Bloat exists (or tries to) in all products
on
All Hail Bloatware
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· Score: 1
I think this guy's a clown as much as any other Linux jihad member. His article is certainly worthy of lambasting on many issues. But I have to admit he does have a certain point.
Consider automobiles and their evolution, for instance. Features have been creeping in for years. Compared to software, however, the bloat rate is much slower. Why? 'Cause features cost money when you have to make them out of real hardware!
As another example, consider toothpaste or laundry soap. What ``feature'' can you possibly add to either of them to make them actually perform better? Both have hit the performance plateau long ago. So instead of adding new features, they give us the same old product in a great new package.
Software, on the other hand... Where do I begin? Where does it end? What new feature will we think of next that simply MUST be in our own free software? Don't get me wrong, I don't want to get a zillion replies to the effect that ``if you don't like (package X)'s bloat, you don't have to use it''
My point is simply that as long as machines get faster, software will expand to fill the available cpu cycles, and it doesn't cost anything more than it did before.
This article is fabulous! These guys get an A+ in my book for objectivity and for being informative. They basically tell the reader every little thing they did and what the effects were, regardless of who's ox was gored. What's wrong with the American rags that they can't be as technically complete as C't? Too many hidden agendas? Too worried about whether they're violating someone's NDA?
Interchange "Linux" with "Windows" throughout the article and you'll have an anti-Linux piece in the fine FUD tradition. Linux is starting to get "hot", so the media has to go out and sell it on this cheap level so that the great beast (the public) will accept (and even like) it, and start hating Windows - just because of this bozo's article and others like it.
``Top-of-the line computers currently sport chips with 600 megahertz of power. Timp said a chip with the smallest features possible would allow for computer processing of at least 10,000 MHz.''
That must mean my house is very low power - it only has 60 Hz of power! How will I be able to power one of these chips if my house doesn't have enough power?
A consequence of narrow viewing angle (methinks) is poor color balance/rendition with viewing angle. Orange xterms on my TP600 change color from top to bottom of the screen, even at the best possible tilt. Full-screen photo images leave a lot to be desired, too. For this reason, I can see graphic design and publishing houses staying with CRTs for a while longer. Too bad, 'cause those multiscreen displays look just the thing...
There are a number of things in your posting I feel must be addressed since I've seen no suitable response.
1) Microwaves, as defined by the NTIA, range from about 100 MHz to 300 GHz ( US Frequency Allocation Chart). Most people think of microwaves as starting at 1 GHz, though (and hardly ever think of 300 GHz). Seriously, though, there's no hard limit in the continuum.
2) Microwave ovens operate at around 2.45 GHz, the resonance of water molecules.
3) The Wired article mentioned neither the carrier frequency nor the energy densities at which the tests were conducted. This kind of vagueness I find unforgivable, because it leads to the sort of vague discussions we're having here on/..
4) I could not find the particular study refered to in the Wired article posted on the WTR website, but I did find statements and information about RF radiation and tumor promotion. One in particular from April 30, 1997, refers to a study where rats developed lymphoma at a rate twice the control group. This study was conducted with pulsed RF at 900 MHz, at ``levels similar to those from wireless digital phones.''
5) The field strength just outside a 300 mW AMPS cellular phone (say, right next to your ear) is around 5 to 15 mW/cm^2, depending how close you wedge the phone to your head. But that's just my back-of-the-envelope calculation. See the FCC's OET Bulletin 65 and supplements for more on human RF exposure guidlines.
Anyway, there is a big difference between exposing a bird to an RF field and saying there's ``no effect'' dues to heating, and exposing a living thing to RF and asking if there's an increased chance of any kind of long or short-term health effect. As a wireless engineer, I personally have a vested interest in knowing the effects. I sure hope there are none, but what am I going to do if there are? Are the risks of health problems too great to ethically push wireless as a viable consumer technology? Can I still feel morally superior to engineers working on missles and bombs?
As a first step, I'll continue to hold off getting a cell phone. I'll also probably stay away from Bluetooth products as well, since they're right in the microwave oven band and because Bluetooth radios might be clipped onto various parts of my body (BodyLAN). What next? Stop working on 5 GHz WLAN because the components are ``too close'' to humans? What is ``too close''? If wireless is the next new thing, is it the next new thing to kill us, too?
