Re:I withhold judgement until I PLAY it...
on
XBox Released
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· Score: 1
It's incredible how you self-declared old wise people complain about how much it was better before.
What's wrong with you ?
I don't know.. people weren't like that when i was younger...:)
hmm, I'm not an RMS fan nor I even know him but... his insistence that Linux be called GNU/Linux
Hmm I think it's more like marking the difference between the kernel (linux) and the OS GNU/Linux. a monolithic OS like GNU/Linux isn't completely described by its sole kernel (even if it's the central piece). It needs at the very least its libc which is the glibc. less necessary for the strict OS description but still very wellcome are the very basic tools and interfaces (binutils shells and de facto compiler).
RMS wants to have "his own" GNU OS since a lot of time and instead of starting from the kernel, he started all around the kernel. Linux provided a suitable kernel, but "Linux" isn't the OS any more than "GNU". We could complain rightfuly if he were insisting on having it called GNU OS alone but it wouldn't be less of a "rip-off" then than it is when you say "Linux" for the OS instead of GNU/Linux.
But of course it's annoying I agree on that one. I do however understand that for him, as he did a very big part of the work, it feels much more of a rip-off than it feels annoying not to do so. his utter arrogance...Who the hell does he think he is
Yes this is arrogance, but i disagree with "who the hell does he think he is". I'm sory but he is not just the first coming guy. the guy *is* a figure (though not a religious one).It's too bad he isn't as free of his ego as most of us would like him to be to be worshipable as a true valuable icon of "the great guy model". But he is still a figure.It's so pathetic when someone possesses a disturbingly inflated ego without anything to justify it. Now an inflated ego is always a bit disturbing, but at least, in RMS case he did earn it. But I'd sure prefer him to be zen and modest and wise and blind and all:) his consistent interference in..
I don't see what you're talking about so I won't argue it, but I'd like to see some examples to know. zealots make me reach for my.38...
Hmm I hope you were being self-ironic here (??)
zealous people are by definition fanatical partisan people.Although your extremism here doesn't directly make you part of some declared group of anti-zealous, you do pertain to the group of persons who hate people who pertain to groups and are fannatics about it. funny... his disapproval...
So you disaprove his disaproval of some other people behavior....
So do I:) ...
Yes, you are correct I think
But it's even worse, because you won't even
solve the latency problem (not easily at least)
Because, even with thios scheme where you already
send "preloaded" Exabits of data for future use
when you instantly change their value,
you will still need to let them know you did so.
but if they measure somthing before you sent the message,
then the roles are inverted:)
So you would need (maybe) another load of boggus
data, whose purpose would be to be constantly chewcked
by your remote fellows to see appear "self obvious" messages
like "ok, we did it now, check the data !"
But, as you wish 0 latency, you'll have to check
the bogus triggers so often, that you'll have an interesting probability to have self-obvious messages appear randomly now and then
(remember you can't have initialized data, their value is unknown at "entanglement creation"
It only become previsible at measuring time
and only by the one that is measuring against his own
data-stream, giving it the value of the actual data-stream.
You aren't completely wrong with your argument, but
This is still a very bad move from Microsoft because it will effectively back-pedal against itself.
As Bush says it himself, noone will be acceptably uninvolved with terrorism.
Either you are pro-terrorism,
Either you are anti-terrorism.
You will have to prove your side with due acts
So, the airline will have to increase their security
So Microsoft will have to significantly increase its security
Also, Microsoft is calling viruses a form of terrorism, and puting Microsoft as an Airline
isn't a so bad analogy, but it isn't acurate.
For the first viruses (virii, whatever) that could hold.
They spreaded mostly with floppies and then in the Lan.
There I'd see the airline analogy.
But now, viruses are mostly spreading localy, being as destructive as they can, but they are carried by worms.
The real issue is the worm spreading, and the worm ability to inoculate a virus in your system.
The fact is, Outlook and Microsoft Exchange are worms nests.
The spreading of viruses being so succesful is effectively Microsoft fault,
and to a much higher degree than as a simple airline.
It's more like carrying gasoline at work in the non-smoking area something blows up
"hey, but you were not supposed to smoke here"
"allright, but what the fuck were you doing with gas here anyway ?"
Anyway, the interesting part is, if Microsoft has viruses be considered as terrorism,
It will have to increase security, and that would be a good thing.
It all depends on how you want to define "operating system"
Maybe Bill Gates would in fact call it KDE/XFree86/BSD/GNU/Linux, but for more general definitions, a more minimalistic approach is taken.
This minimalistic approach however isn't as minimal as "kernel" it involves at least kernel and libc.
If you want to write your own OS and follow hints to do that, you'll be most likely taught how to:
- decide your type of kernel (monolythic, micro..)
- write the kernel:)
- write a libc
Under that consideration, plus the fact that the GNU tools have a major impact on the OS existence and evolution (I mean, besides the glibc)
RMS's claims are correct. But you can still tell me it's two and a half when I ask you for the time at 14:23:02 GMT:)
The kernel is Linux, the OS GNU/Linux, and when you talk about the whole system, well, as you wish, I prefer to say Linux and specify the distrib if needed.
No, it isn't either, for the same geometry problem.
The problem for cellphone, is that the way you use it, (mostly with your thumb) is with a fixed position of the hand.
For a gamepad, this is pretty much the same, and in fact, it's even worse, because you have higher speed concerns.
