Indeed; the capability of such a system is a bit limited with operating systems like FreeBSD, which actively *encourage* their users to build/rebuild from sources. IIRC, FreeBSD actually only gives intermediate security updates in source code format so you have to compile them (not too hard: cd/usr/src ; make buildworld).
So, recording the checksum to/bin/ls, etc. is a bit flawed in that when I do a "make buildworld", my custom configuration parameters from/etc/make.conf get used, overriding CPU type, if Xfree86 is installed, etc. Since my system's parameters likely will not match FreeBSD's master build system, there is a high chance that the checksums after I do a rebuild are significantly different.
But for non-source distributions (Redhat, etc.) this concept is excellent, assuming that no one compromises the database or the OS kernel. Unfortunately, no database checksummer will ever counteract the case when the OS kernel itself is compromised, potentially returning one file when scanned and another when executed.
Still, it wouldn't hurt for them to record source file checksums as well; after all, having an independant checksumming group would require them to be compromised as well as the FTP network, making an attacker's life harder.
Anthony Marchese is a professor at Rowan University, where he teaches Mechanical Engineering. He is a rather nice, young, "cool" professor, as I used to have him.
I'm guessing the reason NASA sent him out to research this is because among other things, he has done reasearch on how things combust (burn) in space. He has had his experiments taken up on the "vomit comet" as well as on the taken space shuttle mission STS-94, to which I recall a CNN reporter stating in an obviously overpitched tone, "Well, isn't that dangerous?"
I shall now turn this into the first ever slashdotting with credits as I list the names of the network administrators I know run various rowan.edu servers, ALL of which are now non-accessable:
Engineering.rowan.edu's administrators: (NOTE: an old Sun SPARC workstation box, will not survive any slashdotting, which it appears to be already getting!!!)
Dennis Dipasquale (Secondary engineering network admin, which is funny, since he was hired first)
Rowan.edu (in general) administrators: We must be fair - the school only had (has?) about a 4.5 Mbps total Internet connection (assuming no faster lines ever came through; they were waiting on a certain phone company for years...) - I'm timing out connecting to their stuff too...
Mark Sedlock (General all-around network administrator and good guy to know)
Patrick Ackerman (Primary generic *.rowan.edu webmaster and graphics designer)
The rest of the general Rowan Information Resources Department
All the above URLs are off the top of my head, as I can no longer access any of those servers. Of the above, only www.rowan.edu seems to be up.
Congratulations to all the slashdotters who now have successfully flooded an entire campus' Internet connection. The students trying to stea^H^H^H^Hresearch their term papers but are now unable to get online will forever remember you.
The New York Times has a much more detailed article on this subject. Registration required, etc., etc., etc.
Of particular note is that the NYT was *not* able to verify that anyone said they carrying a note from a doctor would be useful; rather, it said the police would not accept such a letter as "sole proof" that the person was not trying to pull a fast one on them, and would still conduct a full investigation.
The major problem I have with the concept of starting any race from only two beings stems is because inbreeding of small populations of any species causes weaknesses and defects to be exaggerated.
This phenomenon can be seen in modern times within various small subpopulations, such as the Amish, various small Jewish groups in New York (where educational/physical handicaps occur at a very high rate), etc. So any race started by only two beings has to overcome some major drawbacks.
There actually is an interesting fantasy/sci-fi novel that deal with this concept. L.E. Modesitt's The Magic of Recluce features Creslin, a magician who can control the weather.
The problem is that when Creslin causes rain over his lands (or attempts to "freeze" his enemy, as he does a few times in the book), he takes away rains from other lands. Furthermore, when he causes a significant change in the weather (such as turning summer into winter), that change sticks around for several days to come, causing a significant impact on local events.
I won't go into the book too much, but the Recluce series in general is excellent and has a very belivable magic system. Its definitely worthy of a look.
Most lossy compression schemes like JPEG (regular) work off the concept of using a domain transform, only saving what are considered to be the most significant coefficients after said transform. This makes almost every lossy compression scheme out there is a canidate for bitrate peeling of some sort of another. I'm just surprised that on one does it; having not read the JPEG standard though, I agree that it might be technically challenging (or simply not much in demand).
Having studied wavelets, I can state that they definitely could support a technique similar than this. Given a properly ordered stream of discrete-time wavelets, one could chop off the last few cycles and similarly lose just a bit of quality.
In the United States (at least), everything made since 1923 was, has been, and still are copyrighted, even if they were never registered with the copyright office. So everything you see on a peer-to-peer network is indeed copyrighted.
A more approriate question (as some of the responders have answered) is if anyone has used a peer to peer network for a legitamite purpose. The problem here is that the issues are quite grey. If I have Game X, or Game System version 1.1 can I download copies of the games/BIOS/etc. online for use with emulators/replacements for broken discs/etc.? If an online broadcaster, paying royalty fees, uses ABAcast or Peercast to distribute their works, do I in turn have to pay royalty fees since I am rebroadcasting them?
Unfortunately, there is a major gap between what people think they can do under copyright law and what they actually can do. While I have not extensively researched the above (IANAL), technically, all the above commonly considered legitamite things are *illegal* unless you have worked some deal out to repay the copyright holders.
