Anyone who wants a system that does more will buy a PC. The PS3 is built around a gaming console so it will never function adequately as a PC. Not to mention it wouldn't be compatible with anything on a PC. Those interested in a home theater want dedicated hardware. They don't want audio/visual performance compromised. So ultimately, while for what the PS3 offers it might not be a bad price, it's perceived by everyone as a game console. And in that regard it is overpriced.
I will never understand this kind of reasoning... because it can play games it'll never function adequately as a PC? Because it's not a 1 function piece of home theater hardware its a/v performance is compromised? What are you talking about man? It's a computer, pure and simple. It may have been purposed to play games, but ultimately it's a computer, and that means it can do a ton of different things, only the software decides what its limits are. It would make an awesome computer or home media center device, they've just chosen to cripple it because they're Sony, with all the short-sightedness that entails.
> Uh, the law only restricts the access from government systems. That is in NO WAY what you are talking about.
That is exactly what I'm talking about. These "government systems" are not just computers sitting in a police station or the DMV. The article specifically mentions libraries and schools. Those computers are the sole method of internet access for many citizens who don't own a computer themselves. Just because the government has the capability to restrict these citizens from having equal access to this part of the web doesn't justify actually doing it. In the case of pornographic sites there are community standards on obscenity which are enforceable, but a social networking sites don't fall under this umbrella.
Saying that people don't need to access myspace from certain computers is no kind of justification for making a law against it. Why stop at spending who knows how much time and money enforcing this one particular instance of a law banning something unneeded? Why not ban EVERYTHING that's not necessary on the net? Webcomics, horoscopes, IM, games, etc? That is, why not turn your opinion of what is needed or not into LAW which will be enforced on other people. How are laws enforced? fines and jailtime... does that seem proportional?
The real problem here is that children are several orders of magnitude more likely to be molested by a member of their own family, but myspace has become a convenient target for politicians looking to get some votes from the people who have been scared out of their f'ing minds since September 11, 2001. Why can't we expect the slightest bit of integrity from these lawyers who run our country? And shame on you for condoning this kind of garbage instead of standing up like you've got freedom and the smarts to use it.
It's sort of too bad that Ubuntu ends up having to take this line, but it's not totally their fault. If you want to take the liability of distributing patent-encumbered software and just cross your fingers you don't get sued, be my guest.
Automatix can solve many of these problems anyway, but for 5.10 install gstreamer-mad, or 6.06 install gstreamer-ugly
My point isn't that everyone should use a computer to its "full potential". To do that everyone would have to know tons of CS and a programming language (the equivalent of your racing school). But the same way that using a car even half decently requires certain knowledge (signage, map reading, gear shifting), so does using a computer (understanding the tree structure of filesystems, or what a shortcut/link is, or the difference between hard disk space and "memory", or how email works). Nobody refuses to drive just because our cars require more than stating our destination in order to operate them. Some day cars may not need so much user intervention, but humans are intelligent tool-users and are fully capable of picking up the slack for now. All humans, not just techno-geeks.
Refusing to learn even the basics of a tool is not the right approach. And worse is when the tools start being designed exclusively for such people. Don't get me wrong, interfaces should be designed to make common or easy tasks painless, but this isn't a license to use a computer without even trying to understand what you're doing. You don't have to know everything, but most people know nothing about what they're doing.
After typing this comment I realized it could come off as criticizing ubuntu for targetting "easy", which is not my intent. I'm using Ubuntu right now to type this, and love it, not as a user friendly Linux, but as a nice barebones start for a Debian GNU/Linux desktop after a bit of customization. It's not cluttered with tons of things by default that just get in your way, but still has many useful programs either installed already or easily installable. This comment is more of a gripe about why more people aren't willing to "try" Linux, by which I mean, install, and LEARN it, rather than just failing to set a few things up for a couple minutes and then giving up. As Yoda said, "Do, or do not. There is no try".
Does anyone have an opinion on why people seem to demand that an operating system be so incredibly simple that they could almost use it without thinking before they'll look at it? Computers are complex but extremely powerful machines, and it's not as if a modern GUI based *NIX system is so much harder to use than Windows, with powerful tools available to you if you choose to use them. These systems were created by people who needed to use them to get things done, so it's not as if you can't use them that way if you're willing to apply a little thought to how you use a powerful tool.
