With this exciting new technology, we can remotely rewrite the traces in the silicon substrate of you CPU chip while it is running!. The 'Hardware Upgrade Wizard' is capable of engraving components in-situ right upon the silicon chip of your own old, obsolete CPU, with a feature size of less that 0.07 microns.
The above statement is a little misleading. It is not saying that there is a feature in Windows that does not require a reboot to take effect. After it alters the CPU, you still need a reboot. Obviously it can't ask you to reboot or you will be suspicious, so it just runs the BSOD code (which, contrary to public belief, is not always caused by a bug, but is also a way to trick you into doing a reboot after one of Microsoft's surprise upgrades.)
The reason microwave radiation heats up food and liquids isn't the power output, but because it is the exact frequency required to get water molecules to resonate (think of vibrating molecules), which causes the water in a substance to heat up. The wattage only determines how much microwave radiation is emitted. Radar is in the same frequency range, but doesn't cause water to resonate, so it won't fry you (and I imagine that most radars are probably far more than 2000 Watts).
I don't have my handy-dandy chart of the electromagnetic spectrum handy, so I'm not sure where 2.4 GHz fits in.
My investigation was done last January, and I'm still waiting for my SCI. And where I am, I'm not even close to having waited the longest. Rumor has it there is a 600,000 to 700,000 backlog.
Of course, clearance level and position are important considerations. NSA has more priority, say, than a janitor at a contractor.
There is a nice script for recompiling the Linux kernel called buildkernel. Look for it on Freshmeat. I'm currently considering moving it to Perl/Gtk.
What a stupid way to embed a secret message
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The GCHQ Challenge
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· Score: 1
A real spy wouldn't use something as simple as this. A real spy would do something like encode it in a GIF file. For example, take every nth pixel and offset the RGB values a little. In a large, busy picture, a small change wouldn't be noticed by the naked eye, especially if you only allowed changes that were "close" to the original color of the pixel. For large messages, do this with a wav or avi. JPEG and MPEG probably wouldn't work because of lossy compression.
Not that I've thought about this or have any experience with it. Sure I work for a government contractor on a classified project, but... er... stop looking at me like that!
Something tells me I should post this one anonymously...
I work for a government contractor, so I think I can answer this. Everyone wants Linux. The Army wants us to look into a Linux version of our product (currently Solaris). Linux is a buzzword, and the government is just as fooled by it as anyone else. Also, Linux has good hardware support. We have a lot of Solaris x86 systems in the field, and hardware support is a pain. It is believed that Linux would solve all our hardware woes. And finally, Linux is relatively easy to find a developer/sysadmin for. Linux also has a lot of off the shelf software for it.
Sure, OpenBSD is secure, but what about hardware support? How easy is it to find someone who really understands it? Does it have the same level of buzzword sexiness? How much off the shelf software does it have (and yes, I know the BSD's can run Linux software, but that kind of emulation isn't usually allowed on a secure product)?
Also, I was informed once that the government doesn't want to mess with BSD Unix's. They want System V or one of its variant. This makes it easy to train administrators without worrying about how transferable those skills are. (I was told this when I commented to someone that FreeBSD might be a better choice than Linux for our product).
IMHO, the big problem is that there are so many people reading slashdot, and too many of them want to make frequent comments with no real value.
Something I have wondered about is the possibility of limiting the number of posts a user could make. If you want to post more, post AC. This way, you would reconsider whether the comment is worth wasting a "post point". Users with posts that are frequently moderated up could get awarded with more "post points" than they would otherwise get. Throw in a modest filter (scores of 1 and better), and the signal to noise ratio should improve (for a while anyway).
Another good idea would be to throw in a killfile. Suppose I really hate posts from GritsBoy. It would be neat to set it up so that I only see posts from him if he has a score of, say, 3 or better. While the above idea would need to be thoroughly thought about before doing it, I think this idea is definately a Good Thing.
Re:Too Many Of The Same Old Mistakes
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The ROX Desktop
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· Score: 1
I've always hated it when people complain about a WM being a Windows look-alike. There are Window Managers out there that don't look like Windows, and If you don't want the Windows look and feel, use one of those (them?) or write your own. Some people *like* the Windows look and feel (not me), and prefer the WM's that provide that interface.
In the end, let the user decide for him/herself what interface they want. Or maybe you are just upset that the Windows look-alike WM's are the most popular?
This seems a good time to bring up something I've been wondering about. I know my old Matrox Millenium (w 2MB RAM!) couldn't handle Q3, so I plan on upgrading, but to what? TNT? Voodoo? Something else?
What are the status of X support for newer 3D cards? Any dedicated servers? What about OpenGL/Mesa drivers?