A definitive answer is needed. The effects almost certainly vary with frequency (microwave ovens don't use 900 MHZ for a reason). Once the effects are known, then perhaps we can decide what acceptable risk is.
Yes! Two other books I've read. Very intriguing ideas about early Christianity and a literal interpretation of the sacrament of communion (infecting the communicant with a virus from space that would allow mental contact with an extraterrestrial race, ie, God). Anyway, that's all I can accurately remember at this hour....
I think it was Blackmore that I heard on The Connection a few weeks back. Too bad they don't archive the shows back that far...
I was immediately sucked in by the show, but since I missed the beginning, I probably didn't get her official explanation of memes. What I did hear dissapointed me. It seemed that the definition of meme was constantly shifting and becoming more encompassing as the show went on, until a meme was practically anything we remembered.
Based on the little I know, memes most definitely exist; the very idea of memes is itself a meme: QED. Still, I have trouble with her premise that it's the memes themselves that are the active entities - that the evolution of human brains was influenced by memes so it would perpetuate and proagate memes. You know, like the one that goes "Human beings were created by water to transport it uphill." (Unix fortune)
The hypothesis is certainly a clever one, but it doesn't mean it's correct. I like to believe that atoms are really little solar systems, complete with entire civilizations. Believe me, it explains so many things!;-)
By the way, was it William S. Burroughs who first came up with the idea that language is a virus (in Nova Express, or The Ticket That Exploded) or was it Laurie Anderson? And where did she get the idea?
The way I see it is that until they completely outlaw any crypto technology except the government approved one, they'll never succeed in getting everyone on their side. However, if they make the use of non-approved crypto "prima facie" (sp? I'm not a lawyer) evidence of a crime, then we're all in trouble.
So how would they get a bill like this through congress? A well-publicized bill would get attacked by all the right people, so we're kind of safe there.
The ones we need to worry about are the stealth attempts. And I hope that the EFF or the ACLU (and every other watchdog) is well-resourced enough to keep a sharp eye out for such things.
Of course the arguments on the gov't side will continue along the lines of fear mongering. Given the recent spate of gun legislation, let's just hope that the next shocking high profile crime doesn't involve crypto, or the balance may shift the wrong way...
If someone really had a technology that was really "60,000 times as fast as a PII-350", don't you think they'd want to sell it for more than PC prices for a while and get stinking rich? Heck, I sure would. And they even acknowledge that in the article.
Re:DNA Storage Capacity - practical aspects
on
DNA Encryption
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· Score: 1
Regarding the practicalities of this technique: I imagine it could be rather simple to extract the message if someone developed a convenient lab kit. They might have the result in an hour.
But creating the message - how could that be done quickly? Doesn't it take some time to create a specific DNA sequence? I can't imagine we can do that quickly outside a lab.
If this holds, the best use I can imagine is in "fingerprinting" items. Imagine them used like "taggants" in explosives. First you create a a whole library of different sequences (a precomputed alphabet) and then assign them to specific items or specific lots of items you want to track. One hundred dollar bills, for instance. The detection lab kit would then become a standard part of the counterfeit detector's toolkit.
Anyway, my point really is that this new thing is really useful in the signature scenario than where you want to send an arbitrary message.
It looks like the end markers tell where the message is and the message itself is not encrypted so much as just remapped to a different alphabet. The technique of hiding messages is called steganography (not encryption), and this instance would have to be the best example of "security through obscurity" I've ever seen!;-)
The reason it is so much of interest to geeks is because most of the recent threats to privacy are a direct result of high technology, and especially computer databases. The more information about you that can be stored and searched at someone else's leisure, the less privacy we have. Read Lawrence Lessig's "The Architectures of Privacy" for starters. (I forget the URL; I know I saw it on/. in the past few months.)
And anyway, please keep posting things about privacy.
...and it can start with their install techs. Sound like these guys need a little enlightenment. Either that or don't tell the techs your plans.
