An Indian Psycologist (whose name went something like Sikh Sent Mahalia - but I'm sure I totally mangled it, and can't lay my hands on the book) identified the necessary components of "flow" as skills, rules, goals, and feedback. For any activity, whether work or play, if you lack the skill, or if the activity is too easy or too hard, you are frustrated and unhappy. If you can't discern the rules (or meta rules), you are frustrated and unhappy. If there is no goal, you are frustrated and unhappy. If there is no feedback on your progress, you are frustrated and unhappy.
Sports like football have all the components (for those with the skill), and there is "flow". Putting linux on machines designed to prevent that very thing is like a game of football for geeks. It requires skill (is not too easy), but has been and probably can be done (is not too hard). The rules are those of logic and electronics. The goal is clear, and there is feedback along the way as you (carefully arrange to) see evidence of the system running your code further and further along in the boot process.
It can get frustrating if there is a lack of feedback - you can't find a visible bit to twiddle to show the code has gotten to a specific point.
If you don't like the way record labels are investing their money then why don't you start your own record label and show us all how it's done?
Talking about not hearing the other sides argument. The point is that small artists don't *need* a record label any more. So we don't care how they invest their money - except that suing grandmothers doesn't seem like the best use.
We also have the classic "free" vs. "free" equivocation. I don't want to get music for free. I want to support the artist. But I much prefer to buy albums directly from the artists. And I hate stupid restrictions. "Liberian Acapella" is one of my favorites. They sing at churches and sell their self produced albums. I have many albums from Magnatune (a "record label" that does distribution only). Another favorite is
David Bellugi from Italy.
That said, I am a copyright Nazi. I confiscate and destroy illegally copied RIAA music whenever I find it, give my teenage daughters a lecture on "playing by their rules if your going to listen to their music", and threaten to take the $3000 out of their bank account if they get caught distributing copies (I realize the lawsuits are for online distribution, but the principal is the same). Of course, the fact that I can't stand most of the music has *nothing* to do with this...
What I really need is some official RIAA materials on copyright violation, so that we can be clear that the copyright Nazi thing is part and parcel of RIAA music, and not something I am making up.
JIT code can be cached persistently so that startup costs are only paid once. AS400 does this sweetly. And JIT doesn't add significantly to memory footprint (there is a fixed overhead - think about Transmeta), but certain types of garbage collection do - the fast ones (e.g. generational). When it comes to memory management, you can make it small, fast, automatic - pick any two.
The OpenDOc initiative does not mandate any particular software. It only mandates that the file format be publically (and fully) specified (M$ XML doesn't cut it because it is undocumented proprietary binary pieces wrapped in XLM). Microsoft was invited to submit their own publically specified format. They proposed M$ XML, but that is not fully specified. They could have submitted their usual Word format - provided they fully document it. Even now, they are perfectly welcome to sell an M$ Office that reads/writes OpenDoc.
This latest attack is an attempt to confuse people by pretending that the issue is what software is being used rather than the file format. If M$ Office has better accessibility - great! By all means use it - provided it can read/write a public format. Their complaint is largely irrelevant to the actual issues.
Zoneinfo does in fact use a table of all leapseconds. So the wall clock time of your scheduled event will drift by a few seconds as leap seconds are added to the table in the future.
Yes, the timestamp will be 64bits by 2038, but that does not help zoneinfo. Its file format is based on exhaustively listing all non linear transitions. For a 64-bit timestamp, this would require gigabytes of storage for a single zoneinfo file. Not a good solution.
The zoneinfo files are generated by zic - zoneinfo compiler - from a list of rules. So obviously, the new format will need to incorporate rules of some sort directly, and be interpreted (and probably caching the exhaustive list for recently used time ranges).
He also equated the open-source development model with 'Intellectual property [IP] socialism,' so a system where everyone is free to write anything they want and free to sell their work to those who create different kinds of things is called "socialism". Whereas a system where no one can write anything without first searching a database written in obscure legalese to try and determine the "IP" owner of every sentence, and then obtaining permission, usually by paying for a license, is called what? "Feudalism?" Or maybe we are talking about the system where you aren't allowed (or can't afford) to own any copies of the actual words, but must always ask an officially approved mechanical priest for an interpretation - "the Dark Ages"?
