Which again points out just how much of a joke Unix is. If the OS makes no distinction between folders (that's what directories are called in an Object Oriented operating system like Windows) and files, then how can you explore the C: drive? I mean, having to open a file called 'paths.dir' in notepad.exe just to find your files? I'm beginning to suspect that someone is taking the mickey.
I don't know what you are trying to say there, perhaps there is a loose connection in your internet modem or somesuch.
But this 'solution' seems to have nothing in common with an XML driven agent based security infrastructure, which I hear Microsoft will be developing for their next Windows release. Any modern, user-friendly Operating System would have something along those lines.
Unix's security 'model' seems to be nothing more than a 'please do not modify this file' mark. I am surprised it is even considered as a viable operating system.
At least Microsoft makes an attempt to identify non-secure PCs, while Unix security goes no further than 'read-only' flags on files (and only files, directories are by default read/write, so anybody can delete your files.)
'- just about the only journal which gives a platform to all sides of the global warming debate, especially on the policy issues.'
Now, this may just be my cynicism talking, but most publications that claim to represent all sides of a debate usually don't. Often, they represent the view that is against the mainstream, and so there may be bias against global climate change. The second, and MUCH LARGER red flag is the the phrase "Policy issues". In other words, the journal is overtly political. It's very hard for a political publication to sit on a fence. (Excepting of course the obvious, such as Hansard which are just records.)
On the other hand, like any other area of science surrounded by controversy, it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. All sides will reach for anything that supports their position, no matter how tenuous, and so you get a lot of bullshit, making real, hard science hard to find and hard to do.
As for my own position, so that you know where I am coming from, is this:
The 'hockey stick' graph is probably dodgy. It may reflect reality, but the nature of it's derivation makes it suspicious. There is, however, other data on global warming, such as the shrinkage of the world glaciers, ice shelf collapse, more intense weather, etc, etc. How much of this is natural variation and how much is human induced, it's hard to say. One side would have you believe it's nearly all our fault, the other thinks it's just another cycle. I don't know where we could get the data to make a rough estimate at the proportion, but I suspect taking a core from some really really old trees might help, such as the giant sequoia.
Additionally, this is an area where there are monied interests, and they can and will fight the new order if their interests are threatened. (For a more extreme example, look at how much FUD Big Tobacco threw at smoking related diseases.)
Is climate change going to wipe life off the planet? No. Other forms of environmental disturbance might, such as a massive toxin leak, but that too would have to be pretty big. The earth has been warmer in the past, and it will probably be warmer in the future. It's also been a lot colder. Life is remarkably able to withstand knocks. If all but the most primitive bacteria were wiped out by a comet strike, I'd be willing to bet there'd be life back on the surface within one hundred million years, and certainly by one billion years.
Individual species, however, become extinct quite readily, and often in groups. What possibly very rapid climate change will do is make the biodiversity of life plummet. As the climate of an area changes, all the specialist species, adapted to various niches, will find those niches disappearing, and will die out. If we lose the ice caps, we'll probably lose many seal, walrus, penguin, polar bear and artic fox species, and many more. Of course, given how interlinked an ecosystem is, there will probably be flow on effects. Essentially, some species won't be able to cope with the new conditions, anything that depends on those species will also die out, whether it's through a broken symbioses or from starvation. The effect of those lost species ripples through the ecosystem, causing species to go extinct, especially the highly specialised ones.
But why is losing biodiversity bad? Apart from the loss of the individual species, a system with low biodiversity is a lot more fragile, and a lot less efficient, and a lot less stable than one with great diversity. It's more fragile, because biodiversity acts as an ecosystem's buffer against stress. A good analogy is that game where you have a tower of blocks, and you pull out blocks one by one, until the tower collapses. Except now you're doing it with deeply interlocked blocks, and you also can't see all the connections. When you have a lot of blocks, the loss of a single block is not as likely to cause collapse as when you have only a few.
As for the efficiency of diverse ecosystems, when you have more ways of using the resource
There's a TV ad here encouraging people to wear seatbelts. It says "Of the xxx fatal car crashes in Tasmania last year, 1 in 3 weren't wearing a seatbelt" or words to that effect. I joke that this means you are twice as likely to die if you wear a seatbelt. The error in that logic is that there are far more people wearing seatbelts than not.
What I'd like to see is the percentage of Windows users moving to Linux, not the percentage of Linux users who came from Windows.