Mediaone (now Mediaone Road Runner) never explicitly supported Linux, and according to their current Service Agreement still don't support Linux. There's a FAQ now for how to hook up a cable modem to Linux, and Mediaone, while not supporting Linux, does not explicitly prohibit its use (there are many Linuxers on Mediaone).
The easiest thing to do is get your machine working with Windows, then make it work with Linux. That's what I did with Mediaone, and I never mentioned to the tech that I was planning to use Linux. I haven't used DSL, but it can't be any harder than a cable modem.
Is this disengenuous? I suppose it is a bit, but if you can figure out how Windows makes and maintains the connection, and then duplicate that with Linux, why should they care? (Just make sure your machine's secure:-) I think that a service provider would rather have someone paying for their service rather than go elsewhere because of this kind of nonsense.
Well, that would explain a few things at my company. I'm employed by a multibillion dollar corporation which now insists that all new computer procurements have NT installed - no W95 or W98 (or Linux:-() options. I finally realized exactly how stupid this was when we ordered IBM laptops and they arrived with NT installed even though the req specified W98. So guess what? The Kodak USB cameras we bought specifically to hook up to these laptops? They don't have NT drivers! I had heard that NT driver support was weak, but this just proved it as far as I'm concerned. And yet, the company has already jumped off the cliff... smart!!
You can't just say that they're sick and ignore them. AOL is a profit-making entity - that's it's sole purpose in life, just like any other corporation. Also, just because the volunteers enjoy doing what their doing doesn't exempt AOL from the laws. Given this, I can see where they probably have a case. AOL might have to start treating them according to the laws for part-time help.
With this interpretation, it would appear that places like/. can only be non-profits.
Of course, I'm not a lawyer, so that's only IMHO. Still, it is vital for us to follow the case to its outcome, because it will likely set a precedent. Heck, I can see where this might go all the way to the supreme court.
My TP600 with Linux on it does just about as good if not better than one of those tablets in terms of battery life and visual clarity. And, I can do a hundred other things with it, too.
The one thing I CAN'T do is ROLL IT UP, but I suppose that might be too much to ask of a technology that is basically trying to imitate print.
If we really want to create a new paradigm, how about talking books? What I really mean is highly intelligible text-to-speech. No need to conform to the flat page, and it would be eyes-free. That's what I'd spend my commute time with - listening to a carefully-selected subset of the news: "all/.", or "all Kosovo", etc.
Re: text-to-speech systems, Festival is getting good, but I still found it required too much concentration to listen to for a long time. Someday, though...
fine example of classic propaganda techniques
on
Slate Takes on Linux
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· Score: 1
I really wonder if the techie article was even written by a single person, much less a "techie". As I read it I had the distinct feeling that it had been written in a committee, or at least that several drafts had transpired in which the propaganda was fine-tuned. It is simply too polished.
Either that, or the professed "techie" has turned into a complete marketing flak, having completely internalized the techniques of self-censorship. He could easily get a job working high up in a cigarette company.
Anyway, persistent and polite evangelization is probably the best antidote to the FUD campaign.
Slashdot Mirror
Consider automobiles and their evolution, for instance. Features have been creeping in for years. Compared to software, however, the bloat rate is much slower. Why? 'Cause features cost money when you have to make them out of real hardware!
As another example, consider toothpaste or laundry soap. What ``feature'' can you possibly add to either of them to make them actually perform better? Both have hit the performance plateau long ago. So instead of adding new features, they give us the same old product in a great new package.
Software , on the other hand... Where do I begin? Where does it end? What new feature will we think of next that simply MUST be in our own free software? Don't get me wrong, I don't want to get a zillion replies to the effect that ``if you don't like (package X)'s bloat, you don't have to use it''
My point is simply that as long as machines get faster, software will expand to fill the available cpu cycles, and it doesn't cost anything more than it did before.
This article is fabulous! These guys get an A+ in my book for objectivity and for being informative. They basically tell the reader every little thing they did and what the effects were, regardless of who's ox was gored. What's wrong with the American rags that they can't be as technically complete as C't? Too many hidden agendas? Too worried about whether they're violating someone's NDA?
Why does it always have to be "us vs. them?"
That must mean my house is very low power - it only has 60 Hz of power! How will I be able to power one of these chips if my house doesn't have enough power?