In short: What would be the ideal 3d card out there in regards to price/performance, X/Linux support, and gaming in general?
disinformation Major media outlets (CNNonline, local TV in Boston, Reuters) and the Seattle PD are not acknowledging using rubber bullets or CS (tear) gas, despite photos, video and eyewitness accounts of the use of both. Medics have reported treating CS burns, yet CNN claims that only pepper spray is being used. I think that there is a better explanation than deliberate disinformation. It is possible that the reporter did report the truth at the time, but tear gas was used later. From what I read, the police started with pepper spray and moved up to tear gas later. The CNN article could easily have been written before the tear gas was introduced. This is more than likely since the CNN article/. linked to was posted on 8:19 EST on 30 November. When did the police start using tear gas? Also, remember that the article was probably written a good bit before it was posted to the web.
First, I question some of your history. Apple didn't invent the mouse, so I don't see how they could have a patent on it. Mice were around long before Apple used them. Furthermore, PC's had mice before there was a Windows or a Macintosh, and the first mice were not made by Microsoft.
Why most of these first mice had two or three buttons, I don't know. My first gues is "because they could", and my second one is because of use with X/Windows, though that is just a guess because I don't know my X history very well.
Second, the real reason Win95 added the context menu was because OS/2 had one, and it was a very popular and useful feature so MS just copied it with no changes. In fact, most of the real improvements that the Win95 GUI had over the Win3 GUI came from OS/2. I even remember downloading a toolbar that had a menu and could show minimized apps, though that did not come with OS/2. There were several other third-party panels/bars that were available for OS/2, each of varying quality.
Mice didn't evolve from Windows, but Windows from mice.
I'm sorry, I wasn't clear. Most of the problems do result in taking the earths surface and putting it on a flat map. This isn't to big of a deal for small areas, but it is for larger ones, as you correctly point out. Latitude and Longitude themselves aren't the problem, but the way they are used is. People do try to take lat/long lines and make them perfect squares, and that is what we need to move away from.
And while lat/long are polar, they assume that the earth is a perfect sphere, which isn't true. Using two lat/long coordinates to calculate a distance is pretty imprecise. Other coordinate systems are better (MGRS is what the DoD is most concerned with). An accurate 3D Polar system would have a third variable, the distance from the center of the earth (geometrically, not the center of mass). Lat/Long uses a constant distance to mean sea level.
I hate to tell you all this, but there isn't a standard on the Prime Meridian. When you create a mapping system, you have to account for the curvature of the earth, including the fact that it is fatter at the equator (think of a slightly squished ball). As a result, map creators have created things called spheroid's (there are also datum's, which are related). Any decent map should tell you which spheroid and which datum it used to figure the latitude and longitude. Each spheroid is a little different, and each has their own "prime meridian". Spheroids are chosen to be very accurate in specific areas, and less so in others (there is no spheroid that gives more better than 100 meter accuracy everywhere on earth, and as far as I know, there isn't one that does very well at the poles).
If you go to England, and see the "official" marker for the Prime Meridian, and then check with your nifty GPS system, you will find that there is about a 100 meter difference (assuming my memory is correct in this). That is because all GPS systems (even those not American) uses a spheroid called WGS-1984, which is an *American* DoD spheroid, and is very accurate except for the north pole, south pole, and along the International Date Line. The British have used several different spheroids over the course of history, each one a little more accurate than the previous one, but each with their own areas on earth where they aren't so hot. The Soviets use GK (Gauss-Krueger, which I think was originally a German standard) which is very accurate in Europe, reasonable for the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, but poor south of it. Many American sailors use Perry-1864. Most foreign sailors use International. The Japanese have a Tokyo standard, which does well in the Pacific. No one spheroid is really better than all the others everywhere (though WGS-1984 is better than most), and there is no standard spheroid, and hence no standard Prime Meridian (though WGS-1984, because of its association with GPS systems, might become a standard in the future).
Most of these spheroids differ only by a maximum of 600 meters or so, which is more than accurate for most of us. However, Sailors, pilots, and the military care very much which spheroids are being used. If you are using a map and you want to relay detailed information to someone else, you both have to agree on a spheroid. Luckely, most groups have a standard within themselves, so most pilots, sailors, and soldiers don't even know about all this. I only know all this because right now my job is working for a Government contractor that maintains software used by the U.S. Military Intelligence community, and I have been dealing mainly with different mapping subsystems, so I have a fairly "low-level" perspective on maps (not that I understand most of what I know).
Really, if the French want to do this, let them. It will probably mean another spheroid for everyone to worry about, but that isn't much of a big deal.
Stuff like this will continue until there is a recognized standard or until we move away from the stupid longitude/latitude way of doing things. I mean, the basis for Longitude/Latitude is that you can divide the world into little squares, which is obviously not accurate. 3D Polar Coordinates would be much better as long as you correctly model the shape of the earth.
Re:Some thoughts/comparisons
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1GHz Alphas
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· Score: 1
> A final note, a problem you get with high-speed > processors is that they become nice little > microwave transmittors (at 700-800+ Mhz, I think > it was) and so you really need to reduce the > power (the PA-RISC 8500 consumes 85W @ 440Mhz) > and up the shielding when clocking at this rate, > because otherwise you'd get a REAL pizza > cooker/toaster in your computer...
