A floating point operation is usually taken to mean a floating point multiply followed by a floating point addition, also known as a Multiply/Accumulate Cycle (MAC).
A MAC is a very important operation in digital signal processing.
Thanks for the responce - I guessed there was a standard FLOP, and I hoped someone would mention it. It sounds like a suitable measurement, but I'm still more interested in application benchmarks.
What kind of Floating Point Operation? Addition will be faster than multiplications, which will be faster than division. Operations will no longer be tied to the slowest possible operations, so they may not even be even multiples of each other.
I think in such a system, other features (code optimization, use of 3D accelerators, etc) will be more important than the speed of an add. It will even take several years of experimentation to determine what optimizations to make (how many times is it better to add than multiply, how should loops be unrolled, etc).
I think many traditional measurements will become worse than useless, and instead misleading. Since a lot of your repetative math operations may be unloaded on your 3D accelerator, it is questionable that, even if you could decide how to measure it, floating-point-operations per seconds would be a real indicator. I wouldn't want the manufacturer optimizing for that over other, useful things.
A better question is, how long does a NOP last? Won't this system optimize it out? How can you time a NOP without a clock?
I disagree. What do you mean by unenforcable laws? Anyone can break a law, up to and including murder, and some can even get away with it. However, our society is set up to allow easy enforcement of established law - if you break the law, you will be caught.
If by unenforcable, you mean that people can break the law and ALWAYS get away with it, then that is not the case either. Even "bad" laws like the DMCA and the UCITA are enforcable, once law enforcement has the right tools in place. If the will of law enforcement was brought down on it, Napster would be shut down tommorrow, ISPs would have to filter Gnutella and other clients, a few big violaters would have to pay huge fines, and MP3 trading would become local and minor. It would be like with other forms of copyright infringement (such a pirate videos) - not enough to really care about, and easily stopped when it becomes big.
If we want to continue legally trading MP3s, then we need to have a legal system in place. RIAA and Microsoft will eventually come up with one - do you want their solution to be the default?
Interesting points. I believe that the problem is that all existing systems were designed with the users in mind, with only passing thought to the copyright owners. I was attempting to think of a system that combines the good points of Napster while balancing the rights of copyright owners and users.
Certainly, the system can be bypassed. No digital system is impervious to determined pirates (or government agents). The point is to make a system where the legal path makes sense, and has benefits over the illegal system.
If you want a clarification of my general system idea, check out another post.
Actually there is a 'copyright' bit in the MP3 format. If only the lawyers can be convinced that napster use that bit to filter out the illegal music.;) Last night there were over 2,000,000+ files shared on Napster online covering 8000G of storage. It would be a computational interesting task to go through the files.
I think it's significant that this bit is not used by Napster. They display file size, track length, and encoding rate, but not copyright information. A legal system would note this, maybe save the data in a more convient format for quick lookup, and make it part of the search information.
Of course, many rippers probably also ignore this bit. This is why the whole system needs to be designed, from the ground up, to respect copyright and user's rights. If we don't do it, the industry and Microsoft will create a solution that takes copyright into account but not user's rights.
My idea is why don't we just encode an ACL into the MP3 and encrypt it... The user can also add a few other users to the ACL and purposedly share it with maybe 3 friends, but no more. Perhaps the other 2 entries in the ACL can expire after a certain amount of time or date.
It's an interesting idea, and would be a good component of a legal system. Of course, it would have to platform independent...
I'm afraid Microsoft will implement it before Linux does, and Linux user's won't care, and Linux will go a little farther to earn the reputation of the pirate's operating system.
We won't like Microsoft's implementation. I think we should beat them to a solution.
I think the goal of "zero infringement of copyright" is mistaken and impossible. As your link to Steamripper demonstrates, there will always be a way to circumvent protection and get the sound into a free digital format.
My idea is not to make copyright infringement immposible, but to have a system that encourages legal copying, while discouraging illegal copying. Napster does not - it warns users not to trade copyrighted music, but fails to identify what is and isn't. It doesn't even try, leaving it to the record companies to do so.
I believe an ideal system would include copyright information as a basic peice of information, like Napster does with file size and encoding rate. If a track is not copyrighted, it should state why (public domain, recorded live, or copyright allowing free digital copying).
Point 1 (Digital Files with copyright info) is a rough attempt to describe such a system. The idea is to put the copyright info at the front, so the client software can quickly determine the self-declared copyright. This seems to me to be an essential component of a legal system - even more important than any encryption.
Point 2 (Server software that is key protected) may have been confusing - I was talking about the user's file server, not any central search engine / server. The idea is that, while my server is running out in the open, only those with a key can actually get the files. Possibly, the server would not even announce what files are availible unless the outsider knew the key.
This simulates the meat world, where I only know someone's CD collection if I know them personally, or if they announce it to the world.
This leaves space for third-parties to offer services (Point 3). One service woud be key management, so I don't have to remember keys. Another would be search engine service, so I can find others that share my tastes, and they can find me. Any such search engine would generate a huge amount of requests for keys. Another service could manage key requests, either through simple forms (to prove you know me personally), or bundling requests in a conveinent manner.
The fourth point is about client software, outside of the personal server. This software would manage ripping CDs, implanting copyright information, creating compilation CDs, and other tasks. There is existing software that does all this, but there is no standard way of enforcing copyright. If stand copyright maintance becomes common, the record companies could loosen the belt, offering sample tracks, etc, knowning that legal clients would respect the copyright.
No, it's not a perfect system, not even very original. It's just that I have fallen for trading online music, and I am trying to imagine a system that allows me to do it legally.
Does it prevent piracy? Of course not, just discourages it and offers an attractive alternative. I believe it to be technologically impossible to stop piracy, and the only alternative it to make the benefit/risk balance fall more in the copyright owner's favor. Right now, it's very much against them (lots of benefit, little to no risk for pirates, while legal purchasers look like fools).
