I have a huge rant about abandonware, but my fingers hurt far to much to type that now;)
Concerning warez: what's the deal? Where's the problem? Show me one person who runs to the store
to buy a $50 game without ever playing it first and I'll show you someone who either has a huge income, or doesn't know where to find warez *grin*
Seriously, though, most people at least try out a shareware version of a game they're going to buy, or have already played it somewhere else (friend? etc). And of course pre-releases (q3a) and, of course, the hyped games everyone is going to buy the second it hits the stores (tribes 2). This is all fine and good for the big games, but tons of other games don't achieve this hype. Say, for instance, Baulder's Gate.
Warez is a great way to find software you may not have tried before. A friend may comment that a certain game's cool, but without having tried it are you going to buy it? But you might spend the bandwidth downloading it.
Which brings me to the point: most warez is going to be stripped of fluff (unless you get the complete ISO which is annoying as all hell -- maybe my burner just sucks), probably have wierd problems, require registry hacks, have chopped sound, or other problems. Or even if its perfect, no manuals, no original jewel case, nothing like that. If someone really likes a game, they're not going to just download it, burn it, and archive it. That happens to the crap. If you like it, you buy it. It's much nicer (updates are guaranteed to work, online services are guaranteed to work, etc)
Case in point: I downloaded Diablo2, played it for two days, and then purchased two copies so my boyfriend and I could both play on bnet at the same time. I *never* would have bought even one copy if I hadn't been able to play it first.
Software companies have got to admint that warez is not going away. If they want to ensure revenue? Then add more than just 0s and 1s. Add a detailed map, artwork, ANYTHING as a perk for actually buying the product. If you just ship a crappy app in a cardboard cd holder don't excpet folks to pay $50 for it.
First, the *primary* search method this engine uses is by the keywords specified by the *person
submitting the site*. If they don't supply a word
you are looking for, it won't come up.
Now, how many non-lesbians and gays (OK and the above-average intelligent literary types =p) know who sappho was? Of those, how many have webpages? Of those, how many keyed that word in when they registered their page?
Second, yes, sometimes it does still show the wrong search. If you look carefully at the URL, however, you'll notice that if you search for "red", you'll get: search?words=red. Now, do another search from here for blue and you get: search.pl?words=red&subs=blue Looks like it's getting into secondary proceedures/refining/whatever -- I looked but couldn't find very good documentation on this.
theindex.com obviously has a long way to go. Yes, it would be nice for them to open the source. Yes, they need to start a database of relevancy or something, say, have a two links next to each result, such as "this was helpful" or "this was useless" and let the userbase refine which search options come up first.
Reguardless, it's a good start. I generally try not to critisize something (especially code) unless I know for a fact I could do it better. Somehow, based solely on your comment, I don't think you could *grin*
Yes, they would if we stuck with a 2 or 3 party system. But what if there were, say, 6 major parties? You'd probably end up with a favorite, but at least have a couple you'd list if your fav didn't win.
Ranking systems would work great. Here's the basic idea:
You'd vote for say 4 presidential candidates, for example. If you want Nader to win, but would rather have Gore over Bush, you would vote the following manner:
1) Nader
2) Gore
3) Gore
4) Gore
Now, the state counts a vote of the top choices, and gets say, 45% Bush, 20% Nader, and 35% Gore. Since no candidate has a >50% majority, the second choice votes are added to the total. So let's say that most die-hard Republicans listed Bush as their second choice as well, as did die-hard Democrats, but Nader voters listed Gore for the most part second. So now the vote would switch to something like 45% Bush, 10% Nader, and 45% Gore.
Still no majority so take third and fourth into consideration resulting in: 45% Bush, 5% Nader, 50% Gore.
This of course looks a little contrived for a two-party system with a couple third parties, but imagine if there were say 6 parties. That is when this example would shine.
I can't figure out which makes me laugh harder, the fact that someone paid $100 to print an ugly URL code on paper/objects/whatnot or the basic idea of paperclick in general.
I don't get this. At the moment, you SEE this barcode + number, click on the software and type in the number, and voila!!! You've reached the product's website...
Only problem is this seems rather a bit like you SEE a URL, open your web browser and type it in, and VOILA!!! You've reached the product's website. Seems like a crappier version of database-driven DNS...
Of course, you say, there's a BAR CODE on it, so eventually people will just SCAN the object's tag and have their computer go directly to that webpage!!! I still don't think this is right, though, as 1) Barcodes have already been done, 2) Barcode readers have already been done. The only thing papershit^H^H^H^Hclick can do is patent the software they make that opens up a web-browser, connects to the database and goes to the website. This sounds logical as their final plan. So unless this somehow gets copywritten, it shouldn't be a problem to create your own open-sourced database (companies would either also enter the database barcode entry into an open engine and the paperclick, or maybe not paperclick;) and thus bypassing paperclick's claim altogether.
Once again proving that people, on average, are fucking retards.;)
According to the doccument, ISP's should facilitate the investigation team by keeping track of who is using the system when, and then turn this info over to the team. At first, this doesn't really sound that bad. I mean, you want to help all you can in a criminal investigation, right?
The problem comes in the doublestandard that is held between the real and digital worlds, that can quite possibly bring about 1984 in a very real sense; or digital sense, if you prefer;)
Think about it: We can step onto a bus, get off at a stop, secretly break into a building, and do whatever it is we're doing in this example. OK, it's not the greatest analogy, but lets fly with it for a moment.
Now, for comparison, someone is using XYZ SDSL, breaks into a computer system, and does whatever they want to do. I know all the flaws with this example but just think about it -- it's hard to like the digital world with real life.