I wouldn't worry too much about the frequency emitted by these chips (at least not for health reasons). There are a lot of signals in that region, and we live in an ocean of EM waves that are real close to the frequency of a Microwave (for instance most radar and microwave wireless communications are not too far off).
The real danger with a Microwave is not in the range of frequencies, but in a very specific frequency, which just happens to resonate with water molecules, causing vibration and heat (and yes, this is a little oversimplified). Deviate just a little from that frequency, and there is no effect on water molecules at all, and no known effect on people.
High frequencies causing interference with other devices, however, are possible, so shielding is important.
This is great. Not only is Linux getting more software (choice is good), but it is getting a decent browser that allows you to navigate via the keyboard. The only other browser that allows this is Lynx, and it has some obvious limitations. I agree that MDI is a pain, and there are other things Opera does poorly, but I am willing to overlook all that just so I can navigate without using a mouse!
My only complaint about Opera's keybindings is the Ctrl+arrows. Ctrl+left and Ctrl+right do the same as Alt+left and Alt+right (back and forward) which is redundant and a pain. I would prefer to have the ability to go to the link left or right in a web page that has tables. Limiting navigation to previous and next is a pain on some web pages.
Does anyone know if Mozilla will fix this as well?
This isn't bad sigint. There are a lot of messages that aren't encrypted for one reason or another. If you are talking to one person or organization frequently, then you can agree on a common encryption scheme, complete with the keys necessary for it to work. But otherwise, it is just to much hassle.
And if some of these messages are recorded, then you have the ability to do a more thorough search later if you suspect something. Even if something is encrypted, you can have the experts at the NSA do their magic. Encryption can slow down governments, but it isn't foolproof.
And lastly, there is pattern recognition. Having been in sigint, you should know that who is talking to whom is almost as good as what they are saying. If you have an American nuclear scientist frequently talking to a Chineese official (just to pick an example out of the blue) with some frequency, that should throw a red flag. Even if the messages are discussing the latest Star Wars movie, it is still suspicious. In a case like that, encryption might be worse that clear text, because that looks very suspicious.
Knocking out Yugoslavia's link to the Internet would not have any effect on their internal communications infrastructure. It seperates them from the rest of the net, but one person in Yugoslavia wouldn't need that satalite to talk to another person in Yugoslavia. That satalite would only be used if someone in Yugoslavia wanted to talk to someone in another country.
They shouldn't have only one connection to the internet anyway. Part of the idea behind the Internet was that if any one site was nuked, the rest could still talk. Having only one road in is asking for trouble.
I doubt that their military and government would rely on the Internet for communications anyway. I would assume they rely primarily on radios and maybe their own private network for e-mail.
The Government uses Solaris a lot, using both SPARC and x86. Where I work we have to abide by the Common Operating Environment (COE), which means Solaris, Oracle, and other stuff.
The ability to run Linux binaries is good news for people who have to use Solaris x86 and want to run applications that are only distributed in binary. Due to marketing concerns, a lot of proprietary applications are available to Linux that aren't available to every Unix OS. For example, at work there is a team that has standardized all help files on PDF, but Adobe doesn't make Acrobat Reader for Solaris x86 (or at least it wasn't available a couple of months ago). Now they can run Acrobat Reader without waiting on Adobe to support them.
And there are other reasons for using Solaris. Java and Oracle support is better under Solaris than Linux, and a lot of companies use them. Solaris also has better SMP support (64 CPU's anyone?), journelling filesystem, and other high-end features that isn't quite available for Linux.
This should be good for everyone. Sun benefits, and it looks like Linux is not only getting acceptence by the big Unix makers, but it looks like an emerging standard. (Just imagine seeing Solaris advertised as 100% Linux compliant!)
Re:Why all this single-app threading? Multi-proces
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Linux 2.3.0
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· Score: 2
Multiple processes is the way to go much of the time, but threads have an advantage when it comes to multitasking within a process. Threads make it easy to share data structures, and there is less overhead in creating a thread than in creating a process (a process needs a copy of the environment, a thread just shares an existing one). Of course there are other differences which I won't go into.
However, it would be quite correct to say that the problem with threading isn't the kernel, its the applications. Most applications just aren't written to use multiple threads *or* multiple processes, but thats not the kernels fault, but the applications. Most developers just don't want to deal with synchronization issues and stick with a sequential design model.
The real work that needs to be done in the kernel as far as SMP is concerned is scalability. The 2.2.x kernels do well up to four CPU's (judging from what I've heard, I only run two myself), but don't scale well beyond that. Contrast this with Solaris, which scales well to 64 CPU's. And I think Irix does as well or better than Solaris. If Linux wants to compete on high end machines, it will need to scale well with as many CPU's as possible without hurting single-CPU performance.
