The most logical thing, surely, is to have a script that grabs the latest source, build suitable binary RPMs and a binary DEB, and then move these files to the correct directory for a repository manager.
(For RPMs, you could simply use the distro-supplied SPEC file and have the script replace values as needed. This only breaks when files are added/deleted, which usually doesn't happen.)
Alternatively, standardize on Slackware and banish the distro-specific issues to history. The drawbacks are less support and fewer fixes, but since the DoD can't track or test all variants, it's reasonable to assume they only track issues for the vanilla version. Distro-modded versions could have flaws added ad well as flaws removed, and in the DoD, it's better to have an absence of known threats.
Working off the oldest surnames I have been able to track back to in my family tree (1600s), one side of my family seem to be all descended from archers and the other side is all descended from men-at-arms. This would explain why I'm hopelessly confused all the time.
I would argue that all solutions that currently exist for databases are ideal for some specific set of problems AND some specific set of users for each problem within that initial set.
There is no "perfect" solution that will work for all types of data, be it a flatfile structure, a hierarchical structure, a relational structure, object-oriented or some combination of those. (The star-structure of OLAP databases is a hybrid, for example.)
What would be good is if there was a suitable metalanguage in which you could define an abstract idea of the search and have a source-to-source compiler turn that into a suitable specific solution for the type of database in use, or even the specific database engine itself.
(There are some nice tools for producing specific database SQL queries out of an abstract definition, but I know of nothing that can cross database design methodologies.)
There's probably quite a bit of the body that has no pain receptors. You don't really need pain receptors on a lymph node, for example, so I would imagine there would be rather fewer of them.
I don't see why this couldn't be used elsewhere in the body, and I imagine as the technique improves, people will find all kinds of uses for it beyond killing cells. (For example, being able to selectively warm internal tissue might be quite valuable when treating hypothermia.)
And a hello back.:) I hope we have many more interesting conversations. Your post here, incidentally, is fascinating and gets into some of the social/historical aspects of control that I'd not been aware of. Thank you!
Those that fall without violence generally (but not universally) do better than those that fall with violence. Violent revolutionaries tend to fear being replaced by yet other violent revolutionaries, which can lead to ever-increasing oppression. This is not a universal rule.
The closest thing that there is to a universal rule is that societies are better off for solving their own problems, rather than having a solution imposed. Especially if the imposer and imposee are culturally and/or technologically miles apart.
The simplest way to bypass hardware monitoring devices is to hide your message inside an innocuous message. Plain-text stenography has been around a long time. Have the important letters follow a known series, then fill in the gaps such that the message appears to be genuine and innocent.
You can also use non-technical solutions, such as using phospher-based invisible ink. You can get this past censors by using an ink that IS visible but is based on something that sublimates at room temperature. The visible ink makes the text seem harmless to initial scrutiny but will fade and vanish shortly after. The recipient then uses the correct method to see the real text.
Want to combine methods? No problem, run your message off onto punch tape, then use IP-over-Avian to send and receive e-mails.
The ink solution is simple enough that boy scout manuals from the 1950s were covering it, and that's the hardest one there. The ONLY way to block all these is to block absolutely everything. One gap is all it takes to find an exploit.
Yeah. Right. There's no way an attack could even slow Iranian development, but there are many ways an attack could accelerate it. Not only in Iran but in every other country working towards nuclear technology.
Worse, Iraq and North Korea have, between them, demonstrated already that the more militant in America only give a damn for the rights of those enforcing them at gunpoint. Reinforcing this isn't going to help matters. Sure, the Iranian leadership is full of paranoid religious maniacs, but then so was Bush's administration, and the Iranians at least have the excuse of the CIA and MI5 assassinating those who really were democratically elected.
(If the ones that the US aren't trying to kill are the paranoid schizophrenics, why would you assume Iran would have anyone but a paranoid schizophrenic as a leader?)
If you want the entire Middle East to suddenly opt in to sanctions-busting to buy up North Korean nukes, then sure, Israel launching an attack might be effective. That's the only imaginable consequence of any note.
(Ok, ok, it's just possible it could also trigger World War 3, as violence escalates and allies call on allies, as per World War 1. America can't do a damn thing about it without causing Russia to intervene for the other side.)
