What is probably a more correct way of putting it is to say that the article claims that 1KW energy can produce a force of 1.2mN. A force of 1.2 mN is equivalent of the force produced by a weight of 0.12 gram under formal gravity (9.81 m/s).
Given the force is 1.2mN/kW, and we were able to scale it, a 350kW power source could produce a force/pull that a weight of 40 gram under normal gravity etc.
Just to put the numbers in perspective. A force of 1.2mN/kW is equivalent of a force of 0.12 gram.
A Tesla SP85 has a maximum effect of 350KW. This would (in theory) produce a force of roughly 40 grams, the weight of 10 sugar cubes. A Nuclear submarine is able to produce an effect of 100MW, giving a theoretical force of 10kg. A medium nuclear power plant is producing roughly 1000MW, and a force of 100kg.
The original interview/discussion is available as an embedded video in this article: http://e24.no/digital/elon-musk/elon-musk-norge-har-en-fantastisk-fordel/23663856
Elon Musk starts talking about it 40 minutes into the video.
The main point with such a system would NOT be that you could see what other persons are doing.
The main points would be: * You would always have the most up-to-date version * You could edit the document while other are editing their part * You do not have to merge conflicting versions
Most of the time I write scientific articles (and some reports). Usually there are 3-5 co-authors. Lets say each person spends two days working on the article, but I have to give them at least 2-3 weeks to do their editing.
This locks down the document while I am waiting for feedback. Merging this always turns out to be a real mess, with lots of conflicting changes.
Maybe "live cooperative editing" was a wrong name. I would more like to think of it as a CVS were you actually check out and lock each paragraph in a document.
OO has gone a long way, and is closing in on Word/Office very fast. The main problem with the suite today, is performance and a few UI issues. Adding every obscure Office feature, will just make it more bloated.
To be able to take over the world, it does however need to be better than Office. It already has one, the open docuent format, but I guess the world isnt quite ready to understand that yet.
The following feature, would be a killer- though I have no idea about how to technically solve it: I would like to call it "Live cooperative editing". A document could be saved in a way that multiple persons could open it simulatanously. You would then lock it on paragraph level. Ie the paragraph where my cursor is, is locked to me - and everybody else viewing this paragraph would clearly see that I am working on it. Multiple persons could then work on different parts of a document at the same time. This would be fantastic for working on large report/articles.
Todays features for tracking changes in documents fail terrible when multiple persons are involved, and their changes overlap.
* search engines. Most search engine bots do not understand javascript. Your pages will most likely not be index if they require javascript, or you end up with a poor rating. This might cost you a lot more customers than those viewing the pages with javascript off.
* the future. Even if you plan to update your pages every friday at noon, in real life lots of pages will be unmaintained. The life expectancy of a javascript page is however much less than a compliant html page. In five years you might have problem finding a browser that can read the page. My guess is that a compliant xhtml1.0 page can be read perfectly with the newest browser 30 years from now (if they still use browsers....)
I have tried using Linux on my desktop for the last five years (running Linux on my servers for longer). I have tried tried all Redhat/Fedora distributions since 5.0, most Mandrake distributions, losts of SUSE-versions.
I always ended up with dual booting into Windows. Always too hard (at least for others using the computer) to open Word-documents on a floppy, burn CDs, download images from the camera etc.
My Ubuntu now has an uptime of more than three months! Everything just works! Im not even sure if I bother to upgrade from Warty to Hoary.
The only thing I found a bit confusing, was the way you had to add the universe/multiverse repositiories to get the non standard programs. This is probably no problem for people that are used to apt-get, but will probably cause problem for the average user.
Seems like lots of people don't know what a braille display is. Here is one of the top braille displays availiable. Price: $15.000: Papenmeier EL 2D-80
You place your keyboard on the top. This particular display has a 20 character vertical list as well. That is a bit uncommon. Most have just a 40/60/80 character horisontal list.
The new technology is supposed to replace the 2X4 piezo cells that you see at the bottom of picture 2.
Todays braille terminals actually make "snaps" as the pins are moving up and down. I havent sees Sneakers, but from what you explain it might have been the actually sound. Dont know if you should call the "snaps" a feature or a bug though.
This is for use with CLI. As are todays braille displays.
Lots of fancy technology have tried to use tactile feedback for something useful for blind, but they have failed. The only useful tactile devise is really a braille display, and it displays single characters usually by moving 2X4 pieco-cells/pins up and down.
If you want to display a graphical interface, you really just map it down to one line of text (the line were your cursor is) - basically a CLI, and display it on an 80 character braille display.
Most other info (position, color, font-size etc) you either just discard, or display as sound.