Protect the children from phonography! Phonography is all over the internet, and the League for Moral Turpitude will stop at nothing to destroy this exploitative industry!
wrote a long document talking about how my very reliable Perl based user tracking and billing system was not 'industry standard', and should be replaced by a pile of expensive Cisco stuff because that was 'Industry Standard[tm]'.
I'd only seriously consider an Industry Standard if it really was, not some vendors idea of one. (LDAP is an industry standard, Active Directory isn't. IMHO) And even that bit of information would only come into it if I had two choices with exactly the same functionality and support needs... essentially all else being equal.
And replacing something that 1) works, 2) is supported 2a) by someone in the comapny and 3) does all that's needed, by an Industry Standard(TM) is the sign of somebody who doesn't really know what they are doing. Again, this is my opinion.
For the record, I'm 19 (and 4 months!:), and have worked in the computer industry since I was 16. (For essentially the same person/people) I'd say I'd have about 6 months or less experience, since I've only been working part-time in between school and Uni. There have been a few times when I thought the management was bugging me since I was young, but when I look back with that 20/20 Hindsight, I can see what they were on about.
When you need keep reminding people of your experience and qualifications, I feel that you don't really have them. While you may have the stiff cardboard, you don't show it in your actions, so you have to tell people about it.
To the original questioner, At 19, you don't have as much experience as you think you do. Yes, I am exactly the same age as you. In fact, when I started reading the question, I had to check that it wasn't me asking, from the depths of some sleep deprivation. You've got the sort of problems most of us encounter for the first time while working at $FASTFOODPLACE or $SUPERMARKET. Thing is these places expect you to deal with things as a teenager, and let you learn how to behave in a workplace. I suspect you, like me, never did anything like that, so we have to learn 'on-the-job'. You may have talent in buckets, but talent is only half the answer. It's dealing with the people involved that a lot of people, myself included, fall down on.
That's how most companies make an income, by exchanging goods or services for money.
Not by selling advertising space, and providing freebies or sausage sizzles or other methods to attract eyeballs.
These people are targeting the wrong customers. Instead of targeting the people visiting the site to buy stuff, they are targeting the people with ads to sell.
In this case, it is to ignore the offensive website. When a company starts to insult the decisions of potential customers, they lose more customers than they gain.
But what if you need something that the website provides? Look elsewhere. When there are enough people requiring the services of one company, but who do not want to go to that company, another can come in. By being freindlier to their customers, all else being equal, they can gobble up market share.
But it's your choice whether the companies force-advertising you will succeed or not, because they depend on you, and not the other way around.
Anybody using a 2.4 kernel for a production firewall needs to be LARTed, for exactly this reason. Whenever a major architecture changes, many bugs are bound to appear. I will stick with a 2.2 kernel on my firewall until 2.4 has matured a bit more. For production systems, the latest and greatest can be bad, mostly because of those early bugs. It's best to stay about a year or so behind when it comes to major upgrades. I'll probably start using 2.4 on my servers late this year. Another factor is "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Unless a kernel is seriously broken, I won't be upgrading. I upgraded my kernel recently because of security concerns, but I won't be jumping to a new branch until it has been somewhat stressed.
Personally, I wouldn't find a liter of grey tissue sexy. Firstly, Why are the tissues grey? have they been used? and secondly why is there a liter of them? Why are you using a fluid measure for discrete objects. Unless of course they were all wet... Eugh.
It seems like you have hit the nail on the head. Too many computer science types overlook the fact that science is one of the most computationally hungry and cutting edge field for programmers to work in. A lot more novel algorithms and insights need to be developed to analyse gene sequences and astronomical spectrographs than are needed for a B2B dynamic fully buzzword compliant e-commerce portal.
Whats more, the probability for the work of a scientist to interest me, and keep my brain engaged and stimulated is a lot higher than that of, say, an accounting firm. Science, such as physics, interests me, and it's garunteed you'll produce better code if you are interested in what you are doing. If you understand some of the principles behind the code you're writing, you can see more to make better design choices.
But many computer science students see those big dollar salaries and get all gooey eyed. I think jwz put it best when describing the decline of Netscape (And this quote is from memory so I may get it slightly wrong) "We had too many people that wanted to work for a sucessful company, than people who wanted to sucessfully work for a company". And yet, many skillful programmers first took up the habit for the joy of the code, and the striving for the perfect code to do a task. I would say that for these people, working in a research setting would be just as or more satisfied than a business oriented job.(At least I would, but I'm me)
Now I would love to work in a place like yours. But I fear I am in the wrong place (Tasmania), without enough Qualifications (CCNA, just started BCompSci from UNE, TCE. No PhD sorry), and stuck in a place where my programming skills are not likely to be used.
