to be fair not on my connection - the average page loads in a little under a second. OK so I do have a 2 meg line almost to myself most of the time... but it looks a lot like your delays are network bound not software bound.
The only thing I've ever been addicted to was caffine - and I'm not joking. I used to need to drink a strong mug of coffee just before I went to bed otherwise I couldn't sleep.
typically DNA machines take quite a long time to process anything, after all there are fixed costs involved in extracting the solution but AFAIK the actual time elapsed during mixing does not grow that fast.
I'm pretty sure he means linear... all you have to do is use a bigger vat. Saying that some instances can be solved in linear time is meaningless anyway... linear describes the growth of complexity when compared to the size of the dataset - when all you have is a series of points then talking about its complexity is impossible.
The whole concept of STO is based around the idea that your attacker does not know the system that you are using to protect your data.
This is radically different from not knowing a particular piece of information (ie the key) in order to access data.
In the first case an inexpert crypto designer may find that their 'security' system infact contains a large number of clues as to its structure. Take for example a simple substitution cypher, while it might appear to the naked eye to be a random collection letters an experianced attacker would simply build a histogram and break the code based upon the distribution.
Moreover STO can quite easily become an argument for leaving holes (ie possible buffer overflows) open because "nobody knows about it". Quite simply this sort of sentiment has been shown to be very wrong over the years.
I find the arguments about hidden trip wires more interesting - but I would argue that this does not represent STO. The form of security may well be known to the attacker but the actual events which may trigger security alerts could be considered as an equivalent to a key.
STO has had its day - no information which is genuinly important should be protected in this manner.
Given that the normal definition of security is that it should cost the attacker more to breach the defenses than the information itself is worth - information with a very short lifespan may be eligable for some forms of STO and I'm sure that everyone occasionally follows this maxim.
But as a principal and as a technique I would like to see STO burried once and for all.
Which desktop tho? In a corporate enviroment where users do not have root access it would be great - your users can not fuck with the fundemental config and if you really need to you can login remotely.
I can see your point for home users - I'd not want to try and provide support in that enviroment at the moment, but thats a different market segment.
Its odd that this distro is getting so much attention from/. readers when it is perfectly obvious that it is not intended for them *grin*
I expect someone will correct me but this looks like the first desktop distribution of linux. A distribution for people who want a system that works and don't want to have to get involved in serious admin.
It seems as if all slashdot users are running server configured boxes - apache, ftp servers, sendmail, etc... I'm not sure that your average user either want or needs these facilities installed by default (if they want it then add in a package later).
So everyone here who feels that this distro doesn't offer enough control, or that it wouldn't be suitable for them please try and bear in mind that its isn't meant for you!
Hmmm, interesting so you do not need to link against their proprietry libs in any way? I'd have expected you to need to and then you would need to be licensed.
As plenty of other people have pointed out most consoles are sold at a loss - the profit coming from licensing the software which runs on them.
I could be wrong but I thought that you needed a license from Sony/Nintendo/etc to write software which uses their API's. Without those api's which are hardwired into these consoles I don't imagine you can get them to do very much.
So overall I would say that free software is not feasable for consoles. And just as a note to one of the other respondants - just becuase the PS2 development is going to be on linux does not make the development enviroment itself free...
I've not tried them but they seemed a perfectly valid option - when I was looking at building my PC I considered them.
The problem is that by the time I had factored in all of the other items I wanted another £20 for an AMD K6-II 300 was nothing... I think for the Winchips to make any kind of impression they needed a few other entry level components to be available.
eg: cheap motherboard (2PCI,2ISA) cheap memory (about current price would have done me as my absolute min was 32Mb) cheap CD-ROM (pref 8 speed for about £10)
Put all of that together and you should have been able to assemble a useful base unit for about £150. This is the sort of market WinChip could have claimed - very cheap useful machines.
These photos look pretty good - the model "herself" is pretty realistic, IMHO the skin tone and cloths are good but the hair is a little under defined currently - its the backgrounds that are not fully up to scratch.
That said I can imagine this sort of model being used on top of conventionally filmed images. Be interesting to see if it works.
Tom
PS: As I remember actors contracts have had clauses in them dealing with electronic versions of themselves for years - personally I wouldn't be suprised if in 10 years time a big name film star was "working" on 10 films simultaneously.
I don't mind a closed source compiler if all of the libs are open sourced - and as far as cost goes I'd be happy to pay for a personal license up to about £150 ($225)
yes so do I - but personally I belive in buying books which will still be useful in a years time.
Besides I have always got on better with advanced text books than basic ones, give me a language reference over a "learn xxx in 21 days" any day.
