There are a number of factors in Free Software that may be a cause for concern.
First, naturally, there is the question of "Who do you sue" when things go wrong (which in itself is a statement of the issues surrounding responsibility in community development.) Commercial software vendors strive to meet a standard of reliability because they've implied with the sale of their software a warranty of fitness.
Also, there is a question of reliability. Commercial software is designed towards a goal; Open Source is designed almost by accident. Integrating commercial products tends to work better than Free Software because of an accumulation of tolerances.
Most importantly, using commercial software makes repeatibility in other labs a more likely possibility. A Windows setup is standard. A Linux (or whatever) setup depends on any number of factors, from the versions of the software to the distributions of the kernels. Irregardless of the general expense involved in setting up commercial software testing, this is perhaps the most important thing: your colleagues won't have a chance at duplicating your results if they don't know what you're running.
Although the formats are very similar, I've heard only positive things about +R/+RW (and mostly negative about -R/-RW). As far as compatibility, either will fit into all standard DVD players, however I've noticed that +R media fits better into -R players! (+R players almost seem to push it out of the drive.)
You can find more information and even user testimonials here.
I was a bit concerned that iTunes as it stood was a bit too lenient about what it would permit. This was probably a necessary change to allow them to continue to deliver RIAA content.
This should be a wakeup to you Apple people: your company will be just as willing to cater to the RIAA as ours, but it's better at letting you think you're getting your way. It's just a matter of time before iTunes becomes entirely music rental.
The industry is rife with snake oil. Firewalls, IDSes, and the like are pushed to every business with a computer.
Yet nobody will put the latest service pack on.
Microsoft software, installed correctly and to their specifications, is as if not more secure than most distributions of Linux. The amount of FUD spread about it is all out of proportion to its flaws, and is probably due to a complete lack of familiarity of its features by its detractors, who would of course use it if it was free. It is this same lack of familiarity that is preyed upon by vendors who would rather sell a $10,000 band-aid than a $50 book.
I've been using it for a bit on my own e-mail, and it seems to work out. But it's not at the point where I'd be happy to see ISPs implementing it for their customers -- even ignoring the Freedom of Speech issue, it still has the occasional false positive.
I don't know how much hand-holding people need, but this kind of thing goes a bit far. If you've got a troublesome ex-employee, I'd think they should be able to handle something like this with a civil suit. Instead, it's pulled out of insurance, which drives up all our premiums.
Assuming such a thing were done as to make printers encode a serial number into each print, it isn't likely that the general public would be aware of it. My concern isn't for counterfeiters, but for people performing legal activities that could cause them problems: whistleblowers at a large company, or others who leak information to the press about things that are in the public's interest to know. Who is to say that what is encoded doesn't include the last IP address your computer took, the identity you've registered under Windows, the key you were issued during registration, or the like?
Knowledgable criminals can ditch their printers and get new ones, but the average person won't. Given that this isn't something that is likely to affect most people, I can see it getting slipped in without public complaint. Most people aren't aware cars have black boxes in them either, but if they found out they bought a car that stored information that could be used against them in court I bet it'd bother them at least a little bit.
One of the 'anticounterfeiting' features placed in color copiers that was only acknowledged recently was a code unique to the copier that was added to each copy in such a way that it didn't noticably affect the print quality but would allow copies to be traced back to their point of origin.
I mention this because this could be the next step for inkjets (if it hasn't been done already!) with all the privacy concerns that entails.
I'm reading in the paper where ESR uses a graphic to illustrate the relationship between the various Unixes/workalikes, and I'm a bit confused -- why is Linux way off to the side disconnected from everything else when a largish part is composed of BSD tools and another largish part is derived from Unix?
Is this something you could hook up to a computer? I could see all sorts of neat hacks (emulator/GBA connectivity, GBA/GBA connectivity over the Internet, backup/restore of GBA save files) for a device like that.
Unfortunately, many of the conventional sand deposits (Floridian sand not exempted, I think) contains only a small amount of silica, making the refining process prohibitively expensive. This process might be a little cheaper, but proportionally speaking they're still going to do better with dredged volcanic "supersand".
It wasn't particularly insightful, I'll agree... it was just the first thing that popped into my head. But it's a relevant question, and I appreciate your answering it.
I don't mean to bust on you guys at all. I think it's pretty cool work, and requires a level of commitment most people capable of doing it couldn't possibly provide.