Good luck in your search for a hacker. The programmers are out there, and many would jump at an opportunity to work in a research setting. You've probably now found a few likely candidates from this. It's just annoying that the field has many people that are in it for the money alone. At least we have a few good geeks around, doing some useful coding.
> No. We have a bunch of separate namespaces, each with their own centralized server. And each one has it's own protocol, which is either open or closed. But it doesn't matter, because they don't talk to each other.
That's what I meant, but not what I wrote. Sorry. I should prooread mroe carfully.
> I would agree with you wholeheartedly if AOL was trying to prevent everyone else from developing their own IM protocols and systems, but they're not. They're just keeping their own system private. Go work on the open standards protocols. If one gets developed that is so great, and everyone starts adopting it as the standard, then maybe you'll take some AIM customers away from AOL, or force them to be compatible.
AOL is not trying to prevent alternatives from springing up. To do that would be 'Dangerous' from the companies perspective. The thing with systems like Telephones, Email systems, and IM systems, is network effects. If there is a system with 200 users and on with 190 users, the 200 user system will gradually take users of the 190 system, all else being equal. It may be that the 200 user system got there by being better, and probably did. But the 190 users should have the option of staying where they are if they want to. Think TCP/IP and SPX/IPX. IP had more users, and IPX has faded from the spotlight. Whether or not this is a good thing I am not in a position to decide.
What I'm saying is that AOL, and ICQ, and MSN, and all other major IM providers should have an exchange protocol between the major networks, so that Joe16 on MSN (Joe16@msn.com) can send a message to MaryLou on AOL (maryloug@aol.com). Make the service independent of the provider. I've changed my mind. AIM Client - AIM Server doesn't have to be open, but there should be a AIM Server - anything Server that is open. Thanks, You made a good point.
Well, it doesn't surprise me that AOL is doing this. They are a business. They need as many 'Official' aim clients out there, so that they can change the protocol at will to include things like advertising. It makes good business sense to ensure that the users of it's IM service are running a client that AOL can manipulate, to sell the 'eyeballs'. If they can't be sure that all x number of people will see the adverts, then they can't make as much money. Simple business decision. It sucks for consumers, but it's the best thing AOL can do for itself.
This is good for AOL, but bad for the internet. The problem with the internet at the moment is that it has major applications that do not have simple, open, commodity protocols accepted by the majority of users of that service.
What lets email work so well is RFC821 and PFC822, defining the transport and the format of email so that clients and servers need not be tied to each other.
Now instant messaging in it's current state is horrible. We have a disjoint set of non-structured namespaces (BigMan200 anybody?), We have a single centralised server. And the protocol is closed.
Of course, most IM issues were solved by email years ago. Unless I'm being very dense, it wouldn't be too hard to make IM id's similar to email addresses (I have a sneaking suspicion that Jabber does this, but I haven't looked at it close enough).
I think AIM needs to be confiscated from AOL. While I think they do have a right to make a very nice looking client, and a server that can deal with huge loads, and use them to make a profit, they should not be allowed to lock up the protocol between the two. This is the major strength of the internet, the openness, simplicity and strict focus of the protocols employed by most internet clients. For all but a few protocols, the communication can be done by a clueful individual with a telnet client. (I have done this, and it is a lot of fun. EHLO everyone!) If the AIM protocol remains closed and binary, it will stay linked with AOL. We don't need another propriety protocol polluting pathways with packets parsable by 'proper' programs.
So, what I'm saying is: The client can stay AOL's. The server can stay AOL's. But the protocol should be open and hacker friendly. Please AOL, let the Internet do the right thing. It may be bad for your monopoly on the technology, but it will be good for avoiding the scrutiny of the anti-trust lawyers in years to come. Write some RFCs. Asciify your protocol. Amaze people with your Clue.
Now remember, this is an opinion. Yours may be different, and I like to change mine if I see one that looks good.
Just for those that don't understand what leptons and quarks are, here's particle physics 101:
Leptons are the 'light particles'. they have less mass than most other commonly seen particles. There are six types. The electron, the muon, the tauon, and the neutrino. Now that looks like only four because their are three types of neutrino, the elctron neutrino, the muon neutrino and the tauon neutrino.There are three types so that the 'families' are preserved.