We often say that GNU and open-source is about innovation. If we can create a system that looks legal, smells legal, and can be used legally, before the record companies and Microsoft come up with a solution, we would be justified. I think we would have a product to be truly proud of, and that would seriously influence any final industry solution. I propose we beat them to the punch, before we get slammed ourselves.
Warning: long comment with a bit of thought and spell-checking behind it
It seems to me that Napster's position is untenable. Although there are some possible legal uses of the service (such as trading public domain MP3s), the illegal uses are more numerous, and there are no protections in place to prevent illegal use. Some may say it is up to the individual to avoid illegal uses, but there is no mechanism in place to determine which uses are legal and which are not. There are no copyright stamps on MP3s, as well as no public domain stamps, which make it too easy for an individual to unwittingly break copyright law.
Having said that, I use Naspter, and I believe that some of my activities are legal, while others are questionable. Here they are, in order of possible legality:
Finding tracks that I believe to be in the public domain (such as Naspter's Featured Music)
Making MP3s of my CDs at home, then accessing my home server from work or on the road to get songs as desired.
Finding MP3s of songs I own in an analog format, and do not have the time or skill to convert to MP3s myself.
Finding MP3s of songs I once owned in another format, but the original was lost or destroyed (broken / scratched CDs, analog tapes destroyed by placing them on the dashboard, scratched albums).
"Borrowing" MP3s from friends (friends I interact with in the real world), the same way I would borrow a CD that they do not listen to.
"Borrowing" MP3s from friends (again, meatspace friends) of CDs they are also listening to, the same way I would make a mix tape.
Finding MP3s of songs that I am no longer able to purchase, because they are not being sold anymore
Finding MP3s of songs from albums that were well reviewed, to determine whether I wish to purchase the album (deleting them if I decide not to, of course).
I may be able to argue in a court of law on the first 3 points, but I would be compromised, because while I was legally using them, others could copy them for illegal purposes, and I, in many ways, would have enabled it.
What I am looking for is a legal way to do these things, but on a massive scale. I think a legal service would have the features:
Digital files include a information portion to hold copyright information. For instance, a.WMP3 format (wrapped MP3) could use the first 2048 bytes for copyright information, artist name, track name, album name, track number, etc. As a side benefit, the file would self-encode information I've had to code into the filename, for instance, "The Laziest Men On Mars - Invasion of the Gabber Robots (All Your Base Are Belong To Us!).mp3" could become "ALLYOURBASE.WMP3", and a reasonable jukebox application could use the header to file and display the song properly. If so desired, the info portion could also contain "kill" information, to tell the server software when the file should be deleted. Record companies could issue you a song for a certain time, then (legal) servers would delete it (or ignore it on other servers) after the kill time. Encryption need not be used, but it would be possible.
Servers would be key protected, for instance with a PGP key. I would need the key to access the server, which implies that the server owner has given me the key. If I broke the key, I would be solely responsible for illegal acts. This allows a bit of fair use - I can use the key at work to get into the home system, as can my wife and extended family. As a side benefit, PGP would get into widespread use.
Public web services could offer free services, such as MP3 listings, server names, and webspace. They could also offer simple forms, where I can request access to someone's server. They could make it a automatic validation process, such as, if you know my email address, you get the key, or you have to know my middle name, my dog's name, and where I was born. Or, it could package requests into simple emails, so you can filter your email client based on one address.
Client software, free or otherwise, could manage your collection, keep up to date on servers you have access to, manage keys, and possibly validate your files. If the record companies could ever come up with a way to validate that you own a CD (maybe a data track on new CDs), the client could take care of any verification needed.
Such a system has many components, and may be difficult to implement, but the creators of such a system would have ample proof that they encourage legal uses while discouraging illegal uses. I think they would be in a much better position than Napster is, with more possiblity of survial. Now that many people have experienced the ease of trading digital music, they will hunger for a legal way to do it.
Some will say that I should just set up a home FTP server, but such a soultion will never catch on - it has to be a single purpose server, that takes care of it's own security. Others will say, why don't you make it yourself - valid criticism, but I don't have the time or talent. I'm just looking to see if others think it is a good idea, and maybe someone is already working on it.
Yeah, this may not directly relate to the story - I wrote it before hand, and, since I want people to read it, waited for a new story. Maybe I should have submitted it, as an Ask Slashdot?)
Interesting points, but I think that when good stuff comes out of Microsoft for the Mac, it's more about the upper management NOT caring about the platform (letting the project team innovate without upper presure) than upper management schemeing against Macs.
I see a different progression:
Mac OS X
Microsoft Office ported to OS X cleanly
Mac OS X ported to Intel platform
Mac OS X's interface becomes the first commericially successful (pay-for-use) Linux GUI
Microsoft Office on Linux (pay-for-use, only on OS X interface)
I am a little suspicious of the decision as well. It appears that Microsoft did a moon-shot effort, created a web browser that competed on the same ground as the established favorite, and were fairly successful. From what I've heard, MSIE on Macintosh is the most standard-compliant browser out there, which is not easy to do. It looks like Microsoft is innovative, that deep pockets can make valuable software.
However, their attempts to cut off Netscape's OEM channels did appear predatory, and it may have fallen under anti-trust law. Yes, lots of folks downloaded Netscape, but this was before fat pipes to the home - many home users would have had to do an overnight download over 56K.
Furthermore, a starting user who wanted Netscape would have to use MSIE to download the software - I seem to remember MSIE was pretty bad at downloading more than an hour at a time. Was that a strategy?
Even if a new user wanted Netscape instead, he had MSIE, and could not excise it from the operating system. It may be free, but the end user already paid for it hard disk space. If he had to re-install Windows, there it was again, the default option, only a Windows Update away from the latest version.