In my experiance, advanced text books tend to mean for people who have a solid programming background. Just right now I'm under a lot of time pressure.
Well I bought this book last week and have never worked in CORBA before - I've yet to get round to reading page one as I've been a bit busy gutting an old app to make space for some calls to a third party CORBA object.
The review says its an excellent book (as did Amazon) but mentions that a more basic introduction could be good - does anyone have a real recomendation for a companion text to this for the CORBA virgin.
I want the depth this book promises but I've yet to see a good basic introductory text go to waste.
Tom
Re:Exactly - Linux ultimately a doomed project
on
Storm Linux
·
· Score: 1
common guys - that is not a troll!
its got an aggressive title but the body text is perfectly well reasoned - disagreeing with somebody is not a good enough reason to moderate them down.
If you don't like what somebody says then disagree - post a response but just screaming troll does nobody any good.
What this gus is saying is no different to some +2/3 posts - basically that there is a danger of linux distros fragmenting and producing proprietry incompatabilities.
It could happen - particually with some of the software which is now being bundled (ie ViaVoice with RH 6.0).
I'm very temped to move to that distro purely to try voice rec under linux and thus far haven't taken the time to figure out how to make it work with another distro. Is that fragmentation?
We now have SuSE still running on the libc but most others are now on glibc - afaik this normally only needs a recompile to fix but it can be a problem.
But more to the point what will the LSB actually do? as I understand it, it will descibe a core of libraries/utilities which should be present. This should allow developers to code well behaved linux apps - but it doesn't force them to. Besides novice coders may not be fully aware of which libraries thier software links against - they may just link to everything and let the compiler sort out the mess.
We are already seeing software which is only certified for a particular distro (Oracle and RH5.2), mostly this software can be persuaded to run on other distros (we have Oracle running under SuSE 5.1 here at work) but the end user needs to spend some time chasing down the FAQ's and deciding if they are happy to change their set of libraries just to support one new package.
All of this said I am in favor of different distros - Open source development seems to be based entirely upon evolution. Without a set of distributions how can we be sure that the eventual dominant vendor is best of breed in any sense of the phrase.
but I'd imagine that the site owner would also need to own all of the material. Given the scale of some sites I find this highly unlikely.
Re:Mind control before dictation?
on
Bionic Rats
·
· Score: 2
well according to your definition people can already write a paper simply by thinking at the screen... they have to move a cursor around to select letters but they can do it.
But I'd also say that it is possible for people to write a paper simply by talking at the screen of their PC using software such as ViaVoice. This approach appeals to me a great deal more than having my head drilled in order to get a very slow typewriter.
The experiment is by no means the first experiment to manage to get its input directly from a brain - just remember that all of these programs are still at an early stage - usually they involve monitoring brain activity when trying to perform a task and then fitting electrodes over the active region and using this as a trigger to some device.
Thats exactly what they did with these mice, they taught them to press a lever and then watched for similar activity and assumed that this was a sign that they where thinking about pushing the lever (as I understand it this is a perfectly reasonable assumption - but it is an assumption).
All of this is a long way from being able to pull natural language commands directly from our synapses. Cool as that would be I don't expect to live to see it and I'm only 23.
Whatever the cypher is it can't be to simple of someone would have broken it by now, that almost certainly rules out any cyphers with operating on individual characters.
The lines themselves are not all the same length (which I would expect means that the block length
the lines are not all of equal length and given the size of the variance it looks like there isn't going to be a common factor of the line lengths apart from one which I imagine means that each line is not a block to itself (see above)
I'd also be suprised if part of one of the blocks was a key if only part of the message had been cracked. If the key was available then all that would be needed is to find the right cypher.
So what does this leave? well I don't know, I enjoy tinkering with crypto but I'm no expert - I'd guess that there must be some form of stream element to whatevers been used.
I think if I speculate any more I'll just make a fool of myself infront of others who do this sort of thing more seriously.
The whole point of these 'new' (I have no idea how old the oldest is) systems is that they provide a method for buisness to get the features they want.
One of the bigest gripes that I hear being repeated all over the place is that free software does not have a defined development path.
I also don't think that these contracts are going to be in the $50-100 range. Try adding a zero to those figures and you are looking at costs comparable to one day of a contracters time - given that this would be a fixed price contract this could represent quite a cost saving.
Particually as the sucess or not of a project would be judged by a third party - to a student $1000 could easily be worth a week of work to acomplish - and would look great on a CV.
Now I'm not about to suggest that this sort of sponsered development could become the norm... but it could certainly go a long way to allaying the buisness fears people have about using open source.