Think of todays braille devices as a display of 80 characters (some have 40 or 60). Each character consists usually of 2X4 pizo-cells (Small electrical motors driving a pin up and down). The braille-device has a few other buttons as well. Most notably small buttons above each braille character. Pressing this button will typically move the cursor to this character.
A blind person can use a computer with sound only (using TextToSpeach and Screen Readers), but braille devices are a great aid. But the braille device is a great help, and most users really depend on them to be effective.
The problem is that they are insanely expensive. Typically a 80 character Braille Display of reasonable quality will cost you $10.000 to $15.000!! This is fragile technology. Expect it to last 2-5 years!
It is very hard to reduce this cost significantly - the reason is the cost of the pizo-cells (An 80 character device has actually 640 small electrical motors).
Being able to build braille display without using pizo cells is essential for building useful computers for blind people. This looks fantastic, but is unfortunately very low on details - and costs.
but hard evidence linking that to temperature rises is minimal.
Just out of curiosity, what kind of hard evidence would you concider adequate? A randomised controlled trial? Just give me the funding for another planet and a few billions years and Ill be more than happy to conduct the research..
The nature of the subject makes it impossible that any such link of causuality would be in the form of "hard evidence". It will always be just theories and models, but in this case the theories seems to be very well grounded.
You are forgetting one simple thing. How can you ever prove that something does not exist? It is really a basic scientific question. How would you go about if you should produce scientific valid documentation that one single apartment did not contain WMD? It is impossible. The only thing you can prove is that your appoach was not able to prove that they did exist.
Noboby (not even Saddam Hussein) claims that Iraq did not posess WMD around 1990. It is also pretty obvious to everybody that a significant amount of these weapons was destroyed. It is claimed that part of this destruction is not documentet. Meaning - they can not be accounted for.
Before you start saying that this is totally unbelievable - how can anyone loose track of their own WMD, let me remind you that the US did just that a few years ago.
If you should prove that Iraq did not possess WMD, how could you ever do that?
What Gnome and Firefox is doing, has very little to do with idiot-proofing. The main purpose is not removing features.
The main purpose is giving the power users the one and feature that really matters: "a simple tool that does the job". Real power users want to use a browser for viewing web-pages, and they want it to do it efficiently right out of the box.
They might have special needs (like having a handicap, speaking a strange language), or want to use it for a special purpose (like web-developing). The problem is that if you add all these options, you sooner or later have to trade away the simplicity.
The Gnome solution is OK. If you have to choose between being able finetune the window-behaviour and the power of simplicity... I always go for simplicity.... but its not an ideal solution.
The Firefox-solution is brilliant!!! Here you really get the best from both worlds. If you want to tune Firefox for web-development, it takes just a couple of clicks to download a web-development extension (with all the web-development-tunable-preferences you can dream of). If you want to fine-tune how your tabs behave - two clicks and you are set. And if you really are one of those wierd types that seems to get you kicks from changing the color of your menues and the dinstance between the menu-items, Im sure you can download an extension for that too..;-)
Actually, I admire this guy. He is a leader of a small local Linux User Group, and he is getting his "fifteen minutes" by just resigning. He gets lots of puplicity for his view on the war in Iraq. Most likely he is just tired of leading this group, and would quit anyway.
What's not so smart, is his reasoning. From a filosophical point of view, you might argue that sometime you are morally responsible for what your "neutral" technology is used for. Like Einstein having moral problems with his theories being used for building nuclear bombs, regretting that he ever published them. And most pacifists would also have problems being a chief for the army, even if they do no killing themselves...and so on. You might agree on these stands or not, but the reasoning behind it is logical.
It is however absurd that promoting/programming Linux is a moral problem if the Army is using Linux. Should you stop working in the oil industry because the army uses fuel? Should you stop producing corn because this is a vital part of the army's food?
There have to be a much clearer link, and it has to matter.
Imagine you are in the american army, and are walking down the street, on your way to bomb a village because your president says they have WMD.
Scenario 1: Someone snipes your friend from a nearby window. He bleeds to death in your arms. Your reaction? Anger. Damn them! Revenge! Death to the terrorists. After all, you have bullets too. They're fighting on your terms.
Scenarion 2: Someone hijacks two passenger plains and flies them into the highest buildings of your largest city, and blows all your friends into tiny kibbles-n-bits sized chunks, and sends you ass over elbows into a crumpled heap some 20 yards away. (And even killing themselves in the same action, so it is practically no way to retribute). Your reaction? "HOLY FLURKING SHNIT!" What ya gonna do about it? You'd instantly realize you're way the hell out of your league.
NO! YOU DONT! Nobody reacts this way. It is totally against all we know about human behavior.
