more to the point-- neither pcAnywhere nor Microsoft Windows NT are open source. These software packages are both subject to vendor supplied back-doors, and hacker supplied attacks.
In Ohio (and, I suspect, in many other places), you can go to jail rather than pay a fine. If you're too poor to pay $500, you can "serve" 20 days in jail instead. Soak the poor indeed.
Basing jail terms on actuarial statistics is problematic, though. Judges are often lenient on the very old. However, there also reasons to be lenient on the very young (minors).
Our judicial system, for better or worse, values the freedom of a first time offender over a havitual criminal (read-- one who has committed two felonies.)
In California, a twice felon will face life in prison for petty larceny, but a naive kid won't. Under you fractional life system of sentencing, the kid would "serve" longer than the experienced criminal.
In addition, prison time is dangerous. That makes calculating actuarial parole messy.
Well, there's still the pornographic stories that pop up occasionally.
But trolls have never made up the majority of a large (>60 comment). The recent stories about the election have generated in excess of 500 and 1000 comments.
Getting back on topic-- does anybody have any technical specifics on the Transmeta bug?
Re:why such a fast RAMDAC?
on
Nvidia's NV20
·
· Score: 2
HDTV has a resolution of 1920*1080 or 1280*720. A 350 Mhz ramdac will drive a display at 2048*1536 at 75 Hz.
Supposedly, the correct formula is (RAMDAC speed (MHz) = x * y * refresh rate * 1.32)
So, a 500 Mhz RAMDAC would be able to drive a 1536*2048 display at 120 Hz. I'm sure the calculations are slightly different for widescreen displays.
That's the problem with real world benchmarks. MPEG-4 encoding is associated (by some) with piracy. On the other hand, the publication of (original) digital video might well become a common pastime in the next few years. In the mean time, it does provide a sort of real world application that (some) can appreciate.
I'm not sure that SPEC2000 is an appropriate solution. Most people don't care about the performance of a "quantum-chromodynamics" simulation, and are not involved in compuutational fluid dynamics. The integer simulations are a little closer to home (word processing, chess playing, perl...) but unless your "real world" approximates the "real world" the benchmarks are trying to simulate, the results of such benchmarks are difficult to appreciate.
I supect that to many people, a Quake/Unreal benchmark is much more valuable than SPEC2000 results.
At some point, recompilation doesn't cut it. Yes, recompilation produced almost a four fold increase in efficiency, bringing the Pentium IV to a level comparable with the Althon, (which benefited from a (nearly) ncrease in efficiency), the SSE2 improvement is even more dramatic. And one can't simply recompile to use SSE2.
Metropolitan France is basically European France. Offilially, it does not include French Guiana (.gf), Guadeloupe (.gp), Martinique (.mq), New Caledonia (.nc), French Polynesia (.pf), Saint Pierre and Miquelon (.pm), Reunion (.re), French Southern Territories (.tf), Wallis and Futana Islands (.wf), or Mayotte (.yt). Properly, all of these overseas "territories" are integral parts of France...
The smithsonian institution uses "si.edu". Arguably, the smithsonian institution is educational, even though it does not fit into the "four year institution" category. The smithsonian tropical research center, for instance, supports academic research.
InsuranceFactory.edu is pure abuse. So is clue.edu. I think someone needs to start purging the *.edu tld.
A censoring proxy can prevent outside computers from ascertaining the identity of the end-user. But, a censoring proxy also allows a supervisor to log usage, and defeat attempts by that end-user to conceal his intentions... (The best anonimizers use encryption to defeat network snooping/logs.)
Let us consider the implications of this. Employers who use censorware proxies may be fully within their rights to use such proxies as a method of monitoring web traffic from internal computers-- though such proxies are perhaps not efficient for this application. Whether it is ethical is quite another question. Anonymous whistleblowers may be hindered by a lack of anonymity, though I am sure that some managers believe that anonymity simply has no redeeming value-- especially when used for "whistleblowers"-- and perhaps these managers are among the first to install censorware.
