Hayek (no c, BTW) also pointed out that wartime is one of the few times when society as a whole really does have an aim (survival and victory)
Similarly, every cell is a unique individual. However, when the organism is threatened, survival of the organism is more important than survival of each individual cell.
In a fight, I'll split my knuckles open on my opponent's forehead. Those escaping blood cells will die, and I'll feel sorry for them, but it's necessary to ensure the continued survival of their host.
Government is just an organism on a different scale.
The key for managers is to know when you have someone like this and to assign them to projects where their strengths are best used.
No kidding. I was (am) highly skilled and very creative, and passionate about my work. I was "removed" forcefully by a piece-of-shit manager whose sole method for moving up was by stepping on the backs of the politically unskilled.
He fired several good people, simply to show everyone "who the boss is."
The punchline? He can't father children. Talk about questioning manhood!!! (A phrase he used to use a lot -- "don't make those kinds of waves, you're questioning his manhood" -- and now I know why that wording meant so much to him.)
We had many very quirky people, back when I started there; the company grew from 60 to over 1,800 during my tenure, and most of those quirky people either "grew up" or "got out." Sad, but that's the way bureaucracy works.
The worst part is the company was created by ex-IBMers who despised the bureaucracy at IBM and wanted to create something different. (And, like the quirky, most of those ex-IBMers are gone now, too.)
something like XML-formatted output would help the problem nicely.
That's a great idea. I'm going to start looking at adding a "-xmlin" and a "-xmlout" parameter to GNU tools, so they can "hear" XML-formatted data from a pipe, and "speak" XML-formatted output.
So a grep like:
grep -i -xmlout bugbug *.c
would output something like:
<xml>
<matching file> file1.c </matching file>
<matching line number> 42 </matching line number>
<matching line text> "blah blah blah BUGBUG blah blah blah" </matching line text>
</xml>
(That's not good XML, as I don't know it yet, but you get the idea.)
I expect somebody can point us at a project that has already done this?
Not sure how far along it is, but a project which I've been following off-and-on for a couple months is located
here, called Piper. From their page:
ABSTRACT
Piper is a peer-to-peer (P2P) distributed workflow system. It is an independent, GNU-based project which brings the power and flexibility of the GNU/UNIX command-line interface (CLI) to the graphical user interface (GUI) and Internet-distributed computing.
Networks, programs, files, widgets, and so on, can be Internet-distributed components represented in a GUI as the nodes of a flow chart. The user can join nodes via lines that depict links for data flow, procedural steps, relationships, and so forth.
We have taught these people that if they bloody our nose, then we will do what they want.
I taught the bullies that back in grade school, and you know what? They did the same as the terrorists -- they continued to terrorize me.
My mom taught me to "turn the other cheek." At thirty, she told me that teaching me that was one of her biggest mistakes in raising me. I'm glad she recognized it; it helps heal me. If I had instead been taught self-defense, and bloodied their noses back, I would have had a lot less difficulty growing up.
Our country is growing up. We can't just keep turning the other cheek, much as certain religions espouse. In God we trust; and I do. But that doesn't mean sit back and let shit happen to you. You're in control of your destiny -- you can fight back.
What's happening now to the US is very similar to the internal process I'm going through. In the last couple years I've begun fighting back, and I've made more friends and solved many of my previous problems. The "friends" part is very interesting -- Bush is using that word a lot in his speeches. Not "allies" -- "friends." That's closer to the heart, and is exactly the word George Lucas used to describe the rebels -- Darth Vader said something like "you and your friends will never win." Again, not "allies" -- perhaps this George took a cue card from another George?
And it's interesting how that process works. You let people walk all over you, and they become your enemies. But if you teach them your boundaries, and you firmly defend those boundaries, then they will respect you and befriend you more often than not.
Re:keeping track of ops..?
on
Apocalypse 3
·
· Score: 1
...I'd love to see more of this kind of "artificial" intelligence in programming languages.
If you're interested in how computers can help bring languages together, check out BlueBox -- they're writing "words" which define behavior, and are working on writing syntaxes/grammars for most common languages.