The current Linux solution is to use several midsize computers in a cluster instead of one large computer. This model has its merits, but there are problems as well. For example, Beowulf doesn't have fault tolerence. And there are a lot of people who want to use Linux on a single high-end system. (And I would just love to see what Linux could do with a Beowulf cluster of machines with 64 CPU's!)
Lets not forget that most recent benchmarks comparing Linux to other OS's use high end machines. Many people see that as a bias toward other OS's because it is comparing their strengths with Linux's weakness's, which may be true. But it also points out a valid weakness in Linux. Hopefully the 2.3 kernels will start investigating better use of high-end hardware (not only SMP, but also things like RAID support).
What's the difference between a regular computer language (c,java,perl) vs "compiled" machine code besides the obvious levels of complexity and lack of portability (machine code)?
C, Java, Perl, and even FORTRAN are meant to be read by other people. As such it could be considered a form of expression. Free speech is meant to safeguard communication between people. Compiled machine code is not meant to be read by people but only by a machine. Therefore, it isn't a language as far as free speech is concerned.
The price? Solaris 7 was available for just the cost of the media. I don't know if that's still true or not.
It still is. But only for non-commercial use. Not a bad idea, really. Linux's greatest strength is in the accademic world. Partly because it is a great thing for CS students to play with and learn from, but also becuase it is cheap. And when a student becomes familiar with he is likely to take it with him. I think that Sun realizes this and wants a piece of the action.
Though they should make more of the OS available if they want to appeal to CS geeks. I mean, Solaris isn't nearly the educational tool that Linux is because the implementation isn't freely available to look at and tinker with. And don't even get me started on Solaris x86's hardware compatability.
A Computer Science degree isn't supposed to teach you to program - that is an implementation detail. It concentrates on high-level things like design, which is what the article suggests could be up for certification. They cite Y2K as a design failure.
Certifying a programmer is like certifying an artist. And programming is also like art in that you don't become an artist by taking a few art classes, though that certainly doesn't hurt.
The article mentions that Texas started to certify engineers because of a building that blew up. That is a design failure. They didn't suggest certifying the construction workers. If a software design failure you don't blame the programmers, but you blame the person responsible for the design (of course, for small programs they may be the same person).
A Software Engineer concentrates on the design itself, taking into account requirements, maintainability, and considering some of the implementation details. And if a software design has a fundamental flaw, the blame lies in the designer(s), not the programmers who implemented the syste. This is one reason that Software Engineering is a more structured and rigid discipline than programming.
Ideally, all programmers would be skilled Software Engineers and visa versa, but this isn't the case. Construction workers would be better at what they do if they could also see the big picture. And obviously, Engineers need to understand things from the implementors perspective. People have different abilities and different skills, and few people can be experts in both.
I do however, agree that a CS degree should qualify you as a Software Engineer. From what you have said, it sounds like you didn't go to a good school. I have never counted lines in a function. And a Software Engineer should have at least two semesters of data structures, and if they did then nobody should have to explain a hash table to them (though perhaps the course that introduces that wasn't a pre-requisite and some students hadn't had it yet?).
The theory of Computer Science can be taught. Software Engineering can be taught. If you have a college degree, it should be safe to assume that you are qualified at those. But being a good programmer is up to you.
NT 3.51 (or was it 3.5) was C2 secure, it was only a matter of time before NT4 would be. And lets get a few things straight:
No OS can be C2 secure. Only individual Systems can.
That's right. All that this rating means is that you can make it C2 secure out of the box as long as you follow certain restrictions on usage (locked room with limited access, no connection to a non-secure network). This is not the same as saying the OS itself is C2 secure. For example, if you plug in into a network and you are no longer Orange Box C2 secure. And there are other levels of C2 security, at least one allows you to connect to a secure network. I don't know how they certify networks beyond the fact that every machine must be accredited and that there are no connections to any other networks.
There are many OS's out there that aren't C2 secure out of the box, but can be if you make changes. NT4 is still like this in the US. Where I am at, there is an NT4 workstation in a secure area that is Accredited for Secret data. At first I thought someone made a mistake, but then I learned a little about the accredidation process and it turns out that there is a list of procedures on how to get it to pass certification.
Similarly, you can take a OS that is supposedly C2 secure and make it not C2 secure (by installing a modem, for example). C2 can only certify individual systems, it isn't a blanket statement that the OS itself is secure. As far as I know, there is no such blanket statement (but I'm not familiar with the B* security ratings, so it might exist).
I have heard this before, and it always leaves me wondering, "what has Caldera written that isn't GPL?" Most of the proprietary stuff that comes with OpenLinux is done by other companies (StarOffice, WordPerfect, Partition Magic).