Of course, readers of YRO are aware that network traffic logs from libraies and schools are public records, and thus subject to release to the general public. So, use of an anonymizing service in a public library might well be a good idea... a good idea blocked by the unfortunate reality of a censoring proxy.
As for translators, perhaps the censorware vendors might include a special version of Systran/Babelfish. But seeing as censorware is likely to confuse normal English idiom for "naughty words", and thus block an "innocent" page, and babelfish is innacurate (and thus likely to trigger a naughty word algorithm erroneously) the technical hurdles associated with inclusing a "safe" version of babelfish are immense indeed.
It depends what areas of science you're interested in. But, yes, the military has lots and lots of play money. Genome research is funded in large part by the Department of Energy. (Don't ask me why)
Basic Research, though, is still dominated by academic institutions (and charitable foundations.) There is a way to qualitatively measurethis assertion btw. Look at where the top cited papers come from. Periodically Science and Nature publish the results of such "mini-studies" on citation counts.
You want an incentive? Isn't the honor of seeing a journal article attached to your name incentive enough? And if you can't get a journal to print your letter or article on the new gene, perhaps, your discovery doesn't really merit a patent either.
Scientific research is not driven primarily by commercial institutions. It's driven by academics. Gene liscences, patents, and other concepts of intellectual property stifle the academic process.
I'm really surprised that Genset has patents on 36000 sequences. Considering tht the median number of human genes is about 53 thousand , this seems a bit high. Of course, some of Gensets sequences may duplicate genes. More likely however, is the possibility that Genset has patented a goodly number of introns (non-coding sequences).
It's easy to alter digital records if you know how, but to falsify 10,000 paper ballots is another story.
A double punched ballot is invalid-- one can't vote for both Gore and Bush. It may be a little difficult to add "extra" punches, but it's not impossible. Ballot boxes can always "fall off a truck," as well.
Virginia was safely Republican. Everyone knew that-- and the major candidates "respected" that conventional wisdom. Conversely, Florida was a "battleground" state. If electoral votes were not assigned in a plurality take all fashion, my vote could have had some political impact, and not merely have made a small statement. My comment is not a "crock of shit", it merely pointed out that the Electoral College system diminished the power of my vote to almost nothing. My vote was and is less valuable than a Floridian vote.
The most cheesiest lesson learned in this election is that "Every Vote counts." Wrong. The only locality where one vote makes a difference is in Florida. Even there, its not clear that the votes in Palm Beach will count...
I live in Virginia. As I read the returns, I was struck by the notion that if only 210,000 votes had been for Gore rather than for Bush, Gore could have carried the election without Florida. Wow. To think that my vote really made a difference... The feeling of personal power is just intoxicating.
Whether Gore wil win this election will be decided by handful of voters in Florida. It will be decided through legal wrangling, through disqualifications, and the end result will most probably smell.
Cmdr Taco wrote:
Apparently font issue on ballots caused about 2000 seniors with less then
20/20 vision to vote for Buchanen instead of gore.
What's the source of this info? I can't find a single article in the news that suggests this may be a problem? Am I really supposed to believe the word of Slashdot? (I'm a Gore supporter, and am tempted to believe that Gore was denied votes he should have gotten, but citations would be nice.)
Ah, but newish Microsoft products will stop working if you don't register. Presumably this falls under the rubric of "self-help", which, under the Uniform Commercial Information Transations Act allows computer companies, in the event of a dispute, to disable software remotely.
I had a book of walkthroughs for adventure games-- maps and solutions for Zork, Sherwood Forest, Enchanter... It also had a solution set for "Softporn adventure." It didn't sound very impressive. Of course, I was about ten when I aquired this solutions manual.
Anyway, a walkthrough for softporn is available here
Note that the various online editions of the Red Book are not up to date. The Red Book, third edition, (which is not available online) has more explanations, and covers the current version of OpenGL, 1.2.
Of course, since a certain Washington based operating systems company has been dragging its feet on releasing 1.2, that last feature might not be so important.
Q - Can SDMI-compliant devices play MP3 files?