If there exists any means of communication that is not blocked, that means can be subverted to support every form of communication. As a result, any partial technological block will inevitably be defeated.
The alternative to censorship is self-censorship - alter society such that it no longer wants to communicate in such-and-such a form, or to transmit such-and-such information. This has mixed results. Certainly, China and Iran haven't done well in convincing their citizens not to communicate with the outside world. On the other hand, the Pitcairn Islanders are not exactly broadcasting the facts behind the crimes of the power-brokers there.
I guess the difference is that all the Pitcairn Islanders are, to some extent, guilty of the crimes that only a handful were actually convicted for, and talking could lead to their conviction as well. On the other hand, dissidents in Iran and China don't see themselves as guilty of the crimes of their leadership and so have no need to protect themselves.
(One wonders how many other people have been silent of things they should have spoken up over, to avoid being convicted. It's a part of the censorship debate that IS important, as it is the only part that cannot be technologically circumvented. Well, not until mind-reading machines have been developed.)
In a way, I guess the Iranian censorship technology is a good thing, in that it seems to be pressing the technologists more, forcing them to come up with cleverer solutions. It's good for the mind and may, someday, lead to Iranian inventors and innovators gaining some clout in the world. Adverse conditions tend to produce some brilliant minds.
I'd consider RTF to be RatherObscureText, rather than PlainText, and HTML is more ModeratelyobscureText. Both can be contrasted with TeX, which is AlmostPlainButBloodyAnnoyingText.
Uck! Marketroid speak! It's not exactly new, there was a multicast-based text editor as part of the MICE suite, and there were some very nice "whiteboard" programs out there which allowed you to use OLE linking to share data between two applications real-time.
The first certainly was around in the early 1990s, the second was around in the mid 90s.
EtherPad may be "new" in that it uses HTTP as the underlying protocol, but collaborative editors are ANCIENT. The biggest problem they've faced is that so few people have used them that they have never really maintained critical mass.
There are no good originals. That's the point. The originals are missing, believed wiped. This is stuff telerecorded off of a TV set with far too much dirt on the image.
You also need to remember that early recordings tend to get gummy. The way this is fixed is to bake the tape. You then get ONE shot at recovering the data from it, after that the tape is destroyed. I don't know if they needed to bake the masters, the article doesn't say. If they did, though, then there is nothing you can go back to.
Finally, there's the question of where the new data comes from. Is it data on the recording that is simply too faint to see, or is it data interpolated from quality photographs? Or, yet again, data that the studio THINKS should be there?
leetrout's comment that the studio was working with NASA "not to fix too much" indicates that not all of the data is original from the recording, but may be from other sources. If everything were original from the recording, then "fixing too much" would be impossible and NASA would not be watching over them.
Restoration work is extremely valuable, don't get me wrong, but it's extremely hard to do safely when it comes to rare, historic material. Too easy to accidentally (or deliberately) modify the record. It requires care and integrity - precisely the qualities we are forever accusing Hollywood of not having (including on the Tolkien story from earlier).
Having a Hollywood studio "restore" the footage is going to provide wonderful ammunition for the conspiracy nuts, as they now get to claim that even if the tapes were real, you have no way of knowing if the restored information is genuine or inserted.
Yes, but the argument I was responding to was that copyright should terminate on the author's death. If the author is dead before publication, this would mean the work never gets protected at all. It is that that I object to. Sure, the author gets no benefit, but it doesn't alter the fact that effort was put into the work.
Coreboot actually works on a very wide range of motherboards, in much the same way that Linux had drivers for hardware where the vendors weren't cooperating (reverse-engineering). I maintain (when I have time) the Freshmeat record for Coreboot and just about every entry I've done for it has had vast numbers of new drivers.
Christopher also did a fair bit of editing, cleaning-up and polishing, so he did actually have some creative input. I'd also include the audio tapes, which include an otherwise unknown piece of Elvish poetry being sung by JRRT, as contributing to our knowledge.
I believe the old British standard for copyright for books was lifetime OR fifty years from publication, whichever was the longer. Regardless of whether I'm remembering that correctly or not, that would seem to be a perfectly good term for copyright and would cover for providing for the family for later works.
