We had the same policy at my last workplace. Did we work together? Mad or cruel as it seems, it worked.
I wish they'd implement a scheme like that where I'm working now. They haven't quite got the hang of source control. Most of the time, the version under source control doesn't even compile, let alone run. No-one, it seems, bothers with a local merge and test before checking in. Also, everyone works using data off a shared network drive, so when any of that changes, you're screwed.
The article is a bit thin on details. I presume the experiment kept test squirrels from each generation in a controlled temperature environment to ensure these aren't just squirrels with a "bonk when it's warm enough" gene? I've not seen squirrels with diaries, so I'd assume their behavior in these cases was controlled by their environment more than their genetic make up.
Folks are not taught that sometimes 1.0 + 1.0 != 2.0 (rounding errors)
That's a scary thought!
I remember when we were taught at school that computers aren't as accurate as you'd like to believe. The teacher wrote on the board something along the lines of:
FOR v = 1 TO 2 STEP 0.1
PRINT v
NEXT v
(ie. on every loop, v is incremented by 0.1, from 1 until it equals 2)
and told us the loop would never end. I remember it was pretty hard to believe at the time. He didn't explain why; he just left us to try it and see for ourselves and fathom out why. Either that, or he'd just discovered it himself and he hadn't a clue what was going on...
I've never trusted floating point values since. I'm currently up to my eyeballs in physics simulations using single precision for speed. Trying to keep the rounding errors under control is half the battle!
Linux source code can be slightly modified to produce the disputed code
I've mentioned elsewhere on this section that two functions written to perform the same task in the most optimal way can often compile down to the same or very similar binary. Add a few slight but guided modifications and you're even more likely to create an identical version. Nothing but the original source code can show whether GPL'd code has been directly copied or not.
How the hell did this idiotic post get modded up to the level it did?
Castle are not some huge corporation like Microsoft or Intel. They're a small and I imagine not too financially well-off company helping to keep the RISC OS/Acorn platform alive. I'd imagine it's done more for love than money.. Attempting to produce your own computing platform and OS in the face of the Microsoft/Linux/Apple competition is a brave move and hardly a get-rich-quick scheme.
How proud would the Linux/OSS community be if they managed to beat down a much smaller alternative computer/OS developer out of existance?
I'm sure they're releasing the code on floppy disk, so they only have to deal with the few hundred people (if even that many!) who are really interested, rather than have their net connection hammered by 200,000 people attempting to download the source out of idle curiousity.
Keep your stupid childish DoS-like tactics for spammers or those who might deserve it more.
I have, as part of my work, been required to disassemble binaries and re-implement in C. It always used to make me smile when a chunk of asm revealed itself as a simple plane intersection routine, linked list management, matrix transform, hardware init sequence, or whatever. Recompiling the C implementation often produced *exactly* the same asm.
My point echos the parent post: if you are writing code with the same functionality, it shouldn't come as a shock when the binaries match, especially - as was mentioned - if some massaging is done to one version to make them match.
Of course, no one can say one way or the other until they've seen the source code that Castle has agreed to show. I suspect they merely used the GPL'd code as reference, and wrote a similar version that matched their hardware, which isn't your bog-standard PC. How stupid would they look if they say it isn't the GPL'd code when it is, then show it to people? I mean, really..?
I'm biased, I'll admit that. I've been an Acorn/RISC OS user for many, many years. But I'm disgusted at the pitchfork and torch reaction this issue has received here. Linux/OSS users should be all-to-familiar with a platform struggling against a much larger organisation. Never before have I seen such two-faced, knee-jerk ranting on this site, and that's saying something.
It's been clarified a little in this article on The Register. Apparently, NTL "will ONLY contact customers who exceed the daily data limit for three or more days in any consecutive 14-day period". I was concerned that merely downloading a 3xCD image distro of Linux would get me cut-off, but that's not the case. Unless I do that day after day, but that's not going to happen.