A - Yes. SDMI-compliant devices will be able to play all existing digital formats; it is up to the manufacturer of each device to choose which particular formats to support. The only content SDMI-compliant devices will not play is illegally copied SDMI music beginning in Phase 2.
Unlike non-SDMI devices, SDMI devices can also be upgraded to play new music released in the future in new SDMI-compliant formats. And many SDMI portable devices will be able to play music that is digitally downloaded in new, protected formats right away.
9. Q - Will the watermark technology chosen for Phase 1 interfere with existing CD players?
A - There are hundreds of millions of CD players in the marketplace and nothing being done within SDMI will in any way limit consumers' ability to use those machines with existing and new CDs.
These two statements imply that, while "Phase 1" does not harm fair use rights, "Phase 2" will include technologies that restrict the playing of a "illegally copied" SDMI file. The implicit assumption, in restricting Question 9, above, to both "Phase 1" SDMI, and "existing CD players" is that eventually "Phase 2" SDMI and future CD players will work together to disable copying of music.
The copyright industry has long held the assumption that "fair use" is only a defence against claims of copyright infringement, and does not constitute a right in itself. In their view, all copying is illegal, unless specifically authorized by a court (in dismissing a infringement suit), or by the copyright owner. So, even if a consumer wishes to copy music to give to a friend, or excerpt a segment for a brief review (all examples of fair use), he or she will be stymied by "anti-piracy" features in the SDMI-2 spec.
CSS, SDMI, and like technologies act as contracts, to be enforced by compliant devices. These enforcement mechanisms will eventually have technological ability to prevent copying, and Congress has passed a number of laws (17 US Code 1201 et seq) that attach legal penalties to the circumvention of these pseudo contracts.
If and when SDMI becomes widespread, various lobyists from the RIAA, MPPA et al. will propose that the importation and manufacture of devices that do not recognize SDMI be banned (as contributing to piracy). (DAT players and VHS VCRs are already required to implement "Serial Copy Management System" and "Color stripe" respectively.
So yes, SDMI is something to be feared. It's akin to having an RIAA lawyer living in your computer.
Cynically, one might argue that, since money = speech (Buckley vs Valeo 424 U.S. 1 (1976) ), this can be interpreted as allowing large wads of anonymous speech to be spent in Federal Elections...
Then the X11 vendors could get in the act: "We don't just sell Windows, we sell you a Window System. It would be akin to those somewhat unscrupulous dealers who sell "vinyl window systems" to retirees...
(come on, people have won Nobel Prices by showing that free markets make everybody richer)
Yes, the deregulated electricity markets in California have at least made electricity sellers richer. The biggest problem with a lot of the "free market" ideology is that there are already a number of restrictions on how free the market can be. In the electrical power market, there was already a limited supply of power, it takes a long time to build new power stations, and many elctrical power companies are perfectly comfortable with an economy of scarcity.
A number of noble laureates, who have studied option prices, succeeded in bankrupting their company and neccesitated a government bailout to the tune of billions of dollars. They had believed that they could make money by eliminating the risks inherent in options trading. Many explanations have been given for the demise of Long Term Capital Management, but perhaps the simplest explanation was that the market simply was not big enough to absorb the risks associated with a default on Russian Bank loans.
The Nobel Laureate James Buchanan believes that society can be modeled and structured on the premise that every one is capable of perfectly rational choices (Homo Economicus). Many people, however, are beholden to economically irrational beliefs, or belief structures opaque to economic reasoning...
Perhaps there should be a gradual drift towards a free market utopia. But such a drift should not begin by eliminating structure that prevent megacorporations such as Time-Warner-AOL from excercising their economic power to societies detriment.
Most people weould probably agree with that statement that "slavery is morally wrong." It can probably be argued, that, in a free market, slavery is economically unfeasible. Yet in many societies, slavery remained a stable economic force.
Absolutely Free society: slavery is not banned, slavery is economically unfeasible.
Society A: slavery is banned, slavery would be economically feasible, were it not for the ban.
Society B: slavery is not banned, slavery is economically feasible, and is practiced.
