1. Opening up the WinAPI source would not make Lindows legal. Lindows is not illegal because of anything related to the WinAPI, it is illegal because Michael Robertson has not made the source code to Lindows available to the people who have purchased access, while still releasing the code under the GPL. Perhaps you're thinking of MS attacking Lindows based on its name?
2. Issuing free copies of Windows is not a Good Thing. Why Windows and not some of the alternative operating systems (Linux, BSD, even MacOS)? Although it would seem like a punishment, such a forced-distribution would only strengthen MS's hold on the mindshare of tomorrow's geeks. It would be like saying that the RIAA should issue free N'Sync CDs to poor kids because they broke the law with their "uncopyable" CDs - it just indirectly furthers their dominance of the market.
3. Why will desktop computing lose its prevalence once central-solutions become available? Most people don't need or want to be tied into such a system; I have serious personal doubts about anything that threatens both my privacy and my ability to manage my own system, and I'm not even doing anything *really* important.
4. AMD being on MS's side makes quite a bit of sense, because MS has been pro-Intel for so long. AMD is trying to capture market share; by showing loyalty to MS, they are aiming to hedge out some room for a deal alongside Intel. Pissing MS off would result in them never seeing that market open up.
Disclaimer: I agree with your point (or at least one of then): there is no *need* for anyone to reproduce, and adoption is an excellent option for many, many people.
Why don't these infertile people consider the fact that, right or wrong, justly or unjustly, they're not meant to conceive on their own?
Because such a view implies an acceptance of an intentionally designed world. An atheistic would-be parent, for example, would not necessarily accept that they were *meant* to not have children. If one views the world as the product of fluke instead of fancy, then there is nothing is either allowed or prohibited. Nothing "meant" for anything to even exist - and thus, there is no problem with a cloned child.
I think the real problem is deeper. Instead of medicating the symptoms of this troubled kid, perhaps someone should have tried to get to the root of it - why was this kid so depressed that he took his own life?
Most of us, as humans, have considered offing ourselves at some point. To quote Goddard, "to live is to suffer." (Contempt, 1963) Life is shit - we grasp for a couple decades at *something*, only to realize we never really get anything, just to grow old, lose control of our bowels, and die. At sixteen, this is a fucking scary thing to realize. The problem is that at that age, one does not have the experience of the sublime to counter it - most sixteen year olds haven't stood on a mountaintop at dawn, or fallen in love, or felt the brushings of true inner peace.
In our society, it seems as though we're *looking* for neat, confined, and manageable ways to explain away our existential angst, rather than learning to live with it. A gramme is better than a damn, right? If someone had taken an interest in this kid, and had helped him bear his burden until he was old enough and mature enough to do it himself, rather than medicate him and shove him into a closed room, the outcome might have been different. Blaming a video game for his suicide is just a further extension of the same psychological myopia that medicatated him and left it at that.
I feel deep compassion the mother, for she must be wracked with grief. I feel for the kid, too, who apparently never saw what made life bearable. We all die, but hopefully something makes our lives meaningful for us, even in light of the utter absurdity of life itself.
The interesting thing is that while April Fools is technically "over", anonymous posting is still on the blink. Makes you wonder if advert-announcement wasn't a joke after all...
Mozilla forgets my text size (i prefer 120%) as soon as i close the program. Any way to make that 120% permanent ?
Sure is. I do it myself, as I don't like to squint when browsing - I have a desktop resolution of 1600x1200. Add the following line to your prefs.js file - it's in ~/.mozilla/default/XXX.slt/, where XXX is something unique to the user:
user_pref("font.minimum-size.x-western", 18);
You can replace 18 with whatever you like, of course. Enjoy!
The problem is that there is no free choice. It is not a matter of "sell only Microsoft OSes, and we'll discount you", it's one of "sell only Microsoft OSes, or we disallow you *any* sale of Microsoft OSes." Now, Microsoft is an acknowledged monopoly - no suprise there. An OEM *needs* to sell Microsoft products in order to be competitive. No issue, thusfar.
What Gateway is testifying to is that it's not fair for Microsoft to impose a blanket restriction upon them (via their OEM license agreement that allows them the ability to sell Microsoft products) which prevents them from selling other alternative operating systems at the same time that they are selling Windows. Such a tactic is an unfair leveraging on the behalf of a monopoly. It's legal for Coca-Cola to do it, for example, because there is a definite alternative - Pepsi. Neither are a monopoly. It isn't legal for Microsoft to do it (allegedly) because of (and due to) their monopoly status. Free choice would mean that an OEM could decide for itself how it wanted to sell its products. When a company MUST have a business model that limits that freedom ("don't sell linux systems or we'll effectively revoke your ability to compete in the current market, which we can do because of our monopolization of said market"), something is wrong.