The cool part about this? You can write a program in Perl, feed it into BlueBox, and have it output your program in C++. Or Python. Or Shell script. Or ASM.
Even better is the reverse: feed EXPLORER.EXE in and have it spit out Perl! 'Course it won't be commented, but -- humans know how to comment, perhaps humans can teach computers how to comment?
To be topical: BlueBox could also help convert from Perl 5 to Perl 6 (and vice versa!), once both grammars have been written.
And I'm just bastard enough to file a claim against them for selling me a defective product, if they don't give me my money back (and if it's not clearly labeled that it's broken on PC's).
That's a great idea. Plus, insult and injury and all that, in some states small claims court lawsuits must be answered in person -- the company cannot send its lawyers in to defend.
My contribution to this thread: take your laptop to the store. Keep opening their CDs (thus increasing the number of returns from that store) until they decide to stop opening CDs for you and give you your money back.
I don't understand why bandwidth is still so expensive.
It's currently so expensive because there are few entry points into the Internet, and those are all held by companies -- corporations intent on maximizing shareholder value at the expense of everything else. Including satisfying customers.
I've just recently gotten an email for a flat-rate long-distance company. Just $50 a month, and you can stay on the phone as long as you like. (If only it worked to other countries! But that's coming -- another year or so, my guess.)
With all the DSL companies going out of business (or filing Chapter 11), we seem to be moving toward few companies holding all the access. Which would tend to raise prices. However, more and more people are setting up small private networks in their neighborhoods using 802.11b, and as this continues we may take the wires right out from under the corporations!
So even though bandwidth is still very expensive, with the progress of technology it'll fall to "negligible" within a few years.
I've long thought that quantum entanglements may have something to do with the impressive ability of many twins to feel what their twin is doing...
Yes, and the anecdotal evidence that many mothers know when their children are in danger -- yet I have not once heard of a father knowing the same thing.
Entaglement in the womb. Perhaps we evolved wombs solely to gain the benefits of entanglement-based communications from brain to brain?
I have a somewhat longer post, here, on how I got telepathy out of quantum entanglement and the way the brain works.
so the question is, if a 'classical' copy is sufficient to 'copy' a person, or if the quantum state makes all the difference.
To venture into the spiritual (not religious!), perhaps the quantum state of a human is the equivalent of the soul.
Teleporting a car, or a computer, or office furniture should be okay, since those do not operate or depend on the quantum level. However, "teleporting" a human without the quantum state would result in a perfectly duplicate, yet inert corpse.
I like your idea -- create the "corpse" at the destination, then swap the quantum states of the human and the corpse, and *poof* teleportation! (I won't be the first though... Thing1Fly...)
I've been doing a lot of thinking about the relationship the quantum world has to things spiritual for several years. It started in April of 1999, when I read an article which stated that the human brain works on quantum principles, in addition to chemical, mechanical, and biological. So if we want to create a computer as powerful as the human brain, we'll have to understand quantum mechanics.
Three weeks later, I read an article which stated that we've identified one quantum principle, and demonstrated it in the lab: entanglement. This is Einstein's "spooky action at a distance." Through a process, two electrons become entangled and when separated (by up to 10 km so far, at the time), changing the spin of one would immediately change the spin of the other.
This proved to me that telepathy is possible. And then I considered the anecdotal evidence: you hear all the time about a mother knowing when her child's in danger. Yet I have not once heard that a father knew. Given that evolution tends to take advantage of phenomena, our brains are using this quantum effect to provide better protection for our children. The genes that program for this, are more fit for survival. We must be just starting out in exploring this genetic path, because it's not very controllable, and YMWV greatly.
The child spends 9 months in the womb. 9 months in which the mother and child can spend becoming entangled. I think that's really cool, and raises a neat question -- did wombs evolve in order to get the quantum effects? After all, it's a lot easier to flee from a predator and leave your eggs behind than it is to lug them along with you -- so there had to be a compelling reason for females to give up their flight ability.
This may be too late to get any responses, but I have a conspiracy theory that did not originate in my brain, but I strongly believe in it because of what we're seeing in this country (USA).