My deeper concern, which goes beyond my flip question, is that we're laying the infrastructure for exploitation by American companies without providing the benefits I feel are due those whose work is sold at American prices but produced for local wages. I believe that technology is a great industry because it's low polluting and hardly resource intensive -- besides the initial investment -- and is easy to globalize. The end point will no doubt be a good one for Ghana, as it grows industries of its own and can fully reap the results of its labor, but in the meantime (decades?) it really bothers me that multinational companies can pocket the difference between the pay of a worker in Ghana and a worker in Los Angeles instead of having to turn it over to reinvestment in Ghanan (is that a word?) development or aid.
I don't mean to suggest that it's a one-or-the-other thing to support people or business, and of course some wages are better than no wages, but why can't we export the ability to enjoy some of the better parts of US/EU life as well (or at least to afford our patented medication)?
Is aid money being spent on this IT effort? (yes, if you RTFA)
Are there better things the money can be spent on? (yes, their infrastructure can't even handle electricity properly: do you prefer a functioning hospital or a functioning Internet cafe?)
Does an HIV sufferer need to learn how to set up antialiased fonts in X?
FWIW: Product activation worked out very well for Microsoft's profits, despite the hue and cry. If they can get Hollywood and the music industry to recognize their solution as superior to other platforms (Apple) they will happily wipe themselves with our opinions.
Sucks to be us. Although the fact that I'll be able to do my taxes electronically without hard drive corruption until the point at which reality implodes will be some consolation.
I was reading about one guy (lost the link) who set up solar cells to power his server cluster. I'd give it a try if it was a little sunnier here -- sounded like an interesting project and a way to see if something like this would be feasible on a larger scale.
They don't look too good to the neighbors, though.
Why should Microsoft platforms be immune from the progress that the Open Source spirit has given other platforms? Windows Update doesn't have to be the sole source for the common user of updates, patches, etc. -- many of these are third-party, anyway, and could probably be handled similarly to apt-get, rpm, or emerge.
I've read a number of depressed perspectives on how we've got to accept a broken technology because it is patent-encumbered, closed source, or whatever, and I wonder "Where's your initiative, people?"
To use a cooking analogy: the Koreans and the Dutch couldn't be much more
different geographically, but at approximately the same time in history they
faced a similar crisis involving an abundance of fuel and a pittance of
foodstuffs -- the Koreans invented stir-frying, which allowed a maximum amount
of heat in a minimum amount of time to sear their food, while the Dutch
came up with the Dutch Oven, which is an ancient European equivalent of the
Crock-Pot where food was cooked in its own vapors in a covered environment
at a low temperature over an extended period of time.
This is only one of a number of similar examples throughout history of
almost-parallel development. People have constantly had to reinvent the
wheel for any number of reasons, but most importantly the process was
influenced by cultural and social factors that ultimately lead to different
approaches towards the same problem. Thus we can choose from the solutions
the one that is most efficient or most effective... the strength of Open
Source.
I guess the point is that there is almost always more than one way to solve a
problem, and generally it's the optimists that get to it. I see too many good
ideas sunk by naysayers that won't give a concept a fair shake; irregardless,
who could have predicted the computer, air travel, or the mysteries of the
atom a mere century ago? Hope for even the best of the future and it will
yet exceed your expectations.
It's mostly about the hack value. Everything I'd want to do properly with SMP I wouldn't trust my soldering skills to, such as compiling, rendering, or serving web pages, but I might try something like this if I had spare hardware lying around.
As with the Athlon XP, apparently this processor can be trivially modified to function as an MP chip. I'm curious, however, as to whether this could be perceived as a DMCA violation. If companies refilling ink cartridges can be sued these days...
But another thing that troubles me somewhat is the idea that, perhaps, people are cheating AMD somewhat by doing this. Maybe the sales of Barton XPs are at a loss, but built with the same die as the MP because AMD doesn't want to blow the cash on retooling. If cheap CPUs are being subsidized by the sales of Barton MPs, aren't people who modify their CPUs performing the equivalent of, say, buying Windows XP Home and stealing Windows XP Server? It seems like a bit of a fuzzy issue, although with the popularity of P2P hardly one that's going to trouble most computer users.
How does one go about actually figuring out how a console such as the Xbox authenticates things to begin with? The level of complexity of the hardware would seem to make a task like this, well, complex, and I've always been curious about where people start.
Essentially, they're displays that you can tote around the house/office that maintain a wireless communication with your PC. I imagine it's kind of like VNC on a tablet PC.