It could also end up funding the lifestyles of people who want to do nothing but develop open source. Essentially I don't see that many differences between the bounty model and contracting.
Overall I think that the bounty model could do a lot to improve the perception of open source and to promote the culture.
The only problem I can see is that of bounty steeling - but I'm sure there are ways around that.
Perhaps the third party could provide certification (in the form of a digital signature) as to who did what work.
Odd - I'm making 21-23k after bonuses and its all going into student debt repayments and rent... ok I've got at least 4 times the disposable income I had as a student but thats still not exactly loads.
I think it all depends on your image of a geek, but most peoples standards I qualify (Comp Sci degree, ex roleplayer, work as a programmer) but thats not how I think of myself.
There was a lot of truth in that artical - I want to solve problems, I want to be listened to, I do give answers to exactly the question I'm asked (although I do often expand around that). Basically that artical was very much talking about people who are like me.
It might be arrogance but I think I fall into the catagory of one of the group leaders, certainly I've been taking on that role with most of the companies new joiners (even tho' one of them has 20 years more experiance than I do).
Our company is about to reorganise and I'm going to be moving into the consultancy group - simply because my productivity is either outstanding or terrible based upon how interesting I feel a project is... and consultancy will give me lots of short interesting projects.
I admit it shouldn't be quite that binary but I find it almost impossible to concentrate on something boring.
Given this the incentives mentioned in the artical make a lot of sense - awards made by peer review would mean a hell of a lot to me. Thats an award made by someone who understood what I was trying to say.
I also liked the attitude of very light management - one of the things I fight hardest here is being told "don't worry about X your manager is dealing with that" - I want to worry about it - I want my projects in context. Basically I don't want to be managed - I want to have support made available when I request it.
I also want (and intend) to be paid very well for what I do - but that is actually secondary. Once I have enough to be comfortable my job decisions will be made purely on interest level - and working enviroment.
just my usual collection of semi ordered brain dumps.
Slashdot Mirror
to be fair not on my connection - the average page loads in a little under a second. OK so I do have a 2 meg line almost to myself most of the time... but it looks a lot like your delays are network bound not software bound.
Tom
The only thing I've ever been addicted to was caffine - and I'm not joking. I used to need to drink a strong mug of coffee just before I went to bed otherwise I couldn't sleep.
thats when I knew I had to cut back a bit.
typically DNA machines take quite a long time to process anything, after all there are fixed costs involved in extracting the solution but AFAIK the actual time elapsed during mixing does not grow that fast.
fair point
I'm pretty sure he means linear... all you have to do is use a bigger vat. Saying that some instances can be solved in linear time is meaningless anyway... linear describes the growth of complexity when compared to the size of the dataset - when all you have is a series of points then talking about its complexity is impossible.
Tom
What a truely afwul set of sentiments... I
The whole concept of STO is based around the idea that your attacker does not know the system that you are using to protect your data.
This is radically different from not knowing a particular piece of information (ie the key) in order to access data.
In the first case an inexpert crypto designer may find that their 'security' system infact contains a large number of clues as to its structure. Take for example a simple substitution cypher, while it might appear to the naked eye to be a random collection letters an experianced attacker would simply build a histogram and break the code based upon the distribution.
Moreover STO can quite easily become an argument for leaving holes (ie possible buffer overflows) open because "nobody knows about it". Quite simply this sort of sentiment has been shown to be very wrong over the years.
I find the arguments about hidden trip wires more interesting - but I would argue that this does not represent STO. The form of security may well be known to the attacker but the actual events which may trigger security alerts could be considered as an equivalent to a key.
STO has had its day - no information which is genuinly important should be protected in this manner.
Given that the normal definition of security is that it should cost the attacker more to breach the defenses than the information itself is worth - information with a very short lifespan may be eligable for some forms of STO and I'm sure that everyone occasionally follows this maxim.
But as a principal and as a technique I would like to see STO burried once and for all.
Tom
Which desktop tho? In a corporate enviroment where users do not have root access it would be great - your users can not fuck with the fundemental config and if you really need to you can login remotely.
I can see your point for home users - I'd not want to try and provide support in that enviroment at the moment, but thats a different market segment.
just thoughts
Tom
Its odd that this distro is getting so much attention from
I expect someone will correct me but this looks like the first desktop distribution of linux. A distribution for people who want a system that works and don't want to have to get involved in serious admin.
It seems as if all slashdot users are running server configured boxes - apache, ftp servers, sendmail, etc... I'm not sure that your average user either want or needs these facilities installed by default (if they want it then add in a package later).