There are several possible reactions to "Scenario 2"(mine or your version). Someone will try retribute/revenge, someone will just be devestated for having their friends killed, someone will just start to hate even more. There might be someone who is just too shocked to think/act. You might see that at big accidents, but that is just a reaction that lasts for minutes/hours.
Someone might even forgive, but even they are more convinced after "Scenario 2" that they are right and their opponents wrong.
Prove me wrong. Tell me one time that you have been so in "shock and awe" that you have changed side....
"I love you" and "soBig" both happened because too many people are using Windows, not because Windows in itself are insecure.
Any homogenous system will always be voulnerable to these kind of attacks.
The problem with any homogenous system (ecological, social or digital) - even if it might be very effective and streamlined when it works - when one of the units fails: all fails.
The key to building resistant systems, is making them heterogenous. Nature has figured that out millions of years ago. The key to securing a species survival is variance.
The same goes for computer systems. When 90 % of the computers are running Windows, Office, Outlook, viruses like ILoveYou and soBig have disastrous effects. (The fact that there are several versions of Windows, with different SPs installed, is making it a lot harder to write effective viruses).
My biggest fear is that Microsoft will end up with a susbscription system, and automatical updates. This could lead to a totally homogenous computer park... it is bound to be disastrous..
I own a site for lyrics with guitar chords and tabs: chordie.com.
It looks like most sites for guitar chord/lyrics sites, but it functions like a traditional search engine. It does not host any songs. Just links.
This can not be any more illegal than running a site like Google or AltaVista. Most of the songs indexed at Chordie, can even be found on Google.
I would really like to get some comments on this. Ive discussed it with a copyright lawyer, and even if he was not hundred percent sure, he did not advice me to close the site.
Another point is that very few artists (if any) see this as a problem. That young artists learn to play their songs, and play them to family or friends, isnt a problem. It is he best advertising you can ask for! If they should end up releasing a cover verion, they get their share anyway.
I heard the verdict live on norwegian radio today. I havent read the statement yet, so the quotes might not be 100 percent accurate.
First two comments. * The verdict can be appealed to "Lagmannsretten" (one step below Supreme Court) within two weeks. No statements yet in Norwegian media whether they will do that, but at least one legal expert "guessed" that they will not. The prosecutor (ØkoKrim - "Economical Chrime") will decide if they shall appeal, not MPAA!
* Norway have not yet implemented the European Unions directive on copyright, but they will probably do it soon.
Here is what I found interesting and amusing: The law they used is mainly about "breaking in" og "gaining access" to "stuff" that is not yours and that is protected. The original law is very old, but was changed (about 20 years ago?) to include digital information.
Tha court mainly states that you cannot be convicted for breaking into something that is yours. (If you choose to break into your own car that is your prioblem, not the courts).
It also states that the methods used for breaking into something (it specifically addresses "reverse engineering"-techics") isnt unlawful in themselves. They are just unlawful if you are not entitled to the information the protection is protecting.
The next issue was that the keys themselves could be looked at as the information that was protected (not the content of the DVD). This is slightly more tricky, but firstly the judge said that the first key was not protected at all (this is clearly not breaking into anythin). Then she said that since the "real data" here is the movie, and that since he has the right to look at the movie, gaining access to the keys that protected this infomation could be not be regarding as unlawful.
The last point was whether the reason wasnt looking at the DVD, but to illegally copy DVDs. Several examples for "real life" was used here. It seems clear that you cannot the held accountable (in Norwegian law) if you sell/distribute goods with an legal appliance, even if it is used illegally. (If you sell an axe, you are not responsible if someone uses the axe for murder). There is however legal precedence stating if you know that the intent is clearly illegal, you can be hold accountable, even if the goods in themself is lega. The judge used an example from Supreme Court where a person was convicted for selling equipment for destilling alcohol. He was clearly aware that it was used for illegal purposed, but claimed that each part for legal to sell.
This means that if Johansen distributed/sold/developed deCSS when he knew that the main reason for this was to illegally copy DVDs, he could be convicted for that. Johansen claimed that his main reason was developing a Linux DVD player.
The judge referred several IRC-logs, where Johansen made statements like "Linux sucks", "I wish that all Linux fanatics would be shot" and "FreeBSD rulez" (and an e-mail where he states that Linux is a very good OS, but FreeBSD is better). (Several in the courtroom started to laugh at this time, and the judge had to tell them to be silent). She also mentioned that he didnt have Linux installed at at the time, and that the only thing he developed was a GUI for Windows. However, the court did not find it proved - beyond reasonable doubt - the Johansens main reason was to develop programs that could be used illegally. He terefore falls in the same category as thos selling/distributing goods that can both be used legally and illegally.
Making accessible websites is about a lot more than serving people with disabilities.
