I don't think 200MHz make that much of a difference. The main downside to the N900 in my experience is that it only has 256MB RAM, and needs every drop of it. It also uses a swap partition.
Why are all the free/open hardware devices so underspeced? The reason I never bought a neo during round 1 was because it was GPRS only, no 3G even when plenty of other phones were coming out with 3G. The n900 looked fantastic, but for the lousy processor (800Mhz vs 1Ghz as standard for other smart phones). Seriously, if you're expected to pay $400, which was roughly what the neo 1773 cost when it first went on sale (not 100% sure, but I remember thinking "Fuck! That's expensive") then provide up to date hardware.
and, no it's not a business connection either, those cost more in the order of $600 a month for ADSL and a static IP (which is what makes it a 'business' connection). If you want any sort of guarantee on up-time you have to get a leased line, also $600 a month for 128kbit/s with a contention ratio of up to 8 to one iirc. I haven't looked into leased lines for over 2 years though, so those prices are way out of date.
Or for small businesses in the developing world, where you pay $100 a month for 4Mbit/s (South Africa) and the fastest connection is 10Mbit/s but only available with usage based billing, stick to tapes or hard drives. The cloud is just too damn slow, or too damn expensive.
I guess that the 'language' would have to be declarative, like prolog, since there is no way to enforce sequential execution.
On a really positive note, at least the platform won't be subject to potential fragmentation. Like Richard Feynman said: 'You can't fool mother nature'
Piracy? What about the wikileaks payment embargo? Doing something like that to the next 'threat to national security' will not only be much easier, i.e. won't require voluntary action on the part of payment processors, but will also be legal and not open to challenge.
Wrong again. The UEFI secure boot is the last missing link in the secure Windows boot chain. Each step will validate the next one before relinquishing control to it (letting it execute): 1) The UEFI firmware validates the signature of the bootload'er. If the bootload'er has been tampered with UEFI will *not* execute the bootload'er 2) Bootload'er runs, loads OS boot definitions, checks (through signatures again) that they have not been tampered with. If the chosen OS is set to secure boot, the bootload'er checks the OS integrity (through signatures again) before launching the OS. 3) The OS gains control and before loading kernel executables and kernel mode drivers, it checks that they come from signed cabinet files. If they don't the kernel will refuse to load them.
None of which prevents the installation of a rootkit, it just prevents the machines from rebooting successfully after one has been installed. So now, instead of being able to boot my machine and at least attempt to clean things up, I can't boot my machine at all, and last time I checked boot disks in windows were a REAL pain in the ass... mostly people will just have to let their vendor rescue disks take care of it, i.e. wipe their data, and present them with a shiny new crapware infested machine. Actually, come to think of it, what are the chances that vendors will start ensuring their own crapware is loaded at boot too?
This is actually one of the real forte's of Australia's construction force. Our many remote mining and gas projects which create a local town to sustain the business have basically trained a contract workforce and vendor supply chain easily capable of building massive projects in the middle of no where.
Fair enough, but it still costs more... that cost is presumably hidden in the more expensive labour costs, exchange rates, etc. Not arguing that the Aussies can't do it, just that they're more expensive than the South Africans. Also, building a town around the SKA is precisely want should be avoided surely?
Apparently one of the big advantages the Australians have in the bid is that their site already has significantly less RF interference because of it's relative remoteness and much lower surrounding population density. However, that remoteness is a downside too, as it makes construction and supply costs much more expensive. This technology could really improve South Africa's chances, because apart from RF interference, they seem to have a stronger bid. The Karoo, being less remote, reduces costs for building, communication infrastructure, supply etc. Also, South African labour costs are cheaper. If this technology can reduce RF interference to comparable level with the Australian site, it'll be great. Sure the Australians could use it, but my understanding is that there's so little RF interference at their site as to already be barely above the detectable threshold of the proposed SKA equipment. (Citation, drunken conversation two weeks ago with one of the people working on the S.A. bid)
I realise this doesn't cater to your requirements for bulk export, but reviews like that are ideally placed in something like google sidewiki (obsolete now) or ReframeIT, or at least links to reviews. Personally, I'd like to see more annotation not controlled by site owners, especially with regard to potential product/service purchases
I think the 'correct' outcome would be if Samsung lost to apple on the 3G patents, and Apple lost to Samsung on the rounded corners issue. Seriously, rounded corners do not convey any technical benefit. They are not a process. They shouldn't be patentable. Samsung are being assholes, and if they win it will be bad for everyone. Apple started the fight. They're just like a school ground bully, trying to get rid of the first serious threat before they become a problem. Samsung is just the kid who fights back really dirty.