A Beautiful Mind: Because Time is for Wasting?
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LoTR Takes 4 Oscars
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· Score: 1
Unfortunately, A Beutiful Mind was tepid, predicatable, and poorly written. The highlight of the film is the suffering the lead character undergoes. It pales in light of the suffering of the audience, but at least we're not alone.
My biggest complaint with ABM was the way it ignored everything even potentially unpleasent about John Nash's life, and focused on the warm fuzzies instead. The *real* John Nash had an affair, a bastard child, and was arrested in an FBI trap for homosexuals. The fictional John Nash was just misunderstood, and never did any of this. Who's schizophrenic now?
LoTR, on the other hand, was incredible on so many levels; it was Epic, it was well paced, and it really made an effort not to patronize its audience. It wasn't a masterpiece of cineaesthetic, but it was at least moderately intelligent, and entertaining to boot.
*sigh*
Re:Need 2/3 button mouse. (Single click interface)
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Apple Wants Your Input
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· Score: 1
Actually, this is already resolved. A USB mouse such as a IntelliMouse (one of the few products MS does correctly) or a MouseMan Optical is entirely compatible with a modern Mac, and you can set things up to use all of the buttons.
We don't *really* have morals. When it becomes difficult or inconvinient (ie, when the next Shiny Thing comes out) for us to hold to our principles, we falter.
Of course, if we *really* wanted to make a difference, as a community, we would use this release as our opportunity to not support Blizzard. By NOT buying their latest game, we would directly affect their coiffers. If even a small fraction of the slashdot community were to combine a boycott of Warcraft III with a letter explaining *why* they didn't purchase it, we might even get a message across.
I doubt it, though. Principles are hard; playing games are easy. Why make an effort? *sigh*
A floating iron point would not be a digital compass.:)
As far as I know, GPS units calculate direction by triangulating the unit's position in relation to the 24 orbitting GPS space segment satellites. Each satellite transmits its own known position, the current atomic time, system status, etc., and also sends a pseudorandom navigation (PRN) stream.
The handheld receives a nav signal and PRN stream, and then generates its own PRN, using the current time as the seed. It then adjusts (looking for a pattern match) for the difference (thanks to the delay in transmission time) between the signal and the satellites PRN. This offset lets the GPS determine how far it is from a given satellite.
The handheld repeats this for another satellite, giving it two spheres that overlap, with the overlapping area being where the GPS must currently be. A third satellite is contacted, resulting in two possible points; one will be far, far "above" the satellite, so the GPS unit discards it. The remaining point is your current location. There *is* actually a fourth calculation (you can't determine 3 unknowns with only 3 variables, after all), which is a time-averaging based off the each of the satellites contacted, but many GPS units "fake" this by assuming that the unit is always at sea level.
That triangulation allows the GPS receiver to determine direction freely; the signals it receives give it enough axises of direction to do this, I believe. Anyone a bit more versed in geometry than me want to clear this up?
Re:How fast do we really need to go?
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7 Years of 3D Graphics
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· Score: 2, Interesting
The "SOFTWARE realtime raytracing" you're referring to is rendering extremely low-detail primitives (spheres, cones, etc.) in one-pass tracing at a tiny resolution, then bilinear filtering the image and scaling it. This is neither photorealistic (as the original poster was inquiring after) nor impressive.
What was being discussed was not 1x1 traced, static geometry localisation demos with environment mapping and scanline rendering. What was being discussed was full-fledged, true real-time raytracing of complex scenes with lighting and reflection taken into account in the trace passes. Show me something with even the complexity of Doom in a real-time raytraced environment, I'll be impressed. Half-way demos like this (not that they aren't pretty) just don't cut it.
We're still quiet a distance from photorealism. You are correct about the frame/second perceptibility issue; 120fps is the point of diminishing returns, at least according to the OpenGL Architecture Review Board's programming guides.
The problem is that right now, we're rendering triangles. We can do an incredible number of them - most cards list their triangle output rate - but it just isn't going to be good enough. The holy grail of 3D graphics, in my opinion, is real-time ray tracing. Radiosity rendering isn't really *that* much better, and it's almost unfeasibly far off, but ray-tracing is conceivable. With a ray-traced image, shadows, reflection, and refraction are accurate and free (no extra CPU time needed), but the rendering itself takes a while.
I've read that some of the beefier supercomputers (multi-processor SGI Challenges, for example) can pull a few frames/second when doing real-time ray traced images, given a small window and a low level of image complexity. It's a ways off, but I'd guess that twenty years might see such technology within the reach of wealthier consumers.