So everyone here who feels that this distro doesn't offer enough control, or that it wouldn't be suitable for them please try and bear in mind that its isn't meant for you!
just thoughts
Tom
Hmmm, interesting so you do not need to link against their proprietry libs in any way? I'd have expected you to need to and then you would need to be licensed.
As plenty of other people have pointed out most consoles are sold at a loss - the profit coming from licensing the software which runs on them.
I could be wrong but I thought that you needed a license from Sony/Nintendo/etc to write software which uses their API's. Without those api's which are hardwired into these consoles I don't imagine you can get them to do very much.
So overall I would say that free software is not feasable for consoles. And just as a note to one of the other respondants - just becuase the PS2 development is going to be on linux does not make the development enviroment itself free...
Tom
I've not tried them but they seemed a perfectly valid option - when I was looking at building my PC I considered them.
The problem is that by the time I had factored in all of the other items I wanted another £20 for an AMD K6-II 300 was nothing... I think for the Winchips to make any kind of impression they needed a few other entry level components to be available.
eg:
cheap motherboard (2PCI,2ISA)
cheap memory (about current price would have done me as my absolute min was 32Mb)
cheap CD-ROM (pref 8 speed for about £10)
Put all of that together and you should have been able to assemble a useful base unit for about £150. This is the sort of market WinChip could have claimed - very cheap useful machines.
Tom
These photos look pretty good - the model "herself" is pretty realistic, IMHO the skin tone and cloths are good but the hair is a little under defined currently - its the backgrounds that are not fully up to scratch.
That said I can imagine this sort of model being used on top of conventionally filmed images. Be interesting to see if it works.
Tom
PS:
As I remember actors contracts have had clauses in them dealing with electronic versions of themselves for years - personally I wouldn't be suprised if in 10 years time a big name film star was "working" on 10 films simultaneously.
I don't mind a closed source compiler if all of the libs are open sourced - and as far as cost goes I'd be happy to pay for a personal license up to about £150 ($225)
Tom
Besides I have always got on better with advanced text books than basic ones, give me a language reference over a "learn xxx in 21 days" any day.
In my experiance, advanced text books tend to mean for people who have a solid programming background. Just right now I'm under a lot of time pressure.
Tom
Well I bought this book last week and have never worked in CORBA before - I've yet to get round to reading page one as I've been a bit busy gutting an old app to make space for some calls to a third party CORBA object.
The review says its an excellent book (as did Amazon) but mentions that a more basic introduction could be good - does anyone have a real recomendation for a companion text to this for the CORBA virgin.
I want the depth this book promises but I've yet to see a good basic introductory text go to waste.
Tom
common guys - that is not a troll!
its got an aggressive title but the body text is perfectly well reasoned - disagreeing with somebody is not a good enough reason to moderate them down.
If you don't like what somebody says then disagree - post a response but just screaming troll does nobody any good.
What this gus is saying is no different to some +2/3 posts - basically that there is a danger of linux distros fragmenting and producing proprietry incompatabilities.
It could happen - particually with some of the software which is now being bundled (ie ViaVoice with RH 6.0).
I'm very temped to move to that distro purely to try voice rec under linux and thus far haven't taken the time to figure out how to make it work with another distro. Is that fragmentation?
We now have SuSE still running on the libc but most others are now on glibc - afaik this normally only needs a recompile to fix but it can be a problem.
But more to the point what will the LSB actually do? as I understand it, it will descibe a core of libraries/utilities which should be present. This should allow developers to code well behaved linux apps - but it doesn't force them to. Besides novice coders may not be fully aware of which libraries thier software links against - they may just link to everything and let the compiler sort out the mess.
We are already seeing software which is only certified for a particular distro (Oracle and RH5.2), mostly this software can be persuaded to run on other distros (we have Oracle running under SuSE 5.1 here at work) but the end user needs to spend some time chasing down the FAQ's and deciding if they are happy to change their set of libraries just to support one new package.
All of this said I am in favor of different distros - Open source development seems to be based entirely upon evolution. Without a set of distributions how can we be sure that the eventual dominant vendor is best of breed in any sense of the phrase.
just some thoughts - moderate as you will
Tom
I likewise have no personal experiance of these machines - but a very good friend of mine works for large ISP here in the UK.
Can't really name names because its not my company - but I belive that they have about 1.2M subscribers, which should narrow it down some *grin*.
Their solution is almost entirely Linux based using Network Appliance stuff for all of thier filling and some other stuff.
Anyway to cut to the chase - my friend swears by these NetApp and uses them with nothing but Linux.
Anyone needing to know more mail me and I'll forward the messages to my friend.