To play most action games, you position your fingers above the buttons you will be using and combine, click and click again as fast as possible.
You would use a considerable amount of time to try clicking the same button with different fingers, it's much better to have as many buttons as possible comfortably spread around the device so that you have them all ready to click/trigger/press..
The invention is interesting, but pretty useless in fact, they could have as well invented a camera that could sense your head orientation so that you could do a few things just by moving your head.
It would be interesting but useless, it's not useful just because it is possible or even cool.
The few examples they propose in the article and for what patents were filled are all equaly useless (and even dangerous).
But I could see an application that maybe they forgot to patent:
someone could make a teaching keyboard to train people for typing, or music... where a program could teach the student how to position his fingers and monitor if the words are entered correctly, or if a melody is played "the right way", things like that...
No it was not. (novel and non-obvious)
I'm sorry I can't find reference of it, but I saw (in France) a modified VCR that allowed to do just that.
It was implementing mechanicaly a buffer with at most 30 minutes capacity to pause live video.
The modified VCR was presented in a somewhat funny show, and was limited to this use (not working as a regular VCR) if I remember correctly, and was presented as a funny device to let you pause your favorite show while you could, say, go to the bathroom.
(none of the (few) channels was cutting any movie with ads at this time (not even once) so it was a bit more useful than it may sound, although it remains of very little use)
Anyway I never saw the device ready to buy anywhere, but the point is, the idea is obvious.
So we had, previous implementations of the technique (buffer)
and previous implementations of the idea itself (though using a somewhat different technique)
This patent shouldn't exist.
Well, I think I remember someone refering to GPL as a virus. This is funny, because from the tech report article: An analyst in the aforementioned News.com story hit the nail on the head when he said "Can Microsoft grow much past 92 percent market share on the desktop? There's no new room for growth for new customers on the desktop. In fact, it's a declining market...
It seems that we are really observing a well known pattern.
So who is a virus now ?
I of course agree with your last point which is obviously the ideal world.
But I still don't agree with the rest:)
About the complexity, well, to be fair, you are right, and it depends on how you measure it. Above all, it depends on the application.
But for the CPU part, and especially its costs, I just can't agree.
The cost of the CPU doesn't increase lineary with the capacity, so n cpu are cheapers than a n-capable cpu.
Also, for those thin clients with display, sound and comunication capability, the big part of the cost isn't in the CPU (unless you want to run some very heavy applications, but then again, your central CPU will be very expensive).
(I'm not saying that it won't be justified in the end if for your particular application, this leads to saving monney somewhere else (tech support for example))
Also, and this is "naturaly logical", we are bound to hit physical limits on the thin client side that we are not on the fat client side:
CPU power and bandwidth are limited so that the cost increases as we approach this limit.
Remember I'm talking about a long term solution, i mean, how it will change people behavior, so that they'll ask some more.
More will increase CPU requirements (at least on the server side), it will also, despite the arguments increase the clients cost because they'll have to offer increased battrery life/lower weight/better audio-video capability/better comunication medium support/force feedback/etc...
And of course the bandwidth will also change globally (more people connected at the same time because of the higher value of the application) and also (not my previous point) more bandwidth requirements per client because of the new data exchanges (movies/songs/virtual meetings...) and its improved formats(22khtz ? no 44 ! 16bits color ? no 340x200 ? no...)
And on the cpu side, just imagine if we want to play quake the kind of server you will need if it is supposed to give you the pure image and sound
I know I'm talking about somewhat exagerated "applications" (quake ??):)
But I'm sure that's how it's going to be, it's just natural.
That's why I don't see thin-client as a reasonable architecture (specialy where I have seen it proposed, by SUN among others)
But I understand it might fit in some special cases (I still have a hard time to see it so justified, but I agree nevertheless)
Ok:)
I think I somewhat see what could be your point
But... really I'm having a hard time to see it clearly and how much it matters. (not the whole thing, but the 'little difference'
How I see it, govt isn't fighting to have us a window on the trunk (I suppose it's the part of the car where you put lugages and stuff (??) (I have no idea what the american term might be, but trunk sounds nice:))), but is fighting to have the right to register your car if needed.
But I understand the analogy you are making, I find it pretty good actually, I just don't think it is "the problem".
In fact, I'm even starting o think we're both trying to convince each other of the same thing:):
- Having the window on the trunk won't prevent you to have a black box inside it
- Not having this window will make you look suspect anyway, so you wouldn't do that, especially if you feel like doing something bad
- You don't even need a blackbox inside your trunk if you can just diguise your illicit material as looking like an inocent toy
- Finally, this window will make everybody feel unconfortable because:
- thieves will be more tempted seeing what you carry
- you will turn red once evry neighbor know you're going to offer roses and chocolates to your girlfriend:)
- your children will know about their christmas presents before time
etc..
In the end, you have nothing to get from such a law, but you have to give-up many things
Do we agree ?
Re:Real Programmers...
on
VIM 6.0 is Out
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· Score: 0, Flamebait
Also, Real programmers doesn't spell
closer and closer;)
Of course it can be achievable with a not-so-dumb client. You can always add complexity to a system. Just because you can does not mean it's a good idea, though. Complexity can lead to fragility
Well, the server's complexity is greater to handle 100 clients than the complexity of the 100 clients, but anyway, I see what you mean, and I agree it can be better for certain purposes, I was talking about something more general, and specifically of a few examples I've seen that don't work very well. More bandwidth is NOT required for each application. Why do people keep thinking that? If it takes X number of bytes (worst case) per second to keep the display updated, then it will always take X number of bytes (max) per second to keep the display updated *regardless of the application running*.