I'm guessing that you didn't notice that ssh was found vulnerable to an off-by-one compromise recently, and that a new version is out. Check out the advisory on it, and get the latest version while you're there.
The solution to security flaws like this is not running in runlevel0 - it is diligance and administration. Subscribe to bugtraq (here, and keep an eye on what's coming out. Do an occasional nmap scan against yourself. *Know* what ports are open, don't wait to be surpised. ssh is by no means "stupid". Neither are you. Not keeping up to date on what's out there, however, is.
The nice part of cracking these days is that you don't really need any skill. A few downloads, and a script kiddie is you!
Hotmail probably isn't that much of a concern, but your email isn't what people are going to go after. Your linux box is a *very* lucrative target, not because of anything that you yourself might have on the hard drive, but because further attacks can be launched from you machine. In the United States, at least, you would be liable for damages from your machine, as you failed to take proper precautions to secure it.
Moreover, it's meaningless that you don't know anyone with the know-how or patience to compromise your system. As a former grey-hat in the industry, I can safely assert that more than 75% of the cases I dealt with weren't instances where someone known to the victim carried out the cracking.
Take thirty minutes, read over the Security Quickstart Howto, and prevent yourself a *lot* of future hassle.
I do not deign to judge such things, friend. It's my belief that all people are equally valuable: all people are equally worthless. Thankfully, I do not have to make decisions about the life and death of anyone.
"...all in Time."
--James O'Brien, This Time You've Gone Too Far
"using a PC takes a time investment of several hours _just_ to do basic tasks"
"Still takes hundreds of mouse clicks to read email/news"
What kind of operating system are you using? At work, I develop (via cygwin, no less) on an NT box; at home I only run linux. With my work system, it takes three clicks to check my mail - a doubleclick to open my browser, and one more (which isn't mandatory) to confirm my username and password. On my linux box, it takes one click to open mozilla. That's it. Neither of these tasks take more than 20 seconds.
To address a few other scattered claims: my computer boots in 35 seconds, not 2 minutes. I do not press "buttons", although I occasionally click to open a menu. For the 5.5 billion people on the planet who to whom "it just seems too complicated" (which I doubt), the television industry is perfectly happy to turn you into a passive recepient of crap. No, stay there - we'll let you know when you should move.
You do raise an interesting point on a more abstract level, however. Should we (as computer users) drive the market towards a nearly idiotic level of "useability"? I think not. Your grandmother doesn't *need* to know how to use her operating system with the acuity and depth presented in those 400+ page tomes in your local McBookstore. She's fine with the glossy book that came in the Compaq box.
See, computers are fundamentally different from your toaster or your television. They let you *create* things - via code, image manipulation, sound editing, etc. Each of this these involves a bit of a time commitment and some learning, but they reap rewards for that. A decent analogy is higher education: would you claim that the "hundreds" of books you average college student reads are entirely too many, and that education should be dumbed down for the "layman"?
Computers are a tool. They might have shiny Widgets to play with, but they are still tools - and what you get out of them will be proportional to what you put in. Attempts to make this an uneven relationship (ie, you get out 10x what you put in) will fail. As Einstein (almost) wrote, "simply everything as much as possible, but no more."
Interesting approach. Information like this makes me extremely glad to be using OpenSSH, because I know that this exploit is now well-known and patchable, as opposed to being buried deep in some "Service Pack" style patch and not documented. I immediately took down my 'net-facing SSH machines; how long would they have been vulnerable if some commercial entity was responsible for informing me that their code was flawed?
That's really the best part of open-source software: bugs are more apt to be found, as more people can look for them. Maybe not *you*, but someone. I know I've been able to look at the source to apps I find myself questioning; just last week I ran through the esound code to figure out if it was subject to buffer overflows at a certain point.:)
The "AMOUNT of problems" reported may be smaller with a commerical program, but that does not mean that there are fewer bugs in the code. Commerical code is not inherently more secure, and telling customers about fewer existant problems doesn't magically make it so.
Ease up on the hostility, AC. I never said that I cared much for bragging rights - note that I mentioned that I used Debian. The point of my post was that the article was about a true "from source" distro, where everything was compiled by you, even your compiler. That's not the case with Debian, or SuSE - and your post on their respective strengths was a bit off topic.
Ironically, the main reason most people turn to LFS systems is to make their system work *exactly* as they want it to. I've had more luck administering boxen that have been hand configured than with distros that install binaries haphazardly.
"And it really is not such a big deal to compile from source ever since make."
You've missed the point. SGL, Gentoo, LFS, etc. are all about building your system from source, and getting the combined benefits of optimized binaries and a solid knowledge of *everything* that's installed. Someone who is going down the route of custom-compiled source isn't looking to "compete" with SuSE or Debian, because those distros are offering a binary update path.