Web-accessibility takes a lot of inspiration from whats called "universal design". (As opposed to "special sollutions" that tries to solve the problems for a specific group). The point of "universial design" is that you with very small means can make the world accessible to a lot more people, in different ages, with different abilities. Examples of "universal design" is wider doors, lower and bigger light switches, electrical doors, ramps, lower busses etc etc). Braille and wheelchair elevators are examples of "special sollutions" since they mainly helps those with that special disability.
The really interesting part about "universal design" is that good designs often seems help a lot more people than originally intended. I saw a report one time (sorry, dont have exact reference) about who used wheelchair ramps. Actually just a few percent were wheelchair users. More than 95 percent were mothers with baby carriages, travellers with big suitcases, people making deliveries, roller scaters etc etc The point is: By making it accessible, you also help a lot of people that you usually does not consider diabled. THAT IS ALSO THE POINT WITH WEB-ACESSIBILITY.
So why should you make your bird-watcher site accessible? (Even if you have the right not to do it). My answer is that you should do it without asking, because it takes you just a few minutes and because "you'll never know".
I guess thats not the answer you are looking for, so Im going to give you some other reasons (Note that this is not a complete list. The point with accessibel design is that you plan for situations you cant predict): * Mobile users. A real bird watcher site should be availiable from the field. You should anticipate that some of you power users accessing the site using a Nokia 9210 Communicator, or maybe even a 3510i or maybe even a newer model. If you follow the w3c accessibily guidelines your site will be readeable. If you dont think about accessibilty, and choose to design for the most common browser, you fail to serve your customers when they really need you. * Search engines, robots etc. A very important part of web-accessibility is making all information availiable textual (not using only images for important information). That also ensures that the search enignes can index everything on your site. * Slow connections. If you have a picture heavy site, some of your users, might choose to turn off images. For instance just turning it on when they have found the image of the bird they are looking for. By making the site accessibel, you have made sure that this is possible. * Temporarily disabled users. One of your bird watchers might have fallen down from a tree. Spending lots and lots of time in his hospital bed surfing the web using a voice controlled system. Have you made your system generally accessibel, he will be able to do that.
I could come up with lots of examples. The point is: You'll never know.
Of course you should have the right to ignore this segment of the marked. Chances are however that using just a few minutes making the site accessibel will be worth it.
Sorry for being a bit negative, but Im really just relistic. Lots of thing can go wrong: * Someone might find a fault in your algoritms after several years * Someone might come up with (royalty free) methods of getting the same level of security (not related to your patent)
I dont know your idea, but speaking on a general basis, even if your idea goes through the first review from the nets security gurus, you still just have 1:10 odds of getting you 20K back.
If you havent spent a lot of resources on it already (just your spare time for a couple of years?), I would seriously consider open sourcing it. Remember however (important!): Use your own name for the algoritm.
If it turns out to not be such a good idea after all, you still have your 20K.
If it turns out to be an OK idea, it is a better chance for it to succeed if its open.
If it is an brilliant idea, you want get rich right away, but when everybody is talking about the fantastic "Kip Knight"-algorithm, the $20 your getting from shareware licenses wont matter. You can walk into most security companies in the world, and set your own sallary.
I think if you think it through you'll see that you're applying a standard that is irrelevent to what you're trying to screen for
Sorry, but you are missing the point here. There is no point in asking a person in an interview if he is a good team player. Everybody will answer "yes". You have to look for other things.
Sure, persons that are only interested in watching TV can be good team-players as well, but I would favor a socially active person (if I was looking for someone to work in a close team).
I have now idea if you are a good team player or not, since I dont know you. So dont take this personally:
If someone (with programming skills) have used OS programs for a long time, without contributing anything back (no patches, no bugreports, nothing), it is fairly obvious to me that this is not a good quality for the new programmer for my team. (Of course its not very important, but it is relevant, and definately a piece in the big puzzle)
With all due respect, you are free to choose your priorities.
Contributing to open source projects is about team work, and it is about giving back to a community.
If someone in an interview said that they never contributes to open source project because they dont get any fast cash that way, it would not give me a good impression. Is this a person who only helps out his collegues when he sees short time personal benefits in it as well? If Im looking for team players, open source involvement would be definately be positive (but of course not the only thing to look for).
Norway is a small country (4 million people), and not very much is translated into Norwegian. For instance, you will rarely find dubbed movies here (just subtitled).
As a result, most norwegians understand english fairly well (even if they dont speak/write it very often).
The characterset used to be a problem (like 7-8 years ago), but isnt any problem today (For the special interested, norwegian have three special characters: æøå).
Most people I know like to use english versions of programs (instead of risking new bugs/misunderstanding resulting from low budged translations).
Internationalization is always important, but it is actually of less importance in Norway, than in most other european countries.