That's not what I'm thinking, that's not what I'm saying, but I understand it could be understood like that (though I feel bad you thought I was that stupid:)) (I'll detail later) More CPU may be required for each application, but that would be supplied off the central server which can facilitate more efficient usage of resources (i.e. 50 users running on one CPU at 50% capacity, verses each of those users running their own CPU at 1% capacity. And it's much easier to make that one CPU have a 99.999% uptime than fifty of them.)
Well, this is a good point, and I agree, it's a good example of when you have an interest in such a configuration. but I don't think it is happening that often, most applications use far more CPU, especially those involving graphics (IMHO anyway). Thank's anyway, I was looking for such an answer with my question, (wasn't bashing or anything like that, just proposing my reasons no to see this as a good solution, but you gave me a good argument to consider it, even if I was sure it might be of interest sometimes, I didn't have a good example/reason) As far as service availability goes, I do not feel that is an issue. I cannot recall the last time I picked up my favorite thin-client (i.e. my telephone) and not gotten a dial tone. These things can be done
Thank you, that was precisely my point above, as how bandwidth is related to the application.
Think about your cell phone, or your ISP.
They have capacity for about 20 users, but they give service to about 150 users.
They are for what matters to the discussion a good model of thin-clients solution.
But how can they work with with so many customers if they only have capacity (service availability and/or bandwidth) for a fraction of them ?
Well, precisely because of the application.
Nobody (very few) stays connected to the internet the 24hours (with a modem I mean)
People talk a little with their cell phones and hang.
So really, the game for those service providers is that they evaluate what fraction of the users are being connected simultaneously, how long etc. so they know they don't need 100% of the bandwidth/phone lines. to provide a decent services to everybody.
(as a matter of fact, they aren't playing very well where I live where cell phone is a nightmare)
But, the problem, is that the applications are changing, and they are thus changing the way the device is used.
Imagine now that your cellphone/palm pilot is a thin-client, you connect it to your car and it drives you through the city. (something like that, feel free to create less dumb examples that will work as well).
This application will change customers behavior, so that the fraction of simultaneously connected people will be much higher.
and it will get higher and higher as long as it will be more and more required by applications getting more and more useful/necessary in everyday life.
This is why I'm saying applications will increase bandwidth requirements. I wasn't saying it would be a per/client increase, but a global one (which is the one we have limited in fact).
th same reason also applies for the CPU requirements of course and it is also what I was talking about, but it was also obvious as a per/client direct relationship.
Actualy, shutting dow the Internet and the phone network would only damage ourselves and let them comunicate without any problem.
There are millions way so much better to comunicate in secrecy, there is no way it can be stopped.
As a terrorist leader, I wouldn't use Internet nor phone in a suspicious/spying time
I'd send postcards with some simple coding techniques so that any postcard seems to be a "hey mom, look the liberty statue" stuff.
There is no way we can stop terorists to comunicate, phonme and Internet are great for instant comunications, but they are absolutely inecessary to plan a bomb attack this day, this place monthes before.
Anyway, I don't agree with your first part of the reply, because I don't see how they couldn't do anything if they detect illegal crypto.
(though I don't imply it would be easy to do anything at all)
Anyway, I'm sure it wouldn't happen, because, as you mention, and as i did mention, strong crypto is absolutely not necessary to plan a terrorist attack.
strong crypto is necesary to protect your conversation to some random friend from the rest of the world, or if you are to exchange sensitive information on a public site.
That is because you don't have previous secret agreement, and a "public" part is involved.
For a secret society who doesn't need to share a protocol, it's so easy and effective to use simple encoding that I don't see crypto being of any help.
I really don't understand your point here
How is that different from a clear message ?
How is that different from a backdoor-decryptable message containing an undecryptable one ?
I don't see how you are contradicting my point.
Having backdoored crypto, is indeed so that you can read it, not just to feel comfortable with the idea everybody uses it.. (???)
So in the end you do have to monitor everything.
I suppose random huge quantities of messages will be checked, but they'll have to be "read" to be of any use, so if they are undecryptable, they are spotted. if they are clear but containing an uuencode of something you can't decrypt, you won't spot it unless you read it and see you can't decypt, but it it's talking about bombs and things like that you won't see it neither if you don't "read" it.
I understand what you mean, but I don't see your point as "no" no what ?
Yes it's true, and in Sun's own words
I'm not saying it is not a good product for some specific applications, I have a hard time to really find a way to justify costs/inefectivity etc. but there might be some good reasons to use the product. The example you give seems to be one
Anyway, This SUN solution is being proposed here in Mexico for a very different purpose, where the idea is to give this to students instead of regular computers.
In that case, they will be using all together some 'heavy' applications. Profiling that operation, they gave us the first limit as 10 clients due to network bandwidth, and later 5 clients due to server load.
I'm not making this up, we are (or were, not so sure now) in talks with SUN to see if we'd be producing their boxes.
I have to say I find those shoprt numbers very exagerated myself, but I didn't make themu up.
Still, I was getting a bit offtopic with those details:) but I was trying to explain how are thin-clients the opposite of "the network is the computer".
I understand there is always a way to claim this isn't true, we still have a networked solution blablabla, but really it's not different of what we had with a server and its vt100 when SUN was talkig about the network as being the computer.