Anyhow, it's all a bit academic now, seeing as I've had to move out of an NTL serviced area. I'm waiting to see if BT consider me worthy^H^H^H^H^Hwithin range of an ADSL service.
Or use floppy disks, like I did! A couple of floppies was space enough for anything, seeing as I only had 2Mb of storage space on the mainframe. Yes, sir, we used to line up on a monday morning to use the terminal with a floppy drive, running kermit to transfer the files to the mainframe, and we were happy.
Jeez.. nine years go past, and it sounds like bloomin' stone age already...
You should know your manager after ten years of banking. That story doesnt ring true somehow.
Eh? Wha? Why should I know my bank manager? I have no idea who my bank manager is, or if I've ever seen him/her. The only time I've needed to go to the bank is to pay bills or pay in cheques. You used to exchange a brief "hello" with the member of staff at one of the service windows while they stamped the payment slips and what-not, but that's about it. Now it's entirely done using self-service machines.
Banks are having to be very careful exactly who they are giving accounts to, following the aftermath of the 11th Sept attack in the US. The result of this is the currently ridiculous lengths you need to go to to open one without some form of standardised, reliable identification document.
And even if you had a government issued ID card, the bank would not be compelled to accept it to give you service.
The whole point of the ID card would be that banks et al would be compelled to accept it, unless they had good reason to suspect I was not the person the card identifies. Much in the same way as, for example, a US immigration officer is compelled to accept the identity on my UK passport, unless they have good reason to suspect it has been altered/forged in any way. The addition of biometrics would make it much more secure and nearly impossible for the card to be successfully used by anyone else.
Thank you for making that decision on my behalf. You are - at least in my case - completely wrong. It seems to me that it's only a highly vocal minority who have anything against ID cards, most of whom I wouldn't be surprised to find wearing tin-foil hats. If I had the option of carrying a single, conclusive identification document, I'd jump at the chance.
It took me two weeks last year to open a joint bank account with my wife, due to the bank quibbling over what was suitable identification and what wasn't. Birth certificates, marriage certificates, credit card statements, bank statements, utility bills, NHS cards and signature samples were among the items that were requested and submitted to prove who we were and where we lived. This was despite the fact I'd already had an account with them for 10 years. The really laughable bit was when the bank insisted on seeing a utility bill in both our names, so I phoned British Gas, asked them to add my wife's name and send a new bill. British Gas did so without question - they didn't want any kind of proof of who the additional name on the bill was, but somehow this makes it ok for the bank. I know other people who have had the same kind of trouble.
Please let me have my ID card. If you don't wish to carry one, and would prefer to carry all the other statements, bills and certificates in order to demonstrate who you are, then that's your look out.
..when I was working in a cash-strapped code shop. Doing backups required either your own personal supply of floppy disks, or tracking down the company DAT drive. Floppies soon became far too small. Using the DAT drive was time consuming, and - as was found when someone actually tried to restore a backup - was in fact broken. One of the programmers had a fairly new pc with a huuuuge 2Gb hard drive, however, and I found it easier to use our string and plastic cup network to copy all my stuff into a subdirectory in the depths of his c:\windows directory. It was six months before he discovered where his HD space was disappearing to...
Never mind super-powers... How could they be humans, Toy Biz said, if they possessed "tentacles, claws, wings or robotic limbs?"
Just get yourself into a nasty motorcycle accident and get fitted with a motor assisted artificial leg. Hey presto, you can't possibly be human anymore!
In a way, using a 3rd party remote is like going down to the local keycutters shop and getting a copy of your front door key made. It's not authorised by the manufacturer of your front door lock and it's a direct copy of part of their product. I wouldn't want that to be illegal. If I needed a spare key, I'd have to go to the door lock manufacturer every time, and hope they didn't go out of business, otherwise I'd have to change the lock.