I don't know who did their Novell client, but that is irrelevent with the new kernel. I also don't know about BRU (I assume it isn't open source). Is LISA open source? I also don't know if they are releasing their code to their new snappy installer for 2.2, but I can tolerate a proprietary installer.
But once OpenLinux is installed, just how much of what is there is proprietary *and* written by them?
Again, what have they written that isn't GPL? Instead of just making the statement, please list examples.
Slashdot Mirror
The above statement is a little misleading. It is not saying that there is a feature in Windows that does not require a reboot to take effect. After it alters the CPU, you still need a reboot. Obviously it can't ask you to reboot or you will be suspicious, so it just runs the BSOD code (which, contrary to public belief, is not always caused by a bug, but is also a way to trick you into doing a reboot after one of Microsoft's surprise upgrades.)
The reason microwave radiation heats up food and liquids isn't the power output, but because it is the exact frequency required to get water molecules to resonate (think of vibrating molecules), which causes the water in a substance to heat up. The wattage only determines how much microwave radiation is emitted. Radar is in the same frequency range, but doesn't cause water to resonate, so it won't fry you (and I imagine that most radars are probably far more than 2000 Watts).
I don't have my handy-dandy chart of the electromagnetic spectrum handy, so I'm not sure where 2.4 GHz fits in.
My investigation was done last January, and I'm still waiting for my SCI. And where I am, I'm not even close to having waited the longest. Rumor has it there is a 600,000 to 700,000 backlog.
Of course, clearance level and position are important considerations. NSA has more priority, say, than a janitor at a contractor.
There is a nice script for recompiling the Linux kernel called buildkernel. Look for it on Freshmeat. I'm currently considering moving it to Perl/Gtk.
A real spy wouldn't use something as simple as this. A real spy would do something like encode it in a GIF file. For example, take every nth pixel and offset the RGB values a little. In a large, busy picture, a small change wouldn't be noticed by the naked eye, especially if you only allowed changes that were "close" to the original color of the pixel. For large messages, do this with a wav or avi. JPEG and MPEG probably wouldn't work because of lossy compression.
Not that I've thought about this or have any experience with it. Sure I work for a government contractor on a classified project, but... er... stop looking at me like that!
Something tells me I should post this one anonymously...
I work for a government contractor, so I think I can answer this. Everyone wants Linux. The Army wants us to look into a Linux version of our product (currently Solaris). Linux is a buzzword, and the government is just as fooled by it as anyone else. Also, Linux has good hardware support. We have a lot of Solaris x86 systems in the field, and hardware support is a pain. It is believed that Linux would solve all our hardware woes. And finally, Linux is relatively easy to find a developer/sysadmin for. Linux also has a lot of off the shelf software for it.
Sure, OpenBSD is secure, but what about hardware support? How easy is it to find someone who really understands it? Does it have the same level of buzzword sexiness? How much off the shelf software does it have (and yes, I know the BSD's can run Linux software, but that kind of emulation isn't usually allowed on a secure product)?
Also, I was informed once that the government doesn't want to mess with BSD Unix's. They want System V or one of its variant. This makes it easy to train administrators without worrying about how transferable those skills are. (I was told this when I commented to someone that FreeBSD might be a better choice than Linux for our product).
IMHO, the big problem is that there are so many people reading slashdot, and too many of them want to make frequent comments with no real value.
Something I have wondered about is the possibility of limiting the number of posts a user could make. If you want to post more, post AC. This way, you would reconsider whether the comment is worth wasting a "post point". Users with posts that are frequently moderated up could get awarded with more "post points" than they would otherwise get. Throw in a modest filter (scores of 1 and better), and the signal to noise ratio should improve (for a while anyway).
Another good idea would be to throw in a killfile. Suppose I really hate posts from GritsBoy. It would be neat to set it up so that I only see posts from him if he has a score of, say, 3 or better. While the above idea would need to be thoroughly thought about before doing it, I think this idea is definately a Good Thing.
I've always hated it when people complain about a WM being a Windows look-alike. There are Window Managers out there that don't look like Windows, and If you don't want the Windows look and feel, use one of those (them?) or write your own. Some people *like* the Windows look and feel (not me), and prefer the WM's that provide that interface.
In the end, let the user decide for him/herself what interface they want. Or maybe you are just upset that the Windows look-alike WM's are the most popular?
This seems a good time to bring up something I've been wondering about. I know my old Matrox Millenium (w 2MB RAM!) couldn't handle Q3, so I plan on upgrading, but to what? TNT? Voodoo? Something else?
What are the status of X support for newer 3D cards? Any dedicated servers? What about OpenGL/Mesa drivers?
In short: What would be the ideal 3d card out there in regards to price/performance, X/Linux support, and gaming in general?