Convert to seconds and subtract. The zoneinfo C library supports leapseconds (but craps out in the year 2038). I wrote a TimeZone implementation for the Java API that support leap seconds, and uses the zoneinfo files.
The zoneinfo format exhaustive lists every TOD transition (DST,leapsecond). This is feasible because a 32-bit unix timestamp quits in 2038 (sometime after 2100 if
you switch to unsigned 32-bit timestamps). I have been thinking about a new format for 64-bit timestamps.
The main problem with this kind of secret surveillance is the nature of any evidence produced. It's all very well if they get information which then leads them to real evidence that can be used to arrest and prosecute. What is scary to me is being accused by some software program with no way to contest the "evidence" in court. As reprehensible as drunk driving is, I am glad to see some judges start to throw out evidence which cannot be examined (e.g. the closed source breathalizers in FL).
Launching massive spacecraft is quite feasable with the Orion drive. While the usual objection is the fallout from the nuclear explosions, this pales in comparison with a large asteroid hit. Plus, fallout can be limited and launched in a less sensitive area.
I run the seti@home and folding@home clients. I created an init.d service for each. They run in the background with their own user id. While the kernel could have local exploits, and they don't run chroot (too many libraries to chase down for that), it is a sandbox. I was mainly worried about bugs, rather than intentional spying or sabotage.
I had rpms for each service that "builds" from their binary tarball. But the installation is not consistent, and the RPM needs tweaking every time I upgrade.
If your unix sandbox is all its cracked up to be, you *ought* to be able to run the closed source binary client in a sandbox with no worries. I would feed safer, however, if the client was written in Java, and I could run it in a JVM sandbox inside a unix sandbox. That would make it a cross-platform binary to boot. Java actually does pretty well speed wise for long running programs of that nature. I suspect that the lack of built-in complex number support makes the coding rather a pain. Maybe we'll see a Fortran compiler for Java one of these days.
Suppose for the moment that it works. It works by converting hydrogen to "hydrinos". What happens when significant amounts of hydrinos are released? Since they are slightly smaller that hydrogen, chemical bonds will have slightly different geometries. The consequences could be enormous. This doesn't seem like "clean" energy to me - even if it does work. I hope they study some hydrino filled bubble ecosystems for a while before implementing this on a large scale.
I am also reminded of the "science" behind "Honey, I shrunk the kids!". If you can shrink a hydrogen atom, you should be able to shrink all the others by corresponding amounts. That would add a new plot twist to the movie. His shrinking machine is hooked to the California power grid. Shrinking the kids releases vast amounts of energy used to power CA A/Cs, and getting them back to normal requires putting all that energy back. Where will it come from? Actually, there was just one thing that bothered me in that movie, that my "willing suspension of disbelief" was unable to handle. How were they able to breath the air and eat the food? Isaac Asimov did a much better (more believable) job in "Fantastic Voyage".
Assuming the proof of concept works, I can see a number of potential hazards:
Magnetic deceleration coils fail. Alpha beam disintegrates target, and parts of your home beyond it. There is probably a way to do this on purpose to create a beam weapon. However, as soon as too many alphas start escaping, the device will lose power and stop working.
Fuel metering fails. Too much fuel causes a meltdown. Should not create long lived decay products, so the mess can be cleaned up. Igniting too much fuel near or even in the fuel supply should *not* create an H-bomb, because all the material to be fused must be confined. The heat from igniting fuel will simply scatter any other fuel nearby. The necessity of ionizing the fuel first prevents cramming enough fuel into the plasma to create a bomb.
Shielding fails, and device leaks beta, alpha, or neutrons. There should be gieger counters nearby to turn it off in such an event. Leaking alpha particles can result in a voltage difference between your home and the reactor, which could be hazardous. This can be measured and also trigger a shutdown.
Fuel is contaminated with fusable reactants that produce many high speed neutrons. Again, need gieger counters with auto-shutoff. Just like you have CO alarms for your gas furnace.