Now the nuetrino was introduced in order to preserve a quantity known as spin. All the leptons have spin 1/2, and are fermions. Fermions are particles that follow the Pauli exclusion principle, so no two fermions are in the same quantum state. Now when a neutron decays into a proton and an electron, charge is preserved, whoever spin isn't, because the neutron has spin +-1/2, the proton has spin +-1/2, and so does the electron. In order to get the spins balancing, you need a neutral extra spin 1/2 particle.
Now about those 'familys' I mentioned earlier? Well, only the electron is stable among the non-neutrino leptons. The others decay into an electron and a bunch of neutrinos. However the number of particles in each family remains constant. So when a muon decays (1 muon), it decays into an electron (1 electron), a muon netrino (1 muon) and an electron _anti_neutrino (-1 electron)
So there are six leptons, tauons and muons decay into electrons, but leave behind neutrinos of the same family.However, the universe would not be at all interesting with only leptons. There are quarks as well.
There are also six flavours of quarks. This may or may not be coincidence. Last I checked physicists were unsure if there was a link between quarks and leptons. The six quarks are Up and Down, which form protons, and other stuff that decays into protons (and various leptons). There is strange and charmed, and top and bottom, which make up weird particles that tend to be heavier.
Quarks are never seen alone. They bind together in groups of three or two, and have a charge of +2/3 or -1/3. Now a group of three quarks (called a baryon or heavy particle), such as a proton would have two quarks with a charge of +2/3 and one with a charge of -1/3. I think a proton is uud. Now a neutron(ddu) turns into a proton when one of it's down quarks turns into an up quark, an electron, and two neutrinos. It does this using the weak force, which I'll get to later. Quarks also come in groups of two, which are a quark and an antiquark. These are mesons. They tend to be things like !ud or !du.
So you now have leptons, that help balance things and quarks, that stick together. But what forces act on them? Four. Gravity, Electromagnetism, Weak and Strong nuclear forces.
The strong force is what groups quarks together. All quarks have a color, red, green, or blue. Now in a baryon or meson, the overall color must be white. So a baryon is made up of a red quark, a green quark, and a blue quark. A meson usually has a blue colored quark and an antiblue colored antiquark. Or red/antired, or green/antigreen. As long as no red green or blue shows, the universe is happy. All this is kept in check by the strong force and it's messenger particle, the gluon. Gluons carry color between quarks. If a red quark changes to a green quark, a red/antigreen gluon is emmited, and when it hits a green quark, the antigreen and green colors cancel, and the previously green quark becomes red.
Then there is the weak force. The weak force changes things. It is responsible for the changes in a neutron that cause it to decay. There are three carrier particles for the weak force W+,W- and Z. they carry electrical charges of +1,-1, and 0 respectivly. Now when the d quark in a neutron decays, it emits a W-. the charge is conserved by the W- taking away -1 from the -1/3 to give a +2/3 charge. Now we have a u quark and a W-. the W- then decays into an electron and an electron antineutrino.
Then there is the electromagnetic force, which has as its messenger the photon. Now when two electrons pass by each other and deflect, a pair of photons is exchanged. These photons, like all the other messenger particles are virtual. They only exist for a fleeting second, and don't do much apart from tell the particles what to do. Electromagnetism only talks with particles with electric charge.
Finally there's gravity. Physicists havent yet got Quantum gravity, so they don't yet know how to fit it in with everything else. It's carrier is called the graviton, but nobody has yet caught a live one. Mostly because the energy needed to turn a virtual graviton into a real one is huge.
One last thing. The messenger particles are all bosons, so the can be acting cohesivly in a group. This gives things like lasers their intensity. Fermions can't do this, so you'll never see a easer.
The reason neutrinos are so hard to spot is because the have no mass, they don't interact gravitationally, they are electrically neutral, so they don't talk electromagnetism, and they aren't a quark, so they don't talk colors with the strong force. They can only be detected by their interaction with other particles through the weak force. This is what makes spotting them big physics.
BTW, remember that I may be wrong. IANAPhysicist.
Best crypto is what is not expected
on
Crypto
·
· Score: 1
Why is everybody dealing with crypto when it's only real use is for terrorists and peadophiles to hide they're nefarious activities.
What worries me is that crypto will become accepted by the public, making it harder for law enforcement officials to find the criminals before they hurt innocent people
Slashdot Mirror
Which again points out just how much of a joke Unix is. If the OS makes no distinction between folders (that's what directories are called in an Object Oriented operating system like Windows) and files, then how can you explore the C: drive? I mean, having to open a file called 'paths.dir' in notepad.exe just to find your files? I'm beginning to suspect that someone is taking the mickey.
I don't know what you are trying to say there, perhaps there is a loose connection in your internet modem or somesuch.