Most people would see Society A as preferable to Society B, and perhaps even to the Absolutely Free Society.
Slashdot Mirror
more to the point-- neither pcAnywhere nor Microsoft Windows NT are open source. These software packages are both subject to vendor supplied back-doors, and hacker supplied attacks.
In Ohio (and, I suspect, in many other places), you can go to jail rather than pay a fine. If you're too poor to pay $500, you can "serve" 20 days in jail instead. Soak the poor indeed.
Basing jail terms on actuarial statistics is problematic, though. Judges are often lenient on the very old. However, there also reasons to be lenient on the very young (minors).
Our judicial system, for better or worse, values the freedom of a first time offender over a havitual criminal (read-- one who has committed two felonies.)
In California, a twice felon will face life in prison for petty larceny, but a naive kid won't. Under you fractional life system of sentencing, the kid would "serve" longer than the experienced criminal.
In addition, prison time is dangerous. That makes calculating actuarial parole messy.
Well, there's still the pornographic stories that pop up occasionally.
But trolls have never made up the majority of a large (>60 comment). The recent stories about the election have generated in excess of 500 and 1000 comments.
Getting back on topic-- does anybody have any technical specifics on the Transmeta bug?
HDTV has a resolution of 1920*1080 or 1280*720. A 350 Mhz ramdac will drive a display at 2048*1536 at 75 Hz.
Supposedly, the correct formula is (RAMDAC speed (MHz) = x * y * refresh rate * 1.32)
So, a 500 Mhz RAMDAC would be able to drive a 1536*2048 display at 120 Hz. I'm sure the calculations are slightly different for widescreen displays.
That's the problem with real world benchmarks. MPEG-4 encoding is associated (by some) with piracy. On the other hand, the publication of (original) digital video might well become a common pastime in the next few years. In the mean time, it does provide a sort of real world application that (some) can appreciate.
I'm not sure that SPEC2000 is an appropriate solution. Most people don't care about the performance of a "quantum-chromodynamics" simulation, and are not involved in compuutational fluid dynamics. The integer simulations are a little closer to home (word processing, chess playing, perl...) but unless your "real world" approximates the "real world" the benchmarks are trying to simulate, the results of such benchmarks are difficult to appreciate.
I supect that to many people, a Quake/Unreal benchmark is much more valuable than SPEC2000 results.
At some point, recompilation doesn't cut it. Yes, recompilation produced almost a four fold increase in efficiency, bringing the Pentium IV to a level comparable with the Althon, (which benefited from a (nearly) ncrease in efficiency), the SSE2 improvement is even more dramatic. And one can't simply recompile to use SSE2.
Metropolitan France is basically European France. Offilially, it does not include French Guiana (.gf), Guadeloupe (.gp), Martinique (.mq), New Caledonia (.nc), French Polynesia (.pf), Saint Pierre and Miquelon (.pm), Reunion (.re), French Southern Territories (.tf), Wallis and Futana Islands (.wf), or Mayotte (.yt). Properly, all of these overseas "territories" are integral parts of France...
*.pro.dom?
Don't those properly belong in the *.xxx tld?
/me ducks
The smithsonian institution uses "si.edu". Arguably, the smithsonian institution is educational, even though it does not fit into the "four year institution" category. The smithsonian tropical research center, for instance, supports academic research.
InsuranceFactory.edu is pure abuse. So is clue.edu. I think someone needs to start purging the *.edu tld.
A censoring proxy can prevent outside computers from ascertaining the identity of the end-user. But, a censoring proxy also allows a supervisor to log usage, and defeat attempts by that end-user to conceal his intentions... (The best anonimizers use encryption to defeat network snooping/logs.)
Let us consider the implications of this. Employers who use censorware proxies may be fully within their rights to use such proxies as a method of monitoring web traffic from internal computers-- though such proxies are perhaps not efficient for this application. Whether it is ethical is quite another question. Anonymous whistleblowers may be hindered by a lack of anonymity, though I am sure that some managers believe that anonymity simply has no redeeming value-- especially when used for "whistleblowers"-- and perhaps these managers are among the first to install censorware.
