I love oppurtunities to push my little floppy distro tclDisk or my older, though still applicable, linux floppy howto. Both are pretty barebones but give a starting point for creating more advanced systems.
I did not argue that they mention Jesus; I put them forward as non-biblical reasons for believing in the veracity of the bible. Once you believe that the Bible holds facts (and in other historic documents having mentioned Jesus) then one may stake the claim that the Jesus story is true.
Furthermore I did not presume that each example in itself proved anything. Much like I would not argue that William Penn existed because of tradition, but the fact remains that tradition is evidence for his existence.
Proof is often a collection of evidence, any single fact can be drawn into question. Any single piece of evidence may have an alternate explanation (sometimes even a more reasonable one). As the quotes I posted mention, I have a collection of evidence which points me to believe something. You apparently do not accept that collection as being enough evidence.
you can actually visit China yourself to verify its existence
One can play your doubting game with that as well though. How do I know the pilot actually took me to China? Maybe they landed in Taiwan by accident and I wouldn't know. I would have to rely on someone elses opinion. I have to take a collection of evidence as proof. I know where China is on a globe, people I trust believe in China, I've been on planes before and trust them to take me places, and I know what Chinese people probably look like. This is why I believe in China, and you would be hard pressed to offer me a single piece of evidence that proves China exists. Any evidence you offer is subject to an alternate conspiracy theory discounting its existence.
There is a subtle difference between a person who will die for their beliefs in a battle, even in blowing themselves up, for an ideal and a person who will allow themselves to be tourtured on behalf of something they have seen. I believe more strongly in claims made by the latter.
Dead Sea Scrolls, the Papal succession, tradition, non-biblical writers such as Josephus, miracles (easy to question these but I believe there is evidence for them as well - more on this below). These may seem like scraps of evidence but it is the same type of scaps of evidence that lead me to believe that China exists. No one fact will prove to me that China exists, but I take it on faith because a number of things point to its existance.
Perhaps a couple quotes by G.K. Chesterton will elucidate my point
If I am asked, as a purely intellectual question, why I believe in Christianity, I can only answer, "For the same reason that an intelligent agnostic disbelieves in Christianity." I believe in it quite rationally upon the evidence But the evidence in my case, as in that of the intelligent agnostic, is not really in this or that alleged demonstration; it is in an enormous accumulation of small but unanimous facts. The secularist is not to be blamed because his objections to Christianity are miscellaneous and even scrappy; it is precisely such scrappy evidence that does convince the mind. I mean that a man may well be less convinced of a philosophy from four books, than from one book, one battle, one landscape, and one old friend. The very fact that the things are of different kinds increases the importance of the fact that they all point to one conclusion. Now, the non-Christianity of the average educated man to-day is almost always, to do him justice, made up of these loose but living experiences. I can only say that my evidences for Christianity are of the same vivid but varied kind as his evidences against it.
Somehow or other an extraordinary idea has arisen that the disbelievers in miracles consider them coldly and fairly, while believers in miracles accept them only in connection with some dogma. The fact is quite the other way. The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them. The open, obvious, democratic thing is to believe an old apple-woman when she bears testimony to a miracle, just as you believe an old apple-woman when she bears testimony to a murder. The plain, popular course is to trust the peasant's word about the ghost exactly as far as you trust the peasant's word about the landlord. Being a peasant he will probably have a great deal of healthy agnosticism about both. Still you could fill the British Museum with evidence uttered by the peasant, and given in favour of the ghost. If it comes to human testimony there is a choking cataract of human testimony in favour of the supernatural. If you reject it, you can only mean one of two things. You reject the peasant's story about the ghost either because the man is a peasant or because the story is a ghost story. That is, you either deny the main principle of democracy, or you affirm the main principle of materialism -- the abstract impossibility of miracle. You have a perfect right to do so; but in that case you are the dogmatist. It is we Christians who accept all actual evidence -- it is you rationalists who refuse actual evidence being constrained to do so by your creed. But I am not constrained by any creed in the matter, and looking impartially into certain miracles of mediaeval and modern times, I have come to the conclusion that they occurred. All argument against these plain facts is always argument in a circle. If I say, "Mediaeval documents attest certain miracles as much as they attest certain battles," they answer, "But mediaevals were superstitious"; if I want to know in what they were superstitious, the only ultimate answer is that they believed in the miracles. If I say "a peasant saw a ghost," I am told, "But peasants are so credulous." If I ask, "Why credulous?" the only answer is -- that they see ghosts. Iceland is impossible because only stupid sailors have seen it; and the sailors are only stupid becaus
Christianity relies no more on a cyclical dependancy than does the encyclopedia. The Bible is not believed because it claims its own accuracy anymore than an encyclopedia is believed because it claims to be facts. There are non-biblical reasons for trusting the veracity of the Bible.