People who don't want to learn to use a computer are cheating themselves out of the most amazing tool mankind has yet invented for the transmission and manipulation of knowledge. Why should the target for interface design be someone who doesn't know how to use a computer and never will?
Does it really seem like a good idea to have our computers guessing about what we mean? To be honest, they're not smart enough for me to trust them with that kind of authority quite yet. Until my computer can actually construct a useful PERL routine and explain its reasoning to me, I don't really want it guessing which one I meant by my typo...
As we read articles like the recently published and still steaming wired article predicting the death of Linux as a desktop OS and the futility of fighting Microsoft, I wonder... If Linux and its ilk are no threat to MS, then why are they running so scared?
Regardless of whether Joe Sixpack understands how to install an OS (which he shouldn't have to), eventually it won't matter. MS has repeatedly shown that despite all their resources, they can't produce anything but crap, and in the long run they will fail.
Reliability
on
Tiny Apps
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
This is where software has to go. If there's one lesson we should have learned by now it's that it's nearly impossible to produce enormous but reliable software. Small programs are the only way to produce reliability, at least for now, and that'll be necessary as computers take over more and more tasks.
That actually depends. If the system of encryption creates a "group", a mathematical structure which is closed under the encryption operation, then for all keys k_i, where E(k_i,P) denotes encryption of P using the key k_i:
E(k_j,E(k_i,P)) = E(k_m,P)
for some k_m in the keyspace. Encrypting twice is just like encrypting with some third key. Some ciphers are not groups (although showing one is not a group is a non-trivial task), including DES. That's why triple DES is more secure than standard DES. None of the ciphers mentioned by the first poster have increased security under multiple encryption. Vigenere multiple times with different keys is just Vigenere with another key. Hill involves multiplying matrices against plaintext vectors, and decryption involves multiplying by their inverses, and that means A*B*C*D*p is just M*p for some matrix M which is the product of our 4 keys, so multiple encryption with Hill doesn't help either, since finding M^-1 is no harder than finding A^-1 alone, or B^-1 alone, etc. Permutations are groups, so multiple encryption doesn't help there either. I'm not entirely sure that chaining several together as suggested might not help though, even though individually multiple encryptions by any of the three schemes is useless. Would somebody with more mathematical background care to comment on whether making the encryptions within a single system non adjacent in the chain? i.e. is V(H(P(H(V(p))))) more secure than V(V(H(H(P(p))))) which we know is definitely no better than V(H(P(p)))? --
Transmeta doesn't want to open their source for a good reason. If people knew the instruction set of the chip, many would want to program for it natively. Transmeta doesn't want this because they want to be free to modify the instruction set in the future. As it stands, modifying the instruction set just requires them to replace the code morphing software. However, if they released instruction set info for their chips, anybody who had programmed natively for them would have their code break on the next CPU, rather than coming right along (which is the whole point of code morphing of course).
Did you try the regular version of slashot, or slashdot light? The reduced HTML version of slashdot for use with Lynx and other text mode browswers might be more accessible. I actually use it instead of the heavy version even in Netscape if my connection is slow, less extra stuff to transfer.
The path to acceptance on the desktop is through the average desktop user, and that means interoperability. Microsoft and company have done an excellent job of using proprietary file formats and protocols to obfuscate their products. This works well against anybody who wants to try to build a product that interoperates with MS software while competing with it. It also guarantees upgrade revenue. Sort of the same idea as switching around the exercises in a textbook and releasing it as a "new edition". They're not going to stop doing it for a while, because it makes them money.
Harsh as that environment is, it's the environment we currently exist in. People are going to keep sending email as Word attachments for at least a while longer, and they may or may not understand what you mean when you try to explain why they shouldn't. Just remember that eventually, people are going to realize that there was NO reason for them to have problems opening documents that they wrote at work on their home computers, except bad engineering (and possible greed).
Even if Linux never takes the desktop, people will eventually realize that software should be have much better quality and things will change. The change is in the wind, and Linux is part of that.