Tom
but I'd imagine that the site owner would also need to own all of the material. Given the scale of some sites I find this highly unlikely.
well according to your definition people can already write a paper simply by thinking at the screen... they have to move a cursor around to select letters but they can do it.
But I'd also say that it is possible for people to write a paper simply by talking at the screen of their PC using software such as ViaVoice. This approach appeals to me a great deal more than having my head drilled in order to get a very slow typewriter.
The experiment is by no means the first experiment to manage to get its input directly from a brain - just remember that all of these programs are still at an early stage - usually they involve monitoring brain activity when trying to perform a task and then fitting electrodes over the active region and using this as a trigger to some device.
Thats exactly what they did with these mice, they taught them to press a lever and then watched for similar activity and assumed that this was a sign that they where thinking about pushing the lever (as I understand it this is a perfectly reasonable assumption - but it is an assumption).
All of this is a long way from being able to pull natural language commands directly from our synapses. Cool as that would be I don't expect to live to see it and I'm only 23.
Tom
Whatever the cypher is it can't be to simple of someone would have broken it by now, that almost certainly rules out any cyphers with operating on individual characters.
The lines themselves are not all the same length (which I would expect means that the block length
the lines are not all of equal length and given the size of the variance it looks like there isn't going to be a common factor of the line lengths apart from one which I imagine means that each line is not a block to itself (see above)
I'd also be suprised if part of one of the blocks was a key if only part of the message had been cracked. If the key was available then all that would be needed is to find the right cypher.
So what does this leave? well I don't know, I enjoy tinkering with crypto but I'm no expert - I'd guess that there must be some form of stream element to whatevers been used.
I think if I speculate any more I'll just make a fool of myself infront of others who do this sort of thing more seriously.
Tom
$20,000,000 is a lot of cash - I wonder if how they would use it?
More inhouse staff or perhaps funding remote access specialist hardware - eg a 4 way Xeon server with 1Gb of main memory and 4 network cards?
Just as a random selection *grin*
Tom
The whole point of these 'new' (I have no idea how old the oldest is) systems is that they provide a method for buisness to get the features they want.
One of the bigest gripes that I hear being repeated all over the place is that free software does not have a defined development path.
I also don't think that these contracts are going to be in the $50-100 range. Try adding a zero to those figures and you are looking at costs comparable to one day of a contracters time - given that this would be a fixed price contract this could represent quite a cost saving.
Particually as the sucess or not of a project would be judged by a third party - to a student $1000 could easily be worth a week of work to acomplish - and would look great on a CV.
Now I'm not about to suggest that this sort of sponsered development could become the norm... but it could certainly go a long way to allaying the buisness fears people have about using open source.
It could also end up funding the lifestyles of people who want to do nothing but develop open source. Essentially I don't see that many differences between the bounty model and contracting.
Overall I think that the bounty model could do a lot to improve the perception of open source and to promote the culture.
The only problem I can see is that of bounty steeling - but I'm sure there are ways around that.
Perhaps the third party could provide certification (in the form of a digital signature) as to who did what work.
Tom
Odd - I'm making 21-23k after bonuses and its all going into student debt repayments and rent... ok I've got at least 4 times the disposable income I had as a student but thats still not exactly loads.
Tom
I think it all depends on your image of a geek, but most peoples standards I qualify (Comp Sci degree, ex roleplayer, work as a programmer) but thats not how I think of myself.
There was a lot of truth in that artical - I want to solve problems, I want to be listened to, I do give answers to exactly the question I'm asked (although I do often expand around that). Basically that artical was very much talking about people who are like me.
It might be arrogance but I think I fall into the catagory of one of the group leaders, certainly I've been taking on that role with most of the companies new joiners (even tho' one of them has 20 years more experiance than I do).
Our company is about to reorganise and I'm going to be moving into the consultancy group - simply because my productivity is either outstanding or terrible based upon how interesting I feel a project is... and consultancy will give me lots of short interesting projects.
I admit it shouldn't be quite that binary but I find it almost impossible to concentrate on something boring.
Given this the incentives mentioned in the artical make a lot of sense - awards made by peer review would mean a hell of a lot to me. Thats an award made by someone who understood what I was trying to say.
I also liked the attitude of very light management - one of the things I fight hardest here is being told "don't worry about X your manager is dealing with that" - I want to worry about it - I want my projects in context. Basically I don't want to be managed - I want to have support made available when I request it.
I also want (and intend) to be paid very well for what I do - but that is actually secondary. Once I have enough to be comfortable my job decisions will be made purely on interest level - and working enviroment.
just my usual collection of semi ordered brain dumps.
Tom
fair 'enuf... wasn't sure which revision they started playing this game at!