Anyhow.. there are a a couple of bizarre points brought up by the lawyers. Firstly, they reckon that Skylink's transmitters "when set to operate Chamberlain's rolling code GDOs, have no other purpose or use than to circumvent Chamberlain's technological protective measure". Does "opening my garage door so I can get the car in" not count as a use? Secondly, they claim that "Skylink's [] transmitters are marketed for use in circumventing Chamberlain's technological protective measures", and go on to explain that Skylink "promotes its universal transmitters as additional transmitters to be used with Chamberlain's rolling code GDO systems". I could understand it if Skylink promoted it's transmitters as "great for bypassing the security measures on your neighbour's Chamberlain garage door".
It seems to imply that the sole use of the Skylink device is to gain unauthorised access to other people's property. However, that clearly isn't the case. Just like DeCSS, it can be used for legal and illegal purposes. Unless Skylink's intentions can be proven to be to develop the transmitter primarily for illegal purposes - which I'm also fairly sure isn't the case - then this should be thrown out. Of course, this all relies on common sense being applied, with which the DMCA seems to be mutually exclusive...
When my alarm clock went off this morning, BBC Radio 1 news was in full soothsayer mode, foretelling how bananas will be wiped out by disease in ten years if nothing is done. Horrified, I hit snooze.
According to a trivia game I was playing the other day, the banana is a herb, not fruit. Go figure.
It has long been known that the fabric of space-time is curved. The passage of time is more than merely curved - it is, in fact, circular. The so-called "beginning" of the universe, commonly known as the big bang, occurs every 14 billion years, an instant after some guy flips the switch on a quark-gluon plasma generator, thus ripping the universe apart in it's own creation. Although this is known, any attempts to stop the guy before he starts the generator have been deemed as a pointless waste of whatever time we have left, seeing as we obviously didn't manage it last time.
"Well, why not simply race on real bicycles instead?" The answer is simple, convenience. The people and equipment are already setup, and I don't have to maintain a $1K+ street bicycle
Well, that and the convenience of not being flattened by a 5 ton lorry in the pouring rain...
Bob Cringley wrote this article last year, talking about a decline in the amount of basic research being carried out at companies within the US. It would seem that the first part of a company to suffer cutbacks and layoffs in times of economic hardship is the research department. It would stand to reason that anyone coming through college and seeing the decline in the number of jobs in scientific and engineering research are more likely to opt for something that may give them a more secure future.
Which is a shame really, because these are exactly the sort of people who are likely to be developing my flying car.
What I rather believe happened was that the gongs surface still absorbed enough of the flashes energy to heat up and the air in contact along with it, so that the rapidly expanding air was what sounded the gong.
Either that, or a shockwave from the rapidly heated/expanded air around the flash itself. I was going to suggest you'd need to repeat the experiment in a vacuum, but then you'd never hear the gong anyway. Duh. More coffee please, nurse.
The UK Job Centre website has an irritating feature in the job search part, where you fill out a form selecting the type of job you want, before being asked where in the country you're looking for a job. My wife found this incredibly frustrating, as every time she wanted to alter the particularly narrow job type search parameters, she needed to re-enter the location.
Another one I came across at the weekend was UGC Cinemas. I was trying to book tickets for LOTR. After I selected the location, the film, the time I wanted, selected how many tickets I wanted, entered my name, credit card details, email adress (with confirmation), phone number (with confirmation), and confirmed all the details, then and only then it decided to tell me that it couldn't go ahead with the booking because the showing was sold out. It wouldn't be so bad if I could just change the time to a later showing, but no, I'm back to the start and I have to re-enter everything again. It was only on my third attempt I found a showing with free seats...
Slashdot Mirror
Now, Pinky, with this new encryption scheme that deliberately resembles random typing, we shall take over the world!
We had the same policy at my last workplace. Did we work together? Mad or cruel as it seems, it worked.
I wish they'd implement a scheme like that where I'm working now. They haven't quite got the hang of source control. Most of the time, the version under source control doesn't even compile, let alone run. No-one, it seems, bothers with a local merge and test before checking in. Also, everyone works using data off a shared network drive, so when any of that changes, you're screwed.