Of course, readers of YRO are aware that network traffic logs from libraies and schools are public records, and thus subject to release to the general public. So, use of an anonymizing service in a public library might well be a good idea... a good idea blocked by the unfortunate reality of a censoring proxy.
As for translators, perhaps the censorware vendors might include a special version of Systran/Babelfish. But seeing as censorware is likely to confuse normal English idiom for "naughty words", and thus block an "innocent" page, and babelfish is innacurate (and thus likely to trigger a naughty word algorithm erroneously) the technical hurdles associated with inclusing a "safe" version of babelfish are immense indeed.
It depends what areas of science you're interested in. But, yes, the military has lots and lots of play money. Genome research is funded in large part by the Department of Energy. (Don't ask me why)
Basic Research, though, is still dominated by academic institutions (and charitable foundations.) There is a way to qualitatively measurethis assertion btw. Look at where the top cited papers come from. Periodically Science and Nature publish the results of such "mini-studies" on citation counts.
Scientific research is not driven primarily by commercial institutions. It's driven by academics. Gene liscences, patents, and other concepts of intellectual property stifle the academic process.
I'm really surprised that Genset has patents on 36000 sequences. Considering tht the median number of human genes is about 53 thousand , this seems a bit high. Of course, some of Gensets sequences may duplicate genes. More likely however, is the possibility that Genset has patented a goodly number of introns (non-coding sequences).
It's easy to alter digital records if you know how, but to falsify 10,000 paper ballots is another story.
A double punched ballot is invalid-- one can't vote for both Gore and Bush. It may be a little difficult to add "extra" punches, but it's not impossible. Ballot boxes can always "fall off a truck," as well.
Virginia was safely Republican. Everyone knew that-- and the major candidates "respected" that conventional wisdom. Conversely, Florida was a "battleground" state. If electoral votes were not assigned in a plurality take all fashion, my vote could have had some political impact, and not merely have made a small statement. My comment is not a "crock of shit", it merely pointed out that the Electoral College system diminished the power of my vote to almost nothing. My vote was and is less valuable than a Floridian vote.
The most cheesiest lesson learned in this election is that "Every Vote counts." Wrong. The only locality where one vote makes a difference is in Florida. Even there, its not clear that the votes in Palm Beach will count...
I live in Virginia. As I read the returns, I was struck by the notion that if only 210,000 votes had been for Gore rather than for Bush, Gore could have carried the election without Florida. Wow. To think that my vote really made a difference... The feeling of personal power is just intoxicating.
Whether Gore wil win this election will be decided by handful of voters in Florida. It will be decided through legal wrangling, through disqualifications, and the end result will most probably smell.
Thanks for the links. I can imagine that the ballot design had a possibility of confusing the far-sighted. Perhaps they should have used colored bars.
G.O.P = "Grand Old Party." Apparently, it's the official nickname. The Republican National Commitee explains it here.
What's the source of this info? I can't find a single article in the news that suggests this may be a problem? Am I really supposed to believe the word of Slashdot? (I'm a Gore supporter, and am tempted to believe that Gore was denied votes he should have gotten, but citations would be nice.)
Ah, but newish Microsoft products will stop working if you don't register. Presumably this falls under the rubric of "self-help", which, under the Uniform Commercial Information Transations Act allows computer companies, in the event of a dispute, to disable software remotely.
I had a book of walkthroughs for adventure games-- maps and solutions for Zork, Sherwood Forest, Enchanter... It also had a solution set for "Softporn adventure." It didn't sound very impressive. Of course, I was about ten when I aquired this solutions manual. Anyway, a walkthrough for softporn is available here
Note that the various online editions of the Red Book are not up to date. The Red Book, third edition, (which is not available online) has more explanations, and covers the current version of OpenGL, 1.2.
Of course, since a certain Washington based operating systems company has been dragging its feet on releasing 1.2, that last feature might not be so important.