MS will release IE 6.x soon, and they are already debating whether to release it on Windows 95 or not. This means that existing users will have to upgrade their operating system to browse with the latest browser. Yes, it's been done before, but Microsoft has a way of adding features so that in a few years, you won't be able to browse many sites without IE 6.0 or later.
Government intervention may not be the best bet, but something will have to give eventually. We should re-double our open-source, free software efforts.
That path seems to presuppose that the person didn't already use Linux or BSD, and that being a Karma Whore and hence getting to Karma Kapped is a necessary step.
True, I'm assuming that most new users these days aren't Linux users (like I was). This may be true - it is possible that most who use Linux already know about slashdot, and it's just folks like me, life-time Microsoft users (I fondly remember DOS) who are now signing up. Slashdot does a great job at evangelization, though: I now have 3 computers running Win/Linux, and one laptop running Linux almost all the time.
Good luck never reaching 50. It's a strange feeling, knowing that you can only go down. The +1 at 26 is nice, though, when you want to be heard. With such a low user-id, I'd say you have walked far down the Slashdot path, to where the karma game and recognition isn't as alluring...
As for the moderation life-cycle, I'm at around 3 or 6 - I often use all my mod points on one story, because the stress of knowing I have them is too much (I vote too, out of civic obligation, altough I hate my alternatives). I try to do the right thing, viewing backwards, unthreaded, so late posters like myself get some karma rewards.
I'm still not sure where I fit in this list. I've never been a karma whore, and I don't troll. But then again.. I just read/. to pickup on the news, read a few +4/5 funny posts, and if the mod points flow, do my part to make it easier to find interesting comments.
maybe I just fell through the cracks of the typical/. user.
Hmmm... maybe I have described the path of the Dark Side of the Force, and you are following the good path... or there is a stage before the Karma Whore, where you can decide whether to follow the Karma path or the way of Productivity at Work.
Sounds like, with some research, we could make the Choose Your Own Adventure version of Slashdot membership...
I'm not so sure about the "wrong" mod - maybe if there was no karma attached. It seems obvious it should be used when someone gets the facts wrong, but some may think it means when someone's opinion is wrong. The proper responce to wrong facts is to post the correct facts, in an insightful, interesting, informative, or funny manner, with troll detection meter at 4. The proper responce to "wrong" opinions is to respond in a I/I/I/F manner, with the troll detection meter at 8.
As for the rest, yeah, we may be able to use a few more categories, but I think the editors are against it. Funny/Not Funny would encourage moderator wars, where moderators fought over whether a comment was a 5, Funny or a 4, Not so Funny.
It would also be nice to get some statistics on how many people actually loaded a page that included your comment. For instance, you could know that your comment that took an hour to compose was seen by 100 people and only 1 moderator, justifying the +1 score, or that your comment was seen by 20 moderators, and none liked it. It would really help the karma whores and trolls, and maybe the casual poster as well.
And while we are dreaming, how about some feedback on submissions? Redundant? Bad Spelling? Thought about it, but no?
No. When I first started, it was suprising. I haven't done a full study of the life-cycle of a slashdotter (post-cap), but I'll throw up my notes:
Larval stage: After reading several references to Slashdot, or being pointed to it by a regular Slashdotter, the Larvae is exposed for the first time. Interesting - News for Nerds (I guess I'm a nerd), Stuff that matters (what's all this irrelevant Linux/BSD stuff?). Maybe he/she bookmarks it the first time, maybe some other time.
First Post: The first post is probably an AC post. The person isn't sure yet, if they want to be a poster, what nick they want, what to do it their nick is taken, etc. Soon, they realize that their serious posts will never be seen if they don't post.
First Mod Up: It's quite magical. Someone thought what you said was worth more people seeing! For a few weeks, you debate in your own mind whether it is better to be modded or to get a responce.
Karma Whore: You are below the magic karma number, and you have to get up there. You learn the tricks. Phrases that the moderators like. Few or no spelling mistakes in the first paragraph. Lots of links. To the point, or long enough to look important. Very fast post, so the moderators see it first. You may even strike your first gold - a score of 5. You brown-bag lunch, so you can hunt for new stories during the lunch break. You submit any story remotely related to Linux or Microsoft. You are a whore, and you can't stop.
Karma Kapped: Soon, your whoring pays off. You get the +1, and soon all your posts have that much more visibility. Your skills pay off, and the final sprint to 50 takes no time at all. Then, you are there. Where next?
Slashdot Journeyman: The quest has been for karma - what now? Maybe more story submittals, but now you search for stories you found yourself, never ones from the AP wire or ZDNet (someone else has already done it). You grimace when a submitter did a terrible job on the story. You experiment as a troll, first as AC, then maybe with your prime account. You may start other accounts, if you still feel like whoring, or trying on another persona. You post when you feel passionate about a subject, or have something funny to say, or are just bored. You bitch about the editors, or trolls, or how it was "back in my day".
Slashdot Master: You may still post, you may not. You read Slashdot to get up on the news. You are now an old man in the slashdot world, maybe a battle-scarred vetern, or a drunken merchant, or a mercenary. People look up to your User ID, but you brush it aside. You know many posters by their style, and laugh when Shoeboy or Urban Existentialist are up to their old tricks, but don't respond anymore.
I'm at the Karma Kapped stage right now, so I'm guessing at the upper levels. The editors are busy keeping this baby running, and look on posting as something the community does. If they did post, we'd complain they were posting more than they were reading submittals, and we'd probably be right. Posting is fun, but I imagine it gets old after a few years.
Feel free to tear up my analysis, add stages, whatever. I did it while eating my left-over chinese, during the lunch break...
I may be wrong, but the fuel-less engine needs to already be at a high velocity to work. Won't it take a large amount of fuel/energy to get the engine to hydrogen-oxygen burning mode?
It seems that is why they need to launch it into orbit first, then let it drop, so that it may ignite just before impact. Where is the path from this to a viable launch vehicle?