But this 'solution' seems to have nothing in common with an XML driven agent based security infrastructure, which I hear Microsoft will be developing for their next Windows release. Any modern, user-friendly Operating System would have something along those lines.
Unix's security 'model' seems to be nothing more than a 'please do not modify this file' mark. I am surprised it is even considered as a viable operating system.
At least Microsoft makes an attempt to identify non-secure PCs, while Unix security goes no further than 'read-only' flags on files (and only files, directories are by default read/write, so anybody can delete your files.)
'- just about the only journal which gives a platform to all sides of the global warming debate, especially on the policy issues.'
Now, this may just be my cynicism talking, but most publications that claim to represent all sides of a debate usually don't. Often, they represent the view that is against the mainstream, and so there may be bias against global climate change. The second, and MUCH LARGER red flag is the the phrase "Policy issues". In other words, the journal is overtly political. It's very hard for a political publication to sit on a fence. (Excepting of course the obvious, such as Hansard which are just records.)
On the other hand, like any other area of science surrounded by controversy, it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. All sides will reach for anything that supports their position, no matter how tenuous, and so you get a lot of bullshit, making real, hard science hard to find and hard to do.
As for my own position, so that you know where I am coming from, is this:
The 'hockey stick' graph is probably dodgy. It may reflect reality, but the nature of it's derivation makes it suspicious. There is, however, other data on global warming, such as the shrinkage of the world glaciers, ice shelf collapse, more intense weather, etc, etc. How much of this is natural variation and how much is human induced, it's hard to say. One side would have you believe it's nearly all our fault, the other thinks it's just another cycle. I don't know where we could get the data to make a rough estimate at the proportion, but I suspect taking a core from some really really old trees might help, such as the giant sequoia.
Additionally, this is an area where there are monied interests, and they can and will fight the new order if their interests are threatened. (For a more extreme example, look at how much FUD Big Tobacco threw at smoking related diseases.)
Is climate change going to wipe life off the planet? No. Other forms of environmental disturbance might, such as a massive toxin leak, but that too would have to be pretty big. The earth has been warmer in the past, and it will probably be warmer in the future. It's also been a lot colder. Life is remarkably able to withstand knocks. If all but the most primitive bacteria were wiped out by a comet strike, I'd be willing to bet there'd be life back on the surface within one hundred million years, and certainly by one billion years.
Individual species, however, become extinct quite readily, and often in groups. What possibly very rapid climate change will do is make the biodiversity of life plummet. As the climate of an area changes, all the specialist species, adapted to various niches, will find those niches disappearing, and will die out. If we lose the ice caps, we'll probably lose many seal, walrus, penguin, polar bear and artic fox species, and many more. Of course, given how interlinked an ecosystem is, there will probably be flow on effects. Essentially, some species won't be able to cope with the new conditions, anything that depends on those species will also die out, whether it's through a broken symbioses or from starvation. The effect of those lost species ripples through the ecosystem, causing species to go extinct, especially the highly specialised ones.
But why is losing biodiversity bad? Apart from the loss of the individual species, a system with low biodiversity is a lot more fragile, and a lot less efficient, and a lot less stable than one with great diversity. It's more fragile, because biodiversity acts as an ecosystem's buffer against stress. A good analogy is that game where you have a tower of blocks, and you pull out blocks one by one, until the tower collapses. Except now you're doing it with deeply interlocked blocks, and you also can't see all the connections. When you have a lot of blocks, the loss of a single block is not as likely to cause collapse as when you have only a few.
As for the efficiency of diverse ecosystems, when you have more ways of using the resource
> whats to stop companies from flashing "BUY COKE" every 180th frame.
Because the coca cola company has trademarked it.
Read up on your IP law.
It's not that hard to do now, if you wrap them up in that new Gecko tape.
There are a few other tassies here. I'm a Launcestonian. Even fewer Lonnies around.
Email me. james-nospam@vandenberg.dropbear.id.au.nospam
Because all is not what it seems.
There's a TV ad here encouraging people to wear seatbelts. It says "Of the xxx fatal car crashes in Tasmania last year, 1 in 3 weren't wearing a seatbelt" or words to that effect. I joke that this means you are twice as likely to die if you wear a seatbelt. The error in that logic is that there are far more people wearing seatbelts than not.
What I'd like to see is the percentage of Windows users moving to Linux, not the percentage of Linux users who came from Windows.
It's easy. Just give a Googlebot a large bottle of grog (I suggest Bundaberg Rum.)
