Why, it's, it's almost FORMAL, as in 'mathematical'. E=mc^2 is so succinct, it's immortal.
I remember discussing public key encryption in a second year algebra course (which is pretty standard). The prof mentioned the RSA patent and how silly it was... "They've basically just patented Euler's Theorem. That's all it is." (I think it's Euler's theorem. It's bee a few years.)
Apparently formallity doesn't guarantee any kind of freedom from IP restrictions.
For me, this questions come down to this: Just how well can people express themselves using code?
Consider the way people express their political views with DeCSS and the Mattel crack. That's at least as much a political statement as wandering around with a plackard. We protect that.
And, what about the act of coding itself? You certainly can't express the same things in code that you can using English--does that mean it's a lesser form of "communicating"?
I'd suggest not. How many of us have used works like "beautiful" to describe chunk of code or the algorithm that it represents? Those of us who program know that it's a creative process and that it feels more like writing prose than like balancing your checkbook. I think the non-programmers of the world would be surprised by that, but I think it's true.
So, I guess my answer to the question is "yes." If it looks like a duck, and acts like a duck...
It seems to me that I remember seeing references to papers on computer algebra in some of Maple's help files. They'd say stuff like "This function uses the method for ____ described by ___ in ______."
If people are working on such a beast, that would be a good reference. Not to mention that a lot of schools offer a grad course in Computer Algebra.
Let me preface by saying that I actually like a lot of what you write. I think you're wrong sometimes, but such are the dangers of discourse. Does all of the criticism heaped on you by the/. comminity ever get to you? Does it make you want to take you writings elsewhere? Does it change the way you approach writing? Greg
Not only does it make browsing difficult for the disabled, but it also interferes with text-only browsers and text-to-speech engines.
Not to mention those of us who don't load images. The recent poll here says that even being the geeks that we are, a good chunk are still using modems. Probably a lot don't load images by default.
If you need a good argument for the corporate-types for sites without a lot of useless images, try talking about search engines. Want your corporate site found? Do you think search engines run every image they find throught OCR? No, they need text. No text=no search hits.
I don't really understand the hostility here. TV networks get their revenue from adveritizing, right? Ad revenue is somehow based on the number of people watching the show, right? iCrave gets more people watching.
I'm not so naive as to thing that's the end of it. It's a control thing, the same way the MPAA/DeCSS issue is.
What I don't see here is the economic loss. For DeCSS, a monopoly is lost and revenues go down. With iCrave, so what? There are more people watching--tell the adveritisers that--make more money.
What I find particularly bothersome is that even something as simple as an XF86Config file is packed up in an RPM and thus Red Hat specific. I know that it's the same file that I'd need in Debian, but how many first-timers would? Plus, it's not exactly easy to get a file out of an RPM in non-PRM distributions.
I must say, though, that I like the idea of OEMs providing an XF86Config file. These can be a hassle to put together, especially for those new to Linux. Kudos to Dell on that. (but just give us a text file next time, eh?)
I've been working on a program recently that does just these calculations. It's still pretty rough, but you can try it if you want (seems like a good opportunity to get some testers).
It gets better refresh rates than KVideoGen or the other calculators I've found.
If you have Perl/Tk, you can run the X version with the command xvidcalc, or the command line version with vidcalc (try "vidcalc -h" first).
I did a lot of work on the caclulations to ensure that the resulting modeline was optimal in terms of refresh rate. You have to enter the specs for your monitor (either in the X interface or a settings file), so it's not for the faint of heart; you should probably look through ESR's VideoTimings HOWTO first.
The list of corporate officers is interesting. Bruce (CEO), Ian Murdock (the "ian" in Debian) (CTO), and two guys with financial backgrounds as "Chairman and Business Development director" and CFO. Nobody has said much about Ian being there.
Also interesting, Wichert Akkerman (current Debian leader) is on the Advisory board.
At the moment, it looks like it's a Debian VC firm. I'm sure that will change, though. (Even if it doesn't, I'm all for more money in the Debian world.)
Something/.ers (and JWZ) might want to try is a DynaBee. I've never had any major wrist pains, but my girlfriend has one of these , so I tried it one day
It's a funky little gyroscope thingy that you get going and then use the gyroscopic force as resistance for wrist excercises. It's fun, geeky and good for you!
They claim it "is particularity effective in the rehabilitation and prevention of repetitive stress injuries such as carpal tunnel syndrome, tendonitis or 'tennis elbow'." Like I said, I can't speak from experience, but it is fun.
Some people collect baseball cards; others analyse [computer network] protocols.
This is an odd bit from the article. The only reason that one would use those square brackets is to indicate an addition to a quote, but the sentence is not quoted. Did Jane's perhaps forget to quote and attribute some things that should be?
Most of the products that have angered the RIAA or film industry (Rio, Napster, DeCSS) have come from relatively small players. It will be interesting to see if the film industry has the guts to take on a major player in the industry like Pioneer.