A consequence of narrow viewing angle (methinks) is poor color balance/rendition with viewing angle. Orange xterms on my TP600 change color from top to bottom of the screen, even at the best possible tilt. Full-screen photo images leave a lot to be desired, too. For this reason, I can see graphic design and publishing houses staying with CRTs for a while longer. Too bad, 'cause those multiscreen displays look just the thing...
1) Microwaves, as defined by the NTIA, range from about 100 MHz to 300 GHz ( US Frequency Allocation Chart). Most people think of microwaves as starting at 1 GHz, though (and hardly ever think of 300 GHz). Seriously, though, there's no hard limit in the continuum.
2) Microwave ovens operate at around 2.45 GHz, the resonance of water molecules.
3) The Wired article mentioned neither the carrier frequency nor the energy densities at which the tests were conducted. This kind of vagueness I find unforgivable, because it leads to the sort of vague discussions we're having here on /..
4) I could not find the particular study refered to in the Wired article posted on the WTR website, but I did find statements and information about RF radiation and tumor promotion. One in particular from April 30, 1997, refers to a study where rats developed lymphoma at a rate twice the control group. This study was conducted with pulsed RF at 900 MHz, at ``levels similar to those from wireless digital phones.''
5) The field strength just outside a 300 mW AMPS cellular phone (say, right next to your ear) is around 5 to 15 mW/cm^2, depending how close you wedge the phone to your head. But that's just my back-of-the-envelope calculation. See the FCC's OET Bulletin 65 and supplements for more on human RF exposure guidlines.
Anyway, there is a big difference between exposing a bird to an RF field and saying there's ``no effect'' dues to heating, and exposing a living thing to RF and asking if there's an increased chance of any kind of long or short-term health effect. As a wireless engineer, I personally have a vested interest in knowing the effects. I sure hope there are none, but what am I going to do if there are? Are the risks of health problems too great to ethically push wireless as a viable consumer technology? Can I still feel morally superior to engineers working on missles and bombs?
As a first step, I'll continue to hold off getting a cell phone. I'll also probably stay away from Bluetooth products as well, since they're right in the microwave oven band and because Bluetooth radios might be clipped onto various parts of my body (BodyLAN). What next? Stop working on 5 GHz WLAN because the components are ``too close'' to humans? What is ``too close''? If wireless is the next new thing, is it the next new thing to kill us, too?
A definitive answer is needed. The effects almost certainly vary with frequency (microwave ovens don't use 900 MHZ for a reason). Once the effects are known, then perhaps we can decide what acceptable risk is.
Yes! Two other books I've read. Very intriguing ideas about early Christianity and a literal interpretation of the sacrament of communion (infecting the communicant with a virus from space that would allow mental contact with an extraterrestrial race, ie, God). Anyway, that's all I can accurately remember at this hour....
I was immediately sucked in by the show, but since I missed the beginning, I probably didn't get her official explanation of memes. What I did hear dissapointed me. It seemed that the definition of meme was constantly shifting and becoming more encompassing as the show went on, until a meme was practically anything we remembered.
Based on the little I know, memes most definitely exist; the very idea of memes is itself a meme: QED. Still, I have trouble with her premise that it's the memes themselves that are the active entities - that the evolution of human brains was influenced by memes so it would perpetuate and proagate memes. You know, like the one that goes "Human beings were created by water to transport it uphill." (Unix fortune)
The hypothesis is certainly a clever one, but it doesn't mean it's correct. I like to believe that atoms are really little solar systems, complete with entire civilizations. Believe me, it explains so many things! ;-)
By the way, was it William S. Burroughs who first came up with the idea that language is a virus (in Nova Express, or The Ticket That Exploded) or was it Laurie Anderson? And where did she get the idea?
Uh, stupid question, but wouldn't this sort of sculpture be more appropriately placed at the entrance of the NSA?
So how would they get a bill like this through congress? A well-publicized bill would get attacked by all the right people, so we're kind of safe there.
The ones we need to worry about are the stealth attempts. And I hope that the EFF or the ACLU (and every other watchdog) is well-resourced enough to keep a sharp eye out for such things.
