each grow up and eventually stop pissing in their own time, but the fact that a group of people with these characteristics exists is simply a feature of our world... or maybe it's a bug ;-)
its better than sitting at work staring at the birds frying in the satellite transmitters on a slow day!
That it is!
I really don't know why I spent so much time responding to an obvious troll, but it seems the moderators don't agree with me.
Because you want so badly for them to agree with you. Guess what. They're gone now. This article is dead and the moderators have moved on to today's killings.
Modulus ought to have similar running time to division. It's basically the same operation except for the last part where modulus returns the remainder and division returns the quotient. You could certainly implement modulus and division so that they're O(n), but I would be very surprised and a little pissed if there wasn't something better.
You know, I have yet to see Windows XP other than in its packing on a shelf at a store. Or in ads of various stripes. It kind of reminds me of when Windows 98 came out and I didn't see it actually running until about six months later. When I finally did, it wasn't impressive in the least. Not that it needs to be impressive, it is just an operating system after all, but for all those people who were running Windows 95, I couldn't see anything in Windows 98 worth the price of upgrading. I expect to have approximately the same experience when I finally see a running XP system.
Where is the `incorrect' moderation option? Or `clueless poster' option?
People find this very hard to believe, but factorization is easy. The problem is that it can take a long time when the number your factoring is sufficiently large.
Think about the brute force factorization algorithm. Write it down, in fact. And now analyze it. You'll find that given a positive integer n to factor, the algorithm runs in O(n) time.
The reason cryptosystems based on factorization are thought to be safe is because we can choose arbitrarily large values of n and we presume that there is no more efficient way to factor integers. Now, if someone were to find a way to factor integers faster than O(n), we could still keep increasing n but that alone might not be sufficient. In any case, factorization is not an NP problem.
Although in some twisted fashion you can see it as being linear regarding the number to be factored
How is that so twisted? I think declaring a number's "size" to be equal to the number of digits needed to represent it is twisted. Number base and number of digits is purely cosmetic. Suppose I've got 32 bits of data that represent a number which is the composite of two primes. What do I know about those two primes before I do any calculations at all? They're both less than the number in my 32 bits. So the fact that it fits in 32 bits is pretty irrelevant to the algorithm. It's the number itself that matters.
Remember that speed is normally expressed in terms of the size of the input. It only takes log n bits to represent n.
Obviously when we're talking about computers, we can assume certain things, like that binary numbers will be used, but factorization is mathematics, not computers. You have to remember that in mathematics, you can slide the number base around and represent a given number using arbitrarily few digits. How do you write 1592 in base 1592? It's written like this: 10. So measuring the "size" of the number you're trying to factor by counting its digits is completely arbitrary. But since the integers are ordinal, we don't have to play this stupid "How should we measure this?" game. Integers measure themselves.
Remember, it's easy to factor a number. It can take an aweful long time, though, if your number is big.
Here's the brute force method for factorization that we all know and love:
Pick a positive integer, n. That's your input. Now, for each positive integer i less than n, find n % i. If that's 0, then i is a factor of n. That's a loop of n iterations which guarantees (hence it's an algorithm) that you'll find all the factors of n. And it's O(n).
Actually you only need to check up to the square root of n if you divide and test to see whether the result is an integer, because in that case you're finding factors two at a time and all the factors greater than the square root will be found by the time you get to the square root. Whether or not it's actually faster depends on implementation. Modulus and testing for 0 may or may not be more than half as fast as dividing and testing for an integer.
(Nater pulls head out of ass, puts foot in mouth)
That should say "factoring large numbers" rather than "factoring primes"
My bad
Crypto algorithms are strong for other reasons. Factoring primes is not a difficult problem... the fastest known solution is already O(n), the reason it's time consuming is that you can choose arbitrarily large values of n, in which case, you need to do better than O(n) in order to effectively break it. One time pads are another thing altogether. There is no algorithm of any order that can break a proper OTP (note that an improper OTP, i.e. one who's pad is not truly random or who pad is reused could be cracked). Other algorithms are based on other principles, but in any case, most are based on mathematically difficult or impossible problems, not computationally difficult ones.