The problem you really should be asking is if anyone uses P2P networks to delibrately distribute their copyrighted works, either as a primary or secondary channel. A few minor bands likely do. The next question is if you'll ever find them on Slashdot. And I do not know the answer for that.
Note I personally have *never* used Napster, Gnutella, Kazza, or any of the other networks, mainly because being caught doing so may jepordize my ability to be hired in certain areas. I used to be one of those nasty college network administrators trying to keep your P2P usage down because it overloading our bandwidth, and we could not order a significantly bigger pipe because our local phone switch could not handle it. Feel free to flame me for my ignorance as you will.
"Just like in Garson Keillor's hometown of Lake Wobegon..."
This is a quasi-reference to the radio show A Prarie Home Companion (with Garrison Keillor), a regular segment of which is indeed titled "News from Lake Wobegon" (Keillor's hometown).
Boy do I feel like an NPR geek for knowning this. Listen it online, or catch it on your local NPR station if you can (in my view, the FM broadcasts sound better, and have much lower bandwidth costs:).
The answer to the issue is quite simple: Banks list their recommended browsers to avoid headaches. Yes, Lynx with SSL support may work well enough, but who wants to go chasing down the an obscure bug that only affects 0.00001% of their users?
Personally, my credit union has no issue with what browser I use; they had a XHTML issue which I argued with the Mozilla people they should allow (because I thought XHTML was grey when it came to someone does <SELECT><OPTION.../>Option_Display</SELECT>), but this resolved itself when the credit union changed their HTML header. I used to be able to get into Ing Direct with Konqueror, although I am presently having issues with logins (I do not know if it is a Konqueror or ING bug; changing browser idents does not fix the issue). First Union/Wachovia historically has not given me issues, although I no longer have an account there. But all my personal banking can be done through Netscape for Linux without issues.
For an example of a system which dicates browsers strictly, I name the brokerage Scottrade. They say you can *only* use Internet Explorer or Netscape (but fortunately, do not name an operating system). Why do they do this? Well, if you read their terms of service, they specifically name a number of programs that you cannot use, which gather quotes, attempt to place stock trades automatically, etc. Here, there is a clear and valid danger should someone use a malicious client to do trades, etc.
While I have not asked, I'm certain that if you told a company like Scottrade that other *legitamite* web browsers existed, that they might allow them. I think many banks/brokerages/etc. just specify specific browsers because they [1] don't want people calling them about bugs while using XXXX (my transfer didn't go through, and browser Y said it did!) and [2] want the extra legal leg to stand on should someone attempt to compromise their system with an alternative Internet client. Of course, malicious clients can act like they are legitamite ones, but the more legal room the banks think they have, the better they feel about being online.
Did anyone read the article? What the phone companies did is *worse* than that. They eliminated something that *will* affect many dialup ISP users. Not to mention all those companies in New York City that pay not to have their area changed (although that's a whole other story)...
What the local phone companies are getting rid of is "reverse billing." This is a service which allows a company located in Region A to offer a phone number in Region B by paying the difference in cost for phone calls made to their Region B number. When cell phone companies first started up, they only had callable offices in relatively few locations, which could have made calling cell phones expensive. Nowadays, this is not a bit deal anymore.
Unfortunately, a lot of other firms like using reverse lookups. ISPs use reverse billing to allow them to have phone numbers all over the place while maintaining only a few central dialup pools. Outreach programs often use these numbers to reach out to communities that they would not have been able to easily call them otherwise.
Personally, I feel (*hope*) that CNN seems to be missing some details. If the phone companies truely are getting rid of reverse billing, one would think that they would be getting rid of all their 800/888/877/866 numbers that are *entirely* reverse billed down to pay phone costs. And if a cell phone provider with a central switch in Region A serves customers in region A', and said switch is located in region A, I don't see why reverse billing would come into play; the cell phone company would be like any other large business that just happened to own a few hundred phone numbers in the area.
Apple's MPW C compiler famous for its error msgs
on
Gnarly Error Messages
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Apple once put out a C compiler famous for its error messages. Who else would make a compiler that states "This label is the target of a goto from outside of the block containing this label AND this block has an automatic variable with an initializer AND your window wasn't wide enough to read this whole error message"?
Searching for Apple compiler error messages on Google picks up dozens of sites with the error messages from this compiler, as well as spreads out the slashdot effect.
Doing a search for Eudora humor error messages on Google shows Eudora to have a similar sense of humor as well ("Memory is tight-Live Dangerously").
Umm... the original ARRL book did indeed call being on the side of the road broken down life threatening, as "motorists have been killed waiting for aid alongside the road." The obvious (idiot) case would be opening your door into traffic. I need to find my pre-no-code-Tech copy again; it's actually quite interesting how quite a few paragraphs throughout the ARRL's "Now You're Talking" have reversed their positions.
But yes, the FCC is indeed the final authority on this. I have not seen a ruling for music over digital mediums; I just know what the ARRL has said historically -- the new voice codes some HTs have (that could code music digitially) might change things.
And as an aside, were you at the COARES (Centrol Ohio ARES) meeting this past night? If not, you should join ( www.qsl.net/coares ). Just going by your email address:)
At last check, you COULD send MIDI data over packet radio. This was in one of the ARRL's guidebooks. The MIDI data (and hence MP3) was considered data. I think the example given was one of controlling a musical keyboard remotely.