"Those who will not reason are bigots, those who cannot are fools, and those who dare not are slaves." --George Gordon Noel Byron (1788-1824)
Slashdot Mirror
I will never understand this kind of reasoning... because it can play games it'll never function adequately as a PC? Because it's not a 1 function piece of home theater hardware its a/v performance is compromised? What are you talking about man? It's a computer, pure and simple. It may have been purposed to play games, but ultimately it's a computer, and that means it can do a ton of different things, only the software decides what its limits are. It would make an awesome computer or home media center device, they've just chosen to cripple it because they're Sony, with all the short-sightedness that entails.
no. So you could have done a google search for banned books and gotten the same results ...useless
> Uh, the law only restricts the access from government systems. That is in NO WAY what you are talking about.
That is exactly what I'm talking about. These "government systems" are not just computers sitting in a police station or the DMV. The article specifically mentions libraries and schools. Those computers are the sole method of internet access for many citizens who don't own a computer themselves. Just because the government has the capability to restrict these citizens from having equal access to this part of the web doesn't justify actually doing it. In the case of pornographic sites there are community standards on obscenity which are enforceable, but a social networking sites don't fall under this umbrella.
Saying that people don't need to access myspace from certain computers is no kind of justification for making a law against it. Why stop at spending who knows how much time and money enforcing this one particular instance of a law banning something unneeded? Why not ban EVERYTHING that's not necessary on the net? Webcomics, horoscopes, IM, games, etc? That is, why not turn your opinion of what is needed or not into LAW which will be enforced on other people. How are laws enforced? fines and jailtime... does that seem proportional?
The real problem here is that children are several orders of magnitude more likely to be molested by a member of their own family, but myspace has become a convenient target for politicians looking to get some votes from the people who have been scared out of their f'ing minds since September 11, 2001. Why can't we expect the slightest bit of integrity from these lawyers who run our country? And shame on you for condoning this kind of garbage instead of standing up like you've got freedom and the smarts to use it.
It's sort of too bad that Ubuntu ends up having to take this line, but it's not totally their fault. If you want to take the liability of distributing patent-encumbered software and just cross your fingers you don't get sued, be my guest.
Automatix can solve many of these problems anyway, but for 5.10 install gstreamer-mad, or 6.06 install gstreamer-ugly
My point isn't that everyone should use a computer to its "full potential". To do that everyone would have to know tons of CS and a programming language (the equivalent of your racing school). But the same way that using a car even half decently requires certain knowledge (signage, map reading, gear shifting), so does using a computer (understanding the tree structure of filesystems, or what a shortcut/link is, or the difference between hard disk space and "memory", or how email works). Nobody refuses to drive just because our cars require more than stating our destination in order to operate them. Some day cars may not need so much user intervention, but humans are intelligent tool-users and are fully capable of picking up the slack for now. All humans, not just techno-geeks.
Refusing to learn even the basics of a tool is not the right approach. And worse is when the tools start being designed exclusively for such people. Don't get me wrong, interfaces should be designed to make common or easy tasks painless, but this isn't a license to use a computer without even trying to understand what you're doing. You don't have to know everything, but most people know nothing about what they're doing.
After typing this comment I realized it could come off as criticizing ubuntu for targetting "easy", which is not my intent. I'm using Ubuntu right now to type this, and love it, not as a user friendly Linux, but as a nice barebones start for a Debian GNU/Linux desktop after a bit of customization. It's not cluttered with tons of things by default that just get in your way, but still has many useful programs either installed already or easily installable. This comment is more of a gripe about why more people aren't willing to "try" Linux, by which I mean, install, and LEARN it, rather than just failing to set a few things up for a couple minutes and then giving up. As Yoda said, "Do, or do not. There is no try".
Does anyone have an opinion on why people seem to demand that an operating system be so incredibly simple that they could almost use it without thinking before they'll look at it? Computers are complex but extremely powerful machines, and it's not as if a modern GUI based *NIX system is so much harder to use than Windows, with powerful tools available to you if you choose to use them. These systems were created by people who needed to use them to get things done, so it's not as if you can't use them that way if you're willing to apply a little thought to how you use a powerful tool.