From reading the article, it seems that Motorola has come up with a general scheme, and is seeing how the world reacts. It is a simple fact that some things are more expensive in some areas than others, and they are attempting to keep that situation through technology.
They aren't just using GPS, however. It sounds like they are contemplating other signals to determine location. TV signals, radio signals, or some other kind of signals could be used, if the signal is different enough to determine the area it is being used in. Don't think of the weaknesses of GPS reception, think of radio and TV reception.
What is the impact? If you want to buy cheap electronics from some other country, electronics you could buy in the U.S. at a higher price, you'll have to take other actions, such as modifying the equipment, sheilding your house, or other drastic measures.
It seems a little counter-intuitive. Only the "cheaper" version needs protection, but the cost will go up with the addition of protective devices, lowering the demand for the cheaper version. Free-trade areas like WTO and EU seem to be against it. The only benefit seems to be in the area of consumer electronics like Playstations, where regional sales tactics may already be in place, and there is already a healthy market in moding these boxes. Healthy, but it is a minority market - most people won't go through the trouble of ordering from China and waiting a month if they can pick up the same thing, 10% more, at the local store.
Since the highest-rated comments are on the level of "Get Used To It!", I hope I can inject some positive comments into the group...
Co-op's don't have to suck, but they often do. The problem is, many companies look at you as cheap labor, paid only in experience. You can't be trusted with new engineering tasks, only grunt work that a temp could do, or things that aren't mission critical.
If you are stuck in one of these, and not getting paid, get out. If you are getting paid, stick around, but you'll probably learn more taking another class.
If you are getting paid in a boring, repetative job, you may have to take some initiative to make it a good experience. The best way is to shadow engineers doing the "exciting" stuff, and get them to talk about their jobs. You'll learn something, and, if they like you, you may get moved somewhere more interesting.
If you can't shadow, then spend a lunch with them. You may get a free lunch, if they are feeling guilty, and you'll learn a lot while
they talk over sandwiches. Same benefit - you learn something, they may like you enough to move you to something better.
I haven't had a work-for-credit situation, only summer jobs and part-time work during school. I haven't had a bad experience, but that was mostly luck. The best ones were jobs where someone had a pet project, but couldn't justify putting someone with experience on it.
One summer, I worked for an energy trading company, filling out forms required by new industry regulations. EXTREMELY boring, but I took my spare time to exhance the original Excel form into something much better, learning Visual Basic along the way. I was able to make a one-hour task take 3 minutes, teach someone else how to do it, and left the process better than when I found it. I got a nice sweater out of it, and a good recomendation.
In another job, I had to analyze a set of dial-up computers, used as remote terminals over slow-bandwidth connections. Again, boring work, plus the computer room was freezing. I took the time to automate the process, put together some presentations, and learned a bit about how the company worked. I also had many interesting lunches, and learned much more than the scope of my job.
To make a co-op or part-time job sucessful, you need to get yourself interested in it, find something to like or something new to learn, and talk with those with experience. Again, if you can't do this, or have no interest in the work, you are better off taking another class, rather than working a co-op.
I'm young and atheist. So I think that my point is correct but that I am mis-using pretty much every term I use. So, no one understands what I am trying to say. Help me out. My roommate claim to be "Christian." He follows a very literal translation of the bible (King James version). He's very conservative. Is he Catholic or Protestant or neither?
He's what Catholic's would call a Protestant, but he would never call himself that. It's a term invented by one group to describe another, and not the one they choose themselves. It's kind of like maid vs. house cleaner, or housewife vs. home maker, or mailman vs. letter-carrier, if we were talking about sex roles instead of religion.
One philosopher who studied religion made the assertion that terms only have meaning within their context (any philo. or religious study majors help me out with names/facts). In other words, you can't define these terms, only determine what the speaker means by them.
For instance, many religions that stem from Jesus Christ have a ceremony with bread and wine, that becomes (in their words) the Body and Blood of Christ. For the Catholic Church, officially, this means the bread and wine maintain the form of bread and wine (still provides nourishment, you could get slightly drunk, etc.), but it's essence is now the Body and Blood of Christ. To make a (possibly heretical) comparision, remember those Disney films where a man is transformed into a shaggy dog? The dog has all the form of a dog, but is the human in essence. Now, take away even the intellect of the man, and you are left with a dog in all things, except that it has a human soul. Try Occam's razor on that!!! (Who ever said Occam was right?)
Anyway, that's a fairly complex explaination. If you ask the average Catholic, they may believe that it is just symobolic, or that it now has a new form (my mom once told me you couldn't catch germs drinking from the common cup, which I seriously doubt). Others may not even have thought about it much. Go outside of Roman Catholicism, into other Catholic or "Christian" religions, and you'll get even more answers for what "Body and Blood" means.
Those that call themselves "Christians" usually mean "True Christians", as opposed to other groups, like Roman Catholics, that (in their opinion) don't worship Christ, but instead a corrupt, earthly organization (the Roman Catholic Church). While American Catholics identify themselves as Catholic (often dropping the "Roman" part), they will also identify themselves as Christian. Protestant is a term that only makes sense in Catholic/Protestant relationships, and is mainly used by Catholics to describe the Christians.
Fully confused? Good. Not much of it makes sense, and only a few have studied the actual theological differences. The rest are mostly fighting based on "our group is better than yours", or on "common sense" (the sum of the things you learned up to age 18).
If you want to really probe the differences, start asking about terms like being "saved", "Baptised", and start the old "Faith vs. Good Works" debate,. or the "literal vs. figurative" interpretations of the bible, or what it means to say the bible was "inspired by God/ Holy Spirit". Check out sites like Jack Chick's, for some Christian Propaganda/Ministering Aids, and search for criticism of his claims. If you are interested in what Catholics belive, go to the source: there is a copy of the Catechism on the Vatican's web site, which includes what all Catholic's should believe (not that all do). Have fun, there's a lot of info out there. Even if you are an atheist, you have to deal with religious people every day, and it's better to take the higher ground, to understand them, rather than to hate them because they are different (as the religous right does to various groups, or liberals do to the religous right).