Then again, the ARRL has changed their mind about things a few times. I have a 10-year-old "Now You're Talking" that said you could call mayday over a broken down car, since motorists have been killed alongside highways. Newer editions state that you cannot.
I hate to say it, but no one has said it before me: READ
the notice of inquiry BEFORE you comment! In it is a list of issues that were confused during the last filing, what the Library of Congress *can* change, and what the Library of Congress *cannot*.
If you filing a comment without reading this straightforward (albeight long) 19-page document, and you submit a comment that does not match its formatting/requirements or goes off base, chances are you will be IGNORED.
So please, read what the Library of Congress can and cannot do as well as how to format your submissions *before* the time to submit comments arrives, so when you do submit a comment, it will be taken in a good light.
I thought of a context switch (or possibly a function call) too. Correct me if I am wrong, but what you are trying to do is to create a bunch of registers (my understanding being they will just be the existing x86+MMX+SSE unnamed), and "map" them via another register that certain software knows how to access, correct? That way, when an application knows about these, it can "squirrel" data away in "hidden" registers for fast access later?
The primary problem I have with this "switching" of registers is that registers are supposed to be the fastest, most reliable memory components in a computer. By forcing a lookup table and its associated logic into the mix, you potentially are significantly reducing a processor's speed and/or scalability. Furthermore, the amount of data that can be hidden away inside of a processor is limited. While hiding registers is nice, perhaps it would be better to have the ability to "latch" a row of data so it won't be cleared out of the L1 cache (no processor can do this at the moment?). I would think that this would be much easier to implement without speed degredation, as it would only require a few additional gates used during lookup/overwriting of the L1 cache (which ideally, for this case, is at least semi-associative (i.e. any memory "block" can map to at least two locations in the cache)).
Secondly, your proposal (as I understand it) would require all the registers to share the same area on a chip. Nowadays, the MMU, Arthmatic/Logic unit, etc., each have their own area on the chip. Shared/swapped registers would have to be in the center of the chip, with longer lines to each partial unit (yielding delays and capacitance). I belive you proposed doing this by subunits though; this would reduce delays somewhat, but you are still requiring some centralization, and adding a signifcant delay in.
My personal position on this still kind of stands; if a program's compiler knows how to make use of the MMX & SSE functions of a computer, it should be set up to do so. That way, after an initial context switch for the entire program, the program (being correctly configured for a processor) flys.
A compiler with register renaming functionality ("gcc3.2 -frename-registers", for example), can help do this for apps where the programmer does not know assembler. And if your "minimum requirements" mention a Pentium II 500, don't compile for a 486!
In short, I fail to see how your proposal will speed up most applications significantly. Context-switches are always expensive, but the ability to change contexts 10 clocks versus 30 really isn't significant when your backside bus is less than 50% of the processor's speed.
Obviously, being a minor player, I have my views, and I have to respect yours (especially since I only had about 5-10 minutes to read your piece), but personally, I really do not see why program accessable context switching inside a processor is needed.
I can speak on some authority on this subject since I am presently taking a course on code optimization. What it looks like Mr. Hogdin is trying to do is workaround the issue where people do not compile programs with processor specific optimizations. He seems to be proposing doing so by allowing "paging" per se of registers amongst themselves, although in a bit of an odd fashion.
Personally, I am not too fond of this approach. First of all, operating systems will need to be written to support this paging. Secondly, running a single MMX and/or SSE enabled application (which would use most if not all of the mapped registers), would cause all the other applications on the system to suddently lose any benefit that paging would provide.
The approach I would take (which may or may not be better) would be to change the software. Compilers like gcc 3.2 already know how to generate code with MMX and SSE instructions. Patches are available for Linux 2.4 that add in gcc 3.2's new targets (-march=athlon-xp, etc.) to the Linux kernel configuration system. Libraries for *any* operating system compiled towards a processor or family of processor likely would fair better than generics.
And yes, gcc 3.2 can do register mapping in a similar fashion (to ensure that all registers) on its own. If you read gcc's manual page, you will note that this makes debugging harder though. Gcc even has an *experimental* mode where it will use the x87 and SSE floating point registers simultaneously.
Mr. Hogdin's approach might be a bit be better for inter-process paging by a task scheduler for low numbers of tasks. But as a beginner in this field, I'm not sure what else it would be good for.
Please pardon the omissions; I am not presently using a gcc 3.2 machine:)
I can understand why some colleges have seen the need to limit their Internet bandwidth usage. But the question I have is why haven't the more traditional ISPs done the same. The only organizations I know of selectively reducing bandwidth by protocol are colleges, schools, and univeristies. Earthlink, Comcast, etc. have not done the same.
Dial-up: The dial-up ISPs likely could care less what you do. It takes about 10 minutes to download 5MB on a 56kbps modem.
Some people I know of download all night on their modems. But given a single phone line, I would think most dial-up users would not.
Cable/DSL ISPs: Instead of doing selective slowdowns, cable/DSL ISPs have resorted to slowing everyone's entire connection down. Instead of purchasing more bandwidth (thus reducing its eventual cost), they tend to restrict what customers already have.
Some Cable/DSL ISPs also do port blocking, but this just results in a game of cat & mouse. Selective slowdowns likely are a no-no since many of their customers purchase such connections for online gaming (which maps ports all over the place).