Slashdot Mirror
What is probably a more correct way of putting it is to say that the article claims that 1KW energy can produce a force of 1.2mN. A force of 1.2 mN is equivalent of the force produced by a weight of 0.12 gram under formal gravity (9.81 m/s).
Given the force is 1.2mN/kW, and we were able to scale it, a 350kW power source could produce a force/pull that a weight of 40 gram under normal gravity etc.
Yes, that is a more correct way of putting it. The force the weight of 100kg would exercise.
Just to put the numbers in perspective. A force of 1.2mN/kW is equivalent of a force of 0.12 gram.
A Tesla SP85 has a maximum effect of 350KW. This would (in theory) produce a force of roughly 40 grams, the weight of 10 sugar cubes.
A Nuclear submarine is able to produce an effect of 100MW, giving a theoretical force of 10kg.
A medium nuclear power plant is producing roughly 1000MW, and a force of 100kg.
The original interview/discussion is available as an embedded video in this article: http://e24.no/digital/elon-musk/elon-musk-norge-har-en-fantastisk-fordel/23663856
Elon Musk starts talking about it 40 minutes into the video.
The main point with such a system would NOT be that you could see what other persons are doing.
The main points would be:
* You would always have the most up-to-date version
* You could edit the document while other are editing their part
* You do not have to merge conflicting versions
Most of the time I write scientific articles (and some reports). Usually there are 3-5 co-authors. Lets say each person spends two days working on the article, but I have to give them at least 2-3 weeks to do their editing.
This locks down the document while I am waiting for feedback. Merging this always turns out to be a real mess, with lots of conflicting changes.
Maybe "live cooperative editing" was a wrong name. I would more like to think of it as a CVS were you actually check out and lock each paragraph in a document.
OO has gone a long way, and is closing in on Word/Office very fast. The main problem with the suite today, is performance and a few UI issues. Adding every obscure Office feature, will just make it more bloated.
To be able to take over the world, it does however need to be better than Office. It already has one, the open docuent format, but I guess the world isnt quite ready to understand that yet.
The following feature, would be a killer- though I have no idea about how to technically solve it: I would like to call it "Live cooperative editing". A document could be saved in a way that multiple persons could open it simulatanously. You would then lock it on paragraph level. Ie the paragraph where my cursor is, is locked to me - and everybody else viewing this paragraph would clearly see that I am working on it. Multiple persons could then work on different parts of a document at the same time. This would be fantastic for working on large report/articles.
Todays features for tracking changes in documents fail terrible when multiple persons are involved, and their changes overlap.
just two more points.
* search engines. Most search engine bots do not understand javascript. Your pages will most likely not be index if they require javascript, or you end up with a poor rating. This might cost you a lot more customers than those viewing the pages with javascript off.
* the future. Even if you plan to update your pages every friday at noon, in real life lots of pages will be unmaintained. The life expectancy of a javascript page is however much less than a compliant html page. In five years you might have problem finding a browser that can read the page. My guess is that a compliant xhtml1.0 page can be read perfectly with the newest browser 30 years from now (if they still use browsers....)
I have tried using Linux on my desktop for the last five years (running Linux on my servers for longer). I have tried tried all Redhat/Fedora distributions since 5.0, most Mandrake distributions, losts of SUSE-versions.
I always ended up with dual booting into Windows. Always too hard (at least for others using the computer) to open Word-documents on a floppy, burn CDs, download images from the camera etc.
My Ubuntu now has an uptime of more than three months! Everything just works! Im not even sure if I bother to upgrade from Warty to Hoary.
The only thing I found a bit confusing, was the way you had to add the universe/multiverse repositiories to get the non standard programs. This is probably no problem for people that are used to apt-get, but will probably cause problem for the average user.
Seems like lots of people don't know what a braille display is. Here is one of the top braille displays availiable. Price: $15.000:
Papenmeier EL 2D-80
You place your keyboard on the top. This particular display has a 20 character vertical list as well. That is a bit uncommon. Most have just a 40/60/80 character horisontal list.
The new technology is supposed to replace the 2X4 piezo cells that you see at the bottom of picture 2.
Todays braille terminals actually make "snaps" as the pins are moving up and down. I havent sees Sneakers, but from what you explain it might have been the actually sound. Dont know if you should call the "snaps" a feature or a bug though.
This is for use with CLI. As are todays braille displays.
Lots of fancy technology have tried to use tactile feedback for something useful for blind, but they have failed. The only useful tactile devise is really a braille display, and it displays single characters usually by moving 2X4 pieco-cells/pins up and down.
If you want to display a graphical interface, you really just map it down to one line of text (the line were your cursor is) - basically a CLI, and display it on an 80 character braille display.