I suspect that a lot of motivation behind lawsuits against similar products has been the hope of litigating the company or group out of existence. Who cares about the outcome if the legal bills force a shutdown?
This is different. Pioneer isn't going to fold under a few legal fees. What else might the film industry try? No more DVD decryption keys for Pioneer?
Like the article says, Wiles solved a special case of STW to knock off Fermat's Last Theorem. I guess this is a proof of the general version (but the article is a little vague--any number theorists around who are in the loop?)
This seems like an odd move for CNet--big companies tend to shy away from such controversy.
Is it possible that when CNet gets the inevitible Cease and Desist letter from the RIAA, they plan on fighting for their right to distribute the software? That would be interesting.
Does anyone know of CNet's previous responses to such threats?
Everything I've seen about the MS-DOJ trial has been US-focused (for obvious reasons), but what about the rest of the world?
Is there anything stopping MS from picking up shop, leaving the US and becoming a foriegn-based company? Of course, they might still have most of their operations in Redmond--Corel is in this situation where their "head office" is in Europe (Ireland?) but they clearly do most of their work in Ottawa.
Would this put them beyond the reach of the DOJ and negate the whole process?
It seems to me that one of the biggest possible benefits of the FOF is that a few reporters might actually read it.
Let's face it, there a lot of "tech reporters" out there who are quite willing to regurgitate MS press releases, like this one, into "news". Perhaps a few of these (or their editors) will have a skim through the FOF and realize that perhaps they haven't been telling the whole truth.
We might start seeing a little more balanced reporting on MS and the world around it. Even if that is the only effect, I'll be happy.
Am I the only one that's noticed that on the page with MS's statement, they've translated the judge's WordPerfect document into Word and it's almost twice as big? (851 vs 438k)
On the same page, they say that "Microsoft's products are popular because we've focused on our customers and innovated to meet their needs," and indeed, I need a bigger hard drive.
...campaign donations are implicitly exchanged for influence over the political process.
Perhaps slightly off topic here, but in Canada, we frown on politicians accepting bribes. This applies to most other democratic countries too, I think.
This is the American definition of "politically active", is it? Campain donor? I've always been a bit confused by the way the U.S. has so much of this going on and nobody seems to want to do much to change it.
More practically, are there ways that American geeks (not all of us are, remember) can influence the political process with less of a go-home-and-shower feeling?
Reminds me of terminals set up in a library I used at a University. They had general web access, but you wern't allowed to check your e-mail (via telnet). But, they had access to a catalog that you had to telnet to. Sending a quick "break" to the telnet application let you connect to your heart's content.
Come to think of it, I probably could have forged e-mail, tried to hack systems or whatever, totally anonymously. I really just wanted to check my e-mai, though.
Bottom line on the Internet: you probably can get there from here--it's just harder sometimes.
... the daily cron jobs never get run. This means the/var/log and/tmp, etc. dirs weren't getting cleaned out. The disk was almost full to start with, and she ran out of disk space after a year of use. You'd probably want to setup something to clean these up at boot time, so this doesn't occur.
I've come across this one on a Linux box I had that was occasionally-up. Simple fix: use anacron. In Debian, at least, just install it, and it takes over the funcitons of cron.
It just does an "as soon as possible" scheduling. If you turn your computer on in the morning, it does the cron daily stuff soon thereafter.
The nightly builds aren't meant to be stable. From the binary download page: "These [nightly] builds are the least stable, but the most up-to-date." In short, they are the current state of the programmer's code, which might not even compile.
If you're looking for even moderate stability, you should download the real milestone, not the nightly.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember discussing public key encryption in a second year algebra course (which is pretty standard). The prof mentioned the RSA patent and how silly it was... "They've basically just patented Euler's Theorem. That's all it is." (I think it's Euler's theorem. It's bee a few years.)
Apparently formallity doesn't guarantee any kind of freedom from IP restrictions.
Greg
Consider the way people express their political views with DeCSS and the Mattel crack. That's at least as much a political statement as wandering around with a plackard. We protect that.
And, what about the act of coding itself? You certainly can't express the same things in code that you can using English--does that mean it's a lesser form of "communicating"?
I'd suggest not. How many of us have used works like "beautiful" to describe chunk of code or the algorithm that it represents? Those of us who program know that it's a creative process and that it feels more like writing prose than like balancing your checkbook. I think the non-programmers of the world would be surprised by that, but I think it's true.
So, I guess my answer to the question is "yes." If it looks like a duck, and acts like a duck...
Greg
It seems to me that I remember seeing references to papers on computer algebra in some of Maple's help files. They'd say stuff like "This function uses the method for ____ described by ___ in ______."
If people are working on such a beast, that would be a good reference. Not to mention that a lot of schools offer a grad course in Computer Algebra.
Greg
Let me preface by saying that I actually like a lot of what you write. I think you're wrong sometimes, but such are the dangers of discourse. Does all of the criticism heaped on you by the /. comminity ever get to you? Does it make you want to take you writings elsewhere? Does it change the way you approach writing? Greg
Not to mention those of us who don't load images. The recent poll here says that even being the geeks that we are, a good chunk are still using modems. Probably a lot don't load images by default.