Backbone carriers: Interestingly enough, the backbone carriers typically care less what they carry. They get paid, even for spam (which many prohibit the origination of).
Most co-location centers proudly boast about how they use less than 50% of their available bandwidth, so I speculate that backbone carriers have at least half that amount. While that sounds like everyone on the high end tossing money away, it makes me wonder why the other parties do not do the same in order to lower overall prices and make everyone happy in the long run.
While unlimited job security in government may have been a thing of the past, it is not anymore. Recently, my ex-government employer decided to outsource almost *everyone* that was not an engineer. And by everyone, I mean *everyone*; security, maintaince, computer support, librarians, etc.; only a few VIPs would remain to supervise the winning contractor(s).
Low and behold, there actually are companies that specialize in taking over a variety of tasks in this sort of manner. A single firm bid to do all of the things I listed above, and then some. The winning bidder (Johnson Controls World Services, Inc.) tentatively has a $60 Million, 5-year contract. Approximately 250 jobs will be downsized and/or replaced at this single, government location.
Mind you, the facility I worked at already had outsourced HVAC, groundskeeping, and several other tasks, so the lost of jobs is somewhat minimal. But if 1,000 government facilities all decided to do what mine did, the lost of jobs and/or salaries could skyrocket.
Please pardon my skeptism with outsourcing; the two other cases I've seen of outsourcing have involved people fired from $30K salaries to be replaced with minimum-wage workers. Somehow, the prices still manage to go up, and quality goes down. In one case (a school cafeteria), prices more than doubled. So either the school was selling things too cheaply, or the contractor has seriously marked things up.
Here, rental car companies are using a GPS-based system to verify that you are not violating your agreement with them. Going on a bit of a tangent here, what if the apartment you rented had cameras in it to verify that you were not violating your landlord's rules? My apartment contract (done up by a big, multi-facility renting firm) states that I may not use the apartment I am in for any business purposes, and that they can kick me out for any breach in their contract. Theoretically, that means if I VPNed into my work network, I could lose my place to live.
Of course, my apartment contract also states that I cannot have anything "flammable" in the apartment, and only the apartment I know of with nothing flammable in it is an empty one, so maybe there is such a thing as going overboard. Still, the question remains as to how far parties will allow each other to supervise that agreements have not been broken, and in all cases, I expect big brother to win.
Many computer/video gaming stores have gotten into the anime video business. In the New Jersey area, I know that Software Etc. in particular has taken a liking to selling these products. Some of their stores have dedicated entire racks of shelves if not isles to anime.
Big combo stores such as Best Buy and Circuit City also tend to have reasonably-sized anime collections. At least one Northern NJ Best Buy has a rack or two of anime DVDs. A Circuit City store local to me had everything (DVD, soundtrack CD, orchastral CD) related to Princess Mononoke, as well as some obscure stuff. Their prices are a bit better than the video game stores.
Unfortunately, gaming stores tend to price their anime a bit high in cost, but if you want to find something quickly, I would recommend at least touring your local computer/video game stores. The selection may not be the best, but you may find what you want.
Please note that my views are of somewhat that tends to deal in mainstream anime; if you are looking for something obscure, you may have to go online.
I think I've said it before, but I'll say it again: From what I know, IEEE International as a whole tries to avoid getting involved with local politics. I can understand them trying to maintain a legal distance.
The United States branch of the IEEE, IEEE-USA, *does* get involved with local legal and politics. See their public policy section, which has a number of position statements.
In summary: If you want to know what IEEE International thinks about the DMCA, etc., you're in for a long wait. Look to see what the IEEE-USA branch is doing instead.
Norton purchased the rights to WRQ's AtGuard(tm) product, and now markets it as their own. It can restrict network access on a per port and a per application basis.
While there are a few annoying bugs still seemingly in the product (from my viewpoint anyway; the most annoying one being that launching "C:\Program Files\Directory\Item.exe", "C:\Progra~1\Direct~1\Item.exe", "C:\Program Files\Direct~1\Item.exe", etc., all are treated as seperate applications), for the most part, it works. It has privacy controls to block HTTP referers, cookies, trojan blocking (although if a legit application binds to a trojan port, watch out), etc.
And if I did not mention, while this product was called AtGuard, it worked on Windows 95/98 back in 1999, and still works on Windows XP, so it has been around. Now if only someone made a product with the file restriction permissions per application that Subterfugue seems to do...
Get your General class or higher (Advanced or Extra) license first...
If I really wanted to be picky, I'd point out that the "Technician Plus" license per se does not exist except as a grandfathered concept since the FCC eliminated the Novice level license, but I digress...
Actually, I do, although its science fiction. Go read Callahan's Key by Spider Robinson; the entire book is based on the premise that Nicola Tesla is still alive today (read the book; I'm trying to keep the spoilers down). He built an "energy ray" that indeed did cause the Tunguska level event, and in said book the military is trying to recreate Tesla's ray for their own purposes. (Interestingly enough; Tesla in this book did not aim said ray at Tunguska; he had aimed it at the uninhabited Artic North, but screwed up on his calculations.)