Perhaps it is the fact that the Bible is packaged as a single book that people find it easier to doubt. One can imagine a story in which the book was created in such a way as to "prove" a lie. I believe that story would require more faith than what the Bible expounds.
I have more to say on this but I accidentally erased a longer version of this post that I wrote a few minutes ago and I'm getting tired. I'd be glad to reply to thoughts on this though.
From one perspective the command line interface is closer to the functional languages in which the operating system is probably written. In that way it gives you a better understanding. There are less metaphors between you and the operating system.
When I execute mount/mnt/cdrom from the command line the computer executes (among other things) the function
Donald Knuth said "Premature optimization is the root of all evil"
Therefore I assume #1 is much more likely than #2.
It would seem as though the 2.4 focussed on getting a number of feature in the kernel while the 2.6 series allowed the developers to work towards making those new feature faster. Programming a new feature from scratch while also aiming to optimize it for speed can often lead to buggy code. Optimized code is rarely as straightforward and easy to debug as a more general (but slower) algorithm. When it comes to something as important as a kernel I'd much rather have clean, clear code which can later be optimized than a confusing kludge meant to squeeze out the last little bit of processing power.
Communication and memory may not be as large a requirement as one would think. Like complex action that insects (e.g. ants and termites) are able to perform it may be a case of Self Organization (haven't read this FAQ yet but it looks close to what I want to get across.)
For a good book check out The Computational Beauty of Nature). Some tasks can be broken down into very simple repeated actions which simple machines can perform. The beauty of these system is that they require little communication between agents. Merely an awareness of what is around you and a simple list of tasks can create some complecated forms.
This problem seems little worse than other problems related to DHCP. If someone had access to your subnet and was able to configure a rogue DHCP server (e.g. to exploit the OS X ldap bug) they could just as easily return a rogue proxy as the default gateway or a tainted DNS server. If you are not vigilant about SSH warning messages or best practices you could be connecting to a server which is just recording your password and passing it along to the real server.
There may be something I missing, but this does not seem to be a problem with Mac OS X as much as it is with DHCP. DHCP in its simplest form is not secure. Using DHCP on a subnet requires trust. As with any other kind of security you will have to trust something, whether it is your computer or your home network.
I hope people do not blow this bug out of proportion too much.
If you want a board with a serial port buy one; the majority of boards sold now seem have them. Some people do not want serial ports on their mainboards and for a long time it has been hard to find boards without serial connectors.
I was very satisfied to find my Intel DME810? non-legacy board. It's small form factor is in part due to the lack of legacy connectors that I have no use for (for that machine at least).
I see no reason to argue that every mainboard needs an RS-232 port, especially considering most already have them. This company is selling to a demanding market that you apparently aren't a part of, can't we leave it at that.
That is the idea behind D. J. Bernstein's proposal for a next generation mail protocol if I'm not mistaken. Details can be found here. It should also help curb spam; system resource requirements become greater at the sender's end than the receivers. It is a way to tax the sender without having to explicitly charge them.
This is a little off topic but these creatures were used by one of my professors in his study of optimizations in the brain. Christopher Cherniak's research made a distinction between the philosophical assumption of ideal hardware when dealing with rationality and the more likely limited, but highly optimized hardware, that exists in humans.
It is often questioned as to how evolution can create such highly optimized hardware, as exists in the human brain, given the fact that other parts of biology are not optimized and the fact that the problems in graph optimization (like laying out graphs of neurons in the best patterns) are so computationally difficult. He questioned the method by which evolution could create such optimized nerual topographies given the intractable nature of the problem. In his book
Minimal Rationality (which he refered to as min rat) he argues that there are some physical laws that help push the optimizations in the brain.
In his research he used C elegans because their nerual structure had been completely mapped. He used a computer program to find the optimal layout of the neurons of these worm and discovered that the worms are actually optimized. He further argues that in nature there must be certain laws that construct a analogue computer of sort (I don't think he ever called it that but I do) that has the ability to optimize graphs without the problem of intractability. The same way water flowing in a river will find the path of least resistance neurons can create optimal networks using some optimizations give free by nature.
Well anyway, this might not be the best summary of his work, it has been a few year since I took his class, but I though it was interesting.
Postfix has been good to me and it has simple instructions (in the INSTALL file) for replacing sendmail. As long as you are using pretty standard settings in sendmail it is almost a drop in replacement.