Of course the arguments on the gov't side will continue along the lines of fear mongering. Given the recent spate of gun legislation, let's just hope that the next shocking high profile crime doesn't involve crypto, or the balance may shift the wrong way...
(Kind of rambling, but hey - just my 2 cents.)
If someone really had a technology that was really "60,000 times as fast as a PII-350", don't you think they'd want to sell it for more than PC prices for a while and get stinking rich? Heck, I sure would. And they even acknowledge that in the article.
But creating the message - how could that be done quickly? Doesn't it take some time to create a specific DNA sequence? I can't imagine we can do that quickly outside a lab.
If this holds, the best use I can imagine is in "fingerprinting" items. Imagine them used like "taggants" in explosives. First you create a a whole library of different sequences (a precomputed alphabet) and then assign them to specific items or specific lots of items you want to track. One hundred dollar bills, for instance. The detection lab kit would then become a standard part of the counterfeit detector's toolkit.
Anyway, my point really is that this new thing is really useful in the signature scenario than where you want to send an arbitrary message.
It looks like the end markers tell where the message is and the message itself is not encrypted so much as just remapped to a different alphabet. The technique of hiding messages is called steganography (not encryption), and this instance would have to be the best example of "security through obscurity" I've ever seen! ;-)
And anyway, please keep posting things about privacy.
Mediaone (now Mediaone Road Runner) never explicitly supported Linux, and according to their current Service Agreement still don't support Linux. There's a FAQ now for how to hook up a cable modem to Linux, and Mediaone, while not supporting Linux, does not explicitly prohibit its use (there are many Linuxers on Mediaone).
The easiest thing to do is get your machine working with Windows, then make it work with Linux. That's what I did with Mediaone, and I never mentioned to the tech that I was planning to use Linux. I haven't used DSL, but it can't be any harder than a cable modem.
Is this disengenuous? I suppose it is a bit, but if you can figure out how Windows makes and maintains the connection, and then duplicate that with Linux, why should they care? (Just make sure your machine's secure :-) I think that a service provider would rather have someone paying for their service rather than go elsewhere because of this kind of nonsense.
Well, that would explain a few things at my company. I'm employed by a multibillion dollar corporation which now insists that all new computer procurements have NT installed - no W95 or W98 (or Linux :-() options. I finally realized exactly how stupid this was when we ordered IBM laptops and they arrived with NT installed even though the req specified W98. So guess what? The Kodak USB cameras we bought specifically to hook up to these laptops? They don't have NT drivers! I had heard that NT driver support was weak, but this just proved it as far as I'm concerned. And yet, the company has already jumped off the cliff... smart!!
You can't just say that they're sick and ignore them. AOL is a profit-making entity - that's it's sole purpose in life, just like any other corporation. Also, just because the volunteers enjoy doing what their doing doesn't exempt AOL from the laws. Given this, I can see where they probably have a case. AOL might have to start treating them according to the laws for part-time help.
/. can only be non-profits.
With this interpretation, it would appear that places like
Of course, I'm not a lawyer, so that's only IMHO. Still, it is vital for us to follow the case to its outcome, because it will likely set a precedent. Heck, I can see where this might go all the way to the supreme court.
The one thing I CAN'T do is ROLL IT UP, but I suppose that might be too much to ask of a technology that is basically trying to imitate print.
If we really want to create a new paradigm, how about talking books? What I really mean is highly intelligible text-to-speech. No need to conform to the flat page, and it would be eyes-free. That's what I'd spend my commute time with - listening to a carefully-selected subset of the news: "all /.", or "all Kosovo", etc.
Re: text-to-speech systems, Festival is getting good, but I still found it required too much concentration to listen to for a long time. Someday, though...
I really wonder if the techie article was even written by a single person, much less a "techie". As I read it I had the distinct feeling that it had been written in a committee, or at least that several drafts had transpired in which the propaganda was fine-tuned. It is simply too polished.
Either that, or the professed "techie" has turned into a complete marketing flak, having completely internalized the techniques of self-censorship. He could easily get a job working high up in a cigarette company.
Anyway, persistent and polite evangelization is probably the best antidote to the FUD campaign.