I need a new bat. With rusty nails.
The article is a bit thin on details. I presume the experiment kept test squirrels from each generation in a controlled temperature environment to ensure these aren't just squirrels with a "bonk when it's warm enough" gene? I've not seen squirrels with diaries, so I'd assume their behavior in these cases was controlled by their environment more than their genetic make up.
Folks are not taught that sometimes 1.0 + 1.0 != 2.0 (rounding errors)
:
That's a scary thought!
I remember when we were taught at school that computers aren't as accurate as you'd like to believe. The teacher wrote on the board something along the lines of
FOR v = 1 TO 2 STEP 0.1
PRINT v
NEXT v
(ie. on every loop, v is incremented by 0.1, from 1 until it equals 2)
and told us the loop would never end. I remember it was pretty hard to believe at the time. He didn't explain why; he just left us to try it and see for ourselves and fathom out why. Either that, or he'd just discovered it himself and he hadn't a clue what was going on...
I've never trusted floating point values since. I'm currently up to my eyeballs in physics simulations using single precision for speed. Trying to keep the rounding errors under control is half the battle!
For an encore, they could fit the recently evicted NES guts into that old Dell case over there...
Linux source code can be slightly modified to produce the disputed code
I've mentioned elsewhere on this section that two functions written to perform the same task in the most optimal way can often compile down to the same or very similar binary. Add a few slight but guided modifications and you're even more likely to create an identical version. Nothing but the original source code can show whether GPL'd code has been directly copied or not.
How the hell did this idiotic post get modded up to the level it did?
Castle are not some huge corporation like Microsoft or Intel. They're a small and I imagine not too financially well-off company helping to keep the RISC OS/Acorn platform alive. I'd imagine it's done more for love than money.. Attempting to produce your own computing platform and OS in the face of the Microsoft/Linux/Apple competition is a brave move and hardly a get-rich-quick scheme.
How proud would the Linux/OSS community be if they managed to beat down a much smaller alternative computer/OS developer out of existance?
I'm sure they're releasing the code on floppy disk, so they only have to deal with the few hundred people (if even that many!) who are really interested, rather than have their net connection hammered by 200,000 people attempting to download the source out of idle curiousity.
Keep your stupid childish DoS-like tactics for spammers or those who might deserve it more.
I have, as part of my work, been required to disassemble binaries and re-implement in C. It always used to make me smile when a chunk of asm revealed itself as a simple plane intersection routine, linked list management, matrix transform, hardware init sequence, or whatever. Recompiling the C implementation often produced *exactly* the same asm.
My point echos the parent post: if you are writing code with the same functionality, it shouldn't come as a shock when the binaries match, especially - as was mentioned - if some massaging is done to one version to make them match.
Of course, no one can say one way or the other until they've seen the source code that Castle has agreed to show. I suspect they merely used the GPL'd code as reference, and wrote a similar version that matched their hardware, which isn't your bog-standard PC. How stupid would they look if they say it isn't the GPL'd code when it is, then show it to people? I mean, really..?
I'm biased, I'll admit that. I've been an Acorn/RISC OS user for many, many years. But I'm disgusted at the pitchfork and torch reaction this issue has received here. Linux/OSS users should be all-to-familiar with a platform struggling against a much larger organisation. Never before have I seen such two-faced, knee-jerk ranting on this site, and that's saying something.
It's been clarified a little in this article on The Register. Apparently, NTL "will ONLY contact customers who exceed the daily data limit for three or more days in any consecutive 14-day period". I was concerned that merely downloading a 3xCD image distro of Linux would get me cut-off, but that's not the case. Unless I do that day after day, but that's not going to happen.
Anyhow, it's all a bit academic now, seeing as I've had to move out of an NTL serviced area. I'm waiting to see if BT consider me worthy^H^H^H^H^Hwithin range of an ADSL service.