If you need a good argument for the corporate-types for sites without a lot of useless images, try talking about search engines. Want your corporate site found? Do you think search engines run every image they find throught OCR? No, they need text. No text=no search hits.
Greg
I'm not so naive as to thing that's the end of it. It's a control thing, the same way the MPAA/DeCSS issue is.
What I don't see here is the economic loss. For DeCSS, a monopoly is lost and revenues go down. With iCrave, so what? There are more people watching--tell the adveritisers that--make more money.
Greg
Ooh... ooh... I know! They can't solve the halting problem! Do I get participation marks?
I must say, though, that I like the idea of OEMs providing an XF86Config file. These can be a hassle to put together, especially for those new to Linux. Kudos to Dell on that. (but just give us a text file next time, eh?)
Greg
It's not the funniest thing I've ever seen, but it ain't bad.
Greg
It gets better refresh rates than KVideoGen or the other calculators I've found.
If you have Perl/Tk, you can run the X version with the command xvidcalc, or the command line version with vidcalc (try "vidcalc -h" first).
I did a lot of work on the caclulations to ensure that the resulting modeline was optimal in terms of refresh rate. You have to enter the specs for your monitor (either in the X interface or a settings file), so it's not for the faint of heart; you should probably look through ESR's VideoTimings HOWTO first.
Let me know how it works for you, ggbaker@sfu.ca.
Greg
Also interesting, Wichert Akkerman (current Debian leader) is on the Advisory board.
At the moment, it looks like it's a Debian VC firm. I'm sure that will change, though. (Even if it doesn't, I'm all for more money in the Debian world.)
Greg
It's a funky little gyroscope thingy that you get going and then use the gyroscopic force as resistance for wrist excercises. It's fun, geeky and good for you!
They claim it "is particularity effective in the rehabilitation and prevention of repetitive stress injuries such as carpal tunnel syndrome, tendonitis or 'tennis elbow'." Like I said, I can't speak from experience, but it is fun.
Greg
This is an odd bit from the article. The only reason that one would use those square brackets is to indicate an addition to a quote, but the sentence is not quoted. Did Jane's perhaps forget to quote and attribute some things that should be?
Greg
I suspect that a lot of motivation behind lawsuits against similar products has been the hope of litigating the company or group out of existence. Who cares about the outcome if the legal bills force a shutdown?
This is different. Pioneer isn't going to fold under a few legal fees. What else might the film industry try? No more DVD decryption keys for Pioneer?
Greg
Like the article says, Wiles solved a special case of STW to knock off Fermat's Last Theorem. I guess this is a proof of the general version (but the article is a little vague--any number theorists around who are in the loop?)
Is it possible that when CNet gets the inevitible Cease and Desist letter from the RIAA, they plan on fighting for their right to distribute the software? That would be interesting.
Does anyone know of CNet's previous responses to such threats?
Greg
Is there anything stopping MS from picking up shop, leaving the US and becoming a foriegn-based company? Of course, they might still have most of their operations in Redmond--Corel is in this situation where their "head office" is in Europe (Ireland?) but they clearly do most of their work in Ottawa.
Would this put them beyond the reach of the DOJ and negate the whole process?
Everything's definition
Greg
By that definition, W2K is probably more like 50 million. The catch is that 10 million of those just don't exist.
(Alternate punchline: 40 million + format c: + 1 linux CD)
It seems to me that one of the biggest possible benefits of the FOF is that a few reporters might actually read it.
Let's face it, there a lot of "tech reporters" out there who are quite willing to regurgitate MS press releases, like this one, into "news". Perhaps a few of these (or their editors) will have a skim through the FOF and realize that perhaps they haven't been telling the whole truth.
We might start seeing a little more balanced reporting on MS and the world around it. Even if that is the only effect, I'll be happy.
Greg
On the same page, they say that "Microsoft's products are popular because we've focused on our customers and innovated to meet their needs," and indeed, I need a bigger hard drive.
Greg
Perhaps slightly off topic here, but in Canada, we frown on politicians accepting bribes. This applies to most other democratic countries too, I think.
This is the American definition of "politically active", is it? Campain donor? I've always been a bit confused by the way the U.S. has so much of this going on and nobody seems to want to do much to change it.
More practically, are there ways that American geeks (not all of us are, remember) can influence the political process with less of a go-home-and-shower feeling?
Greg
Come to think of it, I probably could have forged e-mail, tried to hack systems or whatever, totally anonymously. I really just wanted to check my e-mai, though.
Bottom line on the Internet: you probably can get there from here--it's just harder sometimes.
I've come across this one on a Linux box I had that was occasionally-up. Simple fix: use anacron. In Debian, at least, just install it, and it takes over the funcitons of cron.
It just does an "as soon as possible" scheduling. If you turn your computer on in the morning, it does the cron daily stuff soon thereafter.
If you're looking for even moderate stability, you should download the real milestone, not the nightly.
Greg