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disinformation Major media outlets (CNNonline, local TV in Boston, Reuters) and the Seattle PD are not acknowledging using rubber bullets or CS (tear) gas, despite photos, video and eyewitness accounts of the use of both. Medics have reported treating CS burns, yet CNN claims that only pepper spray is being used. I think that there is a better explanation than deliberate disinformation. It is possible that the reporter did report the truth at the time, but tear gas was used later. From what I read, the police started with pepper spray and moved up to tear gas later. The CNN article could easily have been written before the tear gas was introduced. This is more than likely since the CNN article /. linked to was posted on 8:19 EST on 30 November. When did the police start using tear gas? Also, remember that the article was probably written a good bit before it was posted to the web.
First, I question some of your history. Apple didn't invent the mouse, so I don't see how they could have a patent on it. Mice were around long before Apple used them. Furthermore, PC's had mice before there was a Windows or a Macintosh, and the first mice were not made by Microsoft.
Why most of these first mice had two or three buttons, I don't know. My first gues is "because they could", and my second one is because of use with X/Windows, though that is just a guess because I don't know my X history very well.
Second, the real reason Win95 added the context menu was because OS/2 had one, and it was a very popular and useful feature so MS just copied it with no changes. In fact, most of the real improvements that the Win95 GUI had over the Win3 GUI came from OS/2. I even remember downloading a toolbar that had a menu and could show minimized apps, though that did not come with OS/2. There were several other third-party panels/bars that were available for OS/2, each of varying quality.
Mice didn't evolve from Windows, but Windows from mice.
I'm sorry, I wasn't clear. Most of the problems do result in taking the earths surface and putting it on a flat map. This isn't to big of a deal for small areas, but it is for larger ones, as you correctly point out. Latitude and Longitude themselves aren't the problem, but the way they are used is. People do try to take lat/long lines and make them perfect squares, and that is what we need to move away from.
And while lat/long are polar, they assume that the earth is a perfect sphere, which isn't true. Using two lat/long coordinates to calculate a distance is pretty imprecise. Other coordinate systems are better (MGRS is what the DoD is most concerned with). An accurate 3D Polar system would have a third variable, the distance from the center of the earth (geometrically, not the center of mass). Lat/Long uses a constant distance to mean sea level.
Then what it is doing is a conversion.
GPS signals use the WGS-1984 spheroid, and I think coordinates are sent in MGRS. It isn't too hard to convert to another spheroid.
I hate to tell you all this, but there isn't a standard on the Prime Meridian. When you create a mapping system, you have to account for the curvature of the earth, including the fact that it is fatter at the equator (think of a slightly squished ball). As a result, map creators have created things called spheroid's (there are also datum's, which are related). Any decent map should tell you which spheroid and which datum it used to figure the latitude and longitude. Each spheroid is a little different, and each has their own "prime meridian". Spheroids are chosen to be very accurate in specific areas, and less so in others (there is no spheroid that gives more better than 100 meter accuracy everywhere on earth, and as far as I know, there isn't one that does very well at the poles).
If you go to England, and see the "official" marker for the Prime Meridian, and then check with your nifty GPS system, you will find that there is about a 100 meter difference (assuming my memory is correct in this). That is because all GPS systems (even those not American) uses a spheroid called WGS-1984, which is an *American* DoD spheroid, and is very accurate except for the north pole, south pole, and along the International Date Line. The British have used several different spheroids over the course of history, each one a little more accurate than the previous one, but each with their own areas on earth where they aren't so hot. The Soviets use GK (Gauss-Krueger, which I think was originally a German standard) which is very accurate in Europe, reasonable for the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, but poor south of it. Many American sailors use Perry-1864. Most foreign sailors use International. The Japanese have a Tokyo standard, which does well in the Pacific. No one spheroid is really better than all the others everywhere (though WGS-1984 is better than most), and there is no standard spheroid, and hence no standard Prime Meridian (though WGS-1984, because of its association with GPS systems, might become a standard in the future).
Most of these spheroids differ only by a maximum of 600 meters or so, which is more than accurate for most of us. However, Sailors, pilots, and the military care very much which spheroids are being used. If you are using a map and you want to relay detailed information to someone else, you both have to agree on a spheroid. Luckely, most groups have a standard within themselves, so most pilots, sailors, and soldiers don't even know about all this. I only know all this because right now my job is working for a Government contractor that maintains software used by the U.S. Military Intelligence community, and I have been dealing mainly with different mapping subsystems, so I have a fairly "low-level" perspective on maps (not that I understand most of what I know).
Really, if the French want to do this, let them. It will probably mean another spheroid for everyone to worry about, but that isn't much of a big deal.
Stuff like this will continue until there is a recognized standard or until we move away from the stupid longitude/latitude way of doing things. I mean, the basis for Longitude/Latitude is that you can divide the world into little squares, which is obviously not accurate. 3D Polar Coordinates would be much better as long as you correctly model the shape of the earth.
> A final note, a problem you get with high-speed
> processors is that they become nice little
> microwave transmittors (at 700-800+ Mhz, I think
> it was) and so you really need to reduce the
> power (the PA-RISC 8500 consumes 85W @ 440Mhz)
> and up the shielding when clocking at this rate,
> because otherwise you'd get a REAL pizza
> cooker/toaster in your computer...