They are not socializing the same, and the undoubted result is the loss of things like Slashdot. There are good and bad effects here, and I think this shows how the internet can be negative - people using the internet imagine they are socializing when in fact they are not. This makes society a less sociable place, which has a number of bad effects:
List of how self-involved gaming will cause lawlessness, issolation, recession, apocolypse, and bad rashes.
I used to think the same way. I'm not so sure anymore.
There is a great online comics scene out there, and some of the best are all about modern gaming. Comics like Penny Arcade and Player vs. Player (PvP) are consistantly funny and high quality. What's more, they give a shared experience, and often foster a community.
In a bit of nostalgia-meets-the-Internet, Gamers have resurected one of the shining examples of bad localization. The folks who translated ZeroWing did an awful job, and the results are so bad they are funny. The phrases recently became popular again, and you'll hear cries of "ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US" across the Internet.
These same gamers shut off the connection for a while to fire up the photo editor and create some great parodies. Many are posted to message boards to be appreciated by fellow fans. Some of them made a dubbed version, others made a techno soundtrack (search for "Laziest Men On Mars, "All Your Base Are Belong To Us"), and others made a hilarious flash movie.
All this creativity was spawned by this later version of gamers. More that ever, I think creative people are meeting and interacting online, and the new games are, at worst, better versions of television, and, at best, a tool for creating a common experience, so that strangers can meet each other.
All this is a bit off-topic, but I think you are worried over nothing. I'm hoping they do a good job with the new TradeWars, which I remember as fondly as other Slashdotters (...in my day, 2400 baud modems, 1 hour just to download 1 meg of porn, etc...)
(I kind of like having debates no one else will look at. Including, possibly, you).
I'm hoping for a future where space travel is not only regular, but annoyingly regular. Where cross-planet flights often go into orbit, where we regularly visit space-stations in orbit, or travel to the Moon or Mars. Maybe it's a huge corporation, 'cause widgets can be make cheaper / faster / better in space, or maybe it's colonization, or maybe it's just government flights, but we're going up every day.
At that point, the folks in charge start considering safety vs. cost. It's a dirty little fact that car manufacturers weigh safety recalls vs. projected accidents and consumer opinion, and some occasionally faulty components don't get replaced. It will be the same for space flight.
What this means is, once components get good enough, they will start thinking about the cost of fuel and space for all those manuals, and start requiring the electronic copy. Maybe two or three redundant copies at first, but eventually just one. And you won't be able to go up with the paper copies, eventually, unless you declare them as luggage and pay for them. Of course, your seat cushion will act as a floatation device, if you happen to survive a water "landing" from orbit.
Now, that would make an interesting science fiction story...
''I'm an American, I believe in the American Way,'' he said. ''I worry if the government encourages open source, and I don't think we've done enough education of policy makers to understand the threat.''
I've always thought that one of the best things that could happen for Linux and other open-source efforts is if the government, in the name of being better stewards of taxpayers money, moved toward open-source solutions. For one thing, we could have real tests of how Linux does on the desktop on a wide scale. Another benefit would be that government-funded software development could be immediately open-sourced, and developers would get paid (government contracts) to make open-source software.
Microsoft is directly threating to convince lawmakers that open-source is un-American, against business interests, and should not be trusted. I doubt they can pass laws against open-source programs, but they may convince lawmakers to create laws that limit open-source penetration in government, schools, etc.
As we've learned with other battles, Being Right often looses to Having Lots Of Money To Buy The Ears Of Courts And Congress
Then I, for one, am not going. When the main computer with all the e-manuals goes tango uniform and all the light we have left is chemsticks, I'm not going to be stuck without my treeware manuals. No books, no Buck Rogers. And if Mission Control doesn't like it, they can kiss my furry little butt.
News Report - 2055 - Geek Gets Burnt Up By Own Books
...UNASA reported that he refused to make the flight without his manuals, and even paid for two extra tickets just for his 500+ kg of paper manuals. The oxygen tank was quickly sealed, but the fire amoung the manuals spread rapidly, and was not so easily extinguished...
I agree, it would be silly to have all the manuals on one computer. But if you had them on three redundant, self-lighted e-books? You could even turn them all on for ambient light if the emergency lights went out. Even then, you may have the paper manuals on the operation of the ship, like modern planes do. But will your Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy collection really help you at that point?
Mission Control requests you shave that furry little butt.
Slashdot Mirror
A MAC is a very important operation in digital signal processing.
Thanks for the responce - I guessed there was a standard FLOP, and I hoped someone would mention it. It sounds like a suitable measurement, but I'm still more interested in application benchmarks.
I think in such a system, other features (code optimization, use of 3D accelerators, etc) will be more important than the speed of an add. It will even take several years of experimentation to determine what optimizations to make (how many times is it better to add than multiply, how should loops be unrolled, etc).
I think many traditional measurements will become worse than useless, and instead misleading. Since a lot of your repetative math operations may be unloaded on your 3D accelerator, it is questionable that, even if you could decide how to measure it, floating-point-operations per seconds would be a real indicator. I wouldn't want the manufacturer optimizing for that over other, useful things.
A better question is, how long does a NOP last? Won't this system optimize it out? How can you time a NOP without a clock?
If by unenforcable, you mean that people can break the law and ALWAYS get away with it, then that is not the case either. Even "bad" laws like the DMCA and the UCITA are enforcable, once law enforcement has the right tools in place. If the will of law enforcement was brought down on it, Napster would be shut down tommorrow, ISPs would have to filter Gnutella and other clients, a few big violaters would have to pay huge fines, and MP3 trading would become local and minor. It would be like with other forms of copyright infringement (such a pirate videos) - not enough to really care about, and easily stopped when it becomes big.