In any case, by the new laws that seem OK which are attempting to be passed, XYZ DSL service would be required to keep logs of users, users to identies, and possibly what their users are doing online. This is like the bus driver in the first example being required to take down name, addresses, and phone numbers when you get on the bus, then storing where you got off and when in a notebook. For some strange reason, the very same people who don't react to the digital laws would be screaming murder if a government tried to pass a law like this.
Just because we have the ability to packetsniff, parse, and store potentially illegal info (or notes which can help prosecute) automatically with scripts doesn't mean we should. I maintain a large office over a single T1, and I admit I am almost always sniffing and parsing the data that's going through the pipe. But I do this in a manner that is consistant with the rest of my ethics: I specificlally filter OUT (so I don't see) port 25 and port 110 traffic. I scan port 21 and 23 for the sole purpose of screaming at the people who try to use these ports *grin*. Often I find people viewing porn or whatnot, but IMHO that's there business. Even though it is against company policy I will never notify anyone of this misuse. About the only thing I do crack down on is Napster (only because of the bandwidth issue). Mainly I want an idea of what's going over my network.
What scares me is I know the government won't have such scruples. For some reason intercepting and making photocopies of letters is illegal; yet we're trying to legalize sniffing email...
I used to support Katz. Sure, he gets a hard wrap, but I liked his writing style and some of his points. But this goes to far. This is downright dangerous.
Does Katz realize what the 2000 election means? I won't talk about the much more important local races since this is dependant on your area (assuming you're in the US; if not then just forget this post;) but let's focus on just one election -- the President. Why are the 2000 elections so important? The elected president will be in a position to sway the balance in the Supreme Court. With Bush we'd get a much more conservative court.
As an openly gay tech nerd this scares me. This means that commercial empires will continue to reign (conservatives seem to be rather leniant on anti-monopoly policy), and I don't even want to think about the consequences it will have on Civil Rights. But it doesn't matter if you agree with me. Hell, I don't care if you are a right-wing xenophobic neo-nazi;) The point is the deadliest thing you can do is not vote. It's dangerous not to get involved.
In Jon Katz dreamworld where he can go around not even realizing that he lives in a world that is still very much in a constant power struggle between Nations/Interest Groups/Religions/Etc. But in the real world, there is a damn spoon, and if we ever forget that, think things will work out OK without our help, then I would be terrified to see the type of world we would become.
Yes, you are right. *sigh* I didn't read the question well enough. I just read the headline and immediately went into my fevered argument mode I had with a coworker yesterday *grin*.
Peace,
DranoK
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
OK, I'm not a super-coder but from my own understanding (and a slashdot article earlier thatn addressed these issues) I'd like to point out that it's a very unfair assumption to claim that GUI porting is easy.
The earlier/. article suggested (or at least the comments did) that if M$ released IE for OSX that IE could be ported to X. Not quite.
In order to port over a GUI application, you first need to port the graphics libraries and other libraries, which more than likely aren't going to be Open under OSX (correct me if I'm wrong).
If it can be done, I question what software is going to get to OSX. Most good software, IMHO, already has a *nux port (or was designed for Linux *grin*), or has at least planned on porting it. Sadly, it's been my experience that a lot of people (especially the suits I work with) are loath to give up Winblows because of IE, Office, and other memory-hoggin' applications. If it turns out apps can be ported from OSX to *nix rather easily, then my bet is on M$ not writing any software for OSX.
IMHO, this is the exact same reason M$ doesn't make a Linux distro; to do so would require them to open a least a bit of their code, and M$ is scared shitless of the opensource community being able to run their programs/derivatives without paying ungodly liscence fees.
I think the best alternative is not porting over software that companies won't release themselves; rather, we need to let people know we have something better. Porting M$ software and other software that snubs the *nix world does us no favor; it simply tells these companies that their product is so "good" we need it and will port it ourselves. And hell, if the company doesn't like it they can always file charges.
While I admit it would be nice to be able to run every game than runs on a Mac (not sure on the OSX gaming specs) I think we should move towards developing programs designed to run on *nix, not porting over from other OS's. As we continue to grow, companies with enough sense will put out *nix ports. If not, their loss.
Peace,
DranoK
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
Please, I beg of you, do not moderate this down or reply in flame because you disagree! I'm only trying to make a point (that you may or not believe in) for the sake of discussion.
Evolution has held before a process of survival of the fittest. OK. This is very over-simplified, but let's just leave it at that. We can assume that there are minor differences in every creature, and those differences which prove beneficial tend to be passed on, thus evolving the species. I know we now know that there are conditions that can alter the rate of evolution, but again, for the sake of discussion, let's keep it simple.
The problem that I've always seen is that humans have stopped evolving. At least according to this scheme. Sure, we keep attaining more knowlege, but for the most part the biological (and this includes mental) aspect of humanity is not changing (at least in no way that is caused by the strictest sense of evolution). This is because we no longer abide by "survival of the fittest".
Sure, just because someone is smarter / stronger / etc than most gives him/her a huge advantage in life, but doesn't necessarily affect the outcome of survival. With some exceptions, no longer do the fittest survive only, but all do. This means that weak genes are just as likely to be passed along as strong ones. Evolution, for the most part, no longer applies.
Have we reached the stage where we need to evolve ourselves? Where we are in control of evolution? It's a scary thought. Granted, this article only hints of what may be possible in the future, but it's a concept that is relatively new and frighteningly, very feasable. The ability to modify genes in an unborn embryo.
Isn't this controlling the specie's evolution? No matter how many laws the nation or world passes, if the technology exists it will be used. There is not, however, any way to stop the progress.
Personally, I don't think the question is if we ever are able to control our own evolution, how to we stop it, but, when we are able to control our own evolution, how will we mold it?
Something to think about.
Peace, DranoK
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
Actaully, I think the exact opposite has happened from "slimming down" of computer software boxes. They say don't judge a book by it's cover, but it seems consumers judge software from the box.