I kinda agree with you on this one, but the missing information is how much CO2/Methane/Other Nasty Shit (TM) is produced making the paper, compared to how much is fixed by the trees is is made from. Also, compare this to the cost of processing the paper when it's recycled. I haven't been able to find reliable figures on either of those.
sigh... No. You have the right to free speech and opinions YOU create/express on your own, or in collaboration with others who are equally willing to see it's expression or distribution in the form you use. A right to free speech does not allow you to violate someone else's right to privacy.
Some things have to be kept secret, for a limited time at least. The most obvious example is exam scripts. Free speech does not give you the right to release the exam questions before the exam can be written. And preventing the distribution of the exam questions outside of official channels is NOT censorship. It may technically fall under the definition of censorship, but the material is not being censored in a political or moral sense.
Re the 17 year old thing, I can't deny that the laws get abused or applied poorly, but my argument is that calling it censorship, although technically correct, really confuses the issue of child pornography and child abuse in general.
Re Nixon, the public interest argument already exists to take care of such situations. I fail to see the public interest that overrides the prevention of distributing child porn.
I certainly believe that the production of child pornography should be illegal (and it is, under laws pertaining to child abuse) and therefore I don't really see an issue with distribution and possession of it also being illegal. That isn't censorship, that is simply the application of relevant, existing law. The point is that someone had to actually *do* something illegal in the first place.
What? It's censoring information/content. I'd say that it is indeed censorship (whether or not you agree with it is a different matter). And the fact that someone did something illegal to make it doesn't make it not censorship to censor it.
Where the production of child pornography is concerned one needs to remember that the real crime is child abuse, not the recording of it. Outlawing the distribution and possession is an attempt to reduce to market, and thus incentive to commit the original crime. Like banning trade in ivory. Also consider that it's a fair assumption that NO child WANTS, and hence does not consent to having, images of their abuse distributed. Is it censorship if you break in to my house and snap a photo of me naked, and I then take your camera and destroy the photo? So you can look at the law here is not so much censorship, but rather an intelligent default, considering in most jurisdictions minors are not legally able to give consent, regarding consent to distribute from all parties involved in the production of the material, as well as at attempt to reduce the size of a market for truly despicable things. Is it censorship by definition, yes. Is it being censored? No, really that's just a side effect of something else.
All the more reason to divorce the tools and the speech itself in the arguments. I don't know exactly what the wording of the 'social media' conversations was, but did they actually incite rioting, violence, or vandalism? Specifically? Or was it more a case of organising protest, assembly, without specific intent to cause harm or damage. And if it wasn't done by social media, could it have been done phone, placards, posters, or standing on a street corner shouting out? If the latter, then blocking social media sites in a crisis is censorship. If the former, then there are already laws to deal with hate speech, incitement to commit violence, conspiracy to commit vandalism or whatever.
Social media hasn't fundamentally changed our abilities to organise protests or assemblies for any purpose. It HAS changed the speed with which such organization can take place. Governments have been dealing with organised protests for since the inception of the city state, and probably before. The problem is that social media facilitates small rapidly self-organising groups which can disband equally quickly, and governments, being the big slow lumbering beasts they are, cannot react quickly enough.
On the other hand, with the ability to rapidly propagate information, spontaneous mobs (and I mean mobs, not simply assemblies or crowds) form much more easily, and grow much more quickly. Not good! Blocking social media would reduce this effect, but only if done so in time, and a government almost certainly doesn't have the ability to respond and initiate blocking mechanisms quickly enough for this to be effective, leaving us two possibilities. A Government that's too slow, or a government that's quick to shut down social media, almost pre-emptively, which is essentially censorship. Also, not good!
Basically it comes down to the fact that governments must catch up with the mobile internet enabled world, not try to drag their citizens kicking and screaming back into the 20th century.
If you're aiming to make something unpopular, slashdot is hardly the right target audience to try and influence. It's too niche a market to be worth trying to influence for something of the scale you propose, and despite the general perception that no one ever reads TFA or TFS, I find there's almost always two or three well informed comments that area rated appropriately highly, and not necessarily in agreement. Sure, low signal to noise ratio, but browse at 4+ temporarily if you're actually interested.
My original nokia (forgot the model number) phone back in 1995 (before the patent) was doing this. I could receive an sms, and any string of digits was recognised and made available in the 'add to contacts' and 'call number' menus...
Slashdot Mirror
Is the N9 an open hardware platform?
I don't think 200MHz make that much of a difference. The main downside to the N900 in my experience is that it only has 256MB RAM, and needs every drop of it. It also uses a swap partition.