Burn your copy of the Silmarilian (posthumous release, due to the Publisher's cowardice). I certainly don't agree with indefinite copyright, or even the absurd life + 90 they have at the moment. Life =OR= 50 years from publication, whichever is the longer, is perfectly adequate to cover most situations.
Well, is that strictly true? Children of Huron was published a good deal more recently than that. In fact, IIRC, four times as many books have been published by JRRT since he died than when he was alive. Not to mention the audio tapes (which include JRRT reading from his work and singing Elvish poetry that doesn't otherwise survive).
This is all new material. Yes, technically it was all written before JRRT died, but not one scrap of it would have been released if there was no incentive by either Christopher Tolkien OR (more importantly) the publishing house to publish it.
This new material included such gems as The Silmarilian, one of the all-time greatest works of JRRT, and the one he put the most effort into. That was never published in his lifetime. Not because it was no good, but because the publisher didn't realize the market for High Fantasy was as extensive as it proved to be. The other material, likewise, was often not held back by the author, it was held back by the publishers.
I'm not saying extended copyrights are always good, but there ARE special circumstances where they are valuable.
Another example would be the repair and restoration of crates upon crates of Hemmingway material that was left, abandoned, in his house after his death. Most of it is damaged by fungus and rot, but it is salvageable. The costs for the repairs are all being covered by the value of the material being salvaged.
These are exceptional circumstances, you won't find anything remotely similar in the majority of cases, but the exceptions SHOULD be covered by law no less than the general rule.
Let's see. The first hex digit is a 2. Let's see... 4... 8... Ok, you'd need to spend four times as much again, and the sign bit will flip, provided they use two's compliment notation.
Gold is a problem as there's much more of it now than there was when it was an international standard. However, there ARE precious metals (and non-metallic elements elements) where there is a relatively fixed amount available, and huge additional reserves are next to impossible.
If a currency were to be pegged to something like that, where price is in a dynamic equilibrium and is unlikely to shift from equilibrium overall, then that would work.
Gold is not good for this. Too much of it, too many reserves being discovered, pushing the price down. It's not stable. But gold is not the only metal on Earth. It's not even the rarest.
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The most logical thing, surely, is to have a script that grabs the latest source, build suitable binary RPMs and a binary DEB, and then move these files to the correct directory for a repository manager.
(For RPMs, you could simply use the distro-supplied SPEC file and have the script replace values as needed. This only breaks when files are added/deleted, which usually doesn't happen.)
Alternatively, standardize on Slackware and banish the distro-specific issues to history. The drawbacks are less support and fewer fixes, but since the DoD can't track or test all variants, it's reasonable to assume they only track issues for the vanilla version. Distro-modded versions could have flaws added ad well as flaws removed, and in the DoD, it's better to have an absence of known threats.
Working off the oldest surnames I have been able to track back to in my family tree (1600s), one side of my family seem to be all descended from archers and the other side is all descended from men-at-arms. This would explain why I'm hopelessly confused all the time.
I made you a cookie, but I eated it.
Since a high price is above a low price, "above cheap" means "expensive".
I would argue that all solutions that currently exist for databases are ideal for some specific set of problems AND some specific set of users for each problem within that initial set.
There is no "perfect" solution that will work for all types of data, be it a flatfile structure, a hierarchical structure, a relational structure, object-oriented or some combination of those. (The star-structure of OLAP databases is a hybrid, for example.)
What would be good is if there was a suitable metalanguage in which you could define an abstract idea of the search and have a source-to-source compiler turn that into a suitable specific solution for the type of database in use, or even the specific database engine itself.
(There are some nice tools for producing specific database SQL queries out of an abstract definition, but I know of nothing that can cross database design methodologies.)
There's probably quite a bit of the body that has no pain receptors. You don't really need pain receptors on a lymph node, for example, so I would imagine there would be rather fewer of them.
I don't see why this couldn't be used elsewhere in the body, and I imagine as the technique improves, people will find all kinds of uses for it beyond killing cells. (For example, being able to selectively warm internal tissue might be quite valuable when treating hypothermia.)
And a hello back. :) I hope we have many more interesting conversations. Your post here, incidentally, is fascinating and gets into some of the social/historical aspects of control that I'd not been aware of. Thank you!
Very true.