Let's look at some of the stupid wastes I've noticed and laughed at.
Wierd shaped boxes: Star Trek games. You know what I'm talking about. The box that looks like a damned communicator. Or worse, the ones that have the doughnut holes in the middle. What's the point of this? I guess to make people pick up the box.;)
Heavy boxes: Is that hard-covered 300 page manual REALLY a necessity?? Especially since it can be put in postscript format? OK, for RPGs this can be a nice touch, but I got Visual Studio 6.0 for my birthday. The box was about 5 pounds!! So many useless manuals that nobody would ever use! Including a 100-page WELCOME NOTE written on thick paper. I swear this stupid pamphlet accounted for most of the box's weight and it served no usefull purpose. Strange thing is consumers actually seem to take weight into consideration!! I've seen men and women holding competing software in each hand and seeing which one weighed more!! It's a funny site, I'm telling you. They buy softare like they buy watermelon.
Expensive boxes: Quake3 Arena. OK. It looked cool. But why did the box need to be made out of metal! This one was even worse: two guys I worked with at the time BOUGHT Q3A soley to get the metal box. .
Biiiigggg boxes: Ultima 9 started this. Anyone see that box?? It was MASSIVE. 'Nuff said.
I think as more and more people are owning computers and buying software, the less level of knowlege the general consumer has about the product. Just like cereal whose box is only half-full, I think in the future more and more software boxes will be dead space. Or dead weight. Or whatever else is wastefull and sells;) Face it: a single jewel case wrapped in plastic with online doccumentation and a $49.95 pricetag just doesn't sell well.
Peace, DranoK
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
Personally, I'd like to see a set of trials and benchmarks betwen the GIMP and Photoshop. For best results, it'd be nice to see them compare on both high and low-end systems.
I'd reccomend, for example:
Test suite #1: Linux System: Redhat 6.2 default installation (no tweaks) Window System: Windows 98 Second Edition default installation (no tweaks) Hardware: Sawmill window manager (small and fast) PIII dual 650 MHZ w/ 512 MB Ram (to avoid AMD windows issues [if any]) A good Gforce2 vid card.
Test Suite #2: Same as above but with a PII350 w/ 128 MB RAM.
True, we'd never know if it was Windows vs. Linux or Gimp vs. Photoshop, but it'd certainly be fun. I, of course, would expect the Gimp to come out on top but ya never know;)
Cheers, DranoK
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
The coolest thing about this isn't about the free as in beer format, but the fact that it's an open format. I think more and more compression/encryption/etc in the future is going to abide by these open formats, as png has led the way (and hopefully this will continue the cause).
My first thought, of course, was that no new standard could compete with mp3. Then I realized it wouldn't really have to. Let's look at gif vs png, for example. Average Joe User coasts through webpages, never ever knowing if the pretty images he sees are gifs or pngs. He doesn't need to; all he cares about is that the pictures are there. Netscape and IE are the ones that had to do the work of getting png support for their browsers else worry about being slammed as "incomplete". The same will happen with any new open standard, I think.
Winamp, for instance, isn't going to stop playing mp3's. But I bet a future version of winamp will support the new format as well. This is the power of open standards.
Format types are a pain in the ass when they are closed. No company wants to buy liscencing rights to add support for a format, and will only do so if the format is so huge that their product won't sell without it. This stalls development of free software (if you're not going to be paid for it in the end IMHO the less likely you are to shell out thousands of bucks for a liscence) as well as a stagnation in standards. If all standards were proprietary, creating a new one would be hard to get out since companies would rather only impliment those standards that are set in stone. They likely won't purchase a liscence to a new commercial standard before it's been proven, and it won't be proven until it's liscenced. Without open standards stagnation would prevail.
For one last example look at the competition between OpenGL and GLIDE. GLIDE was too proprietory, and after a few years of fame slowly slipped away into the night. The industry is realizing this now, and is embracing open standards.
If only they'd realize the same logic applies to Open Source as well...
DranoK Having honestly nothing better to do today than read old Slashdot stories;)
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
This isn't like the sole purpose of this "monstrosity" it to gain advertising for Radio Shack. Radio Shack is helping fund a commercial company for their projects. When you think about it, this is a good idea.
Commercialization, unfortunately, is one of the best ways to continue funding space research etc. Personally, I think some of the major advances in space technology will come from the commercial sector, as they have the potential to have a very large budget (as well as actually make money off their work some day). Radio Shack is donating a lot of money for this company's research. Why is it so wrong they want to be acknowledged for that? Why would Radio Shack fund them if they can't put their logo on it? Or brag about being it's sponsor? No corporate sponsor is going to donate a large sum of money totally anonymously.
And if logos are so bad anyhow, why don't we get rid of all the NASA ones on the space shuttles? God forbid that they advertise...;)
Peace, DranoK
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
So now along with the "business exec" types out in the forest conducting business meetings, the strange type of guppies that think being connected at the mall or wherever they go is the end-all be-all of life, now we're going to have composers looking over a majestic American scene writing down the next great symphony...At least in the commercials.
This is actually pretty cool, it's more usefull than a scratchpad of notation paper since you can hear the results instantly. I just dread the marketing campaing on this one...
==Begin TV Ad== Scene of ocean w/ small boat just before dawn. Sun comes up. Man steps out and looks around. The US national anthem starts playing....Man takes out PALM PILOT AND STARTS COMPOSING!!! ==End TV Ad==
...As someone who really does appreciate music, I really, REALLY, don't want to see the advertisements for this one...