If we want to continue legally trading MP3s, then we need to have a legal system in place. RIAA and Microsoft will eventually come up with one - do you want their solution to be the default?
Certainly, the system can be bypassed. No digital system is impervious to determined pirates (or government agents). The point is to make a system where the legal path makes sense, and has benefits over the illegal system.
If you want a clarification of my general system idea, check out another post.
I think it's significant that this bit is not used by Napster. They display file size, track length, and encoding rate, but not copyright information. A legal system would note this, maybe save the data in a more convient format for quick lookup, and make it part of the search information.
Of course, many rippers probably also ignore this bit. This is why the whole system needs to be designed, from the ground up, to respect copyright and user's rights. If we don't do it, the industry and Microsoft will create a solution that takes copyright into account but not user's rights.
It's an interesting idea, and would be a good component of a legal system. Of course, it would have to platform independent...
I'm afraid Microsoft will implement it before Linux does, and Linux user's won't care, and Linux will go a little farther to earn the reputation of the pirate's operating system.
We won't like Microsoft's implementation. I think we should beat them to a solution.
My idea is not to make copyright infringement immposible, but to have a system that encourages legal copying, while discouraging illegal copying. Napster does not - it warns users not to trade copyrighted music, but fails to identify what is and isn't. It doesn't even try, leaving it to the record companies to do so.
I believe an ideal system would include copyright information as a basic peice of information, like Napster does with file size and encoding rate. If a track is not copyrighted, it should state why (public domain, recorded live, or copyright allowing free digital copying).
Point 1 (Digital Files with copyright info) is a rough attempt to describe such a system. The idea is to put the copyright info at the front, so the client software can quickly determine the self-declared copyright. This seems to me to be an essential component of a legal system - even more important than any encryption.
Point 2 (Server software that is key protected) may have been confusing - I was talking about the user's file server, not any central search engine / server. The idea is that, while my server is running out in the open, only those with a key can actually get the files. Possibly, the server would not even announce what files are availible unless the outsider knew the key.
This simulates the meat world, where I only know someone's CD collection if I know them personally, or if they announce it to the world.
This leaves space for third-parties to offer services (Point 3). One service woud be key management, so I don't have to remember keys. Another would be search engine service, so I can find others that share my tastes, and they can find me. Any such search engine would generate a huge amount of requests for keys. Another service could manage key requests, either through simple forms (to prove you know me personally), or bundling requests in a conveinent manner.
The fourth point is about client software, outside of the personal server. This software would manage ripping CDs, implanting copyright information, creating compilation CDs, and other tasks. There is existing software that does all this, but there is no standard way of enforcing copyright. If stand copyright maintance becomes common, the record companies could loosen the belt, offering sample tracks, etc, knowning that legal clients would respect the copyright.
No, it's not a perfect system, not even very original. It's just that I have fallen for trading online music, and I am trying to imagine a system that allows me to do it legally.
Does it prevent piracy? Of course not, just discourages it and offers an attractive alternative. I believe it to be technologically impossible to stop piracy, and the only alternative it to make the benefit/risk balance fall more in the copyright owner's favor. Right now, it's very much against them (lots of benefit, little to no risk for pirates, while legal purchasers look like fools).
We often say that GNU and open-source is about innovation. If we can create a system that looks legal, smells legal, and can be used legally, before the record companies and Microsoft come up with a solution, we would be justified. I think we would have a product to be truly proud of, and that would seriously influence any final industry solution. I propose we beat them to the punch, before we get slammed ourselves.
It seems to me that Napster's position is untenable. Although there are some possible legal uses of the service (such as trading public domain MP3s), the illegal uses are more numerous, and there are no protections in place to prevent illegal use. Some may say it is up to the individual to avoid illegal uses, but there is no mechanism in place to determine which uses are legal and which are not. There are no copyright stamps on MP3s, as well as no public domain stamps, which make it too easy for an individual to unwittingly break copyright law.
Having said that, I use Naspter, and I believe that some of my activities are legal, while others are questionable. Here they are, in order of possible legality:
I may be able to argue in a court of law on the first 3 points, but I would be compromised, because while I was legally using them, others could copy them for illegal purposes, and I, in many ways, would have enabled it.
What I am looking for is a legal way to do these things, but on a massive scale. I think a legal service would have the features:
Such a system has many components, and may be difficult to implement, but the creators of such a system would have ample proof that they encourage legal uses while discouraging illegal uses. I think they would be in a much better position than Napster is, with more possiblity of survial. Now that many people have experienced the ease of trading digital music, they will hunger for a legal way to do it.
Some will say that I should just set up a home FTP server, but such a soultion will never catch on - it has to be a single purpose server, that takes care of it's own security. Others will say, why don't you make it yourself - valid criticism, but I don't have the time or talent. I'm just looking to see if others think it is a good idea, and maybe someone is already working on it.
Yeah, this may not directly relate to the story - I wrote it before hand, and, since I want people to read it, waited for a new story. Maybe I should have submitted it, as an Ask Slashdot?)
I see a different progression:
Of course, IANAP (I am not a prophet)
However, their attempts to cut off Netscape's OEM channels did appear predatory, and it may have fallen under anti-trust law. Yes, lots of folks downloaded Netscape, but this was before fat pipes to the home - many home users would have had to do an overnight download over 56K.
Furthermore, a starting user who wanted Netscape would have to use MSIE to download the software - I seem to remember MSIE was pretty bad at downloading more than an hour at a time. Was that a strategy?
Even if a new user wanted Netscape instead, he had MSIE, and could not excise it from the operating system. It may be free, but the end user already paid for it hard disk space. If he had to re-install Windows, there it was again, the default option, only a Windows Update away from the latest version.