The theory is this: whites (in power) don't want blacks to vote. Most blacks live in the inner city, where drugs are rampant. Since there's very little hope for a "good job" many inner city residents turn to selling drugs, as the profits overwhelm the "real jobs" available to them.
So, first we make drugs illegal. Then, we make drug crimes felonies. And finally, we strip the right to vote from convicted felons.
Problem solved.
This disgusts me. I don't want it to be this way. Someone please show me where my logic is faulty.
Installing a face recognition system in every airport & federal building would be massively expensive overkill that wouldn't catch a determined terrorist.
I completely agree. It would make much more sense to take that money and spend it on the following three things, in this order:
1. Have two anonymous federal marshalls on board each flight, armed with handguns (they're doing this, I've heard).
2. Wall off the entry to the cockpit, and cut a separate door for the pilots.
3. Improve the autopilot system such that pilots no longer need to be in the plane.
They're in ascending order of difficulty, AFAIK. Adding people to every flight -- that's logistics, and financial. Cutting separate doors -- that's also financial, and physical, structural, and architechtural as well.
And removing pilots from the planes (including controls) eliminates the possibility that the hijackers could take it over (unless they cracked the security of the protocol[*]). But that'll cost a lot more, in development, testing, reconfiguring the cockpit (perhaps could put more seats in, and get more revenue per flight? -- especially from the "seats with a view" up front!), retraining the pilots to use ground controls (if they're smart they'll build them to be identical to the famailiar controls), and probably many more costs.
The good news is that I've heard (on TV news, so it's fairly reliable) that our autopilot systems are now extremely refined -- they can even take off and land the plane! So perhaps 3. won't take as long to implement as I imagined.
[*] - We could make the planes more autonomous; they'd accept instructions to fly to a specific, pre-defined location (i.e., an airport in existence -- and engineers would have to swap out a physical computer chip (or CD?) in order to update the airport locations -- like when a new airport is built). All other course corrections are done by computers on-board, which will be separated from the passenger section. I dunno. We can't make everything completely secure without stopping everyone from breathing, but I think the above could help -- without removing our liberties.
It would be really fantastic if they made it so that you could inline any language inside any other.
Check out BlueBox, a system designed to do just that.
The developers are writing "words" for many different languages; they currently have syntaxes written for Python, Java, C++, Perl, and are working on more.
I think that'd be very cool -- write something in Perl, then convert it to Java and run it anywhere! (Questions about performance, stability, security, etc...)
In this way, Java programs can be translated to Win32 programs, Perl programs can be translated to C# programs, etc. Compatibility is achieved by providing a mapping process from one platform to another, eliminating the importance of particular APIs and platforms in the process. To emphasize the differences in approach, we're calling this an "anti-platform" as opposed to a "platform." This approach is a better approach, but - given SUN's and Microsoft's commerical bent towards closed source - it's understandable that they made the technical decision for the binary compatibility of a virtual machine rather than source compatibility of a translator.
BlueBox still has a long way to go, but it's looking great so far. Just wish I had more time to help with the effort!
Here's a reason I haven't seen: because the world is evolving towards an economy that's not based on scarcity.
I've long been a supporter of The Foresight Institute. A few years ago, they started mixing Open Source/Free Software into the memes they were promoting (nanotechnology -- first, informative, and later once people accepted that it was possible, toward policy).
One of their messages is that everything will be essentially free in the future, as nanotechnology will bring the cost of manufacturing down to basically the cost of sunlight.
Already, we're starting to see that happen. Software copyright infringement has been going on since copyrighted software started being published. Music has been taped and shared with friends. Even videos are copied. Only now, technology is allowing us to make perfect digital copies. Even before nanotechnology has arrived, the trend of technology has driven prices of many goods down -- some to essentially zero, to those with the appropriate technology.
So my long-winded reason is this: I write free software because it's all going to be free anyway, within about a decade. I might as well improve others' lives with my efforts -- and gain some recognition. As ESR stated, it's a gift economy, and people are judged by their contributions.