BTW, before pointing it out, I KNOW that the US national anthem was first a poem and only later put to the music of a drinking song;) But hell...if they're gonna give a guy from a pre-electrical era a palm pilot why not change history just a little more;)
DranoK
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
I'm not very well versed in the laws/practicallity of reverse engineering, but what would stop a company from doing the same thing to SDRAM or whatever else RAMBUS is liscencing that tons of IBM clones did to IBM? What I mean by that is the whole "black box" idea of seeing what goes in compared to what goes out, and creating a box that does the exact same thing. This is legal last time I checked.
Has this not been done because of compatibility issues? Or maybe companies have tried but have failed? Or maybe it's just not cost-effective; ie, cheaper to just pay the fees than to do the R&D to make your own.
Waiting for the day I can run my box off of a TByte RAMDISK =)
DranoK
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
In my very humble opinion, GUIs detract from the power of UNIX. Maybe it's because I've been a sysadmin since I got out of High School and am used to maintaining tons of machines remotely, but I can type faster than I move my mouse;) And there are things you can do from commandline that you can't from a gui.
To name a few: grep, awk, sed etc.
These tools are part of what makes Linux powerful. I guess you can get around a desktop Linux box using only a gui, but then you're now allowing yourself to gain the true benefit of using UNIX.
DranoK
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
Before I get bashed or moderated down here, I need to say I love Linux. I exclusively run Linux on both my laptops even though I sacrifice sound to do so *damn A3D*
I must ask WHY you would want to install Linux on a hand-held device?? I mean, yeah, it's COOL. It's fun, you can impress your friends, but it doesn't seem very efficient. Linux is powerful as hell, but the interface is still done mostly through command line. This is a good thing. I think (and a lot of people might agree) that the command line is the most efficient way to work. On a handheld device like this, however, command line interface becomes a chore.
Linux is also powerful becuase it's a true multi-user environment. Runlevel 3 ceases to be important in a small device like this (I would think). And what are you going to install on it? Somehow I'm guessing tons of stuff would refuse to compile.
I mean, yeah, it's cool and all, but unless someone writes a distro of Linux designed to be fully graphical etc and perform like WinCE (without the instability and Microsoft patronage) I just don't really understand the usefullness of installing Linux on this thing.
Except, of course, for the coolness value =)
DranoK
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
I tried to find specifications of this but I wasn't able =( So I'm going to have guess. =)
I think you could be right if 1) Computers could truly generate random numbers [say from the emissions per second from an ounce of uranium] 2) The encryption could never be decrypted [aka one-way encryption].
Encryption is like math. Let's for instance look at the Bell Curve. There's no way to take an integral of this formula...but there's a way to go about finding the ingregral nonetheless =)
Remember; if all else fails there's always the brute force method. Sure it may take years, but it can eventually be cracked.
Remember: the point of encrytion is not to hide data forever, but to make it take so long to decrypt it that the information is no longer valuable.
DranoK
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
Maybe I'm dead wrong here, and if so just tell me =)
It seems to me sending encrypted data over utilities such as Naptster etc could be a good or bad idea. Well, we all know the good so I'd like to point out some problems I see *grin*
1) Liscence creation/distribution. To ensure that the liscencing scheme is sound, I would think the best way to do it would be to have two classes of liscences. Type A would be a one-view liscence, and Type B would be a constant liscence. Each would be encrypted via a different scheme. With this, however, comes some inevitable problems. To make this work right, it would be assumed that one must be connected to the internet to check the liscence with an ever-growing online catalog (to make sure nobody has broken the scheme or is giving away their liscence code to everyone else). So....let's say you bought a one-view liscence. You're running winblows. Your machine crashes half-way thru viewing. Must you buy a new liscence? What if you get disconnected? When you dial back up and re-run the liscence their servers would say you already used your activation. Any other method besides online auth could be easily cracked.
2) How many people would downloading it not realizing they needed a liscence and jam tech support lines?
3) Why not stop spending time cracking the encryption method (which almost HAS to be stored in the viewer program and not online; else...well, I'll leave the problems up to you) just hack the code (hex editors are your friends!) to tell the proggy that the code is authentic no matter what.
Nothing is secure. Nothing. Sorry, but everything can be cracked. You'll spend so much time and money trying to stop it that you wonder when it just won't be worth it anymore.
God...WHEN is this whole Intelectual Property shit going to go away!?
DranoK
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
I just wanted to say I feel honored by all the technical information;) Call me a troll (and I just find it amusing) not one comment was made on the point of what I was saying but on my misinformation (sysadmin's don't know all;) and all redundant at that! Hehe, I guess I'm happy people are reading my posts! Have a great night all, DranoK
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
NASA has always come up under-funded after the huge budget to get to the moon (well, yee-haw lot's of good things came from that!) Politicians admit there's tons of good that came from NASA (lots of small technologies, including small computers) but the budget seems to be far too high for them to handle.
NASA has constantly been working on ways to cut costs. The reusable shuttlecraft for now (in fact everything is reusable except for the big orange tank which fuels the shuttle burners; the two white O2 containers are picked up and reused) and in the future something that will be competley reusuable except for the fuel cost. Which leaves the larger expenses of space exploration of 1) the price to hire, train, continue to pay astronauts capable of operating in such adverse conditions, and 2) the huge consideration for saftey (and price!) to warrent a space-walk.
Robots are a pay-once type of deal; you don't need to pay again unless they break. And you don't have to worry about their saftey during a spacewalk exercise. Eventually, what if for a basic maintenance voyage no human need go along at all? Thing about how dratsically that would cut the cost of a mission.
Hope NASA sees the future potential of this project...
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
Slashdot Mirror
No, no it doesn't. Go back to physic class ya freak!