Spider Robinson himself is a very good, humourous author; the best thing you can do is go out and get the book to read it yourself. Callhan's Key is one of the later books in the Callhan series, but you should have no trouble starting from there.
A few years back, while bleem! was still a company making a Playstation(tm) emulator, Sony attempted to get bleem! thrown out of the E3 exhibition (held in California). This was contrary to a court order that bleem! acquired stating that they were allowed to present.
Unfortunately, my old, senile, brain can not remember the details of this incident (and I would prefer not to have large companies coming after me), but perhaps one of the younger people still in the emulation scene can recall the details.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed; the capability of such a system is a bit limited with operating systems like FreeBSD, which actively *encourage* their users to build/rebuild from sources. IIRC, FreeBSD actually only gives intermediate security updates in source code format so you have to compile them (not too hard: cd /usr/src ; make buildworld).
So, recording the checksum to /bin/ls, etc. is a bit flawed in that when I do a "make buildworld", my custom configuration parameters from /etc/make.conf get used, overriding CPU type, if Xfree86 is installed, etc. Since my system's parameters likely will not match FreeBSD's master build system, there is a high chance that the checksums after I do a rebuild are significantly different.
But for non-source distributions (Redhat, etc.) this concept is excellent, assuming that no one compromises the database or the OS kernel. Unfortunately, no database checksummer will ever counteract the case when the OS kernel itself is compromised, potentially returning one file when scanned and another when executed.
Still, it wouldn't hurt for them to record source file checksums as well; after all, having an independant checksumming group would require them to be compromised as well as the FTP network, making an attacker's life harder.
Anthony Marchese is a professor at Rowan University, where he teaches Mechanical Engineering. He is a rather nice, young, "cool" professor, as I used to have him.
I'm guessing the reason NASA sent him out to research this is because among other things, he has done reasearch on how things combust (burn) in space. He has had his experiments taken up on the "vomit comet" as well as on the taken space shuttle mission STS-94, to which I recall a CNN reporter stating in an obviously overpitched tone, "Well, isn't that dangerous?"
I shall now turn this into the first ever slashdotting with credits as I list the names of the network administrators I know run various rowan.edu servers, ALL of which are now non-accessable:
Engineering.rowan.edu's administrators: (NOTE: an old Sun SPARC workstation box, will not survive any slashdotting, which it appears to be already getting!!!)
Rowan.edu (in general) administrators: We must be fair - the school only had (has?) about a 4.5 Mbps total Internet connection (assuming no faster lines ever came through; they were waiting on a certain phone company for years...) - I'm timing out connecting to their stuff too...
All the above URLs are off the top of my head, as I can no longer access any of those servers. Of the above, only www.rowan.edu seems to be up.
Congratulations to all the slashdotters who now have successfully flooded an entire campus' Internet connection. The students trying to stea^H^H^H^Hresearch their term papers but are now unable to get online will forever remember you.
Of particular note is that the NYT was *not* able to verify that anyone said they carrying a note from a doctor would be useful; rather, it said the police would not accept such a letter as "sole proof" that the person was not trying to pull a fast one on them, and would still conduct a full investigation.
The major problem I have with the concept of starting any race from only two beings stems is because inbreeding of small populations of any species causes weaknesses and defects to be exaggerated.
This phenomenon can be seen in modern times within various small subpopulations, such as the Amish, various small Jewish groups in New York (where educational/physical handicaps occur at a very high rate), etc. So any race started by only two beings has to overcome some major drawbacks.
There actually is an interesting fantasy/sci-fi novel that deal with this concept. L.E. Modesitt's The Magic of Recluce features Creslin, a magician who can control the weather.
The problem is that when Creslin causes rain over his lands (or attempts to "freeze" his enemy, as he does a few times in the book), he takes away rains from other lands. Furthermore, when he causes a significant change in the weather (such as turning summer into winter), that change sticks around for several days to come, causing a significant impact on local events.
I won't go into the book too much, but the Recluce series in general is excellent and has a very belivable magic system. Its definitely worthy of a look.
Most lossy compression schemes like JPEG (regular) work off the concept of using a domain transform, only saving what are considered to be the most significant coefficients after said transform. This makes almost every lossy compression scheme out there is a canidate for bitrate peeling of some sort of another. I'm just surprised that on one does it; having not read the JPEG standard though, I agree that it might be technically challenging (or simply not much in demand).
Having studied wavelets, I can state that they definitely could support a technique similar than this. Given a properly ordered stream of discrete-time wavelets, one could chop off the last few cycles and similarly lose just a bit of quality.
In the United States (at least), everything made since 1923 was, has been, and still are copyrighted, even if they were never registered with the copyright office. So everything you see on a peer-to-peer network is indeed copyrighted.
A more approriate question (as some of the responders have answered) is if anyone has used a peer to peer network for a legitamite purpose. The problem here is that the issues are quite grey. If I have Game X, or Game System version 1.1 can I download copies of the games/BIOS/etc. online for use with emulators/replacements for broken discs/etc.? If an online broadcaster, paying royalty fees, uses ABAcast or Peercast to distribute their works, do I in turn have to pay royalty fees since I am rebroadcasting them?
Unfortunately, there is a major gap between what people think they can do under copyright law and what they actually can do. While I have not extensively researched the above (IANAL), technically, all the above commonly considered legitamite things are *illegal* unless you have worked some deal out to repay the copyright holders.