As far as talking to politicians, however, I'd couch it more in terms they can understand. Like "why be a politician?" or "why be a weekend warrior?" or "why be an amateur artist/musician?" or "why do birds create songs and share them with the world?" (That last one's easy -- territorial posturing -- something a politician surely understands.)
can anyone look at the source? say... me? you? any user? can I rebuild from source (if not.. how can I see that the source is indeed the same as the compiled product?)
Don't worry, Microsoft is still hiring. They'll screw up and hire someone who'll put the whole source on Freenet.
The "signature virus" you're trying to spread is actually a "signature worm."
It does not spread by itself.
Back on topic, LTJ rocks, I partied with them in their tour bus a couple years ago. Too bad the pot ran out...;-)
And back on actual topic, there's nothing they (the companies) can do. They're thrashing now, like the buggy whip manufacturers, and they may win some temporary court victories, but they'll never beat constitutional rights. Besides, the world contains far more hackers than any one company can put on their payroll.
The problem with their product is it has to be "unbroken" at some point, so it can get into your ears. Whether they document this process or not, it'll fall into public domain before too long.
because networks compete for the same audience by sheduling shows that have similar appeal opposite each other (the bastards) like for example, X-Files and Dark Angel.
Now that I'd find impressive -- Fox putting one of its shows up against another Fox show!
But my home network cabling doesn't go near the TV, as I suspect is the case for a lot of people.
IANAHD (hardware designer), and know very little about the specifics of 802.11b, but wouldn't it be possible to connect CAT5 cable from the ReplayTV to a detached "802.11b sending station"?
This station (which could sit on top of the TV) would then communicate with other ReplayTVs or PCs in your house -- and the ReplayTV would never know that it's using 802.11b, it would just think it's talking over the Ethernet port that was built in.
I have a ReplayTV (20 hrs), and have been extremely happy with it. In November I'll buy one of the new ones (the cheap one, I'll hack it if I want to -- 20 hrs has been about enough so far anyway), and Santa will give the old one to my technologically-challenged parents.
Getting modded to +5 here does not help him directly.
True. However, why not have Jon Katz (chosen because he's already somewhat political; could be someone else, too) become a "Slashdot lobbyist" and gather the opinions of the Slashdot crowd.
Yes, to have your voice count he'd have to obtain your real name and address, to show the politicians whose constituent you are. But it would be so much easier if, for each major issue, there was a story associated with it, which had a "poll" on it so we could give feedback. This feedback would then be transferred to our rulers.
Similar to petitions. Hell, we could even call it "Slashdot Petitions".
There's something similar at Vote.com, but it would be nice to have "the geek vote" tallied as well.
but if you need to run MULTIPLE VMWare sessions at once, with scripting support (VM1 turns on VM2 to do XYZ and then turns of VM2 etc...) - then you'll need VMWare GSX which got a pretty big price tag - $2500
Just a thought (trying to save some money)... You could run two VMWare sessions at once (if not in the same login, then through a second one). That part can be scripted.
Now, they can both access the same disk, so we could use a semaphore file for them to communicate. Two, really, so they don't collide in writing. And each new write could increment the filename, so that they are both producers and consumers (from CS101).
Then you could define APIs to communicate with, which at their root would access the disk. The filename would be
for$machine2from$pid$user$machine1[++$i].txt
-- so the daemon know which PID to send the reply back to (and an incrementing part, in case that PID sends multiple messages).
Actually, that sounds like a good thing to have regardless -- write it in Perl, and have it send Perl code to be eval()ed. Then it could do anything, use Win32::GUI, cmd-line args, run other programs, gather output, etc. And any output is sent back to the original PID. That way it can be like
$rc = `grep -i foo bar.txt`;
but with different punctuation. Make it a sub, and it'll be
...but it looks like getting data on and off the CPUs from memory is the bottleneck, especially since the CPUs implement this in software...
I don't know much about hardware design, being mostly a software guy, but I wonder if the job of pumping data to the processors couldn't be done by just one of the 25 processors.