I don't know if it is the case in this instance but the Turing Test rubs some the wrong way because it is a pretty lousy test for intelligence. The turing test measures the performance of something not it's competence.
What we see is what the computer does and not what goes on behind the scenes, which many people believe is important in positing intelligence in a agent. One of the major problems with behaviorism was that it initially took into account only how an animal performed and not what it was thinking. Sure the rat could learn the maze when it is rewarded for running thorught it, but it could also learn the maze (competence) by being pulled through it on a little cart or when it was completely sated. The performance of something may be important in judging its intelligence but it is far from the only factor. Imaginge a person in a paralyzed state, they have the competance but lack the ability to performance.
Like I said this may not be the issue as discussed in the article, but it is one caveat to the Turing Test.
It's about time. It's always annoyed me how slow manufacturers are to drop legacy hardware. Even though I think floppies have an important place (I have my own linux floppy distro) that place is not in new machines. Floppy disks are much less reliable than more modern media like CDs and USB pen drives.
I think it is a good idea to stop including these drives as it just gives people a crutch to lean on and slows down the adoption and advancement of new media devices. This isn't to say that someone couldn't get a USB floppy drive if they need one, just there is no reason to make it the default option.
What needs to happen now is manufacturers must come up with ways to boot off of USB memory devices so that we still have all the conviniences offered by floppies. (It would also help if there is almost always a USB port in the front of the computer) Dropping floppies is the first step though. Without the floppy as a crutch manufacturers will be forced to come up with devices that have the same bootable convenience.
My primary machine right now is running an Intel D810EMO legacy free mainboard. It has 4 usb ports, a built in network card, sound, and video. For my workstation I didn't need any more. The board uses the FlexATX form factor and is less bulky than others like it because it doesn't need to maintain the infrastructure for legacy port.
I agree that people have uses for serial ports and parallel ports. Considering I wrote a HOWTO on placing linux on floppy for my firewall, I know that there is a place even for people using floppies still. But why is it so difficult for manufacturers to offer more choices for legacy-free mainboards. Last I saw even Intel doesn't have a legacy-free board available. Aren't they supposed to be some sort of technology leader?
While it is nice to have some boards with serial,etc, if we ever expect to rid ourselves of a dependency on outdated devices we must have some more legacy-free options available.
Always looking for an excuse to post my personal HOWTO for using uClibc & busybox to make a single floppy linux disk. I also have a few example floppy images here. My firewall is running from a linux floppy right now.
There is an article by Charles C. Mann in the September issue of The Atlantic Montly about Bruce Schneier which argues against security systems which fail poorly. Security systems that bring down the entire system when the break are a bad idea. In the case of centralized security, if the system breaking means that an intruder can compromise the data of every user than it is a bad design. Security should be modularized so that one intruder may be able to limit your access but not read your files for example. Authentication should be separate from encryption, etc.
True management can be simplified by haveing centralized servers, and this may improve security slightly, but what use is centralized monitoring if a single intruder can take down the entire system with one compromise.
Here is my web page detailing some of the steps I go through to create a linux on a disk. I am working on putting more details on soon but I think it still gives a good introduction.
I would take a look at using
uClibc a C library for embedded Linux systems.
(they are currently working on pthread support in the cvs which is supposedly what is keeping it from being used to compile mozilla/galeon) BusyBox for basic embedded versions of common linux apps (e.g. init, cp, sed, etc.) KDrive a tiny X server from XFree86 Galeon for a fairly small browser (there are some other smaller ones in development (for example Skipstone and Dillo)
What I would do is compile a stripped down kernel, use busybox for most system apps, and have your init scripts call the tinyX server and then instead of using a window manager have the startx script start galeon in full screen mode using tabs instead of separate windows for popups. The only difficult part may be getting mozilla or galeon compiled because of the gtk requirements) You could try the Xlib mozilla port perhaps.
For a little bit of info on how I have done a similar project take a look at my linux on a floppy page.
Slashdot Mirror
I love oppurtunities to push my little floppy distro tclDisk or my older, though still applicable, linux floppy howto. Both are pretty barebones but give a starting point for creating more advanced systems.
I did not argue that they mention Jesus; I put them forward as non-biblical reasons for believing in the veracity of the bible. Once you believe that the Bible holds facts (and in other historic documents having mentioned Jesus) then one may stake the claim that the Jesus story is true.
Furthermore I did not presume that each example in itself proved anything. Much like I would not argue that William Penn existed because of tradition, but the fact remains that tradition is evidence for his existence.