The problem you really should be asking is if anyone uses P2P networks to delibrately distribute their copyrighted works, either as a primary or secondary channel. A few minor bands likely do. The next question is if you'll ever find them on Slashdot. And I do not know the answer for that.
Note I personally have *never* used Napster, Gnutella, Kazza, or any of the other networks, mainly because being caught doing so may jepordize my ability to be hired in certain areas. I used to be one of those nasty college network administrators trying to keep your P2P usage down because it overloading our bandwidth, and we could not order a significantly bigger pipe because our local phone switch could not handle it. Feel free to flame me for my ignorance as you will.
Larry Rosen wrote:
This is a quasi-reference to the radio show A Prarie Home Companion (with Garrison Keillor), a regular segment of which is indeed titled "News from Lake Wobegon" (Keillor's hometown).
Boy do I feel like an NPR geek for knowning this. Listen it online, or catch it on your local NPR station if you can (in my view, the FM broadcasts sound better, and have much lower bandwidth costs :).
The answer to the issue is quite simple: Banks list their recommended browsers to avoid headaches. Yes, Lynx with SSL support may work well enough, but who wants to go chasing down the an obscure bug that only affects 0.00001% of their users?
Personally, my credit union has no issue with what browser I use; they had a XHTML issue which I argued with the Mozilla people they should allow (because I thought XHTML was grey when it came to someone does <SELECT><OPTION ... />Option_Display</SELECT>), but this resolved itself when the credit union changed their HTML header. I used to be able to get into Ing Direct with Konqueror, although I am presently having issues with logins (I do not know if it is a Konqueror or ING bug; changing browser idents does not fix the issue). First Union/Wachovia historically has not given me issues, although I no longer have an account there. But all my personal banking can be done through Netscape for Linux without issues.
For an example of a system which dicates browsers strictly, I name the brokerage Scottrade. They say you can *only* use Internet Explorer or Netscape (but fortunately, do not name an operating system). Why do they do this? Well, if you read their terms of service, they specifically name a number of programs that you cannot use, which gather quotes, attempt to place stock trades automatically, etc. Here, there is a clear and valid danger should someone use a malicious client to do trades, etc.
While I have not asked, I'm certain that if you told a company like Scottrade that other *legitamite* web browsers existed, that they might allow them. I think many banks/brokerages/etc. just specify specific browsers because they [1] don't want people calling them about bugs while using XXXX (my transfer didn't go through, and browser Y said it did!) and [2] want the extra legal leg to stand on should someone attempt to compromise their system with an alternative Internet client. Of course, malicious clients can act like they are legitamite ones, but the more legal room the banks think they have, the better they feel about being online.
Did anyone read the article? What the phone companies did is *worse* than that. They eliminated something that *will* affect many dialup ISP users. Not to mention all those companies in New York City that pay not to have their area changed (although that's a whole other story)...
What the local phone companies are getting rid of is "reverse billing." This is a service which allows a company located in Region A to offer a phone number in Region B by paying the difference in cost for phone calls made to their Region B number. When cell phone companies first started up, they only had callable offices in relatively few locations, which could have made calling cell phones expensive. Nowadays, this is not a bit deal anymore.
Unfortunately, a lot of other firms like using reverse lookups. ISPs use reverse billing to allow them to have phone numbers all over the place while maintaining only a few central dialup pools. Outreach programs often use these numbers to reach out to communities that they would not have been able to easily call them otherwise.
Personally, I feel (*hope*) that CNN seems to be missing some details. If the phone companies truely are getting rid of reverse billing, one would think that they would be getting rid of all their 800/888/877/866 numbers that are *entirely* reverse billed down to pay phone costs. And if a cell phone provider with a central switch in Region A serves customers in region A', and said switch is located in region A, I don't see why reverse billing would come into play; the cell phone company would be like any other large business that just happened to own a few hundred phone numbers in the area.
Apple once put out a C compiler famous for its error messages. Who else would make a compiler that states "This label is the target of a goto from outside of the block containing this label AND this block has an automatic variable with an initializer AND your window wasn't wide enough to read this whole error message"?
Searching for Apple compiler error messages on Google picks up dozens of sites with the error messages from this compiler, as well as spreads out the slashdot effect.
Doing a search for Eudora humor error messages on Google shows Eudora to have a similar sense of humor as well ("Memory is tight-Live Dangerously").
Umm... the original ARRL book did indeed call being on the side of the road broken down life threatening, as "motorists have been killed waiting for aid alongside the road." The obvious (idiot) case would be opening your door into traffic. I need to find my pre-no-code-Tech copy again; it's actually quite interesting how quite a few paragraphs throughout the ARRL's "Now You're Talking" have reversed their positions.
But yes, the FCC is indeed the final authority on this. I have not seen a ruling for music over digital mediums; I just know what the ARRL has said historically -- the new voice codes some HTs have (that could code music digitially) might change things.
And as an aside, were you at the COARES (Centrol Ohio ARES) meeting this past night? If not, you should join ( www.qsl.net/coares ). Just going by your email address :)
At last check, you COULD send MIDI data over packet radio. This was in one of the ARRL's guidebooks. The MIDI data (and hence MP3) was considered data. I think the example given was one of controlling a musical keyboard remotely.