Then, they meant the oposite.:)
But what is an object ?
Is an object what it is made of ? (ie. the information of the object is the object) or is the object what it is itself ?
Does every single particle have an unknowable divine ID ?
If the object is completely described by its composition, then yeah teleportation might be possible, because it is directly related to the exchange of information.
But, for what I understand, the information exchange itself isn't specialy fast, you comunicate an experiment result by a normal mean.
The good thing is, you don't have to destroy any copy, the process involves destruction itself (of the original, and in fact, before the reconstruction).
You have a pair of entangled particles, A and B, as far away as you want them to be. you want to send a quantum state Q information from where A is, to where B is. incertainty priciple states that you cannot do this measurement without affecting the information itself, but, what you can do, is measure it against A (scrambling A and Q which is the destruction part you can't avoid). the result of this measure of Q against A can be transported anyway you like to B, and applied to it reconstructing the original Q state. it's like a XOR operation:)
You're absolutely right !
I'm glad I checked if anybody posted it before I did it myself
This article is really a good troll
So they have the hackers very well focused !
This is so ridicuouls I don't even know where to start from
They must be confusing hackers with script kiddies (which btw are precisely the ones likely to act DOSing before the spot even ends)
But even if we did assume that, for some reason hackers (real ones I mean) favorites are sci-fi channel and Buffy the vampire slayer, and they will chose those programs to pass the spot, how in the world do they expect just anybody to understand the message in a non agressive way ???
That's almost like implying the answer. "hey, now go kick some bad guy's ass !!"
- Too bad I can't mod you up -
Well, "the network is the computer" related to the idea of decentralized systems with distributed services, against the idea of a server and a bunch of vt100 or X Terms connected to it. the idea of java applets (client side I mean) against simply browsing an entirely server side page. the idea of gini making every device comunicating, providing its services to the comunity, instead of a squid-like central providing those services
Thin clients (the sun ones at least) are vt100 again (well, X-Terms).
Last time we met sun about its wonderful SunRay thin-client solution, it was a true wonder that would take away from you all administration problems, because everything is in the server.
The only problem is the cost of the solution, and the bandwidth problem. only 10 clients could run at the same time because of the bandwidth demand.
But they recently told us that this limit will actualy be 5 (with the proposed server) because besides the bandwidth problem, the server couldn't handle correctly the load for more than 5 clients at the same time.
Quantum cryptography is not an answer and is in fact a very bad chosen name for what is is
Quantic physics is used here in cryptography in the same way a computer is used to coompute a crypto algorythm, and that doesn't make it computer cryptography. they relate, but the computer is not the method, it's just a way to implement a cryptographic algorythm.
In the case of quantum cryptographic, what is address isn't encyption iteslf but secrecy
You can ensure (in theory anyway) that nobody else but the two parties involved in a comunication had access to the interchanged message. This relates to cryptography because you can securely exchange conventional crypto keys until you are sure noone else got the key than the party you intended to (and even this is assuming as always so many thing that it is still flawed, but less than usualy).
So you have a more secure crypto because you addressed a big problem of crypto which is secure key exchange. but it is not quantum crypto. (it's quantum key exchange)
Although I completely disagree with the idea of backdoored software, I don't agree with this reiterated argument against it
Not being able to oblige the terrorists to use it is the very least of the govt's concern, because anybody not using it will just be easily spotted, which is in fact the whole interest:
It's much better for govt to spot you in the crowd (so that later you'll be properly spyed) than to actualy know what was your specific message this time
If backdoored encryption software is mde obligatory by law, then you can be sure terrorists will be use it just as anybody else (they will keep on using 2000 years old encoding/steganography ideas to hide the meaning of their messages)
The real problem of backdoored encryption, is, how do we prevent anyone else than govt to access the backdoor
So the argument against this backdoored encryption idea is in fact easy:
We have nothing to gain from it (at least not in terrorism-war, and probably in nothing else but obscure political power)
We have a lot to lose.
This is not entirely true (extinction of dinosaurs and steganography wiped out, but they do indeed relate) and everybody knows this on slashdot:
Anonymous Coward-aurus, the dinosaur of slashdot (I think you're still alive) is using those techniques frequently, and I'm sure it is being done right now in some other posts
But even more remarkable is the Microsoftaurus, a very well known dinosaur here that defined steganography in its own way as being:
- The art of hidding stupid games or ridiculous messages in already bloated office softwares
- The art of hidding false bug alarms about competition's operating systems in their windowing software
- The art of hidding other peoples code in their own
- The art of hidding malicious dual-boot agreements in oem licenses
- The art of hidding themelves from the DOJ
- the list goes on and on...
The stegosaur is dead, true, but the steganosaur is alive and kicking, we would learn a lot by studying it :) on a more serious note, steganography and stegosaur do relate (the roots I mean) (cover/roof something like that)
No it's easy, there are many ways to do it, it just depends on the way you want to provide any of the two pictures.
If you are going to provide a site where many people can look at you could offer:
- a gimp tutorial
you have the original picture and various transformations
- a thumbnails gallery
(one of the thumbnails is just as big as the original but its specified size is smaller)
- a find the seven differences game
(the information is spread in untouched areas of the picture(s) (or if you fill lazy, don't even put any difference so that it will be a very hard one this time)
- create tiles
- have a key picture as a background
- send the key as a free preview with more images at your main site
- have an image being the href for its key ...