...for the server load to die down :
Why, go and play all those Infocom text adventures, java'd, through your browser, of course!
Or use floppy disks, like I did! A couple of floppies was space enough for anything, seeing as I only had 2Mb of storage space on the mainframe. Yes, sir, we used to line up on a monday morning to use the terminal with a floppy drive, running kermit to transfer the files to the mainframe, and we were happy.
Jeez.. nine years go past, and it sounds like bloomin' stone age already...
You need to change banks.
Heh.. quite possibly.
You should know your manager after ten years of banking. That story doesnt ring true somehow.
Eh? Wha? Why should I know my bank manager? I have no idea who my bank manager is, or if I've ever seen him/her. The only time I've needed to go to the bank is to pay bills or pay in cheques. You used to exchange a brief "hello" with the member of staff at one of the service windows while they stamped the payment slips and what-not, but that's about it. Now it's entirely done using self-service machines.
Banks are having to be very careful exactly who they are giving accounts to, following the aftermath of the 11th Sept attack in the US. The result of this is the currently ridiculous lengths you need to go to to open one without some form of standardised, reliable identification document.
And even if you had a government issued ID card, the bank would not be compelled to accept it to give you service.
The whole point of the ID card would be that banks et al would be compelled to accept it, unless they had good reason to suspect I was not the person the card identifies. Much in the same way as, for example, a US immigration officer is compelled to accept the identity on my UK passport, unless they have good reason to suspect it has been altered/forged in any way. The addition of biometrics would make it much more secure and nearly impossible for the card to be successfully used by anyone else.
Thank you for making that decision on my behalf. You are - at least in my case - completely wrong. It seems to me that it's only a highly vocal minority who have anything against ID cards, most of whom I wouldn't be surprised to find wearing tin-foil hats. If I had the option of carrying a single, conclusive identification document, I'd jump at the chance.
It took me two weeks last year to open a joint bank account with my wife, due to the bank quibbling over what was suitable identification and what wasn't. Birth certificates, marriage certificates, credit card statements, bank statements, utility bills, NHS cards and signature samples were among the items that were requested and submitted to prove who we were and where we lived. This was despite the fact I'd already had an account with them for 10 years. The really laughable bit was when the bank insisted on seeing a utility bill in both our names, so I phoned British Gas, asked them to add my wife's name and send a new bill. British Gas did so without question - they didn't want any kind of proof of who the additional name on the bill was, but somehow this makes it ok for the bank. I know other people who have had the same kind of trouble.
Please let me have my ID card. If you don't wish to carry one, and would prefer to carry all the other statements, bills and certificates in order to demonstrate who you are, then that's your look out.
..when I was working in a cash-strapped code shop. Doing backups required either your own personal supply of floppy disks, or tracking down the company DAT drive. Floppies soon became far too small. Using the DAT drive was time consuming, and - as was found when someone actually tried to restore a backup - was in fact broken. One of the programmers had a fairly new pc with a huuuuge 2Gb hard drive, however, and I found it easier to use our string and plastic cup network to copy all my stuff into a subdirectory in the depths of his c:\windows directory. It was six months before he discovered where his HD space was disappearing to...
I don't think neutering will be an issue.
Never mind super-powers...
How could they be humans, Toy Biz said, if they possessed "tentacles, claws, wings or robotic limbs?"
Just get yourself into a nasty motorcycle accident and get fitted with a motor assisted artificial leg. Hey presto, you can't possibly be human anymore!
In a way, using a 3rd party remote is like going down to the local keycutters shop and getting a copy of your front door key made. It's not authorised by the manufacturer of your front door lock and it's a direct copy of part of their product. I wouldn't want that to be illegal. If I needed a spare key, I'd have to go to the door lock manufacturer every time, and hope they didn't go out of business, otherwise I'd have to change the lock.