Most other info (position, color, font-size etc) you either just discard, or display as sound.
Think of todays braille devices as a display of 80 characters (some have 40 or 60). Each character consists usually of 2X4 pizo-cells (Small electrical motors driving a pin up and down). The braille-device has a few other buttons as well. Most notably small buttons above each braille character. Pressing this button will typically move the cursor to this character.
A blind person can use a computer with sound only (using TextToSpeach and Screen Readers), but braille devices are a great aid. But the braille device is a great help, and most users really depend on them to be effective.
The problem is that they are insanely expensive. Typically a 80 character Braille Display of reasonable quality will cost you $10.000 to $15.000!! This is fragile technology. Expect it to last 2-5 years!
It is very hard to reduce this cost significantly - the reason is the cost of the pizo-cells (An 80 character device has actually 640 small electrical motors).
Being able to build braille display without using pizo cells is essential for building useful computers for blind people. This looks fantastic, but is unfortunately very low on details - and costs.
The nature of the subject makes it impossible that any such link of causuality would be in the form of "hard evidence". It will always be just theories and models, but in this case the theories seems to be very well grounded.
You are forgetting one simple thing. How can you ever prove that something does not exist? It is really a basic scientific question. How would you go about if you should produce scientific valid documentation that one single apartment did not contain WMD? It is impossible. The only thing you can prove is that your appoach was not able to prove that they did exist.
Noboby (not even Saddam Hussein) claims that Iraq did not posess WMD around 1990. It is also pretty obvious to everybody that a significant amount of these weapons was destroyed. It is claimed that part of this destruction is not documentet. Meaning - they can not be accounted for.
Before you start saying that this is totally unbelievable - how can anyone loose track of their own WMD, let me remind you that the US did just that a few years ago.
If you should prove that Iraq did not possess WMD, how could you ever do that?
What Gnome and Firefox is doing, has very little to do with idiot-proofing. The main purpose is not removing features.
... but its not an ideal solution.
The main purpose is giving the power users the one and feature that really matters: "a simple tool that does the job". Real power users want to use a browser for viewing web-pages, and they want it to do it efficiently right out of the box.
They might have special needs (like having a handicap, speaking a strange language), or want to use it for a special purpose (like web-developing). The problem is that if you add all these options, you sooner or later have to trade away the simplicity.
The Gnome solution is OK. If you have to choose between being able finetune the window-behaviour and the power of simplicity... I always go for simplicity.
The Firefox-solution is brilliant!!! Here you really get the best from both worlds. If you want to tune Firefox for web-development, it takes just a couple of clicks to download a web-development extension (with all the web-development-tunable-preferences you can dream of). If you want to fine-tune how your tabs behave - two clicks and you are set. And if you really are one of those wierd types that seems to get you kicks from changing the color of your menues and the dinstance between the menu-items, Im sure you can download an extension for that too..;-)
Actually, I admire this guy. He is a leader of a small local Linux User Group, and he is getting his "fifteen minutes" by just resigning. He gets lots of puplicity for his view on the war in Iraq. Most likely he is just tired of leading this group, and would quit anyway.
What's not so smart, is his reasoning. From a filosophical point of view, you might argue that sometime you are morally responsible for what your "neutral" technology is used for. Like Einstein having moral problems with his theories being used for building nuclear bombs, regretting that he ever published them. And most pacifists would also have problems being a chief for the army, even if they do no killing themselves...and so on. You might agree on these stands or not, but the reasoning behind it is logical.
It is however absurd that promoting/programming Linux is a moral problem if the Army is using Linux. Should you stop working in the oil industry because the army uses fuel? Should you stop producing corn because this is a vital part of the army's food?
There have to be a much clearer link, and it has to matter.
But he got publicity for his view, right?
Ok. Then this probably makes scense as well:
Imagine you are in the american army, and are walking down the street, on your way to bomb a village because your president says they have WMD.
Scenario 1: Someone snipes your friend from a nearby window. He bleeds to death in your arms. Your reaction? Anger. Damn them! Revenge! Death to the terrorists. After all, you have bullets too. They're fighting on your terms.
Scenarion 2: Someone hijacks two passenger plains and flies them into the highest buildings of your largest city, and blows all your friends into tiny kibbles-n-bits sized chunks, and sends you ass over elbows into a crumpled heap some 20 yards away. (And even killing themselves in the same action, so it is practically no way to retribute). Your reaction? "HOLY FLURKING SHNIT!" What ya gonna do about it? You'd instantly realize you're way the hell out of your league.
NO! YOU DONT! Nobody reacts this way. It is totally against all we know about human behavior.