The coffee can sized device is very similar to a plasma rocket engine. The rocket engine trys to keep the plasma symmetrical for nice controlled thrust. Focus fusion "snaps" the plasma filaments like a whip. At the tip, where a leather whip exceeds the speed of sound, the magnetic compression in the plasma is enough to ignite fusion. The plasma is then ejected in one direction at high speed, like the rocket engine. Ironically, the major problem plaguing conventional magnetically confined fusion is that the plasma "leaks" out in high speed jets. Both plasma rockets and focus fusion recognize that this can be a feature rather than a bug.
The neat thing is that the reaction ejects beta radiation (electrons) in all directions, but ejects the alpha particles with the plasma in one direction. The actual fusion generator is the size of a refrigerator, with the coffee can near one end. The larger device captures the beta radiation with a shell around the reactor and has a target at the other end to collect the alpha radiation. The result - fusion reaction produces current directly! The next refinement *decelerates* the speeding alpha particles through a magnetic field, converting their kinetic energy to electricity before it heats up the target. That is the "reverse particle accelerator" aspect. Beta radiation ejected in the same direction as the alpha beam is "lost" and becomes heat at the target. Future refinements will make the alpha beam as narrow as possible so as to minimize the number of beta particles it takes with it.
After the proof of concept, engineering challenges include materials to collect beta radiation without becoming dangerously radioactive, materials to collect alpha radiation (hopefully low speed after magnetic decceleration) without becoming dangerously radioactive, and shielding to stop the occasional neutrons (from impurities, and the random nature of nuclear reactions). Will also need to store energy to "crack the magnetic whip" to drive the reaction, and meter precise amounts of ionized fuel. I'm not convinced that too much fuel won't be dangerous.
While this negates much of the benefit of "automatic" memory management, I avoid the problem you describe by specifying max memory. For instance, a multi-user VM with our accounting applications (no graphics) runs in 1M. The solution to the problem is to use some form of continuous GC (a must for real time Java) - but that increases the GC overhead to where it is comparable to malloc/free. Another solution (though I last used it in JDK1.1) is to call System.gc() at a convenient point. This is supposed to do a complete scan of memory before returning. Again - not exactly automatic, but effective.
While the "automatic" aspect is oversold, I would not want to give up the bug prevention aspect: you can't dereference stale pointers in Java. That and mandatory bounds checking makes me prefer VM based servers (not necessarily Java) for security reasons. IMHO, GC and mandatory bounds checking should be requirements for all public internet servers.
Now, the question is whether people who get infected learn their lesson...that's what I'd like to see.
The key knowledge non computer geek (but otherwise intelligent) people lack is which files are executables. Frankly, not having used Windows since 1995, I am a little behind on that subject myself. So you've learned that JPG and MP3 and passive formats, and safe to click on. Who would'a thought that SCR wasn't? It helps if your browser accurately distinguishes between executable and passive content. Even passive content can be dangerous when your "player" has a buffer overflow type bug.
My family has a Linux server, and 4 LTSP terminals (actually, one LCD is dead at the moment - backlight dead - any suggestions on repair?). The LTSP terminals are discarded Windows 98 computers. I left Windows on them (cleaned out viruses and upgraded drivers, etc), and the LTSP terminals can reboot to Windows to play Windows games or run Windows Tax software (TaxAct by 2nd story software). Although I got a copy of Quicken 2003, it has become such bloatware, and they took out all the features I liked from the basic version (you have to buy the Deluxe version now). So I switched to gnucash. The last good version of Quicken was Quicken 4 for Windows 3.1. Besides, I only have to reboot a workstation once a year to run the tax software. Rebooting every week to run accounting was a pain (booting LTSP is fast, but booting Win98 is slow).
The Linux server also servers as a firewall and webproxy for the terminals when booted in Windows. Only explicitly listed sites are allowed by the web proxy (like the tax software site). This prevents kids from downloading crap for Windows. Some school projects require them to complete assignments online - with ActiveX laden Windows only web sites. Makes me mad, but they can reboot the LTSP terminal and do it.
The Linux server provides a Samba filesystem for workstations when booted into Windows. I save my tax files on there so that they get backed up by the server. (Has a tape drive.)
The server, a Dell 500SC, cost me $600 including the tape drive. The LTSP workstations were free (plus labor to clean up virus/laden Windows - the only reason they were discarded). I had to pay for monitors. Very economical solution.