DranoK
What about gravity? =p
DranoK
I have a huge rant about abandonware, but my fingers hurt far to much to type that now ;)
Concerning warez: what's the deal? Where's the problem? Show me one person who runs to the store to buy a $50 game without ever playing it first and I'll show you someone who either has a huge income, or doesn't know where to find warez *grin*
Seriously, though, most people at least try out a shareware version of a game they're going to buy, or have already played it somewhere else (friend? etc). And of course pre-releases (q3a) and, of course, the hyped games everyone is going to buy the second it hits the stores (tribes 2). This is all fine and good for the big games, but tons of other games don't achieve this hype. Say, for instance, Baulder's Gate.
Warez is a great way to find software you may not have tried before. A friend may comment that a certain game's cool, but without having tried it are you going to buy it? But you might spend the bandwidth downloading it.
Which brings me to the point: most warez is going to be stripped of fluff (unless you get the complete ISO which is annoying as all hell -- maybe my burner just sucks), probably have wierd problems, require registry hacks, have chopped sound, or other problems. Or even if its perfect, no manuals, no original jewel case, nothing like that. If someone really likes a game, they're not going to just download it, burn it, and archive it. That happens to the crap. If you like it, you buy it. It's much nicer (updates are guaranteed to work, online services are guaranteed to work, etc)
Case in point: I downloaded Diablo2, played it for two days, and then purchased two copies so my boyfriend and I could both play on bnet at the same time. I *never* would have bought even one copy if I hadn't been able to play it first.
Software companies have got to admint that warez is not going away. If they want to ensure revenue? Then add more than just 0s and 1s. Add a detailed map, artwork, ANYTHING as a perk for actually buying the product. If you just ship a crappy app in a cardboard cd holder don't excpet folks to pay $50 for it.
DranoK
Shh! Nobody knows I'm gay!
First, the *primary* search method this engine uses is by the keywords specified by the *person submitting the site*. If they don't supply a word you are looking for, it won't come up.
Now, how many non-lesbians and gays (OK and the above-average intelligent literary types =p) know who sappho was? Of those, how many have webpages? Of those, how many keyed that word in when they registered their page?
Second, yes, sometimes it does still show the wrong search. If you look carefully at the URL, however, you'll notice that if you search for "red", you'll get: search?words=red. Now, do another search from here for blue and you get: search.pl?words=red&subs=blue Looks like it's getting into secondary proceedures/refining/whatever -- I looked but couldn't find very good documentation on this.
theindex.com obviously has a long way to go. Yes, it would be nice for them to open the source. Yes, they need to start a database of relevancy or something, say, have a two links next to each result, such as "this was helpful" or "this was useless" and let the userbase refine which search options come up first.
Reguardless, it's a good start. I generally try not to critisize something (especially code) unless I know for a fact I could do it better. Somehow, based solely on your comment, I don't think you could *grin*
DranoK
Shh! Nobody knows I'm gay!
Yes, they would if we stuck with a 2 or 3 party system. But what if there were, say, 6 major parties? You'd probably end up with a favorite, but at least have a couple you'd list if your fav didn't win.
DranoK
Shh! Nobody knows I'm gay!
No, you're right, that's not the "traditional" idea of how it works.
It's the way *I* would like it to work...more statisticly stable IMHO.
DranoK
Shh! Nobody knows I'm gay!
Ranking systems would work great. Here's the basic idea:
You'd vote for say 4 presidential candidates, for example. If you want Nader to win, but would rather have Gore over Bush, you would vote the following manner:
1) Nader
2) Gore
3) Gore
4) Gore
Now, the state counts a vote of the top choices, and gets say, 45% Bush, 20% Nader, and 35% Gore. Since no candidate has a >50% majority, the second choice votes are added to the total. So let's say that most die-hard Republicans listed Bush as their second choice as well, as did die-hard Democrats, but Nader voters listed Gore for the most part second. So now the vote would switch to something like 45% Bush, 10% Nader, and 45% Gore. Still no majority so take third and fourth into consideration resulting in: 45% Bush, 5% Nader, 50% Gore.
This of course looks a little contrived for a two-party system with a couple third parties, but imagine if there were say 6 parties. That is when this example would shine.
DranoK
Shh! Nobody knows I'm gay!
I can't figure out which makes me laugh harder, the fact that someone paid $100 to print an ugly URL code on paper/objects/whatnot or the basic idea of paperclick in general.
;) and thus bypassing paperclick's claim altogether.
;)
I don't get this. At the moment, you SEE this barcode + number, click on the software and type in the number, and voila!!! You've reached the product's website...
Only problem is this seems rather a bit like you SEE a URL, open your web browser and type it in, and VOILA!!! You've reached the product's website. Seems like a crappier version of database-driven DNS...
Of course, you say, there's a BAR CODE on it, so eventually people will just SCAN the object's tag and have their computer go directly to that webpage!!! I still don't think this is right, though, as 1) Barcodes have already been done, 2) Barcode readers have already been done. The only thing papershit^H^H^H^Hclick can do is patent the software they make that opens up a web-browser, connects to the database and goes to the website. This sounds logical as their final plan. So unless this somehow gets copywritten, it shouldn't be a problem to create your own open-sourced database (companies would either also enter the database barcode entry into an open engine and the paperclick, or maybe not paperclick
Once again proving that people, on average, are fucking retards.
Shh! Nobody knows I'm gay!
According to the doccument, ISP's should facilitate the investigation team by keeping track of who is using the system when, and then turn this info over to the team. At first, this doesn't really sound that bad. I mean, you want to help all you can in a criminal investigation, right?
;)
The problem comes in the doublestandard that is held between the real and digital worlds, that can quite possibly bring about 1984 in a very real sense; or digital sense, if you prefer
Think about it: We can step onto a bus, get off at a stop, secretly break into a building, and do whatever it is we're doing in this example. OK, it's not the greatest analogy, but lets fly with it for a moment.
Now, for comparison, someone is using XYZ SDSL, breaks into a computer system, and does whatever they want to do. I know all the flaws with this example but just think about it -- it's hard to like the digital world with real life.