Slashdot Mirror
It's incredible how you self-declared old wise people complain about how much it was better before. :)
What's wrong with you ?
I don't know.. people weren't like that when i was younger...
hmm, I'm not an RMS fan nor I even know him but... :) .. .38... :)
...
his insistence that Linux be called GNU/Linux
Hmm I think it's more like marking the difference between the kernel (linux) and the OS GNU/Linux. a monolithic OS like GNU/Linux isn't completely described by its sole kernel (even if it's the central piece). It needs at the very least its libc which is the glibc. less necessary for the strict OS description but still very wellcome are the very basic tools and interfaces (binutils shells and de facto compiler).
RMS wants to have "his own" GNU OS since a lot of time and instead of starting from the kernel, he started all around the kernel. Linux provided a suitable kernel, but "Linux" isn't the OS any more than "GNU". We could complain rightfuly if he were insisting on having it called GNU OS alone but it wouldn't be less of a "rip-off" then than it is when you say "Linux" for the OS instead of GNU/Linux.
But of course it's annoying I agree on that one. I do however understand that for him, as he did a very big part of the work, it feels much more of a rip-off than it feels annoying not to do so.
his utter arrogance...Who the hell does he think he is
Yes this is arrogance, but i disagree with "who the hell does he think he is". I'm sory but he is not just the first coming guy. the guy *is* a figure (though not a religious one).It's too bad he isn't as free of his ego as most of us would like him to be to be worshipable as a true valuable icon of "the great guy model". But he is still a figure.It's so pathetic when someone possesses a disturbingly inflated ego without anything to justify it. Now an inflated ego is always a bit disturbing, but at least, in RMS case he did earn it. But I'd sure prefer him to be zen and modest and wise and blind and all
his consistent interference in
I don't see what you're talking about so I won't argue it, but I'd like to see some examples to know.
zealots make me reach for my
Hmm I hope you were being self-ironic here (??)
zealous people are by definition fanatical partisan people.Although your extremism here doesn't directly make you part of some declared group of anti-zealous, you do pertain to the group of persons who hate people who pertain to groups and are fannatics about it. funny...
his disapproval...
So you disaprove his disaproval of some other people behavior....
So do I
Yes, you are correct I think :)
But it's even worse, because you won't even
solve the latency problem (not easily at least)
Because, even with thios scheme where you already
send "preloaded" Exabits of data for future use
when you instantly change their value,
you will still need to let them know you did so.
but if they measure somthing before you sent the message,
then the roles are inverted
So you would need (maybe) another load of boggus
data, whose purpose would be to be constantly chewcked
by your remote fellows to see appear "self obvious" messages
like "ok, we did it now, check the data !"
But, as you wish 0 latency, you'll have to check
the bogus triggers so often, that you'll have an interesting probability to have self-obvious
messages appear randomly now and then
(remember you can't have initialized data, their value is unknown at "entanglement creation"
It only become previsible at measuring time
and only by the one that is measuring against his own
data-stream, giving it the value of the actual data-stream.
You aren't completely wrong with your argument, but
This is still a very bad move from Microsoft because it will effectively back-pedal against itself.
As Bush says it himself, noone will be acceptably uninvolved with terrorism.
Either you are pro-terrorism,
Either you are anti-terrorism.
You will have to prove your side with due acts
So, the airline will have to increase their security
So Microsoft will have to significantly increase its security
Also, Microsoft is calling viruses a form of terrorism, and puting Microsoft as an Airline
isn't a so bad analogy, but it isn't acurate.
For the first viruses (virii, whatever) that could hold.
They spreaded mostly with floppies and then in the Lan.
There I'd see the airline analogy.
But now, viruses are mostly spreading localy, being as destructive as they can, but they are carried by worms.
The real issue is the worm spreading, and the worm ability to inoculate a virus in your system.
The fact is, Outlook and Microsoft Exchange are worms nests.
The spreading of viruses being so succesful is effectively Microsoft fault,
and to a much higher degree than as a simple airline.
It's more like carrying gasoline at work in the non-smoking area something blows up
"hey, but you were not supposed to smoke here"
"allright, but what the fuck were you doing with gas here anyway ?"
Anyway, the interesting part is, if Microsoft has viruses be considered as terrorism,
It will have to increase security, and that would be a good thing.
It all depends on how you want to define "operating system" :) :)
Maybe Bill Gates would in fact call it KDE/XFree86/BSD/GNU/Linux, but for more general definitions, a more minimalistic approach is taken.
This minimalistic approach however isn't as minimal as "kernel" it involves at least kernel and libc.
If you want to write your own OS and follow hints to do that, you'll be most likely taught how to:
- decide your type of kernel (monolythic, micro..)
- write the kernel
- write a libc
Under that consideration, plus the fact that the GNU tools have a major impact on the OS existence and evolution (I mean, besides the glibc)
RMS's claims are correct. But you can still tell me it's two and a half when I ask you for the time at 14:23:02 GMT
The kernel is Linux, the OS GNU/Linux, and when you talk about the whole system, well, as you wish, I prefer to say Linux and specify the distrib if needed.
No, it isn't either, for the same geometry problem.
The problem for cellphone, is that the way you use it, (mostly with your thumb) is with a fixed position of the hand.
For a gamepad, this is pretty much the same, and in fact, it's even worse, because you have higher speed concerns.
To play most action games, you position your fingers above the buttons you will be using and combine, click and click again as fast as possible.