There are several possible reactions to "Scenario 2"(mine or your version). Someone will try retribute/revenge, someone will just be devestated for having their friends killed, someone will just start to hate even more. There might be someone who is just too shocked to think/act. You might see that at big accidents, but that is just a reaction that lasts for minutes/hours.
Someone might even forgive, but even they are more convinced after "Scenario 2" that they are right and their opponents wrong.
Prove me wrong. Tell me one time that you have been so in "shock and awe" that you have changed side....
"I love you" and "soBig" both happened because too many people are using Windows, not because Windows in itself are insecure.
Any homogenous system will always be voulnerable to these kind of attacks.
The problem with any homogenous system (ecological, social or digital) - even if it might be very effective and streamlined when it works - when one of the units fails: all fails.
The key to building resistant systems, is making them heterogenous. Nature has figured that out millions of years ago. The key to securing a species survival is variance.
The same goes for computer systems. When 90 % of the computers are running Windows, Office, Outlook, viruses like ILoveYou and soBig have disastrous effects. (The fact that there are several versions of Windows, with different SPs installed, is making it a lot harder to write effective viruses).
My biggest fear is that Microsoft will end up with a susbscription system, and automatical updates. This could lead to a totally homogenous computer park... it is bound to be disastrous..
I own a site for lyrics with guitar chords and tabs: chordie.com.
It looks like most sites for guitar chord/lyrics sites, but it functions like a traditional search engine. It does not host any songs. Just links.
This can not be any more illegal than running a site like Google or AltaVista. Most of the songs indexed at Chordie, can even be found on Google.
I would really like to get some comments on this. Ive discussed it with a copyright lawyer, and even if he was not hundred percent sure, he did not advice me to close the site.
Another point is that very few artists (if any) see this as a problem. That young artists learn to play their songs, and play them to family or friends, isnt a problem. It is he best advertising you can ask for! If they should end up releasing a cover verion, they get their share anyway.
pere
I heard the verdict live on norwegian radio today. I havent read the statement yet, so the quotes might not be 100 percent accurate.
First two comments.
* The verdict can be appealed to "Lagmannsretten" (one step below Supreme Court) within two weeks. No statements yet in Norwegian media whether they will do that, but at least one legal expert "guessed" that they will not. The prosecutor (ØkoKrim - "Economical Chrime") will decide if they shall appeal, not MPAA!
* Norway have not yet implemented the European Unions directive on copyright, but they will probably do it soon.
Here is what I found interesting and amusing:
The law they used is mainly about "breaking in" og "gaining access" to "stuff" that is not yours and that is protected. The original law is very old, but was changed (about 20 years ago?) to include digital information.
Tha court mainly states that you cannot be convicted for breaking into something that is yours. (If you choose to break into your own car that is your prioblem, not the courts).
It also states that the methods used for breaking into something (it specifically addresses "reverse engineering"-techics") isnt unlawful in themselves. They are just unlawful if you are not entitled to the information the protection is protecting.
The next issue was that the keys themselves could be looked at as the information that was protected (not the content of the DVD). This is slightly more tricky, but firstly the judge said that the first key was not protected at all (this is clearly not breaking into anythin). Then she said that since the "real data" here is the movie, and that since he has the right to look at the movie, gaining access to the keys that protected this infomation could be not be regarding as unlawful.
The last point was whether the reason wasnt looking at the DVD, but to illegally copy DVDs. Several examples for "real life" was used here. It seems clear that you cannot the held accountable (in Norwegian law) if you sell/distribute goods with an legal appliance, even if it is used illegally. (If you sell an axe, you are not responsible if someone uses the axe for murder). There is however legal precedence stating if you know that the intent is clearly illegal, you can be hold accountable, even if the goods in themself is lega. The judge used an example from Supreme Court where a person was convicted for selling equipment for destilling alcohol. He was clearly aware that it was used for illegal purposed, but claimed that each part for legal to sell.
This means that if Johansen distributed/sold/developed deCSS when he knew that the main reason for this was to illegally copy DVDs, he could be convicted for that. Johansen claimed that his main reason was developing a Linux DVD player.
The judge referred several IRC-logs, where Johansen made statements like "Linux sucks", "I wish that all Linux fanatics would be shot" and "FreeBSD rulez" (and an e-mail where he states that Linux is a very good OS, but FreeBSD is better). (Several in the courtroom started to laugh at this time, and the judge had to tell them to be silent). She also mentioned that he didnt have Linux installed at at the time, and that the only thing he developed was a GUI for Windows. However, the court did not find it proved - beyond reasonable doubt - the Johansens main reason was to develop programs that could be used illegally. He terefore falls in the same category as thos selling/distributing goods that can both be used legally and illegally.
And as you all know: not guilty.
Making accessible websites is about a lot more than serving people with disabilities.