What they're talking about here is giving the display some processing power of its own, so that it's more like a laptop that runs a terminal off of your main computer. If you're doing something on it, it won't cause your main computer to slow down (much), whereas the smart display uses a lot more of your computer's resources. Doesn't sound like a huge deal to me, except that it should be cheaper and more portable than a laptop.
It makes for more effective monopolization. The average smart display doesn't have the power to fully monopolize the PC, so it makes sense to have a Crusoe in the display to help it determine how best to monopolize the PC.
I've heard they're working on an SMP setup of the Crusoe (following the O'Doyle Rules to achieve n-way monopolization) to improve even further the CPU monopolization process.
I just got done watching CNN, where they were perplexed about how our economy seems to be getting back on track amid increasing (domestic) layoffs. They haven't connected the dots, but does anybody here think that this might possibly be because these companies are replacing workers here with others outside the country for pennies on the dollar?
Political correctness is all well and good, but don't let it blind you to reality. I'm getting the bulk of my telemarketing calls from Newfoundland and India (try asking sometimes, before you hang up), and calls for support seem to be going out of country too. How much of the stuff you buy says Made In USA on it these days?
Of course the IT industry isn't immune. We ought to fix things by requiring companies who use foreign labor to pay equivalent U.S. for each overseas position into a fund used for improving living conditions in the countries these companies are abusing (or similar causes).
Slashdot Mirror
First, naturally, there is the question of "Who do you sue" when things go wrong (which in itself is a statement of the issues surrounding responsibility in community development.) Commercial software vendors strive to meet a standard of reliability because they've implied with the sale of their software a warranty of fitness.
Also, there is a question of reliability. Commercial software is designed towards a goal; Open Source is designed almost by accident. Integrating commercial products tends to work better than Free Software because of an accumulation of tolerances.
Most importantly, using commercial software makes repeatibility in other labs a more likely possibility. A Windows setup is standard. A Linux (or whatever) setup depends on any number of factors, from the versions of the software to the distributions of the kernels. Irregardless of the general expense involved in setting up commercial software testing, this is perhaps the most important thing: your colleagues won't have a chance at duplicating your results if they don't know what you're running.
You can find more information and even user testimonials here.
This should be a wakeup to you Apple people: your company will be just as willing to cater to the RIAA as ours, but it's better at letting you think you're getting your way. It's just a matter of time before iTunes becomes entirely music rental.
Yet nobody will put the latest service pack on.
Microsoft software, installed correctly and to their specifications, is as if not more secure than most distributions of Linux. The amount of FUD spread about it is all out of proportion to its flaws, and is probably due to a complete lack of familiarity of its features by its detractors, who would of course use it if it was free. It is this same lack of familiarity that is preyed upon by vendors who would rather sell a $10,000 band-aid than a $50 book.
I've been using it for a bit on my own e-mail, and it seems to work out. But it's not at the point where I'd be happy to see ISPs implementing it for their customers -- even ignoring the Freedom of Speech issue, it still has the occasional false positive.
Fantastic. And with litigation costs to boot.
Knowledgable criminals can ditch their printers and get new ones, but the average person won't. Given that this isn't something that is likely to affect most people, I can see it getting slipped in without public complaint. Most people aren't aware cars have black boxes in them either, but if they found out they bought a car that stored information that could be used against them in court I bet it'd bother them at least a little bit.
I mention this because this could be the next step for inkjets (if it hasn't been done already!) with all the privacy concerns that entails.
I'm reading in the paper where ESR uses a graphic to illustrate the relationship between the various Unixes/workalikes, and I'm a bit confused -- why is Linux way off to the side disconnected from everything else when a largish part is composed of BSD tools and another largish part is derived from Unix?
Is this something you could hook up to a computer? I could see all sorts of neat hacks (emulator/GBA connectivity, GBA/GBA connectivity over the Internet, backup/restore of GBA save files) for a device like that.
Unfortunately, many of the conventional sand deposits (Floridian sand not exempted, I think) contains only a small amount of silica, making the refining process prohibitively expensive. This process might be a little cheaper, but proportionally speaking they're still going to do better with dredged volcanic "supersand".
I don't mean to bust on you guys at all. I think it's pretty cool work, and requires a level of commitment most people capable of doing it couldn't possibly provide.