I wouldn't worry too much about the frequency emitted by these chips (at least not for health reasons). There are a lot of signals in that region, and we live in an ocean of EM waves that are real close to the frequency of a Microwave (for instance most radar and microwave wireless communications are not too far off).
The real danger with a Microwave is not in the range of frequencies, but in a very specific frequency, which just happens to resonate with water molecules, causing vibration and heat (and yes, this is a little oversimplified). Deviate just a little from that frequency, and there is no effect on water molecules at all, and no known effect on people.
High frequencies causing interference with other devices, however, are possible, so shielding is important.
This is great. Not only is Linux getting more software (choice is good), but it is getting a decent browser that allows you to navigate via the keyboard. The only other browser that allows this is Lynx, and it has some obvious limitations. I agree that MDI is a pain, and there are other things Opera does poorly, but I am willing to overlook all that just so I can navigate without using a mouse!
My only complaint about Opera's keybindings is the Ctrl+arrows. Ctrl+left and Ctrl+right do the same as Alt+left and Alt+right (back and forward) which is redundant and a pain. I would prefer to have the ability to go to the link left or right in a web page that has tables. Limiting navigation to previous and next is a pain on some web pages.
Does anyone know if Mozilla will fix this as well?
This isn't bad sigint. There are a lot of messages that aren't encrypted for one reason or another. If you are talking to one person or organization frequently, then you can agree on a common encryption scheme, complete with the keys necessary for it to work. But otherwise, it is just to much hassle.
And if some of these messages are recorded, then you have the ability to do a more thorough search later if you suspect something. Even if something is encrypted, you can have the experts at the NSA do their magic. Encryption can slow down governments, but it isn't foolproof.
And lastly, there is pattern recognition. Having been in sigint, you should know that who is talking to whom is almost as good as what they are saying. If you have an American nuclear scientist frequently talking to a Chineese official (just to pick an example out of the blue) with some frequency, that should throw a red flag. Even if the messages are discussing the latest Star Wars movie, it is still suspicious. In a case like that, encryption might be worse that clear text, because that looks very suspicious.
I can't and won't say anything more.
Knocking out Yugoslavia's link to the Internet would not have any effect on their internal communications infrastructure. It seperates them from the rest of the net, but one person in Yugoslavia wouldn't need that satalite to talk to another person in Yugoslavia. That satalite would only be used if someone in Yugoslavia wanted to talk to someone in another country.
They shouldn't have only one connection to the internet anyway. Part of the idea behind the Internet was that if any one site was nuked, the rest could still talk. Having only one road in is asking for trouble.
I doubt that their military and government would rely on the Internet for communications anyway. I would assume they rely primarily on radios and maybe their own private network for e-mail.
The Government uses Solaris a lot, using both SPARC and x86. Where I work we have to abide by the Common Operating Environment (COE), which means Solaris, Oracle, and other stuff.
The ability to run Linux binaries is good news for people who have to use Solaris x86 and want to run applications that are only distributed in binary. Due to marketing concerns, a lot of proprietary applications are available to Linux that aren't available to every Unix OS. For example, at work there is a team that has standardized all help files on PDF, but Adobe doesn't make Acrobat Reader for Solaris x86 (or at least it wasn't available a couple of months ago). Now they can run Acrobat Reader without waiting on Adobe to support them.
And there are other reasons for using Solaris. Java and Oracle support is better under Solaris than Linux, and a lot of companies use them. Solaris also has better SMP support (64 CPU's anyone?), journelling filesystem, and other high-end features that isn't quite available for Linux.
This should be good for everyone. Sun benefits, and it looks like Linux is not only getting acceptence by the big Unix makers, but it looks like an emerging standard. (Just imagine seeing Solaris advertised as 100% Linux compliant!)
Multiple processes is the way to go much of the time, but threads have an advantage when it comes to multitasking within a process. Threads make it easy to share data structures, and there is less overhead in creating a thread than in creating a process (a process needs a copy of the environment, a thread just shares an existing one). Of course there are other differences which I won't go into.
However, it would be quite correct to say that the problem with threading isn't the kernel, its the applications. Most applications just aren't written to use multiple threads *or* multiple processes, but thats not the kernels fault, but the applications. Most developers just don't want to deal with synchronization issues and stick with a sequential design model.
The real work that needs to be done in the kernel as far as SMP is concerned is scalability. The 2.2.x kernels do well up to four CPU's (judging from what I've heard, I only run two myself), but don't scale well beyond that. Contrast this with Solaris, which scales well to 64 CPU's. And I think Irix does as well or better than Solaris. If Linux wants to compete on high end machines, it will need to scale well with as many CPU's as possible without hurting single-CPU performance.