I find apt useful for grabbing source, but that does not put it in the same class as LFS or SGL when it comes to bragging rights or philosophy.
Not a bad sentiment, but you're all wrong with that "straw man" thing. A straw man is a type of arguing where you erect a very weak version of your opponent's argument, fell it, and then claim victory.
An example of a straw man argument: "Senator Jones says that we should not fund the attack submarine program. I disagree entirely. I can't understand why he wants to leave us defenseless like that."
If the objections to Carnivore often voiced here - that it is invasive, morally questionable, and poorly managed - were indeed straw men, there would be a stronger set of arguments against it that were being distorted. Somehow, I doubt that - if Carnivore is an unethical and (arguably) unconstitutional device, it is damned on its own accord, don't you think?
One other point: "it takes a hell of a lot to get an FBI agent to bother a judge about your private files."
A nice alternative to using Windows Media Player under linux for viewing movies (even windows media formats!) is "MPlayer", located at: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/. It's a bit tricky for a novice to install, but the effort is well worth it.
Supported formats current include "MPEG, VOB, AVI, VIVO, ASF/WMV, QT/MOV, FLI, NuppelVideo, yuv4mpeg, FILM, RoQ, and some RealMedia files", as well as "MPEG, VOB, AVI, VIVO, ASF/WMV, QT/MOV, FLI, NuppelVideo, yuv4mpeg, FILM, RoQ, and some RealMedia files", to quote from the information on mplayer's site.
Actually, if you re-read the snippet you quoted, it indicates that legal use is granted if you "have a validly licensed copy" of at least Win98 or better. In my case, the last operating system I purchased from Microsoft was Windows 98SE; thus, I meet the EULA requirements for using Windows Media Player on another operating system.
Posession of the license is key, not having an installed copy of Windows.
Things have certainly changed, haven't they? The R&D guys at @stake (the remnants of the l0pht) are certainly brilliant coders and security analysts, but it's painful to see them going down a route that indemifies companies from the results of the very failings that they once attacked.
It's amusing to look a current pictures of Mudge, as well - it really points out the changes that have occured with the former l0pht: Current "Mudge" versus the Mudge that was.
The point I make is that this *is* a form of competition. Bear with me for a moment.
Imagine the following: As with the current situation, Blizzard sees that there is now a way to play pirated copies of their software, albeit not on their network, but on bnetd. For the purposes of our example, let's pretend that they can't the DMCA around, but instead have to find some other way to defend their business.
A team of engineers and designers sit down, and hash the problem out: someone else has reverse engineered - legally - the method for connecting to Battle.net, and has created another network that can do the same thing. The engineers propose that they increase the complexity of the network protocol, and the designers argue that by adding content to Blizzard.net, more people will want to use it over the alternative. If either of these are pursued, who benefits? Blizzard, if they do things well, have lured more people into Battle.net, as they will be using a better protocol and offering more content. Legitimate users benefit from both of this, and can now play Diablo (that's a Blizzard title, isn't it?) online with lower latency and with ranked standings, telecasts of games, and all sorts of other bells and whistles.
What about those people playing on bnetd? Aren't they hurting Blizzard by *not* buying into their service? Probably not. With a few exceptions, software pirates are not a group known for shelling out for software just because they can't get a free copy. Were Blizzard to shut down bnetd, those people would most likely move on to some other game, not decide to travel the moral high ground and buy legal, boxed Blizzard games.
So what *should* Blizzard do? Compete. Improve their software in a variety of ways, making the non-free network substantially more lucrative than a free alternative. That free alternative is the very essence of competition - a less costly and more efficient alternative. If Blizzard cannot offer an alternative that is worth more to consumers, with worth being determined by how much those game-playing shoppers are willing to pay, then they deserve to flounder.
Not that any of this will occur, of course. We live in a society where we shy away from such harsh market action, throwing out terms of "injustice" to describe the results of normal market behavior. To paraquote Hayek, a prominent bastard of a economic philosopher, unintentional actions cannot be unjust, although we are free to dislike them. Bnetd is not *trying* to kill Blizzard, they are just offering an alternate service. If you as a consumer prefer that alternate, then put your support there.
The real issue seems to be software pirates, not bnetd. Bnetd doesn't steal from Blizzard, the warez kiddies do. By the same logic that says that bnetd is "providing a means by which you can play pirated Blizzard products", I could argue that my car provides a means for me to mow down mass numbers of people. Should either be banned? Are we so removed from personal responsibility that we must cater to the least responsible members of our society, at the expense of those who wouldn't steal/kill/etc.?