You would use a considerable amount of time to try clicking the same button with different fingers, it's much better to have as many buttons as possible comfortably spread around the device so that you have them all ready to click/trigger/press..
The invention is interesting, but pretty useless in fact, they could have as well invented a camera that could sense your head orientation so that you could do a few things just by moving your head.
It would be interesting but useless, it's not useful just because it is possible or even cool.
The few examples they propose in the article and for what patents were filled are all equaly useless (and even dangerous).
But I could see an application that maybe they forgot to patent:
someone could make a teaching keyboard to train people for typing, or music... where a program could teach the student how to position his fingers and monitor if the words are entered correctly, or if a melody is played "the right way", things like that...
No it was not. (novel and non-obvious)
I'm sorry I can't find reference of it, but I saw (in France) a modified VCR that allowed to do just that.
It was implementing mechanicaly a buffer with at most 30 minutes capacity to pause live video.
The modified VCR was presented in a somewhat funny show, and was limited to this use (not working as a regular VCR) if I remember correctly, and was presented as a funny device to let you pause your favorite show while you could, say, go to the bathroom.
(none of the (few) channels was cutting any movie with ads at this time (not even once) so it was a bit more useful than it may sound, although it remains of very little use)
Anyway I never saw the device ready to buy anywhere, but the point is, the idea is obvious.
So we had, previous implementations of the technique (buffer)
and previous implementations of the idea itself (though using a somewhat different technique)
This patent shouldn't exist.
Well, I think I remember someone refering to GPL as a virus. This is funny, because from the tech report article:
An analyst in the aforementioned News.com story hit the nail on the head when he said "Can Microsoft grow much past 92 percent market share on the desktop? There's no new room for growth for new customers on the desktop. In fact, it's a declining market...
It seems that we are really observing a well known pattern.
So who is a virus now ?
:)
Oh well that's right
In fact I agree with you on that point too
I of course agree with your last point which is obviously the ideal world. :) :)
But I still don't agree with the rest
About the complexity, well, to be fair, you are right, and it depends on how you measure it. Above all, it depends on the application.
But for the CPU part, and especially its costs, I just can't agree.
The cost of the CPU doesn't increase lineary with the capacity, so n cpu are cheapers than a n-capable cpu.
Also, for those thin clients with display, sound and comunication capability, the big part of the cost isn't in the CPU (unless you want to run some very heavy applications, but then again, your central CPU will be very expensive).
(I'm not saying that it won't be justified in the end if for your particular application, this leads to saving monney somewhere else (tech support for example))
Also, and this is "naturaly logical", we are bound to hit physical limits on the thin client side that we are not on the fat client side:
CPU power and bandwidth are limited so that the cost increases as we approach this limit.
Remember I'm talking about a long term solution, i mean, how it will change people behavior, so that they'll ask some more.
More will increase CPU requirements (at least on the server side), it will also, despite the arguments increase the clients cost because they'll have to offer increased battrery life/lower weight/better audio-video capability/better comunication medium support/force feedback/etc...
And of course the bandwidth will also change globally (more people connected at the same time because of the higher value of the application) and also (not my previous point) more bandwidth requirements per client because of the new data exchanges (movies/songs/virtual meetings...) and its improved formats(22khtz ? no 44 ! 16bits color ? no 340x200 ? no...)
And on the cpu side, just imagine if we want to play quake the kind of server you will need if it is supposed to give you the pure image and sound
I know I'm talking about somewhat exagerated "applications" (quake ??)
But I'm sure that's how it's going to be, it's just natural.
That's why I don't see thin-client as a reasonable architecture (specialy where I have seen it proposed, by SUN among others)
But I understand it might fit in some special cases (I still have a hard time to see it so justified, but I agree nevertheless)
Ok :) :))), but is fighting to have the right to register your car if needed. :) : :)
I think I somewhat see what could be your point
But... really I'm having a hard time to see it clearly and how much it matters. (not the whole thing, but the 'little difference'
How I see it, govt isn't fighting to have us a window on the trunk (I suppose it's the part of the car where you put lugages and stuff (??) (I have no idea what the american term might be, but trunk sounds nice
But I understand the analogy you are making, I find it pretty good actually, I just don't think it is "the problem".
In fact, I'm even starting o think we're both trying to convince each other of the same thing
- Having the window on the trunk won't prevent you to have a black box inside it
- Not having this window will make you look suspect anyway, so you wouldn't do that, especially if you feel like doing something bad - You don't even need a blackbox inside your trunk if you can just diguise your illicit material as looking like an inocent toy
- Finally, this window will make everybody feel unconfortable because:
- thieves will be more tempted seeing what you carry
- you will turn red once evry neighbor know you're going to offer roses and chocolates to your girlfriend
- your children will know about their christmas presents before time
etc..
In the end, you have nothing to get from such a law, but you have to give-up many things
Do we agree ?
Also, Real programmers doesn't spell ;)
closer and closer
Of course it can be achievable with a not-so-dumb client. You can always add complexity to a system. Just because you can does not mean it's a good idea, though. Complexity can lead to fragility :)) (I'll detail later)
Well, the server's complexity is greater to handle 100 clients than the complexity of the 100 clients, but anyway, I see what you mean, and I agree it can be better for certain purposes, I was talking about something more general, and specifically of a few examples I've seen that don't work very well.
More bandwidth is NOT required for each application. Why do people keep thinking that? If it takes X number of bytes (worst case) per second to keep the display updated, then it will always take X number of bytes (max) per second to keep the display updated *regardless of the application running*.