Q - Can SDMI-compliant devices play MP3 files? A - Yes. SDMI-compliant devices will be able to play all existing digital formats; it is up to the manufacturer of each device to choose which particular formats to support. The only content SDMI-compliant devices will not play is illegally copied SDMI music beginning in Phase 2. Unlike non-SDMI devices, SDMI devices can also be upgraded to play new music released in the future in new SDMI-compliant formats. And many SDMI portable devices will be able to play music that is digitally downloaded in new, protected formats right away.
9. Q - Will the watermark technology chosen for Phase 1 interfere with existing CD players? A - There are hundreds of millions of CD players in the marketplace and nothing being done within SDMI will in any way limit consumers' ability to use those machines with existing and new CDs.
These two statements imply that, while "Phase 1" does not harm fair use rights, "Phase 2" will include technologies that restrict the playing of a "illegally copied" SDMI file. The implicit assumption, in restricting Question 9, above, to both "Phase 1" SDMI, and "existing CD players" is that eventually "Phase 2" SDMI and future CD players will work together to disable copying of music.
The copyright industry has long held the assumption that "fair use" is only a defence against claims of copyright infringement, and does not constitute a right in itself. In their view, all copying is illegal, unless specifically authorized by a court (in dismissing a infringement suit), or by the copyright owner. So, even if a consumer wishes to copy music to give to a friend, or excerpt a segment for a brief review (all examples of fair use), he or she will be stymied by "anti-piracy" features in the SDMI-2 spec.
CSS, SDMI, and like technologies act as contracts, to be enforced by compliant devices. These enforcement mechanisms will eventually have technological ability to prevent copying, and Congress has passed a number of laws (17 US Code 1201 et seq) that attach legal penalties to the circumvention of these pseudo contracts.
If and when SDMI becomes widespread, various lobyists from the RIAA, MPPA et al. will propose that the importation and manufacture of devices that do not recognize SDMI be banned (as contributing to piracy). (DAT players and VHS VCRs are already required to implement "Serial Copy Management System" and "Color stripe" respectively.
So yes, SDMI is something to be feared. It's akin to having an RIAA lawyer living in your computer.
Cynically, one might argue that, since money = speech (Buckley vs Valeo 424 U.S. 1 (1976) ), this can be interpreted as allowing large wads of anonymous speech to be spent in Federal Elections...
Then the X11 vendors could get in the act: "We don't just sell Windows, we sell you a Window System. It would be akin to those somewhat unscrupulous dealers who sell "vinyl window systems" to retirees...
Yes, the deregulated electricity markets in California have at least made electricity sellers richer. The biggest problem with a lot of the "free market" ideology is that there are already a number of restrictions on how free the market can be. In the electrical power market, there was already a limited supply of power, it takes a long time to build new power stations, and many elctrical power companies are perfectly comfortable with an economy of scarcity.
A number of noble laureates, who have studied option prices, succeeded in bankrupting their company and neccesitated a government bailout to the tune of billions of dollars. They had believed that they could make money by eliminating the risks inherent in options trading. Many explanations have been given for the demise of Long Term Capital Management, but perhaps the simplest explanation was that the market simply was not big enough to absorb the risks associated with a default on Russian Bank loans.
The Nobel Laureate James Buchanan believes that society can be modeled and structured on the premise that every one is capable of perfectly rational choices (Homo Economicus). Many people, however, are beholden to economically irrational beliefs, or belief structures opaque to economic reasoning...
Perhaps there should be a gradual drift towards a free market utopia. But such a drift should not begin by eliminating structure that prevent megacorporations such as Time-Warner-AOL from excercising their economic power to societies detriment.
Most people weould probably agree with that statement that "slavery is morally wrong." It can probably be argued, that, in a free market, slavery is economically unfeasible. Yet in many societies, slavery remained a stable economic force.
Absolutely Free society: slavery is not banned, slavery is economically unfeasible.
Society A: slavery is banned, slavery would be economically feasible, were it not for the ban.
Society B: slavery is not banned, slavery is economically feasible, and is practiced.
Most people would see Society A as preferable to Society B, and perhaps even to the Absolutely Free Society.