Then again, the ARRL has changed their mind about things a few times. I have a 10-year-old "Now You're Talking" that said you could call mayday over a broken down car, since motorists have been killed alongside highways. Newer editions state that you cannot.
I hate to say it, but no one has said it before me: READ the notice of inquiry BEFORE you comment! In it is a list of issues that were confused during the last filing, what the Library of Congress *can* change, and what the Library of Congress *cannot*.
If you filing a comment without reading this straightforward (albeight long) 19-page document, and you submit a comment that does not match its formatting/requirements or goes off base, chances are you will be IGNORED.
So please, read what the Library of Congress can and cannot do as well as how to format your submissions *before* the time to submit comments arrives, so when you do submit a comment, it will be taken in a good light.
I thought of a context switch (or possibly a function call) too. Correct me if I am wrong, but what you are trying to do is to create a bunch of registers (my understanding being they will just be the existing x86+MMX+SSE unnamed), and "map" them via another register that certain software knows how to access, correct? That way, when an application knows about these, it can "squirrel" data away in "hidden" registers for fast access later?
The primary problem I have with this "switching" of registers is that registers are supposed to be the fastest, most reliable memory components in a computer. By forcing a lookup table and its associated logic into the mix, you potentially are significantly reducing a processor's speed and/or scalability. Furthermore, the amount of data that can be hidden away inside of a processor is limited. While hiding registers is nice, perhaps it would be better to have the ability to "latch" a row of data so it won't be cleared out of the L1 cache (no processor can do this at the moment?). I would think that this would be much easier to implement without speed degredation, as it would only require a few additional gates used during lookup/overwriting of the L1 cache (which ideally, for this case, is at least semi-associative (i.e. any memory "block" can map to at least two locations in the cache)).
Secondly, your proposal (as I understand it) would require all the registers to share the same area on a chip. Nowadays, the MMU, Arthmatic/Logic unit, etc., each have their own area on the chip. Shared/swapped registers would have to be in the center of the chip, with longer lines to each partial unit (yielding delays and capacitance). I belive you proposed doing this by subunits though; this would reduce delays somewhat, but you are still requiring some centralization, and adding a signifcant delay in.
My personal position on this still kind of stands; if a program's compiler knows how to make use of the MMX & SSE functions of a computer, it should be set up to do so. That way, after an initial context switch for the entire program, the program (being correctly configured for a processor) flys. A compiler with register renaming functionality ("gcc3.2 -frename-registers", for example), can help do this for apps where the programmer does not know assembler. And if your "minimum requirements" mention a Pentium II 500, don't compile for a 486!
In short, I fail to see how your proposal will speed up most applications significantly. Context-switches are always expensive, but the ability to change contexts 10 clocks versus 30 really isn't significant when your backside bus is less than 50% of the processor's speed.
Obviously, being a minor player, I have my views, and I have to respect yours (especially since I only had about 5-10 minutes to read your piece), but personally, I really do not see why program accessable context switching inside a processor is needed.
I can speak on some authority on this subject since I am presently taking a course on code optimization. What it looks like Mr. Hogdin is trying to do is workaround the issue where people do not compile programs with processor specific optimizations. He seems to be proposing doing so by allowing "paging" per se of registers amongst themselves, although in a bit of an odd fashion.
Personally, I am not too fond of this approach. First of all, operating systems will need to be written to support this paging. Secondly, running a single MMX and/or SSE enabled application (which would use most if not all of the mapped registers), would cause all the other applications on the system to suddently lose any benefit that paging would provide.
The approach I would take (which may or may not be better) would be to change the software. Compilers like gcc 3.2 already know how to generate code with MMX and SSE instructions. Patches are available for Linux 2.4 that add in gcc 3.2's new targets (-march=athlon-xp, etc.) to the Linux kernel configuration system. Libraries for *any* operating system compiled towards a processor or family of processor likely would fair better than generics.
And yes, gcc 3.2 can do register mapping in a similar fashion (to ensure that all registers) on its own. If you read gcc's manual page, you will note that this makes debugging harder though. Gcc even has an *experimental* mode where it will use the x87 and SSE floating point registers simultaneously.
Mr. Hogdin's approach might be a bit be better for inter-process paging by a task scheduler for low numbers of tasks. But as a beginner in this field, I'm not sure what else it would be good for.
Please pardon the omissions; I am not presently using a gcc 3.2 machine :)
I can understand why some colleges have seen the need to limit their Internet bandwidth usage. But the question I have is why haven't the more traditional ISPs done the same. The only organizations I know of selectively reducing bandwidth by protocol are colleges, schools, and univeristies. Earthlink, Comcast, etc. have not done the same.
Some people I know of download all night on their modems. But given a single phone line, I would think most dial-up users would not.
Some Cable/DSL ISPs also do port blocking, but this just results in a game of cat & mouse. Selective slowdowns likely are a no-no since many of their customers purchase such connections for online gaming (which maps ports all over the place).
Most co-location centers proudly boast about how they use less than 50% of their available bandwidth, so I speculate that backbone carriers have at least half that amount. While that sounds like everyone on the high end tossing money away, it makes me wonder why the other parties do not do the same in order to lower overall prices and make everyone happy in the long run.