That's not what I'm thinking, that's not what I'm saying, but I understand it could be understood like that (though I feel bad you thought I was that stupid
More CPU may be required for each application, but that would be supplied off the central server which can facilitate more efficient usage of resources (i.e. 50 users running on one CPU at 50% capacity, verses each of those users running their own CPU at 1% capacity. And it's much easier to make that one CPU have a 99.999% uptime than fifty of them.)
Well, this is a good point, and I agree, it's a good example of when you have an interest in such a configuration. but I don't think it is happening that often, most applications use far more CPU, especially those involving graphics (IMHO anyway). Thank's anyway, I was looking for such an answer with my question, (wasn't bashing or anything like that, just proposing my reasons no to see this as a good solution, but you gave me a good argument to consider it, even if I was sure it might be of interest sometimes, I didn't have a good example/reason)
As far as service availability goes, I do not feel that is an issue. I cannot recall the last time I picked up my favorite thin-client (i.e. my telephone) and not gotten a dial tone. These things can be done
Thank you, that was precisely my point above, as how bandwidth is related to the application.
Think about your cell phone, or your ISP.
They have capacity for about 20 users, but they give service to about 150 users.
They are for what matters to the discussion a good model of thin-clients solution.
But how can they work with with so many customers if they only have capacity (service availability and/or bandwidth) for a fraction of them ?
Well, precisely because of the application.
Nobody (very few) stays connected to the internet the 24hours (with a modem I mean)
People talk a little with their cell phones and hang.
So really, the game for those service providers is that they evaluate what fraction of the users are being connected simultaneously, how long etc. so they know they don't need 100% of the bandwidth/phone lines. to provide a decent services to everybody.
(as a matter of fact, they aren't playing very well where I live where cell phone is a nightmare)
But, the problem, is that the applications are changing, and they are thus changing the way the device is used.
Imagine now that your cellphone/palm pilot is a thin-client, you connect it to your car and it drives you through the city. (something like that, feel free to create less dumb examples that will work as well).
This application will change customers behavior, so that the fraction of simultaneously connected people will be much higher.
and it will get higher and higher as long as it will be more and more required by applications getting more and more useful/necessary in everyday life.
This is why I'm saying applications will increase bandwidth requirements. I wasn't saying it would be a per/client increase, but a global one (which is the one we have limited in fact).
th same reason also applies for the CPU requirements of course and it is also what I was talking about, but it was also obvious as a per/client direct relationship.
Actualy, shutting dow the Internet and the phone network would only damage ourselves and let them comunicate without any problem.
There are millions way so much better to comunicate in secrecy, there is no way it can be stopped.
As a terrorist leader, I wouldn't use Internet nor phone in a suspicious/spying time
I'd send postcards with some simple coding techniques so that any postcard seems to be a "hey mom, look the liberty statue" stuff.
There is no way we can stop terorists to comunicate, phonme and Internet are great for instant comunications, but they are absolutely inecessary to plan a bomb attack this day, this place monthes before.
Anyway, I don't agree with your first part of the reply, because I don't see how they couldn't do anything if they detect illegal crypto.
(though I don't imply it would be easy to do anything at all)
Anyway, I'm sure it wouldn't happen, because, as you mention, and as i did mention, strong crypto is absolutely not necessary to plan a terrorist attack.
strong crypto is necesary to protect your conversation to some random friend from the rest of the world, or if you are to exchange sensitive information on a public site.
That is because you don't have previous secret agreement, and a "public" part is involved.
For a secret society who doesn't need to share a protocol, it's so easy and effective to use simple encoding that I don't see crypto being of any help.
I really don't understand your point here
How is that different from a clear message ?
How is that different from a backdoor-decryptable message containing an undecryptable one ?
I don't see how you are contradicting my point.
Having backdoored crypto, is indeed so that you can read it, not just to feel comfortable with the idea everybody uses it.. (???)
So in the end you do have to monitor everything.
I suppose random huge quantities of messages will be checked, but they'll have to be "read" to be of any use, so if they are undecryptable, they are spotted. if they are clear but containing an uuencode of something you can't decrypt, you won't spot it unless you read it and see you can't decypt, but it it's talking about bombs and things like that you won't see it neither if you don't "read" it.
I understand what you mean, but I don't see your point as "no" no what ?
Yes it's true, and in Sun's own words :) but I was trying to explain how are thin-clients the opposite of "the network is the computer". :)
I'm not saying it is not a good product for some specific applications, I have a hard time to really find a way to justify costs/inefectivity etc. but there might be some good reasons to use the product. The example you give seems to be one
Anyway, This SUN solution is being proposed here in Mexico for a very different purpose, where the idea is to give this to students instead of regular computers.
In that case, they will be using all together some 'heavy' applications. Profiling that operation, they gave us the first limit as 10 clients due to network bandwidth, and later 5 clients due to server load.
I'm not making this up, we are (or were, not so sure now) in talks with SUN to see if we'd be producing their boxes.
I have to say I find those shoprt numbers very exagerated myself, but I didn't make themu up.
Still, I was getting a bit offtopic with those details
I understand there is always a way to claim this isn't true, we still have a networked solution blablabla, but really it's not different of what we had with a server and its vt100 when SUN was talkig about the network as being the computer.
Then, they meant the oposite.
But what is an object ? :)
Is an object what it is made of ? (ie. the information of the object is the object) or is the object what it is itself ?