Those that fall without violence generally (but not universally) do better than those that fall with violence. Violent revolutionaries tend to fear being replaced by yet other violent revolutionaries, which can lead to ever-increasing oppression. This is not a universal rule.
The closest thing that there is to a universal rule is that societies are better off for solving their own problems, rather than having a solution imposed. Especially if the imposer and imposee are culturally and/or technologically miles apart.
The simplest way to bypass hardware monitoring devices is to hide your message inside an innocuous message. Plain-text stenography has been around a long time. Have the important letters follow a known series, then fill in the gaps such that the message appears to be genuine and innocent.
You can also use non-technical solutions, such as using phospher-based invisible ink. You can get this past censors by using an ink that IS visible but is based on something that sublimates at room temperature. The visible ink makes the text seem harmless to initial scrutiny but will fade and vanish shortly after. The recipient then uses the correct method to see the real text.
Want to combine methods? No problem, run your message off onto punch tape, then use IP-over-Avian to send and receive e-mails.
The ink solution is simple enough that boy scout manuals from the 1950s were covering it, and that's the hardest one there. The ONLY way to block all these is to block absolutely everything. One gap is all it takes to find an exploit.
Yeah. Right. There's no way an attack could even slow Iranian development, but there are many ways an attack could accelerate it. Not only in Iran but in every other country working towards nuclear technology.
Worse, Iraq and North Korea have, between them, demonstrated already that the more militant in America only give a damn for the rights of those enforcing them at gunpoint. Reinforcing this isn't going to help matters. Sure, the Iranian leadership is full of paranoid religious maniacs, but then so was Bush's administration, and the Iranians at least have the excuse of the CIA and MI5 assassinating those who really were democratically elected.
(If the ones that the US aren't trying to kill are the paranoid schizophrenics, why would you assume Iran would have anyone but a paranoid schizophrenic as a leader?)
If you want the entire Middle East to suddenly opt in to sanctions-busting to buy up North Korean nukes, then sure, Israel launching an attack might be effective. That's the only imaginable consequence of any note.
(Ok, ok, it's just possible it could also trigger World War 3, as violence escalates and allies call on allies, as per World War 1. America can't do a damn thing about it without causing Russia to intervene for the other side.)
If there exists any means of communication that is not blocked, that means can be subverted to support every form of communication. As a result, any partial technological block will inevitably be defeated.
The alternative to censorship is self-censorship - alter society such that it no longer wants to communicate in such-and-such a form, or to transmit such-and-such information. This has mixed results. Certainly, China and Iran haven't done well in convincing their citizens not to communicate with the outside world. On the other hand, the Pitcairn Islanders are not exactly broadcasting the facts behind the crimes of the power-brokers there.
I guess the difference is that all the Pitcairn Islanders are, to some extent, guilty of the crimes that only a handful were actually convicted for, and talking could lead to their conviction as well. On the other hand, dissidents in Iran and China don't see themselves as guilty of the crimes of their leadership and so have no need to protect themselves.
(One wonders how many other people have been silent of things they should have spoken up over, to avoid being convicted. It's a part of the censorship debate that IS important, as it is the only part that cannot be technologically circumvented. Well, not until mind-reading machines have been developed.)
In a way, I guess the Iranian censorship technology is a good thing, in that it seems to be pressing the technologists more, forcing them to come up with cleverer solutions. It's good for the mind and may, someday, lead to Iranian inventors and innovators gaining some clout in the world. Adverse conditions tend to produce some brilliant minds.
I'd consider RTF to be RatherObscureText, rather than PlainText, and HTML is more ModeratelyobscureText. Both can be contrasted with TeX, which is AlmostPlainButBloodyAnnoyingText.
Uck! Marketroid speak! It's not exactly new, there was a multicast-based text editor as part of the MICE suite, and there were some very nice "whiteboard" programs out there which allowed you to use OLE linking to share data between two applications real-time.
The first certainly was around in the early 1990s, the second was around in the mid 90s.
EtherPad may be "new" in that it uses HTTP as the underlying protocol, but collaborative editors are ANCIENT. The biggest problem they've faced is that so few people have used them that they have never really maintained critical mass.
There are no good originals. That's the point. The originals are missing, believed wiped. This is stuff telerecorded off of a TV set with far too much dirt on the image.