My deeper concern, which goes beyond my flip question, is that we're laying the infrastructure for exploitation by American companies without providing the benefits I feel are due those whose work is sold at American prices but produced for local wages. I believe that technology is a great industry because it's low polluting and hardly resource intensive -- besides the initial investment -- and is easy to globalize. The end point will no doubt be a good one for Ghana, as it grows industries of its own and can fully reap the results of its labor, but in the meantime (decades?) it really bothers me that multinational companies can pocket the difference between the pay of a worker in Ghana and a worker in Los Angeles instead of having to turn it over to reinvestment in Ghanan (is that a word?) development or aid.
I don't mean to suggest that it's a one-or-the-other thing to support people or business, and of course some wages are better than no wages, but why can't we export the ability to enjoy some of the better parts of US/EU life as well (or at least to afford our patented medication)?
Are there better things the money can be spent on? (yes, their infrastructure can't even handle electricity properly: do you prefer a functioning hospital or a functioning Internet cafe?)
Does an HIV sufferer need to learn how to set up antialiased fonts in X?
FWIW: Product activation worked out very well for Microsoft's profits, despite the hue and cry. If they can get Hollywood and the music industry to recognize their solution as superior to other platforms (Apple) they will happily wipe themselves with our opinions.
How much longer do we ha
They don't look too good to the neighbors, though.
isn't there still an issue with things like, well, food, medicine, clean water, stuff like that?
I've read a number of depressed perspectives on how we've got to accept a broken technology because it is patent-encumbered, closed source, or whatever, and I wonder "Where's your initiative, people?" To use a cooking analogy: the Koreans and the Dutch couldn't be much more different geographically, but at approximately the same time in history they faced a similar crisis involving an abundance of fuel and a pittance of foodstuffs -- the Koreans invented stir-frying, which allowed a maximum amount of heat in a minimum amount of time to sear their food, while the Dutch came up with the Dutch Oven, which is an ancient European equivalent of the Crock-Pot where food was cooked in its own vapors in a covered environment at a low temperature over an extended period of time.
This is only one of a number of similar examples throughout history of almost-parallel development. People have constantly had to reinvent the wheel for any number of reasons, but most importantly the process was influenced by cultural and social factors that ultimately lead to different approaches towards the same problem. Thus we can choose from the solutions the one that is most efficient or most effective... the strength of Open Source.
I guess the point is that there is almost always more than one way to solve a problem, and generally it's the optimists that get to it. I see too many good ideas sunk by naysayers that won't give a concept a fair shake; irregardless, who could have predicted the computer, air travel, or the mysteries of the atom a mere century ago? Hope for even the best of the future and it will yet exceed your expectations.
It's mostly about the hack value. Everything I'd want to do properly with SMP I wouldn't trust my soldering skills to, such as compiling, rendering, or serving web pages, but I might try something like this if I had spare hardware lying around.
But another thing that troubles me somewhat is the idea that, perhaps, people are cheating AMD somewhat by doing this. Maybe the sales of Barton XPs are at a loss, but built with the same die as the MP because AMD doesn't want to blow the cash on retooling. If cheap CPUs are being subsidized by the sales of Barton MPs, aren't people who modify their CPUs performing the equivalent of, say, buying Windows XP Home and stealing Windows XP Server? It seems like a bit of a fuzzy issue, although with the popularity of P2P hardly one that's going to trouble most computer users.
We need to find a way to get the BSA and the RIAA to cross paths so that we can work our way back to a usable Internet.
How does one go about actually figuring out how a console such as the Xbox authenticates things to begin with? The level of complexity of the hardware would seem to make a task like this, well, complex, and I've always been curious about where people start.
What they're talking about here is giving the display some processing power of its own, so that it's more like a laptop that runs a terminal off of your main computer. If you're doing something on it, it won't cause your main computer to slow down (much), whereas the smart display uses a lot more of your computer's resources. Doesn't sound like a huge deal to me, except that it should be cheaper and more portable than a laptop.
I've heard they're working on an SMP setup of the Crusoe (following the O'Doyle Rules to achieve n-way monopolization) to improve even further the CPU monopolization process.
Political correctness is all well and good, but don't let it blind you to reality. I'm getting the bulk of my telemarketing calls from Newfoundland and India (try asking sometimes, before you hang up), and calls for support seem to be going out of country too. How much of the stuff you buy says Made In USA on it these days?
Of course the IT industry isn't immune. We ought to fix things by requiring companies who use foreign labor to pay equivalent U.S. for each overseas position into a fund used for improving living conditions in the countries these companies are abusing (or similar causes).