Does every single particle have an unknowable divine ID ?
If the object is completely described by its composition, then yeah teleportation might be possible, because it is directly related to the exchange of information.
But, for what I understand, the information exchange itself isn't specialy fast, you comunicate an experiment result by a normal mean.
The good thing is, you don't have to destroy any copy, the process involves destruction itself (of the original, and in fact, before the reconstruction).
You have a pair of entangled particles, A and B, as far away as you want them to be. you want to send a quantum state Q information from where A is, to where B is. incertainty priciple states that you cannot do this measurement without affecting the information itself, but, what you can do, is measure it against A (scrambling A and Q which is the destruction part you can't avoid). the result of this measure of Q against A can be transported anyway you like to B, and applied to it reconstructing the original Q state. it's like a XOR operation
You're absolutely right !
I'm glad I checked if anybody posted it before I did it myself
This article is really a good troll
So they have the hackers very well focused !
This is so ridicuouls I don't even know where to start from
They must be confusing hackers with script kiddies (which btw are precisely the ones likely to act DOSing before the spot even ends)
But even if we did assume that, for some reason hackers (real ones I mean) favorites are sci-fi channel and Buffy the vampire slayer, and they will chose those programs to pass the spot, how in the world do they expect just anybody to understand the message in a non agressive way ???
That's almost like implying the answer. "hey, now go kick some bad guy's ass !!"
- Too bad I can't mod you up -
Well, "the network is the computer" related to the idea of decentralized systems with distributed services, against the idea of a server and a bunch of vt100 or X Terms connected to it. the idea of java applets (client side I mean) against simply browsing an entirely server side page. the idea of gini making every device comunicating, providing its services to the comunity, instead of a squid-like central providing those services
Thin clients (the sun ones at least) are vt100 again (well, X-Terms).
Last time we met sun about its wonderful SunRay thin-client solution, it was a true wonder that would take away from you all administration problems, because everything is in the server.
The only problem is the cost of the solution, and the bandwidth problem. only 10 clients could run at the same time because of the bandwidth demand.
But they recently told us that this limit will actualy be 5 (with the proposed server) because besides the bandwidth problem, the server couldn't handle correctly the load for more than 5 clients at the same time.
thin clients are exactly the opposite of what they meant by "The network is the computer".
Quantum cryptography is not an answer and is in fact a very bad chosen name for what is is
Quantic physics is used here in cryptography in the same way a computer is used to coompute a crypto algorythm, and that doesn't make it computer cryptography. they relate, but the computer is not the method, it's just a way to implement a cryptographic algorythm.
In the case of quantum cryptographic, what is address isn't encyption iteslf but secrecy
You can ensure (in theory anyway) that nobody else but the two parties involved in a comunication had access to the interchanged message. This relates to cryptography because you can securely exchange conventional crypto keys until you are sure noone else got the key than the party you intended to (and even this is assuming as always so many thing that it is still flawed, but less than usualy).
So you have a more secure crypto because you addressed a big problem of crypto which is secure key exchange. but it is not quantum crypto. (it's quantum key exchange)
Although I completely disagree with the idea of backdoored software, I don't agree with this reiterated argument against it
Not being able to oblige the terrorists to use it is the very least of the govt's concern, because anybody not using it will just be easily spotted, which is in fact the whole interest:
It's much better for govt to spot you in the crowd (so that later you'll be properly spyed) than to actualy know what was your specific message this time
If backdoored encryption software is mde obligatory by law, then you can be sure terrorists will be use it just as anybody else (they will keep on using 2000 years old encoding/steganography ideas to hide the meaning of their messages)
The real problem of backdoored encryption, is, how do we prevent anyone else than govt to access the backdoor
So the argument against this backdoored encryption idea is in fact easy:
We have nothing to gain from it (at least not in terrorism-war, and probably in nothing else but obscure political power)
We have a lot to lose.
(note how a seasoned slashdotter always finds a way to bash Microsoft, no matter the topic may be)
This is not entirely true (extinction of dinosaurs and steganography wiped out, but they do indeed relate) and everybody knows this on slashdot:
:) on a more serious note, steganography and stegosaur do relate (the roots I mean) (cover/roof something like that)
Anonymous Coward-aurus, the dinosaur of slashdot (I think you're still alive) is using those techniques frequently, and I'm sure it is being done right now in some other posts
But even more remarkable is the Microsoftaurus, a very well known dinosaur here that defined steganography in its own way as being:
- The art of hidding stupid games or ridiculous messages in already bloated office softwares
- The art of hidding false bug alarms about competition's operating systems in their windowing software
- The art of hidding other peoples code in their own
- The art of hidding malicious dual-boot agreements in oem licenses
- The art of hidding themelves from the DOJ
- the list goes on and on...
The stegosaur is dead, true, but the steganosaur is alive and kicking, we would learn a lot by studying it
No it's easy, there are many ways to do it, it just depends on the way you want to provide any of the two pictures.
...
If you are going to provide a site where many people can look at you could offer:
- a gimp tutorial
you have the original picture and various transformations
- a thumbnails gallery
(one of the thumbnails is just as big as the original but its specified size is smaller)
- a find the seven differences game
(the information is spread in untouched areas of the picture(s) (or if you fill lazy, don't even put any difference so that it will be a very hard one this time)
- create tiles
- have a key picture as a background
- send the key as a free preview with more images at your main site
- have an image being the href for its key