Anyhow.. there are a a couple of bizarre points brought up by the lawyers. Firstly, they reckon that Skylink's transmitters "when set to operate Chamberlain's rolling code GDOs, have no other purpose or use than to circumvent Chamberlain's technological protective measure". Does "opening my garage door so I can get the car in" not count as a use? Secondly, they claim that "Skylink's [] transmitters are marketed for use in circumventing Chamberlain's technological protective measures", and go on to explain that Skylink "promotes its universal transmitters as additional transmitters to be used with Chamberlain's rolling code GDO systems". I could understand it if Skylink promoted it's transmitters as "great for bypassing the security measures on your neighbour's Chamberlain garage door".
It seems to imply that the sole use of the Skylink device is to gain unauthorised access to other people's property. However, that clearly isn't the case. Just like DeCSS, it can be used for legal and illegal purposes. Unless Skylink's intentions can be proven to be to develop the transmitter primarily for illegal purposes - which I'm also fairly sure isn't the case - then this should be thrown out. Of course, this all relies on common sense being applied, with which the DMCA seems to be mutually exclusive...
When my alarm clock went off this morning, BBC Radio 1 news was in full soothsayer mode, foretelling how bananas will be wiped out by disease in ten years if nothing is done. Horrified, I hit snooze.
According to a trivia game I was playing the other day, the banana is a herb, not fruit. Go figure.
Joel Spolsky comments on what starting again from scratch did for Netscape. Now I've never looked at the Mozilla code, so I can't comment on what state it's in, but I'd be thinking long and hard before choosing to start again from a completely clean slate.
It has long been known that the fabric of space-time is curved. The passage of time is more than merely curved - it is, in fact, circular. The so-called "beginning" of the universe, commonly known as the big bang, occurs every 14 billion years, an instant after some guy flips the switch on a quark-gluon plasma generator, thus ripping the universe apart in it's own creation. Although this is known, any attempts to stop the guy before he starts the generator have been deemed as a pointless waste of whatever time we have left, seeing as we obviously didn't manage it last time.
"Well, why not simply race on real bicycles instead?" The answer is simple, convenience. The people and equipment are already setup, and I don't have to maintain a $1K+ street bicycle
Well, that and the convenience of not being flattened by a 5 ton lorry in the pouring rain...
Bob Cringley wrote this article last year, talking about a decline in the amount of basic research being carried out at companies within the US. It would seem that the first part of a company to suffer cutbacks and layoffs in times of economic hardship is the research department. It would stand to reason that anyone coming through college and seeing the decline in the number of jobs in scientific and engineering research are more likely to opt for something that may give them a more secure future.
Which is a shame really, because these are exactly the sort of people who are likely to be developing my flying car.
What I rather believe happened was that the gongs surface still absorbed enough of the flashes energy to heat up and the air in contact along with it, so that the rapidly expanding air was what sounded the gong.
Either that, or a shockwave from the rapidly heated/expanded air around the flash itself. I was going to suggest you'd need to repeat the experiment in a vacuum, but then you'd never hear the gong anyway. Duh. More coffee please, nurse.
I'm intrigued... the company censorwall has blocked my sensitive eyes from seeing that page. Ah well, griping over, it's back to coding I go...
The UK Job Centre website has an irritating feature in the job search part, where you fill out a form selecting the type of job you want, before being asked where in the country you're looking for a job. My wife found this incredibly frustrating, as every time she wanted to alter the particularly narrow job type search parameters, she needed to re-enter the location.
;)
Another one I came across at the weekend was UGC Cinemas. I was trying to book tickets for LOTR. After I selected the location, the film, the time I wanted, selected how many tickets I wanted, entered my name, credit card details, email adress (with confirmation), phone number (with confirmation), and confirmed all the details, then and only then it decided to tell me that it couldn't go ahead with the booking because the showing was sold out. It wouldn't be so bad if I could just change the time to a later showing, but no, I'm back to the start and I have to re-enter everything again. It was only on my third attempt I found a showing with free seats...
At lease the film turned out ok!