MS will release IE 6.x soon, and they are already debating whether to release it on Windows 95 or not. This means that existing users will have to upgrade their operating system to browse with the latest browser. Yes, it's been done before, but Microsoft has a way of adding features so that in a few years, you won't be able to browse many sites without IE 6.0 or later.
Government intervention may not be the best bet, but something will have to give eventually. We should re-double our open-source, free software efforts.
True, I'm assuming that most new users these days aren't Linux users (like I was). This may be true - it is possible that most who use Linux already know about slashdot, and it's just folks like me, life-time Microsoft users (I fondly remember DOS) who are now signing up. Slashdot does a great job at evangelization, though: I now have 3 computers running Win/Linux, and one laptop running Linux almost all the time.
Good luck never reaching 50. It's a strange feeling, knowing that you can only go down. The +1 at 26 is nice, though, when you want to be heard. With such a low user-id, I'd say you have walked far down the Slashdot path, to where the karma game and recognition isn't as alluring...
As for the moderation life-cycle, I'm at around 3 or 6 - I often use all my mod points on one story, because the stress of knowing I have them is too much (I vote too, out of civic obligation, altough I hate my alternatives). I try to do the right thing, viewing backwards, unthreaded, so late posters like myself get some karma rewards.
maybe I just fell through the cracks of the typical /. user.
Hmmm... maybe I have described the path of the Dark Side of the Force, and you are following the good path... or there is a stage before the Karma Whore, where you can decide whether to follow the Karma path or the way of Productivity at Work.
Sounds like, with some research, we could make the Choose Your Own Adventure version of Slashdot membership...
As for the rest, yeah, we may be able to use a few more categories, but I think the editors are against it. Funny/Not Funny would encourage moderator wars, where moderators fought over whether a comment was a 5, Funny or a 4, Not so Funny.
It would also be nice to get some statistics on how many people actually loaded a page that included your comment. For instance, you could know that your comment that took an hour to compose was seen by 100 people and only 1 moderator, justifying the +1 score, or that your comment was seen by 20 moderators, and none liked it. It would really help the karma whores and trolls, and maybe the casual poster as well.
And while we are dreaming, how about some feedback on submissions? Redundant? Bad Spelling? Thought about it, but no?
I think you are right - I can't remember if mine kicked in at 25 or 30, but not 20.
I'm at the Karma Kapped stage right now, so I'm guessing at the upper levels. The editors are busy keeping this baby running, and look on posting as something the community does. If they did post, we'd complain they were posting more than they were reading submittals, and we'd probably be right. Posting is fun, but I imagine it gets old after a few years.
Feel free to tear up my analysis, add stages, whatever. I did it while eating my left-over chinese, during the lunch break...
It seems that is why they need to launch it into orbit first, then let it drop, so that it may ignite just before impact. Where is the path from this to a viable launch vehicle?
They aren't just using GPS, however. It sounds like they are contemplating other signals to determine location. TV signals, radio signals, or some other kind of signals could be used, if the signal is different enough to determine the area it is being used in. Don't think of the weaknesses of GPS reception, think of radio and TV reception.
What is the impact? If you want to buy cheap electronics from some other country, electronics you could buy in the U.S. at a higher price, you'll have to take other actions, such as modifying the equipment, sheilding your house, or other drastic measures.
It seems a little counter-intuitive. Only the "cheaper" version needs protection, but the cost will go up with the addition of protective devices, lowering the demand for the cheaper version. Free-trade areas like WTO and EU seem to be against it. The only benefit seems to be in the area of consumer electronics like Playstations, where regional sales tactics may already be in place, and there is already a healthy market in moding these boxes. Healthy, but it is a minority market - most people won't go through the trouble of ordering from China and waiting a month if they can pick up the same thing, 10% more, at the local store.
Co-op's don't have to suck, but they often do. The problem is, many companies look at you as cheap labor, paid only in experience. You can't be trusted with new engineering tasks, only grunt work that a temp could do, or things that aren't mission critical.
If you are stuck in one of these, and not getting paid, get out. If you are getting paid, stick around, but you'll probably learn more taking another class.
If you are getting paid in a boring, repetative job, you may have to take some initiative to make it a good experience. The best way is to shadow engineers doing the "exciting" stuff, and get them to talk about their jobs. You'll learn something, and, if they like you, you may get moved somewhere more interesting.
If you can't shadow, then spend a lunch with them. You may get a free lunch, if they are feeling guilty, and you'll learn a lot while they talk over sandwiches. Same benefit - you learn something, they may like you enough to move you to something better.
I haven't had a work-for-credit situation, only summer jobs and part-time work during school. I haven't had a bad experience, but that was mostly luck. The best ones were jobs where someone had a pet project, but couldn't justify putting someone with experience on it.
One summer, I worked for an energy trading company, filling out forms required by new industry regulations. EXTREMELY boring, but I took my spare time to exhance the original Excel form into something much better, learning Visual Basic along the way. I was able to make a one-hour task take 3 minutes, teach someone else how to do it, and left the process better than when I found it. I got a nice sweater out of it, and a good recomendation.
In another job, I had to analyze a set of dial-up computers, used as remote terminals over slow-bandwidth connections. Again, boring work, plus the computer room was freezing. I took the time to automate the process, put together some presentations, and learned a bit about how the company worked. I also had many interesting lunches, and learned much more than the scope of my job.
To make a co-op or part-time job sucessful, you need to get yourself interested in it, find something to like or something new to learn, and talk with those with experience. Again, if you can't do this, or have no interest in the work, you are better off taking another class, rather than working a co-op.
Occasionally, I do call them fundamentialist Christians, but more often, I just call 'em "fundies". Makes them sound like more fun, doesn't it?
He's what Catholic's would call a Protestant, but he would never call himself that. It's a term invented by one group to describe another, and not the one they choose themselves. It's kind of like maid vs. house cleaner, or housewife vs. home maker, or mailman vs. letter-carrier, if we were talking about sex roles instead of religion.