That too
Why are all the free/open hardware devices so underspeced? The reason I never bought a neo during round 1 was because it was GPRS only, no 3G even when plenty of other phones were coming out with 3G. The n900 looked fantastic, but for the lousy processor (800Mhz vs 1Ghz as standard for other smart phones). Seriously, if you're expected to pay $400, which was roughly what the neo 1773 cost when it first went on sale (not 100% sure, but I remember thinking "Fuck! That's expensive") then provide up to date hardware.
Ill leave it to your imagination to come up with reasons why you dont want the government classifying and regulating speech.
As opposed to leaving corporations classifying and regulating speech?
and, no it's not a business connection either, those cost more in the order of $600 a month for ADSL and a static IP (which is what makes it a 'business' connection). If you want any sort of guarantee on up-time you have to get a leased line, also $600 a month for 128kbit/s with a contention ratio of up to 8 to one iirc. I haven't looked into leased lines for over 2 years though, so those prices are way out of date.
No, no SLA... in fact a SPECIFIC disclaimer that those are best-effort maximum speeds, and there is no guarantee the line will even be up.... ever
Or for small businesses in the developing world, where you pay $100 a month for 4Mbit/s (South Africa) and the fastest connection is 10Mbit/s but only available with usage based billing, stick to tapes or hard drives. The cloud is just too damn slow, or too damn expensive.
'I've spent the last three weeks" ... I should really READ the preview
I spent the day working on a grant proposal using with Microsoft Word and it was an absolutely excruciating experience-
Amen Brother! I've the the last three weeks in grant application hell, made only more tortuous the use of word...
I guess that the 'language' would have to be declarative, like prolog, since there is no way to enforce sequential execution. On a really positive note, at least the platform won't be subject to potential fragmentation. Like Richard Feynman said: 'You can't fool mother nature'
Piracy? What about the wikileaks payment embargo? Doing something like that to the next 'threat to national security' will not only be much easier, i.e. won't require voluntary action on the part of payment processors, but will also be legal and not open to challenge.
Wrong again. The UEFI secure boot is the last missing link in the secure Windows boot chain. Each step will validate the next one before relinquishing control to it (letting it execute): 1) The UEFI firmware validates the signature of the bootload'er. If the bootload'er has been tampered with UEFI will *not* execute the bootload'er 2) Bootload'er runs, loads OS boot definitions, checks (through signatures again) that they have not been tampered with. If the chosen OS is set to secure boot, the bootload'er checks the OS integrity (through signatures again) before launching the OS. 3) The OS gains control and before loading kernel executables and kernel mode drivers, it checks that they come from signed cabinet files. If they don't the kernel will refuse to load them.
None of which prevents the installation of a rootkit, it just prevents the machines from rebooting successfully after one has been installed. So now, instead of being able to boot my machine and at least attempt to clean things up, I can't boot my machine at all, and last time I checked boot disks in windows were a REAL pain in the ass... mostly people will just have to let their vendor rescue disks take care of it, i.e. wipe their data, and present them with a shiny new crapware infested machine. Actually, come to think of it, what are the chances that vendors will start ensuring their own crapware is loaded at boot too?
This is actually one of the real forte's of Australia's construction force. Our many remote mining and gas projects which create a local town to sustain the business have basically trained a contract workforce and vendor supply chain easily capable of building massive projects in the middle of no where.
Fair enough, but it still costs more... that cost is presumably hidden in the more expensive labour costs, exchange rates, etc. Not arguing that the Aussies can't do it, just that they're more expensive than the South Africans. Also, building a town around the SKA is precisely want should be avoided surely?
Apparently one of the big advantages the Australians have in the bid is that their site already has significantly less RF interference because of it's relative remoteness and much lower surrounding population density. However, that remoteness is a downside too, as it makes construction and supply costs much more expensive. This technology could really improve South Africa's chances, because apart from RF interference, they seem to have a stronger bid. The Karoo, being less remote, reduces costs for building, communication infrastructure, supply etc. Also, South African labour costs are cheaper. If this technology can reduce RF interference to comparable level with the Australian site, it'll be great. Sure the Australians could use it, but my understanding is that there's so little RF interference at their site as to already be barely above the detectable threshold of the proposed SKA equipment. (Citation, drunken conversation two weeks ago with one of the people working on the S.A. bid)
I realise this doesn't cater to your requirements for bulk export, but reviews like that are ideally placed in something like google sidewiki (obsolete now) or ReframeIT, or at least links to reviews. Personally, I'd like to see more annotation not controlled by site owners, especially with regard to potential product/service purchases
I think the 'correct' outcome would be if Samsung lost to apple on the 3G patents, and Apple lost to Samsung on the rounded corners issue. Seriously, rounded corners do not convey any technical benefit. They are not a process. They shouldn't be patentable. Samsung are being assholes, and if they win it will be bad for everyone. Apple started the fight. They're just like a school ground bully, trying to get rid of the first serious threat before they become a problem. Samsung is just the kid who fights back really dirty.