Proof is often a collection of evidence, any single fact can be drawn into question. Any single piece of evidence may have an alternate explanation (sometimes even a more reasonable one). As the quotes I posted mention, I have a collection of evidence which points me to believe something. You apparently do not accept that collection as being enough evidence.
you can actually visit China yourself to verify its existence
One can play your doubting game with that as well though. How do I know the pilot actually took me to China? Maybe they landed in Taiwan by accident and I wouldn't know. I would have to rely on someone elses opinion. I have to take a collection of evidence as proof. I know where China is on a globe, people I trust believe in China, I've been on planes before and trust them to take me places, and I know what Chinese people probably look like. This is why I believe in China, and you would be hard pressed to offer me a single piece of evidence that proves China exists. Any evidence you offer is subject to an alternate conspiracy theory discounting its existence.
There is a subtle difference between a person who will die for their beliefs in a battle, even in blowing themselves up, for an ideal and a person who will allow themselves to be tourtured on behalf of something they have seen. I believe more strongly in claims made by the latter.
Dead Sea Scrolls, the Papal succession, tradition, non-biblical writers such as Josephus, miracles (easy to question these but I believe there is evidence for them as well - more on this below). These may seem like scraps of evidence but it is the same type of scaps of evidence that lead me to believe that China exists. No one fact will prove to me that China exists, but I take it on faith because a number of things point to its existance.
Perhaps a couple quotes by G.K. Chesterton will elucidate my point
Perhaps it is the fact that the Bible is packaged as a single book that people find it easier to doubt. One can imagine a story in which the book was created in such a way as to "prove" a lie. I believe that story would require more faith than what the Bible expounds.
I have more to say on this but I accidentally erased a longer version of this post that I wrote a few minutes ago and I'm getting tired. I'd be glad to reply to thoughts on this though.
When I execute mount /mnt/cdrom from the command line the computer executes (among other things) the function
.On the other hand, there is little similarity between me dragging a disk to the trash can and executing mount().
Therefore I assume #1 is much more likely than #2.
It would seem as though the 2.4 focussed on getting a number of feature in the kernel while the 2.6 series allowed the developers to work towards making those new feature faster. Programming a new feature from scratch while also aiming to optimize it for speed can often lead to buggy code. Optimized code is rarely as straightforward and easy to debug as a more general (but slower) algorithm. When it comes to something as important as a kernel I'd much rather have clean, clear code which can later be optimized than a confusing kludge meant to squeeze out the last little bit of processing power.
Just my humble opinion
For a good book check out The Computational Beauty of Nature). Some tasks can be broken down into very simple repeated actions which simple machines can perform. The beauty of these system is that they require little communication between agents. Merely an awareness of what is around you and a simple list of tasks can create some complecated forms.
This problem seems little worse than other problems related to DHCP. If someone had access to your subnet and was able to configure a rogue DHCP server (e.g. to exploit the OS X ldap bug) they could just as easily return a rogue proxy as the default gateway or a tainted DNS server. If you are not vigilant about SSH warning messages or best practices you could be connecting to a server which is just recording your password and passing it along to the real server.
There may be something I missing, but this does not seem to be a problem with Mac OS X as much as it is with DHCP. DHCP in its simplest form is not secure. Using DHCP on a subnet requires trust. As with any other kind of security you will have to trust something, whether it is your computer or your home network.
I hope people do not blow this bug out of proportion too much.
DON'T SUSPECT YOUR FRIEND REPORT HIM
If you want a board with a serial port buy one; the majority of boards sold now seem have them. Some people do not want serial ports on their mainboards and for a long time it has been hard to find boards without serial connectors.
I was very satisfied to find my Intel DME810? non-legacy board. It's small form factor is in part due to the lack of legacy connectors that I have no use for (for that machine at least).
I see no reason to argue that every mainboard needs an RS-232 port, especially considering most already have them. This company is selling to a demanding market that you apparently aren't a part of, can't we leave it at that.
Bart: Sounds like a pretty crappy game to me.
Principal Skinner: Yes, well... Get started.
-- ``Bart the Murderer''
a small preview of a friends project. SWAFT
That is the idea behind D. J. Bernstein's proposal for a next generation mail protocol if I'm not mistaken. Details can be found here. It should also help curb spam; system resource requirements become greater at the sender's end than the receivers. It is a way to tax the sender without having to explicitly charge them.
For those who want to roll their own linux router floppy see Linux on a floppy HOWTO
It is often questioned as to how evolution can create such highly optimized hardware, as exists in the human brain, given the fact that other parts of biology are not optimized and the fact that the problems in graph optimization (like laying out graphs of neurons in the best patterns) are so computationally difficult. He questioned the method by which evolution could create such optimized nerual topographies given the intractable nature of the problem. In his book Minimal Rationality (which he refered to as min rat) he argues that there are some physical laws that help push the optimizations in the brain.