In any case, by the new laws that seem OK which are attempting to be passed, XYZ DSL service would be required to keep logs of users, users to identies, and possibly what their users are doing online. This is like the bus driver in the first example being required to take down name, addresses, and phone numbers when you get on the bus, then storing where you got off and when in a notebook. For some strange reason, the very same people who don't react to the digital laws would be screaming murder if a government tried to pass a law like this.
Just because we have the ability to packetsniff, parse, and store potentially illegal info (or notes which can help prosecute) automatically with scripts doesn't mean we should. I maintain a large office over a single T1, and I admit I am almost always sniffing and parsing the data that's going through the pipe. But I do this in a manner that is consistant with the rest of my ethics: I specificlally filter OUT (so I don't see) port 25 and port 110 traffic. I scan port 21 and 23 for the sole purpose of screaming at the people who try to use these ports *grin*. Often I find people viewing porn or whatnot, but IMHO that's there business. Even though it is against company policy I will never notify anyone of this misuse. About the only thing I do crack down on is Napster (only because of the bandwidth issue). Mainly I want an idea of what's going over my network.
What scares me is I know the government won't have such scruples. For some reason intercepting and making photocopies of letters is illegal; yet we're trying to legalize sniffing email...
Shh! Nobody knows I'm gay!
I used to support Katz. Sure, he gets a hard wrap, but I liked his writing style and some of his points. But this goes to far. This is downright dangerous.
;) but let's focus on just one election -- the President. Why are the 2000 elections so important? The elected president will be in a position to sway the balance in the Supreme Court. With Bush we'd get a much more conservative court.
;) The point is the deadliest thing you can do is not vote. It's dangerous not to get involved.
Does Katz realize what the 2000 election means? I won't talk about the much more important local races since this is dependant on your area (assuming you're in the US; if not then just forget this post
As an openly gay tech nerd this scares me. This means that commercial empires will continue to reign (conservatives seem to be rather leniant on anti-monopoly policy), and I don't even want to think about the consequences it will have on Civil Rights. But it doesn't matter if you agree with me. Hell, I don't care if you are a right-wing xenophobic neo-nazi
In Jon Katz dreamworld where he can go around not even realizing that he lives in a world that is still very much in a constant power struggle between Nations/Interest Groups/Religions/Etc. But in the real world, there is a damn spoon, and if we ever forget that, think things will work out OK without our help, then I would be terrified to see the type of world we would become.
Shh! Nobody knows I'm gay!
Yes, you are right. *sigh* I didn't read the question well enough. I just read the headline and immediately went into my fevered argument mode I had with a coworker yesterday *grin*.
Peace,
DranoK
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
OK, I'm not a super-coder but from my own understanding (and a slashdot article earlier thatn addressed these issues) I'd like to point out that it's a very unfair assumption to claim that GUI porting is easy.
/. article suggested (or at least the comments did) that if M$ released IE for OSX that IE could be ported to X. Not quite.
The earlier
In order to port over a GUI application, you first need to port the graphics libraries and other libraries, which more than likely aren't going to be Open under OSX (correct me if I'm wrong).
If it can be done, I question what software is going to get to OSX. Most good software, IMHO, already has a *nux port (or was designed for Linux *grin*), or has at least planned on porting it. Sadly, it's been my experience that a lot of people (especially the suits I work with) are loath to give up Winblows because of IE, Office, and other memory-hoggin' applications. If it turns out apps can be ported from OSX to *nix rather easily, then my bet is on M$ not writing any software for OSX.
IMHO, this is the exact same reason M$ doesn't make a Linux distro; to do so would require them to open a least a bit of their code, and M$ is scared shitless of the opensource community being able to run their programs/derivatives without paying ungodly liscence fees.
I think the best alternative is not porting over software that companies won't release themselves; rather, we need to let people know we have something better. Porting M$ software and other software that snubs the *nix world does us no favor; it simply tells these companies that their product is so "good" we need it and will port it ourselves. And hell, if the company doesn't like it they can always file charges.
While I admit it would be nice to be able to run every game than runs on a Mac (not sure on the OSX gaming specs) I think we should move towards developing programs designed to run on *nix, not porting over from other OS's. As we continue to grow, companies with enough sense will put out *nix ports. If not, their loss.
Peace,
DranoK
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
Please, I beg of you, do not moderate this down or reply in flame because you disagree! I'm only trying to make a point (that you may or not believe in) for the sake of discussion.
Evolution has held before a process of survival of the fittest. OK. This is very over-simplified, but let's just leave it at that. We can assume that there are minor differences in every creature, and those differences which prove beneficial tend to be passed on, thus evolving the species. I know we now know that there are conditions that can alter the rate of evolution, but again, for the sake of discussion, let's keep it simple.
The problem that I've always seen is that humans have stopped evolving. At least according to this scheme. Sure, we keep attaining more knowlege, but for the most part the biological (and this includes mental) aspect of humanity is not changing (at least in no way that is caused by the strictest sense of evolution). This is because we no longer abide by "survival of the fittest".
Sure, just because someone is smarter / stronger / etc than most gives him/her a huge advantage in life, but doesn't necessarily affect the outcome of survival. With some exceptions, no longer do the fittest survive only, but all do. This means that weak genes are just as likely to be passed along as strong ones. Evolution, for the most part, no longer applies.
Have we reached the stage where we need to evolve ourselves? Where we are in control of evolution? It's a scary thought. Granted, this article only hints of what may be possible in the future, but it's a concept that is relatively new and frighteningly, very feasable. The ability to modify genes in an unborn embryo.
Isn't this controlling the specie's evolution? No matter how many laws the nation or world passes, if the technology exists it will be used. There is not, however, any way to stop the progress.