While unlimited job security in government may have been a thing of the past, it is not anymore. Recently, my ex-government employer decided to outsource almost *everyone* that was not an engineer. And by everyone, I mean *everyone*; security, maintaince, computer support, librarians, etc.; only a few VIPs would remain to supervise the winning contractor(s).
Low and behold, there actually are companies that specialize in taking over a variety of tasks in this sort of manner. A single firm bid to do all of the things I listed above, and then some. The winning bidder (Johnson Controls World Services, Inc.) tentatively has a $60 Million, 5-year contract. Approximately 250 jobs will be downsized and/or replaced at this single, government location.
Mind you, the facility I worked at already had outsourced HVAC, groundskeeping, and several other tasks, so the lost of jobs is somewhat minimal. But if 1,000 government facilities all decided to do what mine did, the lost of jobs and/or salaries could skyrocket.
Please pardon my skeptism with outsourcing; the two other cases I've seen of outsourcing have involved people fired from $30K salaries to be replaced with minimum-wage workers. Somehow, the prices still manage to go up, and quality goes down. In one case (a school cafeteria), prices more than doubled. So either the school was selling things too cheaply, or the contractor has seriously marked things up.
Here, rental car companies are using a GPS-based system to verify that you are not violating your agreement with them. Going on a bit of a tangent here, what if the apartment you rented had cameras in it to verify that you were not violating your landlord's rules? My apartment contract (done up by a big, multi-facility renting firm) states that I may not use the apartment I am in for any business purposes, and that they can kick me out for any breach in their contract. Theoretically, that means if I VPNed into my work network, I could lose my place to live.
Of course, my apartment contract also states that I cannot have anything "flammable" in the apartment, and only the apartment I know of with nothing flammable in it is an empty one, so maybe there is such a thing as going overboard. Still, the question remains as to how far parties will allow each other to supervise that agreements have not been broken, and in all cases, I expect big brother to win.
Many computer/video gaming stores have gotten into the anime video business. In the New Jersey area, I know that Software Etc. in particular has taken a liking to selling these products. Some of their stores have dedicated entire racks of shelves if not isles to anime.
Big combo stores such as Best Buy and Circuit City also tend to have reasonably-sized anime collections. At least one Northern NJ Best Buy has a rack or two of anime DVDs. A Circuit City store local to me had everything (DVD, soundtrack CD, orchastral CD) related to Princess Mononoke, as well as some obscure stuff. Their prices are a bit better than the video game stores.
Unfortunately, gaming stores tend to price their anime a bit high in cost, but if you want to find something quickly, I would recommend at least touring your local computer/video game stores. The selection may not be the best, but you may find what you want.
Please note that my views are of somewhat that tends to deal in mainstream anime; if you are looking for something obscure, you may have to go online.
I think I've said it before, but I'll say it again: From what I know, IEEE International as a whole tries to avoid getting involved with local politics. I can understand them trying to maintain a legal distance.
The United States branch of the IEEE, IEEE-USA, *does* get involved with local legal and politics. See their public policy section, which has a number of position statements.
In summary: If you want to know what IEEE International thinks about the DMCA, etc., you're in for a long wait. Look to see what the IEEE-USA branch is doing instead.
Norton purchased the rights to WRQ's AtGuard(tm) product, and now markets it as their own. It can restrict network access on a per port and a per application basis.
While there are a few annoying bugs still seemingly in the product (from my viewpoint anyway; the most annoying one being that launching "C:\Program Files\Directory\Item.exe", "C:\Progra~1\Direct~1\Item.exe", "C:\Program Files\Direct~1\Item.exe", etc., all are treated as seperate applications), for the most part, it works. It has privacy controls to block HTTP referers, cookies, trojan blocking (although if a legit application binds to a trojan port, watch out), etc.
And if I did not mention, while this product was called AtGuard, it worked on Windows 95/98 back in 1999, and still works on Windows XP, so it has been around. Now if only someone made a product with the file restriction permissions per application that Subterfugue seems to do...
Get your General class or higher (Advanced or Extra) license first...
If I really wanted to be picky, I'd point out that the "Technician Plus" license per se does not exist except as a grandfathered concept since the FCC eliminated the Novice level license, but I digress...
Actually, I do, although its science fiction. Go read Callahan's Key by Spider Robinson; the entire book is based on the premise that Nicola Tesla is still alive today (read the book; I'm trying to keep the spoilers down). He built an "energy ray" that indeed did cause the Tunguska level event, and in said book the military is trying to recreate Tesla's ray for their own purposes. (Interestingly enough; Tesla in this book did not aim said ray at Tunguska; he had aimed it at the uninhabited Artic North, but screwed up on his calculations.)
Spider Robinson himself is a very good, humourous author; the best thing you can do is go out and get the book to read it yourself. Callhan's Key is one of the later books in the Callhan series, but you should have no trouble starting from there.
A few years back, while bleem! was still a company making a Playstation(tm) emulator, Sony attempted to get bleem! thrown out of the E3 exhibition (held in California). This was contrary to a court order that bleem! acquired stating that they were allowed to present.
Unfortunately, my old, senile, brain can not remember the details of this incident (and I would prefer not to have large companies coming after me), but perhaps one of the younger people still in the emulation scene can recall the details.