You know, that's a very good idea. You'd have people choosing roles, making decisions, trading, building, and so on.
It'd be almost like real life.
Protect the children from phonography! Phonography is all over the internet, and the League for Moral Turpitude will stop at nothing to destroy this exploitative industry!
DOWN WITH PHONOGRAPHY!
I'd only seriously consider an Industry Standard if it really was, not some vendors idea of one. (LDAP is an industry standard, Active Directory isn't. IMHO) And even that bit of information would only come into it if I had two choices with exactly the same functionality and support needs... essentially all else being equal.
And replacing something that 1) works, 2) is supported 2a) by someone in the comapny and 3) does all that's needed, by an Industry Standard(TM) is the sign of somebody who doesn't really know what they are doing. Again, this is my opinion.
For the record, I'm 19 (and 4 months! :), and have worked in the computer industry since I was 16. (For essentially the same person/people) I'd say I'd have about 6 months or less experience, since I've only been working part-time in between school and Uni. There have been a few times when I thought the management was bugging me since I was young, but when I look back with that 20/20 Hindsight, I can see what they were on about.
When you need keep reminding people of your experience and qualifications, I feel that you don't really have them. While you may have the stiff cardboard, you don't show it in your actions, so you have to tell people about it.
To the original questioner, At 19, you don't have as much experience as you think you do. Yes, I am exactly the same age as you. In fact, when I started reading the question, I had to check that it wasn't me asking, from the depths of some sleep deprivation. You've got the sort of problems most of us encounter for the first time while working at $FASTFOODPLACE or $SUPERMARKET. Thing is these places expect you to deal with things as a teenager, and let you learn how to behave in a workplace. I suspect you, like me, never did anything like that, so we have to learn 'on-the-job'. You may have talent in buckets, but talent is only half the answer. It's dealing with the people involved that a lot of people, myself included, fall down on.
James
"Shuttleworth"
Almost as good as a dog trainer I know called Jack Russel
By selling things that people wish to buy.
That's how most companies make an income, by exchanging goods or services for money.
Not by selling advertising space, and providing freebies or sausage sizzles or other methods to attract eyeballs.
These people are targeting the wrong customers. Instead of targeting the people visiting the site to buy stuff, they are targeting the people with ads to sell.
Always there is a third option.
In this case, it is to ignore the offensive website. When a company starts to insult the decisions of potential customers, they lose more customers than they gain.
But what if you need something that the website provides? Look elsewhere. When there are enough people requiring the services of one company, but who do not want to go to that company, another can come in. By being freindlier to their customers, all else being equal, they can gobble up market share.
But it's your choice whether the companies force-advertising you will succeed or not, because they depend on you, and not the other way around.
Please investigate the .id.au domain.
I agree entirely. We should censor something, why not start there?
/. Wooo!!
/. Woo Hooo!!!!!
Hey Look #vortex, I got us on
Wooo!
Look Mum, I'm on
Anybody using a 2.4 kernel for a production firewall needs to be LARTed, for exactly this reason. Whenever a major architecture changes, many bugs are bound to appear. I will stick with a 2.2 kernel on my firewall until 2.4 has matured a bit more. For production systems, the latest and greatest can be bad, mostly because of those early bugs. It's best to stay about a year or so behind when it comes to major upgrades. I'll probably start using 2.4 on my servers late this year. Another factor is "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Unless a kernel is seriously broken, I won't be upgrading. I upgraded my kernel recently because of security concerns, but I won't be jumping to a new branch until it has been somewhat stressed.
Personally, I wouldn't find a liter of grey tissue sexy. Firstly, Why are the tissues grey? have they been used? and secondly why is there a liter of them? Why are you using a fluid measure for discrete objects. Unless of course they were all wet... Eugh.
It seems like you have hit the nail on the head. Too many computer science types overlook the fact that science is one of the most computationally hungry and cutting edge field for programmers to work in. A lot more novel algorithms and insights need to be developed to analyse gene sequences and astronomical spectrographs than are needed for a B2B dynamic fully buzzword compliant e-commerce portal.
Whats more, the probability for the work of a scientist to interest me, and keep my brain engaged and stimulated is a lot higher than that of, say, an accounting firm. Science, such as physics, interests me, and it's garunteed you'll produce better code if you are interested in what you are doing. If you understand some of the principles behind the code you're writing, you can see more to make better design choices.