Slashdot Mirror
A few points:
1. Opening up the WinAPI source would not make Lindows legal. Lindows is not illegal because of anything related to the WinAPI, it is illegal because Michael Robertson has not made the source code to Lindows available to the people who have purchased access, while still releasing the code under the GPL. Perhaps you're thinking of MS attacking Lindows based on its name?
2. Issuing free copies of Windows is not a Good Thing. Why Windows and not some of the alternative operating systems (Linux, BSD, even MacOS)? Although it would seem like a punishment, such a forced-distribution would only strengthen MS's hold on the mindshare of tomorrow's geeks. It would be like saying that the RIAA should issue free N'Sync CDs to poor kids because they broke the law with their "uncopyable" CDs - it just indirectly furthers their dominance of the market.
3. Why will desktop computing lose its prevalence once central-solutions become available? Most people don't need or want to be tied into such a system; I have serious personal doubts about anything that threatens both my privacy and my ability to manage my own system, and I'm not even doing anything *really* important.
4. AMD being on MS's side makes quite a bit of sense, because MS has been pro-Intel for so long. AMD is trying to capture market share; by showing loyalty to MS, they are aiming to hedge out some room for a deal alongside Intel. Pissing MS off would result in them never seeing that market open up.
Disclaimer: I agree with your point (or at least one of then): there is no *need* for anyone to reproduce, and adoption is an excellent option for many, many people.
Why don't these infertile people consider the fact that, right or wrong, justly or unjustly, they're not meant to conceive on their own?
Because such a view implies an acceptance of an intentionally designed world. An atheistic would-be parent, for example, would not necessarily accept that they were *meant* to not have children. If one views the world as the product of fluke instead of fancy, then there is nothing is either allowed or prohibited. Nothing "meant" for anything to even exist - and thus, there is no problem with a cloned child.
I think the real problem is deeper. Instead of medicating the symptoms of this troubled kid, perhaps someone should have tried to get to the root of it - why was this kid so depressed that he took his own life?
Most of us, as humans, have considered offing ourselves at some point. To quote Goddard, "to live is to suffer." (Contempt, 1963) Life is shit - we grasp for a couple decades at *something*, only to realize we never really get anything, just to grow old, lose control of our bowels, and die. At sixteen, this is a fucking scary thing to realize. The problem is that at that age, one does not have the experience of the sublime to counter it - most sixteen year olds haven't stood on a mountaintop at dawn, or fallen in love, or felt the brushings of true inner peace.
In our society, it seems as though we're *looking* for neat, confined, and manageable ways to explain away our existential angst, rather than learning to live with it. A gramme is better than a damn, right? If someone had taken an interest in this kid, and had helped him bear his burden until he was old enough and mature enough to do it himself, rather than medicate him and shove him into a closed room, the outcome might have been different. Blaming a video game for his suicide is just a further extension of the same psychological myopia that medicatated him and left it at that.
I feel deep compassion the mother, for she must be wracked with grief. I feel for the kid, too, who apparently never saw what made life bearable. We all die, but hopefully something makes our lives meaningful for us, even in light of the utter absurdity of life itself.
The interesting thing is that while April Fools is technically "over", anonymous posting is still on the blink. Makes you wonder if advert-announcement wasn't a joke after all...
Sure is. I do it myself, as I don't like to squint when browsing - I have a desktop resolution of 1600x1200. Add the following line to your prefs.js file - it's in ~/.mozilla/default/XXX.slt/, where XXX is something unique to the user:
You can replace 18 with whatever you like, of course. Enjoy!
The problem is that there is no free choice. It is not a matter of "sell only Microsoft OSes, and we'll discount you", it's one of "sell only Microsoft OSes, or we disallow you *any* sale of Microsoft OSes." Now, Microsoft is an acknowledged monopoly - no suprise there. An OEM *needs* to sell Microsoft products in order to be competitive. No issue, thusfar.
What Gateway is testifying to is that it's not fair for Microsoft to impose a blanket restriction upon them (via their OEM license agreement that allows them the ability to sell Microsoft products) which prevents them from selling other alternative operating systems at the same time that they are selling Windows. Such a tactic is an unfair leveraging on the behalf of a monopoly. It's legal for Coca-Cola to do it, for example, because there is a definite alternative - Pepsi. Neither are a monopoly. It isn't legal for Microsoft to do it (allegedly) because of (and due to) their monopoly status. Free choice would mean that an OEM could decide for itself how it wanted to sell its products. When a company MUST have a business model that limits that freedom ("don't sell linux systems or we'll effectively revoke your ability to compete in the current market, which we can do because of our monopolization of said market"), something is wrong.