Personally, I don't think the question is if we ever are able to control our own evolution, how to we stop it, but, when we are able to control our own evolution, how will we mold it?
Something to think about.
Peace,
DranoK
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
Actaully, I think the exact opposite has happened from "slimming down" of computer software boxes. They say don't judge a book by it's cover, but it seems consumers judge software from the box.
;)
;) Face it: a single jewel case wrapped in plastic with online doccumentation and a $49.95 pricetag just doesn't sell well.
Let's look at some of the stupid wastes I've noticed and laughed at.
Wierd shaped boxes: Star Trek games. You know what I'm talking about. The box that looks like a damned communicator. Or worse, the ones that have the doughnut holes in the middle. What's the point of this? I guess to make people pick up the box.
Heavy boxes: Is that hard-covered 300 page manual REALLY a necessity?? Especially since it can be put in postscript format? OK, for RPGs this can be a nice touch, but I got Visual Studio 6.0 for my birthday. The box was about 5 pounds!! So many useless manuals that nobody would ever use! Including a 100-page WELCOME NOTE written on thick paper. I swear this stupid pamphlet accounted for most of the box's weight and it served no usefull purpose. Strange thing is consumers actually seem to take weight into consideration!! I've seen men and women holding competing software in each hand and seeing which one weighed more!! It's a funny site, I'm telling you. They buy softare like they buy watermelon.
Expensive boxes: Quake3 Arena. OK. It looked cool. But why did the box need to be made out of metal! This one was even worse: two guys I worked with at the time BOUGHT Q3A soley to get the metal box. .
Biiiigggg boxes: Ultima 9 started this. Anyone see that box?? It was MASSIVE. 'Nuff said.
I think as more and more people are owning computers and buying software, the less level of knowlege the general consumer has about the product. Just like cereal whose box is only half-full, I think in the future more and more software boxes will be dead space. Or dead weight. Or whatever else is wastefull and sells
Peace,
DranoK
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
Personally, I'd like to see a set of trials and benchmarks betwen the GIMP and Photoshop. For best results, it'd be nice to see them compare on both high and low-end systems.
;)
I'd reccomend, for example:
Test suite #1: Linux System:
Redhat 6.2 default installation (no tweaks)
Window System:
Windows 98 Second Edition default installation (no tweaks)
Hardware:
Sawmill window manager (small and fast) PIII dual 650 MHZ w/ 512 MB Ram (to avoid AMD windows issues [if any]) A good Gforce2 vid card.
Test Suite #2:
Same as above but with a PII350 w/ 128 MB RAM.
True, we'd never know if it was Windows vs. Linux or Gimp vs. Photoshop, but it'd certainly be fun. I, of course, would expect the Gimp to come out on top but ya never know
Cheers,
DranoK
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
The coolest thing about this isn't about the free as in beer format, but the fact that it's an open format. I think more and more compression/encryption/etc in the future is going to abide by these open formats, as png has led the way (and hopefully this will continue the cause).
;)
My first thought, of course, was that no new standard could compete with mp3. Then I realized it wouldn't really have to. Let's look at gif vs png, for example. Average Joe User coasts through webpages, never ever knowing if the pretty images he sees are gifs or pngs. He doesn't need to; all he cares about is that the pictures are there. Netscape and IE are the ones that had to do the work of getting png support for their browsers else worry about being slammed as "incomplete". The same will happen with any new open standard, I think.
Winamp, for instance, isn't going to stop playing mp3's. But I bet a future version of winamp will support the new format as well. This is the power of open standards.
Format types are a pain in the ass when they are closed. No company wants to buy liscencing rights to add support for a format, and will only do so if the format is so huge that their product won't sell without it. This stalls development of free software (if you're not going to be paid for it in the end IMHO the less likely you are to shell out thousands of bucks for a liscence) as well as a stagnation in standards. If all standards were proprietary, creating a new one would be hard to get out since companies would rather only impliment those standards that are set in stone. They likely won't purchase a liscence to a new commercial standard before it's been proven, and it won't be proven until it's liscenced. Without open standards stagnation would prevail.
For one last example look at the competition between OpenGL and GLIDE. GLIDE was too proprietory, and after a few years of fame slowly slipped away into the night. The industry is realizing this now, and is embracing open standards.
If only they'd realize the same logic applies to Open Source as well...
DranoK
Having honestly nothing better to do today than read old Slashdot stories
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
Please read the articles if you haven't already.
;)
This isn't like the sole purpose of this "monstrosity" it to gain advertising for Radio Shack. Radio Shack is helping fund a commercial company for their projects. When you think about it, this is a good idea.
Commercialization, unfortunately, is one of the best ways to continue funding space research etc. Personally, I think some of the major advances in space technology will come from the commercial sector, as they have the potential to have a very large budget (as well as actually make money off their work some day). Radio Shack is donating a lot of money for this company's research. Why is it so wrong they want to be acknowledged for that? Why would Radio Shack fund them if they can't put their logo on it? Or brag about being it's sponsor? No corporate sponsor is going to donate a large sum of money totally anonymously.
And if logos are so bad anyhow, why don't we get rid of all the NASA ones on the space shuttles? God forbid that they advertise...
Peace,
DranoK
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
So now along with the "business exec" types out in the forest conducting business meetings, the strange type of guppies that think being connected at the mall or wherever they go is the end-all be-all of life, now we're going to have composers looking over a majestic American scene writing down the next great symphony...At least in the commercials.
...As someone who really does appreciate music, I really, REALLY, don't want to see the advertisements for this one...
;) But hell...if they're gonna give a guy from a pre-electrical era a palm pilot why not change history just a little more ;)
This is actually pretty cool, it's more usefull than a scratchpad of notation paper since you can hear the results instantly. I just dread the marketing campaing on this one...