You also need to remember that early recordings tend to get gummy. The way this is fixed is to bake the tape. You then get ONE shot at recovering the data from it, after that the tape is destroyed. I don't know if they needed to bake the masters, the article doesn't say. If they did, though, then there is nothing you can go back to.
Finally, there's the question of where the new data comes from. Is it data on the recording that is simply too faint to see, or is it data interpolated from quality photographs? Or, yet again, data that the studio THINKS should be there?
leetrout's comment that the studio was working with NASA "not to fix too much" indicates that not all of the data is original from the recording, but may be from other sources. If everything were original from the recording, then "fixing too much" would be impossible and NASA would not be watching over them.
Restoration work is extremely valuable, don't get me wrong, but it's extremely hard to do safely when it comes to rare, historic material. Too easy to accidentally (or deliberately) modify the record. It requires care and integrity - precisely the qualities we are forever accusing Hollywood of not having (including on the Tolkien story from earlier).
Having a Hollywood studio "restore" the footage is going to provide wonderful ammunition for the conspiracy nuts, as they now get to claim that even if the tapes were real, you have no way of knowing if the restored information is genuine or inserted.
Yes, but the argument I was responding to was that copyright should terminate on the author's death. If the author is dead before publication, this would mean the work never gets protected at all. It is that that I object to. Sure, the author gets no benefit, but it doesn't alter the fact that effort was put into the work.
14 seems a bit short, but ok, that would be fair.
Coreboot actually works on a very wide range of motherboards, in much the same way that Linux had drivers for hardware where the vendors weren't cooperating (reverse-engineering). I maintain (when I have time) the Freshmeat record for Coreboot and just about every entry I've done for it has had vast numbers of new drivers.
Christopher also did a fair bit of editing, cleaning-up and polishing, so he did actually have some creative input. I'd also include the audio tapes, which include an otherwise unknown piece of Elvish poetry being sung by JRRT, as contributing to our knowledge.
So only the mime artists, then.
I believe the old British standard for copyright for books was lifetime OR fifty years from publication, whichever was the longer. Regardless of whether I'm remembering that correctly or not, that would seem to be a perfectly good term for copyright and would cover for providing for the family for later works.
Burn your copy of the Silmarilian (posthumous release, due to the Publisher's cowardice). I certainly don't agree with indefinite copyright, or even the absurd life + 90 they have at the moment. Life =OR= 50 years from publication, whichever is the longer, is perfectly adequate to cover most situations.
Well, is that strictly true? Children of Huron was published a good deal more recently than that. In fact, IIRC, four times as many books have been published by JRRT since he died than when he was alive. Not to mention the audio tapes (which include JRRT reading from his work and singing Elvish poetry that doesn't otherwise survive).
This is all new material. Yes, technically it was all written before JRRT died, but not one scrap of it would have been released if there was no incentive by either Christopher Tolkien OR (more importantly) the publishing house to publish it.
This new material included such gems as The Silmarilian, one of the all-time greatest works of JRRT, and the one he put the most effort into. That was never published in his lifetime. Not because it was no good, but because the publisher didn't realize the market for High Fantasy was as extensive as it proved to be. The other material, likewise, was often not held back by the author, it was held back by the publishers.
I'm not saying extended copyrights are always good, but there ARE special circumstances where they are valuable.
Another example would be the repair and restoration of crates upon crates of Hemmingway material that was left, abandoned, in his house after his death. Most of it is damaged by fungus and rot, but it is salvageable. The costs for the repairs are all being covered by the value of the material being salvaged.
These are exceptional circumstances, you won't find anything remotely similar in the majority of cases, but the exceptions SHOULD be covered by law no less than the general rule.
Let's see. The first hex digit is a 2. Let's see... 4... 8... Ok, you'd need to spend four times as much again, and the sign bit will flip, provided they use two's compliment notation.
Gold is a problem as there's much more of it now than there was when it was an international standard. However, there ARE precious metals (and non-metallic elements elements) where there is a relatively fixed amount available, and huge additional reserves are next to impossible.
If a currency were to be pegged to something like that, where price is in a dynamic equilibrium and is unlikely to shift from equilibrium overall, then that would work.
Gold is not good for this. Too much of it, too many reserves being discovered, pushing the price down. It's not stable. But gold is not the only metal on Earth. It's not even the rarest.