But many computer science students see those big dollar salaries and get all gooey eyed. I think jwz put it best when describing the decline of Netscape (And this quote is from memory so I may get it slightly wrong) "We had too many people that wanted to work for a sucessful company, than people who wanted to sucessfully work for a company". And yet, many skillful programmers first took up the habit for the joy of the code, and the striving for the perfect code to do a task. I would say that for these people, working in a research setting would be just as or more satisfied than a business oriented job.(At least I would, but I'm me)
Now I would love to work in a place like yours. But I fear I am in the wrong place (Tasmania), without enough Qualifications (CCNA, just started BCompSci from UNE, TCE. No PhD sorry), and stuck in a place where my programming skills are not likely to be used.
Good luck in your search for a hacker. The programmers are out there, and many would jump at an opportunity to work in a research setting. You've probably now found a few likely candidates from this. It's just annoying that the field has many people that are in it for the money alone. At least we have a few good geeks around, doing some useful coding.
Good Luck,
James
> No. We have a bunch of separate namespaces, each with their own centralized server. And each one has it's own protocol, which is either open or closed. But it doesn't matter, because they don't talk to each other.
That's what I meant, but not what I wrote. Sorry. I should prooread mroe carfully.
> I would agree with you wholeheartedly if AOL was trying to prevent everyone else from developing their own IM protocols and systems, but they're not. They're just keeping their own system private. Go work on the open standards protocols. If one gets developed that is so great, and everyone starts adopting it as the standard, then maybe you'll take some AIM customers away from AOL, or force them to be compatible.
AOL is not trying to prevent alternatives from springing up. To do that would be 'Dangerous' from the companies perspective. The thing with systems like Telephones, Email systems, and IM systems, is network effects. If there is a system with 200 users and on with 190 users, the 200 user system will gradually take users of the 190 system, all else being equal. It may be that the 200 user system got there by being better, and probably did. But the 190 users should have the option of staying where they are if they want to. Think TCP/IP and SPX/IPX. IP had more users, and IPX has faded from the spotlight. Whether or not this is a good thing I am not in a position to decide.
What I'm saying is that AOL, and ICQ, and MSN, and all other major IM providers should have an exchange protocol between the major networks, so that Joe16 on MSN (Joe16@msn.com) can send a message to MaryLou on AOL (maryloug@aol.com). Make the service independent of the provider. I've changed my mind. AIM Client - AIM Server doesn't have to be open, but there should be a AIM Server - anything Server that is open. Thanks, You made a good point.
James
Well, it doesn't surprise me that AOL is doing this. They are a business. They need as many 'Official' aim clients out there, so that they can change the protocol at will to include things like advertising. It makes good business sense to ensure that the users of it's IM service are running a client that AOL can manipulate, to sell the 'eyeballs'. If they can't be sure that all x number of people will see the adverts, then they can't make as much money. Simple business decision. It sucks for consumers, but it's the best thing AOL can do for itself.
This is good for AOL, but bad for the internet. The problem with the internet at the moment is that it has major applications that do not have simple, open, commodity protocols accepted by the majority of users of that service.
What lets email work so well is RFC821 and PFC822, defining the transport and the format of email so that clients and servers need not be tied to each other.
Now instant messaging in it's current state is horrible. We have a disjoint set of non-structured namespaces (BigMan200 anybody?), We have a single centralised server. And the protocol is closed.
Of course, most IM issues were solved by email years ago. Unless I'm being very dense, it wouldn't be too hard to make IM id's similar to email addresses (I have a sneaking suspicion that Jabber does this, but I haven't looked at it close enough).
I think AIM needs to be confiscated from AOL. While I think they do have a right to make a very nice looking client, and a server that can deal with huge loads, and use them to make a profit, they should not be allowed to lock up the protocol between the two. This is the major strength of the internet, the openness, simplicity and strict focus of the protocols employed by most internet clients. For all but a few protocols, the communication can be done by a clueful individual with a telnet client. (I have done this, and it is a lot of fun. EHLO everyone!) If the AIM protocol remains closed and binary, it will stay linked with AOL. We don't need another propriety protocol polluting pathways with packets parsable by 'proper' programs.
So, what I'm saying is: The client can stay AOL's. The server can stay AOL's. But the protocol should be open and hacker friendly. Please AOL, let the Internet do the right thing. It may be bad for your monopoly on the technology, but it will be good for avoiding the scrutiny of the anti-trust lawyers in years to come. Write some RFCs. Asciify your protocol. Amaze people with your Clue.
Now remember, this is an opinion. Yours may be different, and I like to change mine if I see one that looks good.