The kids have grown up with access to both Window 98 and Linux (Rh9, Gnome desktop, heaviliy updated). Generally, they regard Linux as cool, Windows as klunky. The only complaint about Linux is websites with Windows only media or plugins. And they understand why that is the websites fault. The most really really stupid thing some websites do is have MP3 media (which Linux plays fine), but then use some stupid executable launcher called HURL.EXE so that you can't just click on the link in Linux. That HURL.EXE is such a tempting target if you want your virus distributed quickly...
The "people on/." (and Groklaw.net) know that you are not *supposed* to get patents on ideas. It is the fact that such patents are regularly granted despite such paragraphs as you quote that has us in an uproar. And we complain that it is *technically* (in the non-legal sense) "easy" to get a patent - not that it is "easy" in the sense of the expense or legal technicalities involved. So saying, "just patent your own inventions if you're so smart" is not a valid argument for ordinary people without $10000 to blow on every software invention (even the real inventions as opposed to obvious stuff).
Notice that if I'm going to be investing $50000 in parts and equipment (say because I've just figured out to make a Farnsworth generator actually produce power), another $10000 for a patent makes a lot more sense. It is software patents that have such a ridiculous discrepancy between the cost of invention and the cost of a patent. That is why "people on/." (and Groklaw.net) are against *software* patents, not patents in general.
It is also software patents for which the Patent Office seems to have the most trouble distinguishing real inventions from the trivial. But even if that problem (USPTO ignorance of software technology) is fixed, there is simply no need for patent protection of software, because there is no hard cost of invention. It "only" costs time to write and debug code - and that debugged and working code is already protected by copyright. Software patents are purely a tool of oppression.
The king can only change it k times. The value of k influences how long it will take before the prisoners can be confident of a yes answer. This is a thinly disguised scenario for a "zero-knowledge" cryptographic authentication protocol.
I like to annoy my kids with physics story problems. Here is a sample:
Lying awake at night, you hear a motorcyle drive by. As it passes the house, the pitch of the motor drops by 1/2 step on a standard piano scale. How fast was the motorcycle traveling?
Your parody falls short because the FSM starts with a mountain, trees and midget. You need to understand the basics of monotheism (e.g. self-existence) before you can effectively make fun of it.
Furthermore, the Intelligent Design hypothesis is just as compatible with Flying Spaghetti Monsters and Space Aliens as it is with monotheism. It is even compatible with macro evolution. The point of disagreement between ID and traditional macro evolution is whether "chance plus selection" by themselves can create "information" (defined as intelligently chosen configurations of matter).
Even this conflict is a philosophical one. If the "blind watchmaker" model is right, then there is no such thing as meaning or intelligence in reality. What we perceive as such is simply a finely tuned and complex response to our environment. In that case, of course, what seems to be moral outrage over whether ID should or should not be taught as a mainstream model is also just an "interesting psychological phenomenon".
In any event, (returning to the implicit assumption that intelligence is real, since otherwise this discussion is meaningless), portraying ID as opposed to "evolution" is deceptive (even if most adherents see it that way). ID is only opposed to the "blind chance" aspect of traditional evolution. Mechanisms like chance and selection are not ruled out at all, and have been used by human intelligence to accomplish some impressive designs. If you believe there is really such a thing as intelligence (literally, the power to choose between), then you can recognize intelligent choice both intuitively and statistically. If you believe that no configuration of matter is any more significant than any other configuration, then both sides are equally interesting phenomena, and which prevails in the next century is a question of survival of the fittest rather than truth.
However, no one is going to make money on open sourcing things like Quicken or TurboTax and other common user apps unless they are utterly useless without some expensive services provided by the company that makes them.
Like providing annual updates, for instance? An open source engine where you pay yearly for forms, instructions and rules would make a good model. Currently, vendors are too busy competing on peripheral things like interviews and eye candy.