The current Linux solution is to use several midsize computers in a cluster instead of one large computer. This model has its merits, but there are problems as well. For example, Beowulf doesn't have fault tolerence. And there are a lot of people who want to use Linux on a single high-end system. (And I would just love to see what Linux could do with a Beowulf cluster of machines with 64 CPU's!)
Lets not forget that most recent benchmarks comparing Linux to other OS's use high end machines. Many people see that as a bias toward other OS's because it is comparing their strengths with Linux's weakness's, which may be true. But it also points out a valid weakness in Linux. Hopefully the 2.3 kernels will start investigating better use of high-end hardware (not only SMP, but also things like RAID support).
C, Java, Perl, and even FORTRAN are meant to be read by other people. As such it could be considered a form of expression. Free speech is meant to safeguard communication between people. Compiled machine code is not meant to be read by people but only by a machine. Therefore, it isn't a language as far as free speech is concerned.
It still is. But only for non-commercial use. Not a bad idea, really. Linux's greatest strength is in the accademic world. Partly because it is a great thing for CS students to play with and learn from, but also becuase it is cheap. And when a student becomes familiar with he is likely to take it with him. I think that Sun realizes this and wants a piece of the action.
Though they should make more of the OS available if they want to appeal to CS geeks. I mean, Solaris isn't nearly the educational tool that Linux is because the implementation isn't freely available to look at and tinker with. And don't even get me started on Solaris x86's hardware compatability.
A Computer Science degree isn't supposed to teach you to program - that is an implementation detail. It concentrates on high-level things like design, which is what the article suggests could be up for certification. They cite Y2K as a design failure.
Certifying a programmer is like certifying an artist. And programming is also like art in that you don't become an artist by taking a few art classes, though that certainly doesn't hurt.
The article mentions that Texas started to certify engineers because of a building that blew up. That is a design failure. They didn't suggest certifying the construction workers. If a software design failure you don't blame the programmers, but you blame the person responsible for the design (of course, for small programs they may be the same person).
A Software Engineer concentrates on the design itself, taking into account requirements, maintainability, and considering some of the implementation details. And if a software design has a fundamental flaw, the blame lies in the designer(s), not the programmers who implemented the syste. This is one reason that Software Engineering is a more structured and rigid discipline than programming.
Ideally, all programmers would be skilled Software Engineers and visa versa, but this isn't the case. Construction workers would be better at what they do if they could also see the big picture. And obviously, Engineers need to understand things from the implementors perspective. People have different abilities and different skills, and few people can be experts in both.
I do however, agree that a CS degree should qualify you as a Software Engineer. From what you have said, it sounds like you didn't go to a good school. I have never counted lines in a function. And a Software Engineer should have at least two semesters of data structures, and if they did then nobody should have to explain a hash table to them (though perhaps the course that introduces that wasn't a pre-requisite and some students hadn't had it yet?).
The theory of Computer Science can be taught. Software Engineering can be taught. If you have a college degree, it should be safe to assume that you are qualified at those. But being a good programmer is up to you.
(Sorry about the rant.)
NT 3.51 (or was it 3.5) was C2 secure, it was only a matter of time before NT4 would be. And lets get a few things straight:
No OS can be C2 secure.
Only individual Systems can.
That's right. All that this rating means is that you can make it C2 secure out of the box as long as you follow certain restrictions on usage (locked room with limited access, no connection to a non-secure network). This is not the same as saying the OS itself is C2 secure. For example, if you plug in into a network and you are no longer Orange Box C2 secure. And there are other levels of C2 security, at least one allows you to connect to a secure network. I don't know how they certify networks beyond the fact that every machine must be accredited and that there are no connections to any other networks.
There are many OS's out there that aren't C2 secure out of the box, but can be if you make changes. NT4 is still like this in the US. Where I am at, there is an NT4 workstation in a secure area that is Accredited for Secret data. At first I thought someone made a mistake, but then I learned a little about the accredidation process and it turns out that there is a list of procedures on how to get it to pass certification.
Similarly, you can take a OS that is supposedly C2 secure and make it not C2 secure (by installing a modem, for example). C2 can only certify individual systems, it isn't a blanket statement that the OS itself is secure. As far as I know, there is no such blanket statement (but I'm not familiar with the B* security ratings, so it might exist).
I have heard this before, and it always leaves me wondering, "what has Caldera written that isn't GPL?" Most of the proprietary stuff that comes with OpenLinux is done by other companies (StarOffice, WordPerfect, Partition Magic).
I don't know who did their Novell client, but that is irrelevent with the new kernel. I also don't know about BRU (I assume it isn't open source). Is LISA open source? I also don't know if they are releasing their code to their new snappy installer for 2.2, but I can tolerate a proprietary installer.
But once OpenLinux is installed, just how much of what is there is proprietary *and* written by them?
Again, what have they written that isn't GPL? Instead of just making the statement, please list examples.