James,
Just for those that don't understand what leptons and quarks are, here's particle physics 101:
Leptons are the 'light particles'. they have less mass than most other commonly seen particles. There are six types. The electron, the muon, the tauon, and the neutrino. Now that looks like only four because their are three types of neutrino, the elctron neutrino, the muon neutrino and the tauon neutrino.There are three types so that the 'families' are preserved.
Now the nuetrino was introduced in order to preserve a quantity known as spin. All the leptons have spin 1/2, and are fermions. Fermions are particles that follow the Pauli exclusion principle, so no two fermions are in the same quantum state. Now when a neutron decays into a proton and an electron, charge is preserved, whoever spin isn't, because the neutron has spin +-1/2, the proton has spin +-1/2, and so does the electron. In order to get the spins balancing, you need a neutral extra spin 1/2 particle.
Now about those 'familys' I mentioned earlier? Well, only the electron is stable among the non-neutrino leptons. The others decay into an electron and a bunch of neutrinos. However the number of particles in each family remains constant. So when a muon decays (1 muon), it decays into an electron (1 electron), a muon netrino (1 muon) and an electron _anti_neutrino (-1 electron)
So there are six leptons, tauons and muons decay into electrons, but leave behind neutrinos of the same family.However, the universe would not be at all interesting with only leptons. There are quarks as well.
There are also six flavours of quarks. This may or may not be coincidence. Last I checked physicists were unsure if there was a link between quarks and leptons. The six quarks are Up and Down, which form protons, and other stuff that decays into protons (and various leptons). There is strange and charmed, and top and bottom, which make up weird particles that tend to be heavier.
Quarks are never seen alone. They bind together in groups of three or two, and have a charge of +2/3 or -1/3. Now a group of three quarks (called a baryon or heavy particle), such as a proton would have two quarks with a charge of +2/3 and one with a charge of -1/3. I think a proton is uud. Now a neutron(ddu) turns into a proton when one of it's down quarks turns into an up quark, an electron, and two neutrinos. It does this using the weak force, which I'll get to later. Quarks also come in groups of two, which are a quark and an antiquark. These are mesons. They tend to be things like !ud or !du.
So you now have leptons, that help balance things and quarks, that stick together. But what forces act on them? Four. Gravity, Electromagnetism, Weak and Strong nuclear forces.
The strong force is what groups quarks together. All quarks have a color, red, green, or blue. Now in a baryon or meson, the overall color must be white. So a baryon is made up of a red quark, a green quark, and a blue quark. A meson usually has a blue colored quark and an antiblue colored antiquark. Or red/antired, or green/antigreen. As long as no red green or blue shows, the universe is happy. All this is kept in check by the strong force and it's messenger particle, the gluon. Gluons carry color between quarks. If a red quark changes to a green quark, a red/antigreen gluon is emmited, and when it hits a green quark, the antigreen and green colors cancel, and the previously green quark becomes red.
Then there is the weak force. The weak force changes things. It is responsible for the changes in a neutron that cause it to decay. There are three carrier particles for the weak force W+,W- and Z. they carry electrical charges of +1,-1, and 0 respectivly. Now when the d quark in a neutron decays, it emits a W-. the charge is conserved by the W- taking away -1 from the -1/3 to give a +2/3 charge. Now we have a u quark and a W-. the W- then decays into an electron and an electron antineutrino.
Then there is the electromagnetic force, which has as its messenger the photon. Now when two electrons pass by each other and deflect, a pair of photons is exchanged. These photons, like all the other messenger particles are virtual. They only exist for a fleeting second, and don't do much apart from tell the particles what to do. Electromagnetism only talks with particles with electric charge.
Finally there's gravity. Physicists havent yet got Quantum gravity, so they don't yet know how to fit it in with everything else. It's carrier is called the graviton, but nobody has yet caught a live one. Mostly because the energy needed to turn a virtual graviton into a real one is huge.
One last thing. The messenger particles are all bosons, so the can be acting cohesivly in a group. This gives things like lasers their intensity. Fermions can't do this, so you'll never see a easer.
The reason neutrinos are so hard to spot is because the have no mass, they don't interact gravitationally, they are electrically neutral, so they don't talk electromagnetism, and they aren't a quark, so they don't talk colors with the strong force. They can only be detected by their interaction with other particles through the weak force. This is what makes spotting them big physics.
BTW, remember that I may be wrong. IANAPhysicist.
What worries me is that crypto will become accepted by the public, making it harder for law enforcement officials to find the criminals before they hurt innocent people
In case you haven't noticed this is a troll :-)
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