In order to do this, it would have to communicate with the other 24 processors, to see how many instructions they have in their cache. Since there are 5 horizontal and 5 vertical buses, other processors would have to be "routers" for the data. If the top left CPU was handling the caching, then the left edge (4 CPUs under the top left) would hand off messages. 4 of the CPUs (to the right of the top left) would be able to send directly to the cache CPU (as would the left edge).
Another simpler idea is to have 5 of the CPUs (the top row) handle the caching, so each one can communicate with the other 4 CPUs in its column. And if necessary, the cache CPUs can talk to each other.
Since there are 384 words in each processor, the topmost processor in each column could load 96 words for each of its 4 CPUs. Then, feeding them more instructions would be as fast as the CPU bus.
Perhaps he could even make the cache CPUs different than the rest -- so they have more memory, 1536 words, so they can cache 384 words for each processor. And tweak them for memory access.
You should mention to Linus that Perforce is giving free licenses to Open Source developers; the GNU GPL v2 or higher is sufficient.
Perforce is very flexible, a great system. Plus there's a great user community.
One advantage Perforce has over CVS is it groups a number of files into a "submit". A submit is atomic: if anything goes wrong it rolls everything else back. Change numbers describe a submission, then, not a single file. This is very useful -- you can see which files a person touched at once, either to see how he was thinking while working, or if maintenance is required, it's easy to find all the changes that went into his contribution to the source tree -- there all described by a single change number.
Slashdot Mirror
Similarly, every cell is a unique individual. However, when the organism is threatened, survival of the organism is more important than survival of each individual cell.
In a fight, I'll split my knuckles open on my opponent's forehead. Those escaping blood cells will die, and I'll feel sorry for them, but it's necessary to ensure the continued survival of their host.
Government is just an organism on a different scale.
No kidding. I was (am) highly skilled and very creative, and passionate about my work. I was "removed" forcefully by a piece-of-shit manager whose sole method for moving up was by stepping on the backs of the politically unskilled.
He fired several good people, simply to show everyone "who the boss is."
The punchline? He can't father children. Talk about questioning manhood!!! (A phrase he used to use a lot -- "don't make those kinds of waves, you're questioning his manhood" -- and now I know why that wording meant so much to him.)
We had many very quirky people, back when I started there; the company grew from 60 to over 1,800 during my tenure, and most of those quirky people either "grew up" or "got out." Sad, but that's the way bureaucracy works.
The worst part is the company was created by ex-IBMers who despised the bureaucracy at IBM and wanted to create something different. (And, like the quirky, most of those ex-IBMers are gone now, too.)
Anybody else struck by the irony that Windows XP is being released the same day as this hearing?
Thanks for the pointer! Looks very interesting, even though the link for signing up to the mailing list appears to be broken...
That's a great idea. I'm going to start looking at adding a "-xmlin" and a "-xmlout" parameter to GNU tools, so they can "hear" XML-formatted data from a pipe, and "speak" XML-formatted output.
So a grep like:
would output something like:
<xml>
<matching file> file1.c </matching file>
<matching line number> 42 </matching line number>
<matching line text> "blah blah blah BUGBUG blah blah blah" </matching line text>
</xml>
(That's not good XML, as I don't know it yet, but you get the idea.)
Not sure how far along it is, but a project which I've been following off-and-on for a couple months is located here , called Piper. From their page:
I taught the bullies that back in grade school, and you know what? They did the same as the terrorists -- they continued to terrorize me.
My mom taught me to "turn the other cheek." At thirty, she told me that teaching me that was one of her biggest mistakes in raising me. I'm glad she recognized it; it helps heal me. If I had instead been taught self-defense, and bloodied their noses back, I would have had a lot less difficulty growing up.
Our country is growing up. We can't just keep turning the other cheek, much as certain religions espouse. In God we trust; and I do. But that doesn't mean sit back and let shit happen to you. You're in control of your destiny -- you can fight back.
What's happening now to the US is very similar to the internal process I'm going through. In the last couple years I've begun fighting back, and I've made more friends and solved many of my previous problems. The "friends" part is very interesting -- Bush is using that word a lot in his speeches. Not "allies" -- "friends." That's closer to the heart, and is exactly the word George Lucas used to describe the rebels -- Darth Vader said something like "you and your friends will never win." Again, not "allies" -- perhaps this George took a cue card from another George?