Unfortunately, A Beutiful Mind was tepid, predicatable, and poorly written. The highlight of the film is the suffering the lead character undergoes. It pales in light of the suffering of the audience, but at least we're not alone.
My biggest complaint with ABM was the way it ignored everything even potentially unpleasent about John Nash's life, and focused on the warm fuzzies instead. The *real* John Nash had an affair, a bastard child, and was arrested in an FBI trap for homosexuals. The fictional John Nash was just misunderstood, and never did any of this. Who's schizophrenic now?
LoTR, on the other hand, was incredible on so many levels; it was Epic, it was well paced, and it really made an effort not to patronize its audience. It wasn't a masterpiece of cineaesthetic, but it was at least moderately intelligent, and entertaining to boot.
*sigh*
Actually, this is already resolved. A USB mouse such as a IntelliMouse (one of the few products MS does correctly) or a MouseMan Optical is entirely compatible with a modern Mac, and you can set things up to use all of the buttons.
We don't *really* have morals. When it becomes difficult or inconvinient (ie, when the next Shiny Thing comes out) for us to hold to our principles, we falter.
Of course, if we *really* wanted to make a difference, as a community, we would use this release as our opportunity to not support Blizzard. By NOT buying their latest game, we would directly affect their coiffers. If even a small fraction of the slashdot community were to combine a boycott of Warcraft III with a letter explaining *why* they didn't purchase it, we might even get a message across.
I doubt it, though. Principles are hard; playing games are easy. Why make an effort? *sigh*
A floating iron point would not be a digital compass. :)
As far as I know, GPS units calculate direction by triangulating the unit's position in relation to the 24 orbitting GPS space segment satellites. Each satellite transmits its own known position, the current atomic time, system status, etc., and also sends a pseudorandom navigation (PRN) stream.
The handheld receives a nav signal and PRN stream, and then generates its own PRN, using the current time as the seed. It then adjusts (looking for a pattern match) for the difference (thanks to the delay in transmission time) between the signal and the satellites PRN. This offset lets the GPS determine how far it is from a given satellite.
The handheld repeats this for another satellite, giving it two spheres that overlap, with the overlapping area being where the GPS must currently be. A third satellite is contacted, resulting in two possible points; one will be far, far "above" the satellite, so the GPS unit discards it. The remaining point is your current location. There *is* actually a fourth calculation (you can't determine 3 unknowns with only 3 variables, after all), which is a time-averaging based off the each of the satellites contacted, but many GPS units "fake" this by assuming that the unit is always at sea level.
That triangulation allows the GPS receiver to determine direction freely; the signals it receives give it enough axises of direction to do this, I believe. Anyone a bit more versed in geometry than me want to clear this up?
The "SOFTWARE realtime raytracing" you're referring to is rendering extremely low-detail primitives (spheres, cones, etc.) in one-pass tracing at a tiny resolution, then bilinear filtering the image and scaling it. This is neither photorealistic (as the original poster was inquiring after) nor impressive.
What was being discussed was not 1x1 traced, static geometry localisation demos with environment mapping and scanline rendering. What was being discussed was full-fledged, true real-time raytracing of complex scenes with lighting and reflection taken into account in the trace passes. Show me something with even the complexity of Doom in a real-time raytraced environment, I'll be impressed. Half-way demos like this (not that they aren't pretty) just don't cut it.
We're still quiet a distance from photorealism. You are correct about the frame/second perceptibility issue; 120fps is the point of diminishing returns, at least according to the OpenGL Architecture Review Board's programming guides.
The problem is that right now, we're rendering triangles. We can do an incredible number of them - most cards list their triangle output rate - but it just isn't going to be good enough. The holy grail of 3D graphics, in my opinion, is real-time ray tracing. Radiosity rendering isn't really *that* much better, and it's almost unfeasibly far off, but ray-tracing is conceivable. With a ray-traced image, shadows, reflection, and refraction are accurate and free (no extra CPU time needed), but the rendering itself takes a while.
I've read that some of the beefier supercomputers (multi-processor SGI Challenges, for example) can pull a few frames/second when doing real-time ray traced images, given a small window and a low level of image complexity. It's a ways off, but I'd guess that twenty years might see such technology within the reach of wealthier consumers.
You got cracked whilst running ssh? How?
I'm guessing that you didn't notice that ssh was found vulnerable to an off-by-one compromise recently, and that a new version is out. Check out the advisory on it, and get the latest version while you're there.
The solution to security flaws like this is not running in runlevel0 - it is diligance and administration. Subscribe to bugtraq (here, and keep an eye on what's coming out. Do an occasional nmap scan against yourself. *Know* what ports are open, don't wait to be surpised. ssh is by no means "stupid". Neither are you. Not keeping up to date on what's out there, however, is.