In his research he used C elegans because their nerual structure had been completely mapped. He used a computer program to find the optimal layout of the neurons of these worm and discovered that the worms are actually optimized. He further argues that in nature there must be certain laws that construct a analogue computer of sort (I don't think he ever called it that but I do) that has the ability to optimize graphs without the problem of intractability. The same way water flowing in a river will find the path of least resistance neurons can create optimal networks using some optimizations give free by nature.
Well anyway, this might not be the best summary of his work, it has been a few year since I took his class, but I though it was interesting.
I really enjoy Local Hero. Also I heard it was the favorite movie of Joel from Mystery Science Theater 3000
Postfix has been good to me and it has simple instructions (in the INSTALL file) for replacing sendmail. As long as you are using pretty standard settings in sendmail it is almost a drop in replacement.
I don't know if it is the case in this instance but the Turing Test rubs some the wrong way because it is a pretty lousy test for intelligence. The turing test measures the performance of something not it's competence.
What we see is what the computer does and not what goes on behind the scenes, which many people believe is important in positing intelligence in a agent. One of the major problems with behaviorism was that it initially took into account only how an animal performed and not what it was thinking. Sure the rat could learn the maze when it is rewarded for running thorught it, but it could also learn the maze (competence) by being pulled through it on a little cart or when it was completely sated. The performance of something may be important in judging its intelligence but it is far from the only factor. Imaginge a person in a paralyzed state, they have the competance but lack the ability to performance.
Like I said this may not be the issue as discussed in the article, but it is one caveat to the Turing Test.
I think it is a good idea to stop including these drives as it just gives people a crutch to lean on and slows down the adoption and advancement of new media devices. This isn't to say that someone couldn't get a USB floppy drive if they need one, just there is no reason to make it the default option.
What needs to happen now is manufacturers must come up with ways to boot off of USB memory devices so that we still have all the conviniences offered by floppies. (It would also help if there is almost always a USB port in the front of the computer) Dropping floppies is the first step though. Without the floppy as a crutch manufacturers will be forced to come up with devices that have the same bootable convenience.
My primary machine right now is running an Intel D810EMO legacy free mainboard. It has 4 usb ports, a built in network card, sound, and video. For my workstation I didn't need any more. The board uses the FlexATX form factor and is less bulky than others like it because it doesn't need to maintain the infrastructure for legacy port.
I agree that people have uses for serial ports and parallel ports. Considering I wrote a HOWTO on placing linux on floppy for my firewall, I know that there is a place even for people using floppies still. But why is it so difficult for manufacturers to offer more choices for legacy-free mainboards. Last I saw even Intel doesn't have a legacy-free board available. Aren't they supposed to be some sort of technology leader?
While it is nice to have some boards with serial,etc, if we ever expect to rid ourselves of a dependency on outdated devices we must have some more legacy-free options available.
Always looking for an excuse to post my personal HOWTO for using uClibc & busybox to make a single floppy linux disk. I also have a few example floppy images here. My firewall is running from a linux floppy right now.
There is an article by Charles C. Mann in the September issue of The Atlantic Montly about Bruce Schneier which argues against security systems which fail poorly. Security systems that bring down the entire system when the break are a bad idea. In the case of centralized security, if the system breaking means that an intruder can compromise the data of every user than it is a bad design. Security should be modularized so that one intruder may be able to limit your access but not read your files for example. Authentication should be separate from encryption, etc.
True management can be simplified by haveing centralized servers, and this may improve security slightly, but what use is centralized monitoring if a single intruder can take down the entire system with one compromise.
I believe AbiWord runs on QNX.
Here is my web page detailing some of the steps I go through to create a linux on a disk. I am working on putting more details on soon but I think it still gives a good introduction.
BusyBox for basic embedded versions of common linux apps (e.g. init, cp, sed, etc.)
KDrive a tiny X server from XFree86
Galeon for a fairly small browser (there are some other smaller ones in development (for example Skipstone and Dillo)
What I would do is compile a stripped down kernel, use busybox for most system apps, and have your init scripts call the tinyX server and then instead of using a window manager have the startx script start galeon in full screen mode using tabs instead of separate windows for popups. The only difficult part may be getting mozilla or galeon compiled because of the gtk requirements) You could try the Xlib mozilla port perhaps.
For a little bit of info on how I have done a similar project take a look at my linux on a floppy page.