And it's interesting how that process works. You let people walk all over you, and they become your enemies. But if you teach them your boundaries, and you firmly defend those boundaries, then they will respect you and befriend you more often than not.
If you're interested in how computers can help bring languages together, check out BlueBox -- they're writing "words" which define behavior, and are working on writing syntaxes/grammars for most common languages.
The cool part about this? You can write a program in Perl, feed it into BlueBox, and have it output your program in C++. Or Python. Or Shell script. Or ASM.
Even better is the reverse: feed EXPLORER.EXE in and have it spit out Perl! 'Course it won't be commented, but -- humans know how to comment, perhaps humans can teach computers how to comment?
To be topical: BlueBox could also help convert from Perl 5 to Perl 6 (and vice versa!), once both grammars have been written.
That's a great idea. Plus, insult and injury and all that, in some states small claims court lawsuits must be answered in person -- the company cannot send its lawyers in to defend.
My contribution to this thread: take your laptop to the store. Keep opening their CDs (thus increasing the number of returns from that store) until they decide to stop opening CDs for you and give you your money back.
It's currently so expensive because there are few entry points into the Internet, and those are all held by companies -- corporations intent on maximizing shareholder value at the expense of everything else. Including satisfying customers.
I've just recently gotten an email for a flat-rate long-distance company. Just $50 a month, and you can stay on the phone as long as you like. (If only it worked to other countries! But that's coming -- another year or so, my guess.)
With all the DSL companies going out of business (or filing Chapter 11), we seem to be moving toward few companies holding all the access. Which would tend to raise prices. However, more and more people are setting up small private networks in their neighborhoods using 802.11b, and as this continues we may take the wires right out from under the corporations!
So even though bandwidth is still very expensive, with the progress of technology it'll fall to "negligible" within a few years.
Yes, and the anecdotal evidence that many mothers know when their children are in danger -- yet I have not once heard of a father knowing the same thing.
Entaglement in the womb. Perhaps we evolved wombs solely to gain the benefits of entanglement-based communications from brain to brain?
I have a somewhat longer post, here , on how I got telepathy out of quantum entanglement and the way the brain works.
To venture into the spiritual (not religious!), perhaps the quantum state of a human is the equivalent of the soul.
Teleporting a car, or a computer, or office furniture should be okay, since those do not operate or depend on the quantum level. However, "teleporting" a human without the quantum state would result in a perfectly duplicate, yet inert corpse.
I like your idea -- create the "corpse" at the destination, then swap the quantum states of the human and the corpse, and *poof* teleportation! (I won't be the first though... Thing1Fly...)
I've been doing a lot of thinking about the relationship the quantum world has to things spiritual for several years. It started in April of 1999, when I read an article which stated that the human brain works on quantum principles, in addition to chemical, mechanical, and biological. So if we want to create a computer as powerful as the human brain, we'll have to understand quantum mechanics.
Three weeks later, I read an article which stated that we've identified one quantum principle, and demonstrated it in the lab: entanglement. This is Einstein's "spooky action at a distance." Through a process, two electrons become entangled and when separated (by up to 10 km so far, at the time), changing the spin of one would immediately change the spin of the other.
This proved to me that telepathy is possible. And then I considered the anecdotal evidence: you hear all the time about a mother knowing when her child's in danger. Yet I have not once heard that a father knew. Given that evolution tends to take advantage of phenomena, our brains are using this quantum effect to provide better protection for our children. The genes that program for this, are more fit for survival. We must be just starting out in exploring this genetic path, because it's not very controllable, and YMWV greatly.
The child spends 9 months in the womb. 9 months in which the mother and child can spend becoming entangled. I think that's really cool, and raises a neat question -- did wombs evolve in order to get the quantum effects? After all, it's a lot easier to flee from a predator and leave your eggs behind than it is to lug them along with you -- so there had to be a compelling reason for females to give up their flight ability.