The nice part of cracking these days is that you don't really need any skill. A few downloads, and a script kiddie is you!
Hotmail probably isn't that much of a concern, but your email isn't what people are going to go after. Your linux box is a *very* lucrative target, not because of anything that you yourself might have on the hard drive, but because further attacks can be launched from you machine. In the United States, at least, you would be liable for damages from your machine, as you failed to take proper precautions to secure it.
Moreover, it's meaningless that you don't know anyone with the know-how or patience to compromise your system. As a former grey-hat in the industry, I can safely assert that more than 75% of the cases I dealt with weren't instances where someone known to the victim carried out the cracking.
Take thirty minutes, read over the Security Quickstart Howto, and prevent yourself a *lot* of future hassle.
I do not deign to judge such things, friend. It's my belief that all people are equally valuable: all people are equally worthless. Thankfully, I do not have to make decisions about the life and death of anyone.
"...all in Time."
--James O'Brien, This Time You've Gone Too Far
Reminds me of a little saying: "Hatred will never cease in this world by hating, but rather by not hating. This is an eternal truth."
Might ponder that one next time you're drawing up a list of people you wish had died in an act of violence and anger.
"using a PC takes a time investment of several hours _just_ to do basic tasks"
"Still takes hundreds of mouse clicks to read email/news"
What kind of operating system are you using? At work, I develop (via cygwin, no less) on an NT box; at home I only run linux. With my work system, it takes three clicks to check my mail - a doubleclick to open my browser, and one more (which isn't mandatory) to confirm my username and password. On my linux box, it takes one click to open mozilla. That's it. Neither of these tasks take more than 20 seconds.
To address a few other scattered claims: my computer boots in 35 seconds, not 2 minutes. I do not press "buttons", although I occasionally click to open a menu. For the 5.5 billion people on the planet who to whom "it just seems too complicated" (which I doubt), the television industry is perfectly happy to turn you into a passive recepient of crap. No, stay there - we'll let you know when you should move.
You do raise an interesting point on a more abstract level, however. Should we (as computer users) drive the market towards a nearly idiotic level of "useability"? I think not. Your grandmother doesn't *need* to know how to use her operating system with the acuity and depth presented in those 400+ page tomes in your local McBookstore. She's fine with the glossy book that came in the Compaq box.
See, computers are fundamentally different from your toaster or your television. They let you *create* things - via code, image manipulation, sound editing, etc. Each of this these involves a bit of a time commitment and some learning, but they reap rewards for that. A decent analogy is higher education: would you claim that the "hundreds" of books you average college student reads are entirely too many, and that education should be dumbed down for the "layman"?
Computers are a tool. They might have shiny Widgets to play with, but they are still tools - and what you get out of them will be proportional to what you put in. Attempts to make this an uneven relationship (ie, you get out 10x what you put in) will fail. As Einstein (almost) wrote, "simply everything as much as possible, but no more."
Interesting approach. Information like this makes me extremely glad to be using OpenSSH, because I know that this exploit is now well-known and patchable, as opposed to being buried deep in some "Service Pack" style patch and not documented. I immediately took down my 'net-facing SSH machines; how long would they have been vulnerable if some commercial entity was responsible for informing me that their code was flawed?
:)
That's really the best part of open-source software: bugs are more apt to be found, as more people can look for them. Maybe not *you*, but someone. I know I've been able to look at the source to apps I find myself questioning; just last week I ran through the esound code to figure out if it was subject to buffer overflows at a certain point.
The "AMOUNT of problems" reported may be smaller with a commerical program, but that does not mean that there are fewer bugs in the code. Commerical code is not inherently more secure, and telling customers about fewer existant problems doesn't magically make it so.
Ease up on the hostility, AC. I never said that I cared much for bragging rights - note that I mentioned that I used Debian. The point of my post was that the article was about a true "from source" distro, where everything was compiled by you, even your compiler. That's not the case with Debian, or SuSE - and your post on their respective strengths was a bit off topic.
:)
Ironically, the main reason most people turn to LFS systems is to make their system work *exactly* as they want it to. I've had more luck administering boxen that have been hand configured than with distros that install binaries haphazardly.
"And it really is not such a big deal to compile from source ever since make."
Thanks for that gem of irrelevant insight!
You've missed the point. SGL, Gentoo, LFS, etc. are all about building your system from source, and getting the combined benefits of optimized binaries and a solid knowledge of *everything* that's installed. Someone who is going down the route of custom-compiled source isn't looking to "compete" with SuSE or Debian, because those distros are offering a binary update path.