==Begin TV Ad==
Scene of ocean w/ small boat just before dawn. Sun comes up. Man steps out and looks around. The US national anthem starts playing....Man takes out PALM PILOT AND STARTS COMPOSING!!!
==End TV Ad==
BTW, before pointing it out, I KNOW that the US national anthem was first a poem and only later put to the music of a drinking song
DranoK
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
I'm not very well versed in the laws/practicallity of reverse engineering, but what would stop a company from doing the same thing to SDRAM or whatever else RAMBUS is liscencing that tons of IBM clones did to IBM? What I mean by that is the whole "black box" idea of seeing what goes in compared to what goes out, and creating a box that does the exact same thing. This is legal last time I checked.
Has this not been done because of compatibility issues? Or maybe companies have tried but have failed? Or maybe it's just not cost-effective; ie, cheaper to just pay the fees than to do the R&D to make your own.
Waiting for the day I can run my box off of a TByte RAMDISK =)
DranoK
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
In my very humble opinion, GUIs detract from the power of UNIX. Maybe it's because I've been a sysadmin since I got out of High School and am used to maintaining tons of machines remotely, but I can type faster than I move my mouse ;) And there are things you can do from commandline that you can't from a gui.
To name a few: grep, awk, sed etc.
These tools are part of what makes Linux powerful. I guess you can get around a desktop Linux box using only a gui, but then you're now allowing yourself to gain the true benefit of using UNIX.
DranoK
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
Before I get bashed or moderated down here, I need to say I love Linux. I exclusively run Linux on both my laptops even though I sacrifice sound to do so *damn A3D*
I must ask WHY you would want to install Linux on a hand-held device?? I mean, yeah, it's COOL. It's fun, you can impress your friends, but it doesn't seem very efficient. Linux is powerful as hell, but the interface is still done mostly through command line. This is a good thing. I think (and a lot of people might agree) that the command line is the most efficient way to work. On a handheld device like this, however, command line interface becomes a chore.
Linux is also powerful becuase it's a true multi-user environment. Runlevel 3 ceases to be important in a small device like this (I would think). And what are you going to install on it? Somehow I'm guessing tons of stuff would refuse to compile.
I mean, yeah, it's cool and all, but unless someone writes a distro of Linux designed to be fully graphical etc and perform like WinCE (without the instability and Microsoft patronage) I just don't really understand the usefullness of installing Linux on this thing.
Except, of course, for the coolness value =)
DranoK
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
I tried to find specifications of this but I wasn't able =( So I'm going to have guess. =)
I think you could be right if 1) Computers could truly generate random numbers [say from the emissions per second from an ounce of uranium] 2) The encryption could never be decrypted [aka one-way encryption].
Encryption is like math. Let's for instance look at the Bell Curve. There's no way to take an integral of this formula...but there's a way to go about finding the ingregral nonetheless =)
Remember; if all else fails there's always the brute force method. Sure it may take years, but it can eventually be cracked.
Remember: the point of encrytion is not to hide data forever, but to make it take so long to decrypt it that the information is no longer valuable.
DranoK
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
Maybe I'm dead wrong here, and if so just tell me =)
...well, I'll leave the problems up to you) just hack the code (hex editors are your friends!) to tell the proggy that the code is authentic no matter what.
It seems to me sending encrypted data over utilities such as Naptster etc could be a good or bad idea. Well, we all know the good so I'd like to point out some problems I see *grin*
1) Liscence creation/distribution. To ensure that the liscencing scheme is sound, I would think the best way to do it would be to have two classes of liscences. Type A would be a one-view liscence, and Type B would be a constant liscence. Each would be encrypted via a different scheme. With this, however, comes some inevitable problems. To make this work right, it would be assumed that one must be connected to the internet to check the liscence with an ever-growing online catalog (to make sure nobody has broken the scheme or is giving away their liscence code to everyone else). So....let's say you bought a one-view liscence. You're running winblows. Your machine crashes half-way thru viewing. Must you buy a new liscence? What if you get disconnected? When you dial back up and re-run the liscence their servers would say you already used your activation. Any other method besides online auth could be easily cracked.
2) How many people would downloading it not realizing they needed a liscence and jam tech support lines?
3) Why not stop spending time cracking the encryption method (which almost HAS to be stored in the viewer program and not online; else
Nothing is secure. Nothing. Sorry, but everything can be cracked. You'll spend so much time and money trying to stop it that you wonder when it just won't be worth it anymore.
God...WHEN is this whole Intelectual Property shit going to go away!?
DranoK
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
I just wanted to say I feel honored by all the technical information ;) Call me a troll (and I just find it amusing) not one comment was made on the point of what I was saying but on my misinformation (sysadmin's don't know all ;) and all redundant at that! Hehe, I guess I'm happy people are reading my posts! Have a great night all, DranoK
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
NASA has always come up under-funded after the huge budget to get to the moon (well, yee-haw lot's of good things came from that!) Politicians admit there's tons of good that came from NASA (lots of small technologies, including small computers) but the budget seems to be far too high for them to handle.
NASA has constantly been working on ways to cut costs. The reusable shuttlecraft for now (in fact everything is reusable except for the big orange tank which fuels the shuttle burners; the two white O2 containers are picked up and reused) and in the future something that will be competley reusuable except for the fuel cost. Which leaves the larger expenses of space exploration of 1) the price to hire, train, continue to pay astronauts capable of operating in such adverse conditions, and 2) the huge consideration for saftey (and price!) to warrent a space-walk.
Robots are a pay-once type of deal; you don't need to pay again unless they break. And you don't have to worry about their saftey during a spacewalk exercise. Eventually, what if for a basic maintenance voyage no human need go along at all? Thing about how dratsically that would cut the cost of a mission.
Hope NASA sees the future potential of this project...
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.