Web-accessibility takes a lot of inspiration from whats called "universal design". (As opposed to "special sollutions" that tries to solve the problems for a specific group). The point of "universial design" is that you with very small means can make the world accessible to a lot more people, in different ages, with different abilities. Examples of "universal design" is wider doors, lower and bigger light switches, electrical doors, ramps, lower busses etc etc). Braille and wheelchair elevators are examples of "special sollutions" since they mainly helps those with that special disability.
The really interesting part about "universal design" is that good designs often seems help a lot more people than originally intended. I saw a report one time (sorry, dont have exact reference) about who used wheelchair ramps. Actually just a few percent were wheelchair users. More than 95 percent were mothers with baby carriages, travellers with big suitcases, people making deliveries, roller scaters etc etc The point is: By making it accessible, you also help a lot of people that you usually does not consider diabled. THAT IS ALSO THE POINT WITH WEB-ACESSIBILITY.
So why should you make your bird-watcher site accessible? (Even if you have the right not to do it). My answer is that you should do it without asking, because it takes you just a few minutes and because "you'll never know".
I guess thats not the answer you are looking for, so Im going to give you some other reasons (Note that this is not a complete list. The point with accessibel design is that you plan for situations you cant predict):
* Mobile users. A real bird watcher site should be availiable from the field. You should anticipate that some of you power users accessing the site using a Nokia 9210 Communicator, or maybe even a 3510i or maybe even a newer model. If you follow the w3c accessibily guidelines your site will be readeable. If you dont think about accessibilty, and choose to design for the most common browser, you fail to serve your customers when they really need you.
* Search engines, robots etc. A very important part of web-accessibility is making all information availiable textual (not using only images for important information). That also ensures that the search enignes can index everything on your site.
* Slow connections. If you have a picture heavy site, some of your users, might choose to turn off images. For instance just turning it on when they have found the image of the bird they are looking for. By making the site accessibel, you have made sure that this is possible.
* Temporarily disabled users. One of your bird watchers might have fallen down from a tree. Spending lots and lots of time in his hospital bed surfing the web using a voice controlled system. Have you made your system generally accessibel, he will be able to do that.
I could come up with lots of examples. The point is: You'll never know.
Of course you should have the right to ignore this segment of the marked. Chances are however that using just a few minutes making the site accessibel will be worth it.
Lets say that you have a really good idea.
Sorry for being a bit negative, but Im really just relistic. Lots of thing can go wrong:
* Someone might find a fault in your algoritms after several years
* Someone might come up with (royalty free) methods of getting the same level of security (not related to your patent)
I dont know your idea, but speaking on a general basis, even if your idea goes through the first review from the nets security gurus, you still just have 1:10 odds of getting you 20K back.
If you havent spent a lot of resources on it already (just your spare time for a couple of years?), I would seriously consider open sourcing it. Remember however (important!): Use your own name for the algoritm.
If it turns out to not be such a good idea after all, you still have your 20K.
If it turns out to be an OK idea, it is a better chance for it to succeed if its open.
If it is an brilliant idea, you want get rich right away, but when everybody is talking about the fantastic "Kip Knight"-algorithm, the $20 your getting from shareware licenses wont matter. You can walk into most security companies in the world, and set your own sallary.
Sorry, but you are missing the point here. There is no point in asking a person in an interview if he is a good team player. Everybody will answer "yes". You have to look for other things.
Sure, persons that are only interested in watching TV can be good team-players as well, but I would favor a socially active person (if I was looking for someone to work in a close team).
I have now idea if you are a good team player or not, since I dont know you. So dont take this personally:
If someone (with programming skills) have used OS programs for a long time, without contributing anything back (no patches, no bugreports, nothing), it is fairly obvious to me that this is not a good quality for the new programmer for my team. (Of course its not very important, but it is relevant, and definately a piece in the big puzzle)
With all due respect, you are free to choose your priorities.
Contributing to open source projects is about team work, and it is about giving back to a community.
If someone in an interview said that they never contributes to open source project because they dont get any fast cash that way, it would not give me a good impression. Is this a person who only helps out his collegues when he sees short time personal benefits in it as well? If Im looking for team players, open source involvement would be definately be positive (but of course not the only thing to look for).
Norway is a small country (4 million people), and not very much is translated into Norwegian. For instance, you will rarely find dubbed movies here (just subtitled).
As a result, most norwegians understand english fairly well (even if they dont speak/write it very often).
The characterset used to be a problem (like 7-8 years ago), but isnt any problem today (For the special interested, norwegian have three special characters: æøå).
Most people I know like to use english versions of programs (instead of risking new bugs/misunderstanding resulting from low budged translations).
Internationalization is always important, but it is actually of less importance in Norway, than in most other european countries.