I find apt useful for grabbing source, but that does not put it in the same class as LFS or SGL when it comes to bragging rights or philosophy.
Not a bad sentiment, but you're all wrong with that "straw man" thing. A straw man is a type of arguing where you erect a very weak version of your opponent's argument, fell it, and then claim victory.
An example of a straw man argument: "Senator Jones says that we should not fund the attack submarine program. I disagree entirely. I can't understand why he wants to leave us defenseless like that."
If the objections to Carnivore often voiced here - that it is invasive, morally questionable, and poorly managed - were indeed straw men, there would be a stronger set of arguments against it that were being distorted. Somehow, I doubt that - if Carnivore is an unethical and (arguably) unconstitutional device, it is damned on its own accord, don't you think?
One other point: "it takes a hell of a lot to get an FBI agent to bother a judge about your private files."
Right. That is why they generally don't. (*gasp*)
A nice alternative to using Windows Media Player under linux for viewing movies (even windows media formats!) is "MPlayer", located at: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/. It's a bit tricky for a novice to install, but the effort is well worth it.
Supported formats current include "MPEG, VOB, AVI, VIVO, ASF/WMV, QT/MOV, FLI, NuppelVideo, yuv4mpeg, FILM, RoQ, and some RealMedia files", as well as "MPEG, VOB, AVI, VIVO, ASF/WMV, QT/MOV, FLI, NuppelVideo, yuv4mpeg, FILM, RoQ, and some RealMedia files", to quote from the information on mplayer's site.
Actually, if you re-read the snippet you quoted, it indicates that legal use is granted if you "have a validly licensed copy" of at least Win98 or better. In my case, the last operating system I purchased from Microsoft was Windows 98SE; thus, I meet the EULA requirements for using Windows Media Player on another operating system.
Posession of the license is key, not having an installed copy of Windows.
Things have certainly changed, haven't they? The R&D guys at @stake (the remnants of the l0pht) are certainly brilliant coders and security analysts, but it's painful to see them going down a route that indemifies companies from the results of the very failings that they once attacked.
It's amusing to look a current pictures of Mudge, as well - it really points out the changes that have occured with the former l0pht: Current "Mudge" versus the Mudge that was.
The point I make is that this *is* a form of competition. Bear with me for a moment.
Imagine the following: As with the current situation, Blizzard sees that there is now a way to play pirated copies of their software, albeit not on their network, but on bnetd. For the purposes of our example, let's pretend that they can't the DMCA around, but instead have to find some other way to defend their business.
A team of engineers and designers sit down, and hash the problem out: someone else has reverse engineered - legally - the method for connecting to Battle.net, and has created another network that can do the same thing. The engineers propose that they increase the complexity of the network protocol, and the designers argue that by adding content to Blizzard.net, more people will want to use it over the alternative. If either of these are pursued, who benefits? Blizzard, if they do things well, have lured more people into Battle.net, as they will be using a better protocol and offering more content. Legitimate users benefit from both of this, and can now play Diablo (that's a Blizzard title, isn't it?) online with lower latency and with ranked standings, telecasts of games, and all sorts of other bells and whistles.
What about those people playing on bnetd? Aren't they hurting Blizzard by *not* buying into their service? Probably not. With a few exceptions, software pirates are not a group known for shelling out for software just because they can't get a free copy. Were Blizzard to shut down bnetd, those people would most likely move on to some other game, not decide to travel the moral high ground and buy legal, boxed Blizzard games.
So what *should* Blizzard do? Compete. Improve their software in a variety of ways, making the non-free network substantially more lucrative than a free alternative. That free alternative is the very essence of competition - a less costly and more efficient alternative. If Blizzard cannot offer an alternative that is worth more to consumers, with worth being determined by how much those game-playing shoppers are willing to pay, then they deserve to flounder.
Not that any of this will occur, of course. We live in a society where we shy away from such harsh market action, throwing out terms of "injustice" to describe the results of normal market behavior. To paraquote Hayek, a prominent bastard of a economic philosopher, unintentional actions cannot be unjust, although we are free to dislike them. Bnetd is not *trying* to kill Blizzard, they are just offering an alternate service. If you as a consumer prefer that alternate, then put your support there.
The real issue seems to be software pirates, not bnetd. Bnetd doesn't steal from Blizzard, the warez kiddies do. By the same logic that says that bnetd is "providing a means by which you can play pirated Blizzard products", I could argue that my car provides a means for me to mow down mass numbers of people. Should either be banned? Are we so removed from personal responsibility that we must cater to the least responsible members of our society, at the expense of those who wouldn't steal/kill/etc.?
No offense to you, killj0y.