I kinda agree with you on this one, but the missing information is how much CO2/Methane/Other Nasty Shit (TM) is produced making the paper, compared to how much is fixed by the trees is is made from. Also, compare this to the cost of processing the paper when it's recycled. I haven't been able to find reliable figures on either of those.
sigh... No. You have the right to free speech and opinions YOU create/express on your own, or in collaboration with others who are equally willing to see it's expression or distribution in the form you use. A right to free speech does not allow you to violate someone else's right to privacy.
Some things have to be kept secret, for a limited time at least. The most obvious example is exam scripts. Free speech does not give you the right to release the exam questions before the exam can be written. And preventing the distribution of the exam questions outside of official channels is NOT censorship. It may technically fall under the definition of censorship, but the material is not being censored in a political or moral sense.
Re the 17 year old thing, I can't deny that the laws get abused or applied poorly, but my argument is that calling it censorship, although technically correct, really confuses the issue of child pornography and child abuse in general.
Re Nixon, the public interest argument already exists to take care of such situations. I fail to see the public interest that overrides the prevention of distributing child porn.
I certainly believe that the production of child pornography should be illegal (and it is, under laws pertaining to child abuse) and therefore I don't really see an issue with distribution and possession of it also being illegal. That isn't censorship, that is simply the application of relevant, existing law. The point is that someone had to actually *do* something illegal in the first place.
What? It's censoring information/content. I'd say that it is indeed censorship (whether or not you agree with it is a different matter). And the fact that someone did something illegal to make it doesn't make it not censorship to censor it.
Where the production of child pornography is concerned one needs to remember that the real crime is child abuse, not the recording of it. Outlawing the distribution and possession is an attempt to reduce to market, and thus incentive to commit the original crime. Like banning trade in ivory. Also consider that it's a fair assumption that NO child WANTS, and hence does not consent to having, images of their abuse distributed. Is it censorship if you break in to my house and snap a photo of me naked, and I then take your camera and destroy the photo? So you can look at the law here is not so much censorship, but rather an intelligent default, considering in most jurisdictions minors are not legally able to give consent, regarding consent to distribute from all parties involved in the production of the material, as well as at attempt to reduce the size of a market for truly despicable things. Is it censorship by definition, yes. Is it being censored? No, really that's just a side effect of something else.
All the more reason to divorce the tools and the speech itself in the arguments. I don't know exactly what the wording of the 'social media' conversations was, but did they actually incite rioting, violence, or vandalism? Specifically? Or was it more a case of organising protest, assembly, without specific intent to cause harm or damage. And if it wasn't done by social media, could it have been done phone, placards, posters, or standing on a street corner shouting out? If the latter, then blocking social media sites in a crisis is censorship. If the former, then there are already laws to deal with hate speech, incitement to commit violence, conspiracy to commit vandalism or whatever.
Social media hasn't fundamentally changed our abilities to organise protests or assemblies for any purpose. It HAS changed the speed with which such organization can take place. Governments have been dealing with organised protests for since the inception of the city state, and probably before. The problem is that social media facilitates small rapidly self-organising groups which can disband equally quickly, and governments, being the big slow lumbering beasts they are, cannot react quickly enough.
On the other hand, with the ability to rapidly propagate information, spontaneous mobs (and I mean mobs, not simply assemblies or crowds) form much more easily, and grow much more quickly. Not good! Blocking social media would reduce this effect, but only if done so in time, and a government almost certainly doesn't have the ability to respond and initiate blocking mechanisms quickly enough for this to be effective, leaving us two possibilities. A Government that's too slow, or a government that's quick to shut down social media, almost pre-emptively, which is essentially censorship. Also, not good!
Basically it comes down to the fact that governments must catch up with the mobile internet enabled world, not try to drag their citizens kicking and screaming back into the 20th century.
If you're aiming to make something unpopular, slashdot is hardly the right target audience to try and influence. It's too niche a market to be worth trying to influence for something of the scale you propose, and despite the general perception that no one ever reads TFA or TFS, I find there's almost always two or three well informed comments that area rated appropriately highly, and not necessarily in agreement. Sure, low signal to noise ratio, but browse at 4+ temporarily if you're actually interested.
http://xkcd.com/875/
So let me get this straight re: patent #2; Apple says I can't create an API for accessing my sound card? So all sound card drivers are infringing too?
My original nokia (forgot the model number) phone back in 1995 (before the patent) was doing this. I could receive an sms, and any string of digits was recognised and made available in the 'add to contacts' and 'call number' menus...