People who don't want to learn to use a computer are cheating themselves out of the most amazing tool mankind has yet invented for the transmission and manipulation of knowledge. Why should the target for interface design be someone who doesn't know how to use a computer and never will?
Does it really seem like a good idea to have our computers guessing about what we mean? To be honest, they're not smart enough for me to trust them with that kind of authority quite yet. Until my computer can actually construct a useful PERL routine and explain its reasoning to me, I don't really want it guessing which one I meant by my typo...
As we read articles like the recently published and still steaming wired article predicting the death of Linux as a desktop OS and the futility of fighting Microsoft, I wonder... If Linux and its ilk are no threat to MS, then why are they running so scared?
Regardless of whether Joe Sixpack understands how to install an OS (which he shouldn't have to), eventually it won't matter. MS has repeatedly shown that despite all their resources, they can't produce anything but crap, and in the long run they will fail.
This is where software has to go. If there's one lesson we should have learned by now it's that it's nearly impossible to produce enormous but reliable software. Small programs are the only way to produce reliability, at least for now, and that'll be necessary as computers take over more and more tasks.
That actually depends. If the system of encryption creates a "group", a mathematical structure which is closed under the encryption operation, then for all keys k_i, where E(k_i,P) denotes encryption of P using the key k_i:
E(k_j,E(k_i,P)) = E(k_m,P)
for some k_m in the keyspace. Encrypting twice is just like encrypting with some third key. Some ciphers are not groups (although showing one is not a group is a non-trivial task), including DES. That's why triple DES is more secure than standard DES. None of the ciphers mentioned by the first poster have increased security under multiple encryption. Vigenere multiple times with different keys is just Vigenere with another key. Hill involves multiplying matrices against plaintext vectors, and decryption involves multiplying by their inverses, and that means A*B*C*D*p is just M*p for some matrix M which is the product of our 4 keys, so multiple encryption with Hill doesn't help either, since finding M^-1 is no harder than finding A^-1 alone, or B^-1 alone, etc. Permutations are groups, so multiple encryption doesn't help there either. I'm not entirely sure that chaining several together as suggested might not help though, even though individually multiple encryptions by any of the three schemes is useless. Would somebody with more mathematical background care to comment on whether making the encryptions within a single system non adjacent in the chain? i.e. is V(H(P(H(V(p))))) more secure than V(V(H(H(P(p))))) which we know is definitely no better than V(H(P(p)))?
--
Transmeta doesn't want to open their source for a good reason. If people knew the instruction set of the chip, many would want to program for it natively. Transmeta doesn't want this because they want to be free to modify the instruction set in the future. As it stands, modifying the instruction set just requires them to replace the code morphing software. However, if they released instruction set info for their chips, anybody who had programmed natively for them would have their code break on the next CPU, rather than coming right along (which is the whole point of code morphing of course).
Did you try the regular version of slashot, or slashdot light? The reduced HTML version of slashdot for use with Lynx and other text mode browswers might be more accessible. I actually use it instead of the heavy version even in Netscape if my connection is slow, less extra stuff to transfer.
the HTML for the link is missing a ">".
The path to acceptance on the desktop is through the average desktop user, and that means interoperability. Microsoft and company have done an excellent job of using proprietary file formats and protocols to obfuscate their products. This works well against anybody who wants to try to build a product that interoperates with MS software while competing with it. It also guarantees upgrade revenue. Sort of the same idea as switching around the exercises in a textbook and releasing it as a "new edition". They're not going to stop doing it for a while, because it makes them money.
Harsh as that environment is, it's the environment we currently exist in. People are going to keep sending email as Word attachments for at least a while longer, and they may or may not understand what you mean when you try to explain why they shouldn't. Just remember that eventually, people are going to realize that there was NO reason for them to have problems opening documents that they wrote at work on their home computers, except bad engineering (and possible greed).
Even if Linux never takes the desktop, people will eventually realize that software should be have much better quality and things will change. The change is in the wind, and Linux is part of that.
"Those who will not reason are bigots, those who cannot are fools, and
those who dare not are slaves." --George Gordon Noel Byron (1788-1824)