The theory is this: whites (in power) don't want blacks to vote. Most blacks live in the inner city, where drugs are rampant. Since there's very little hope for a "good job" many inner city residents turn to selling drugs, as the profits overwhelm the "real jobs" available to them.
So, first we make drugs illegal. Then, we make drug crimes felonies. And finally, we strip the right to vote from convicted felons.
Problem solved.
This disgusts me. I don't want it to be this way. Someone please show me where my logic is faulty.
I completely agree. It would make much more sense to take that money and spend it on the following three things, in this order:
1. Have two anonymous federal marshalls on board each flight, armed with handguns (they're doing this, I've heard).
2. Wall off the entry to the cockpit, and cut a separate door for the pilots.
3. Improve the autopilot system such that pilots no longer need to be in the plane.
They're in ascending order of difficulty, AFAIK. Adding people to every flight -- that's logistics, and financial. Cutting separate doors -- that's also financial, and physical, structural, and architechtural as well.
And removing pilots from the planes (including controls) eliminates the possibility that the hijackers could take it over (unless they cracked the security of the protocol[*]). But that'll cost a lot more, in development, testing, reconfiguring the cockpit (perhaps could put more seats in, and get more revenue per flight? -- especially from the "seats with a view" up front!), retraining the pilots to use ground controls (if they're smart they'll build them to be identical to the famailiar controls), and probably many more costs.
The good news is that I've heard (on TV news, so it's fairly reliable) that our autopilot systems are now extremely refined -- they can even take off and land the plane! So perhaps 3. won't take as long to implement as I imagined.
[*] - We could make the planes more autonomous; they'd accept instructions to fly to a specific, pre-defined location (i.e., an airport in existence -- and engineers would have to swap out a physical computer chip (or CD?) in order to update the airport locations -- like when a new airport is built). All other course corrections are done by computers on-board, which will be separated from the passenger section. I dunno. We can't make everything completely secure without stopping everyone from breathing, but I think the above could help -- without removing our liberties.
Check out BlueBox , a system designed to do just that.
The developers are writing "words" for many different languages; they currently have syntaxes written for Python, Java, C++, Perl, and are working on more.
I think that'd be very cool -- write something in Perl, then convert it to Java and run it anywhere! (Questions about performance, stability, security, etc...)
Straight from the main developer (from BlueBox Mailing List ):
BlueBox still has a long way to go, but it's looking great so far. Just wish I had more time to help with the effort!
I've long been a supporter of The Foresight Institute. A few years ago, they started mixing Open Source/Free Software into the memes they were promoting (nanotechnology -- first, informative, and later once people accepted that it was possible, toward policy).
One of their messages is that everything will be essentially free in the future, as nanotechnology will bring the cost of manufacturing down to basically the cost of sunlight.
Already, we're starting to see that happen. Software copyright infringement has been going on since copyrighted software started being published. Music has been taped and shared with friends. Even videos are copied. Only now, technology is allowing us to make perfect digital copies. Even before nanotechnology has arrived, the trend of technology has driven prices of many goods down -- some to essentially zero, to those with the appropriate technology.
So my long-winded reason is this: I write free software because it's all going to be free anyway, within about a decade. I might as well improve others' lives with my efforts -- and gain some recognition. As ESR stated, it's a gift economy, and people are judged by their contributions.
As far as talking to politicians, however, I'd couch it more in terms they can understand. Like "why be a politician?" or "why be a weekend warrior?" or "why be an amateur artist/musician?" or "why do birds create songs and share them with the world?" (That last one's easy -- territorial posturing -- something a politician surely understands.)
Don't worry, Microsoft is still hiring. They'll screw up and hire someone who'll put the whole source on Freenet.
Including complete build instructions.
The "signature virus" you're trying to spread is actually a "signature worm."
It does not spread by itself.
Back on topic, LTJ rocks, I partied with them in their tour bus a couple years ago. Too bad the pot ran out... ;-)
And back on actual topic, there's nothing they (the companies) can do. They're thrashing now, like the buggy whip manufacturers, and they may win some temporary court victories, but they'll never beat constitutional rights. Besides, the world contains far more hackers than any one company can put on their payroll.