One philosopher who studied religion made the assertion that terms only have meaning within their context (any philo. or religious study majors help me out with names/facts). In other words, you can't define these terms, only determine what the speaker means by them.
For instance, many religions that stem from Jesus Christ have a ceremony with bread and wine, that becomes (in their words) the Body and Blood of Christ. For the Catholic Church, officially, this means the bread and wine maintain the form of bread and wine (still provides nourishment, you could get slightly drunk, etc.), but it's essence is now the Body and Blood of Christ. To make a (possibly heretical) comparision, remember those Disney films where a man is transformed into a shaggy dog? The dog has all the form of a dog, but is the human in essence. Now, take away even the intellect of the man, and you are left with a dog in all things, except that it has a human soul. Try Occam's razor on that!!! (Who ever said Occam was right?)
Anyway, that's a fairly complex explaination. If you ask the average Catholic, they may believe that it is just symobolic, or that it now has a new form (my mom once told me you couldn't catch germs drinking from the common cup, which I seriously doubt). Others may not even have thought about it much. Go outside of Roman Catholicism, into other Catholic or "Christian" religions, and you'll get even more answers for what "Body and Blood" means.
Those that call themselves "Christians" usually mean "True Christians", as opposed to other groups, like Roman Catholics, that (in their opinion) don't worship Christ, but instead a corrupt, earthly organization (the Roman Catholic Church). While American Catholics identify themselves as Catholic (often dropping the "Roman" part), they will also identify themselves as Christian. Protestant is a term that only makes sense in Catholic/Protestant relationships, and is mainly used by Catholics to describe the Christians.
Fully confused? Good. Not much of it makes sense, and only a few have studied the actual theological differences. The rest are mostly fighting based on "our group is better than yours", or on "common sense" (the sum of the things you learned up to age 18).
If you want to really probe the differences, start asking about terms like being "saved", "Baptised", and start the old "Faith vs. Good Works" debate,. or the "literal vs. figurative" interpretations of the bible, or what it means to say the bible was "inspired by God/ Holy Spirit". Check out sites like Jack Chick's, for some Christian Propaganda/Ministering Aids, and search for criticism of his claims. If you are interested in what Catholics belive, go to the source: there is a copy of the Catechism on the Vatican's web site, which includes what all Catholic's should believe (not that all do). Have fun, there's a lot of info out there. Even if you are an atheist, you have to deal with religious people every day, and it's better to take the higher ground, to understand them, rather than to hate them because they are different (as the religous right does to various groups, or liberals do to the religous right).
There is a great online comics scene out there, and some of the best are all about modern gaming. Comics like Penny Arcade and Player vs. Player (PvP) are consistantly funny and high quality. What's more, they give a shared experience, and often foster a community.
In a bit of nostalgia-meets-the-Internet, Gamers have resurected one of the shining examples of bad localization. The folks who translated ZeroWing did an awful job, and the results are so bad they are funny. The phrases recently became popular again, and you'll hear cries of "ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US" across the Internet.
These same gamers shut off the connection for a while to fire up the photo editor and create some great parodies. Many are posted to message boards to be appreciated by fellow fans. Some of them made a dubbed version, others made a techno soundtrack (search for "Laziest Men On Mars, "All Your Base Are Belong To Us"), and others made a hilarious flash movie.
All this creativity was spawned by this later version of gamers. More that ever, I think creative people are meeting and interacting online, and the new games are, at worst, better versions of television, and, at best, a tool for creating a common experience, so that strangers can meet each other.
All this is a bit off-topic, but I think you are worried over nothing. I'm hoping they do a good job with the new TradeWars, which I remember as fondly as other Slashdotters (...in my day, 2400 baud modems, 1 hour just to download 1 meg of porn, etc...)
ALL YOUR
BASE ARE
BELONG
TO US
!!!
Imagine a basketball team with those shoes!!!
I'm hoping for a future where space travel is not only regular, but annoyingly regular. Where cross-planet flights often go into orbit, where we regularly visit space-stations in orbit, or travel to the Moon or Mars. Maybe it's a huge corporation, 'cause widgets can be make cheaper / faster / better in space, or maybe it's colonization, or maybe it's just government flights, but we're going up every day.
At that point, the folks in charge start considering safety vs. cost. It's a dirty little fact that car manufacturers weigh safety recalls vs. projected accidents and consumer opinion, and some occasionally faulty components don't get replaced. It will be the same for space flight.
What this means is, once components get good enough, they will start thinking about the cost of fuel and space for all those manuals, and start requiring the electronic copy. Maybe two or three redundant copies at first, but eventually just one. And you won't be able to go up with the paper copies, eventually, unless you declare them as luggage and pay for them. Of course, your seat cushion will act as a floatation device, if you happen to survive a water "landing" from orbit.
Now, that would make an interesting science fiction story...
I've always thought that one of the best things that could happen for Linux and other open-source efforts is if the government, in the name of being better stewards of taxpayers money, moved toward open-source solutions. For one thing, we could have real tests of how Linux does on the desktop on a wide scale. Another benefit would be that government-funded software development could be immediately open-sourced, and developers would get paid (government contracts) to make open-source software.
Microsoft is directly threating to convince lawmakers that open-source is un-American, against business interests, and should not be trusted. I doubt they can pass laws against open-source programs, but they may convince lawmakers to create laws that limit open-source penetration in government, schools, etc.
As we've learned with other battles, Being Right often looses to Having Lots Of Money To Buy The Ears Of Courts And Congress
News Report - 2055 - Geek Gets Burnt Up By Own Books
I agree, it would be silly to have all the manuals on one computer. But if you had them on three redundant, self-lighted e-books? You could even turn them all on for ambient light if the emergency lights went out. Even then, you may have the paper manuals on the operation of the ship, like modern planes do. But will your Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy collection really help you at that point?
Mission Control requests you shave that furry little butt.