The expense and trouble of tracking the owner down would probably cancel any monetary damage I might sue for.
I agree. The effort and expense required for one person to prove that a spam came from a particular source and violated a particular law is probably enough to cancel the benefit of winning the case. However, the spam likely went to thousands of people within the jurisdiction of that particular law, and the source and violation need only be proven once. If a dozen recipients sued together and were each awarded some payback by the court, then the cost of the case is pitted against twelve times anyone's individual award. The problem is organizing the recipients into a group.
IANAL... but this looks very similar to the "where do I owe taxes" question. Basically, with online purchases, you owe sales tax in the state where your ass is. I would expect the ass doctrine to apply to spam law as well.
I was thinking more in terms of isolationist mentality, actually, but you are correct insofar as the fact that the U.S. is the only one of those four nations which has imposed it's laws on a non-resident foreign citizen.
Ha... good call. But that's a whole 'nother debate.
Note that this is also true of Australia, France, and China and each of their respective populations/legislatures.
As a U.S. citizen, I can answer that.
The U.S. legislature is composed entirely of Americans. It is well known that a rather high percentage of Americans ignore the fact that there is a world outside the United States (except when it comes crashing into us). Hence, one may conclude by admittedly oversimplified logic that a high percentage of legislators also suffer from this sort of ignorance, and furthermore, that when the world on the other side of the border comes across, that they will want to push it out.
Maybe it was (Po)lished Linux then, I don't recall. Either way, I got an apt and a dpkg RPM and went from there.
Back in August I decided to give Debian a try. I downloaded the apt and dpkg SRPMs from Connectiva and installed them on my Red Hat 7.0 system. It took a bit of shoe horning to get them in, but I made it happen and they worked.
Then I went into the /etc/apt directory and pointed everything at the Debian archives instead of Connectiva. At first I tried to just aim it at ftp.redhat.com and update my 7.0 install, but apt and the Red Hat archive didn't like each other. Anyway, I ran apt-get update and got the Debian lists, then was able (with a lot of manual this-and-that that I really should have documented) to apt-get dist-upgrade into Debian stable without rebooting.
Since I was dialing up at the time, it took a while, like a week or so, just to download it all. Once I got everything installed, I let it run for a while for shits and giggles. For a period of almost a month, I had a couple of virtual consoles logged in, a couple displaying Debian's /etc/issue and a couple displaying Red Hat's /etc/issue. Then I decided to do the kernel, too, and rebooted.
I'm still finding a bit of Red Hat cruft now and then. Oh well.
You're changing the "1 month", "2 month", "3 month", "1 year", etc thing, right? That changes the start date. The end date is always the current date.
By selecting 3 months, you're looking at a comparison since Sept 8. That's pretty close to the day the planes hit, which we could reasonably call a low point for most stocks. It was certainly a low for RHAT.
That model isn't viable in the long term. Whether or not it is a good model or not is also debatable, but let's just stick to viability...
First of all, the model obviously discourages trolling and other "down-mod" behavior. A few people might be willing to go pay-per-troll, but most will just vacate the premesis in favor of some other weblog. Therefore income from trolls will tend toward epsilon.
Epsilon won't be enough to pay for the upward moderations on genuinely deserving comments. There are plenty of them as it is.
So, in the long run, the pay/earn-per-mod scenario becomes a money pit for slashdot. It simply isn't viable.
Ironically, many of them are the same people who replace their car every three to five years, get the oil changed every 3000 miles, gas up every few hundred miles, pay a considerable sum of money monthly "in case shit," etc. How much effort is it to run a program (up2date) once every week or two and just let it do what it does? I would venture that it's considerably less effort than these same people put into their other complex machinery.