The problem with their product is it has to be "unbroken" at some point, so it can get into your ears. Whether they document this process or not, it'll fall into public domain before too long.
Now that I'd find impressive -- Fox putting one of its shows up against another Fox show!
See Fox.
IANAHD (hardware designer), and know very little about the specifics of 802.11b, but wouldn't it be possible to connect CAT5 cable from the ReplayTV to a detached "802.11b sending station"?
This station (which could sit on top of the TV) would then communicate with other ReplayTVs or PCs in your house -- and the ReplayTV would never know that it's using 802.11b, it would just think it's talking over the Ethernet port that was built in.
I have a ReplayTV (20 hrs), and have been extremely happy with it. In November I'll buy one of the new ones (the cheap one, I'll hack it if I want to -- 20 hrs has been about enough so far anyway), and Santa will give the old one to my technologically-challenged parents.
True. However, why not have Jon Katz (chosen because he's already somewhat political; could be someone else, too) become a "Slashdot lobbyist" and gather the opinions of the Slashdot crowd.
Yes, to have your voice count he'd have to obtain your real name and address, to show the politicians whose constituent you are. But it would be so much easier if, for each major issue, there was a story associated with it, which had a "poll" on it so we could give feedback. This feedback would then be transferred to our rulers.
Similar to petitions. Hell, we could even call it "Slashdot Petitions".
There's something similar at Vote.com , but it would be nice to have "the geek vote" tallied as well.
Just a thought (trying to save some money)... You could run two VMWare sessions at once (if not in the same login, then through a second one). That part can be scripted.
Now, they can both access the same disk, so we could use a semaphore file for them to communicate. Two, really, so they don't collide in writing. And each new write could increment the filename, so that they are both producers and consumers (from CS101).
Then you could define APIs to communicate with, which at their root would access the disk. The filename would be
-- so the daemon know which PID to send the reply back to (and an incrementing part, in case that PID sends multiple messages).Actually, that sounds like a good thing to have regardless -- write it in Perl, and have it send Perl code to be eval()ed. Then it could do anything, use Win32::GUI, cmd-line args, run other programs, gather output, etc. And any output is sent back to the original PID. That way it can be like
but with different punctuation. Make it a sub, and it'll be .I think I'll start working on that.
I don't know much about hardware design, being mostly a software guy, but I wonder if the job of pumping data to the processors couldn't be done by just one of the 25 processors.
In order to do this, it would have to communicate with the other 24 processors, to see how many instructions they have in their cache. Since there are 5 horizontal and 5 vertical buses, other processors would have to be "routers" for the data. If the top left CPU was handling the caching, then the left edge (4 CPUs under the top left) would hand off messages. 4 of the CPUs (to the right of the top left) would be able to send directly to the cache CPU (as would the left edge).
Another simpler idea is to have 5 of the CPUs (the top row) handle the caching, so each one can communicate with the other 4 CPUs in its column. And if necessary, the cache CPUs can talk to each other.
Since there are 384 words in each processor, the topmost processor in each column could load 96 words for each of its 4 CPUs. Then, feeding them more instructions would be as fast as the CPU bus.
Perhaps he could even make the cache CPUs different than the rest -- so they have more memory, 1536 words, so they can cache 384 words for each processor. And tweak them for memory access.
Question? What do you think of the above?
Last I checked it was about $70 a month for the service, $449 for the hardware, and $199 for the setup.
See StarBand info for more details. This is a service of Dish Network.
You should mention to Linus that Perforce is giving free licenses to Open Source developers; the GNU GPL v2 or higher is sufficient.
Perforce is very flexible, a great system. Plus there's a great user community.
One advantage Perforce has over CVS is it groups a number of files into a "submit". A submit is atomic: if anything goes wrong it rolls everything else back. Change numbers describe a submission, then, not a single file. This is very useful -- you can see which files a person touched at once, either to see how he was thinking while working, or if maintenance is required, it's easy to find all the changes that went into his contribution to the source tree -- there all described by a single change number.