Another, perhaps better model would be for the government to provide the forms, instructions and rules in machine readable format at no additional charge. Then, both open source and proprietary programs can compete with engines to execute them - providing eye candy and interview fluff, or not according to preferrence.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks. No wonder I couldn't google it either :-)
An Indian Psycologist (whose name went something like Sikh Sent Mahalia - but I'm sure I totally mangled it, and can't lay my hands on the book) identified the necessary components of "flow" as skills, rules, goals, and feedback. For any activity, whether work or play, if you lack the skill, or if the activity is too easy or too hard, you are frustrated and unhappy. If you can't discern the rules (or meta rules), you are frustrated and unhappy. If there is no goal, you are frustrated and unhappy. If there is no feedback on your progress, you are frustrated and unhappy.
Sports like football have all the components (for those with the skill), and there is "flow". Putting linux on machines designed to prevent that very thing is like a game of football for geeks. It requires skill (is not too easy), but has been and probably can be done (is not too hard). The rules are those of logic and electronics. The goal is clear, and there is feedback along the way as you (carefully arrange to) see evidence of the system running your code further and further along in the boot process.
It can get frustrating if there is a lack of feedback - you can't find a visible bit to twiddle to show the code has gotten to a specific point.
Talking about not hearing the other sides argument. The point is that small artists don't *need* a record label any more. So we don't care how they invest their money - except that suing grandmothers doesn't seem like the best use.
We also have the classic "free" vs. "free" equivocation. I don't want to get music for free. I want to support the artist. But I much prefer to buy albums directly from the artists. And I hate stupid restrictions. "Liberian Acapella" is one of my favorites. They sing at churches and sell their self produced albums. I have many albums from Magnatune (a "record label" that does distribution only). Another favorite is David Bellugi from Italy.
That said, I am a copyright Nazi. I confiscate and destroy illegally copied RIAA music whenever I find it, give my teenage daughters a lecture on "playing by their rules if your going to listen to their music", and threaten to take the $3000 out of their bank account if they get caught distributing copies (I realize the lawsuits are for online distribution, but the principal is the same). Of course, the fact that I can't stand most of the music has *nothing* to do with this...
What I really need is some official RIAA materials on copyright violation, so that we can be clear that the copyright Nazi thing is part and parcel of RIAA music, and not something I am making up.
JIT code can be cached persistently so that startup costs are only paid once. AS400 does this sweetly. And JIT doesn't add significantly to memory footprint (there is a fixed overhead - think about Transmeta), but certain types of garbage collection do - the fast ones (e.g. generational). When it comes to memory management, you can make it small, fast, automatic - pick any two.
This latest attack is an attempt to confuse people by pretending that the issue is what software is being used rather than the file format. If M$ Office has better accessibility - great! By all means use it - provided it can read/write a public format. Their complaint is largely irrelevant to the actual issues.
Yes, the timestamp will be 64bits by 2038, but that does not help zoneinfo. Its file format is based on exhaustively listing all non linear transitions. For a 64-bit timestamp, this would require gigabytes of storage for a single zoneinfo file. Not a good solution. The zoneinfo files are generated by zic - zoneinfo compiler - from a list of rules. So obviously, the new format will need to incorporate rules of some sort directly, and be interpreted (and probably caching the exhaustive list for recently used time ranges).
He also equated the open-source development model with 'Intellectual property [IP] socialism,' so a system where everyone is free to write anything they want and free to sell their work to those who create different kinds of things is called "socialism". Whereas a system where no one can write anything without first searching a database written in obscure legalese to try and determine the "IP" owner of every sentence, and then obtaining permission, usually by paying for a license, is called what? "Feudalism?" Or maybe we are talking about the system where you aren't allowed (or can't afford) to own any copies of the actual words, but must always ask an officially approved mechanical priest for an interpretation - "the Dark Ages"?
The zoneinfo format exhaustive lists every TOD transition (DST,leapsecond). This is feasible because a 32-bit unix timestamp quits in 2038 (sometime after 2100 if you switch to unsigned 32-bit timestamps). I have been thinking about a new format for 64-bit timestamps.
The main problem with this kind of secret surveillance is the nature of any evidence produced. It's all very well if they get information which then leads them to real evidence that can be used to arrest and prosecute. What is scary to me is being accused by some software program with no way to contest the "evidence" in court. As reprehensible as drunk driving is, I am glad to see some judges start to throw out evidence which cannot be examined (e.g. the closed source breathalizers in FL).
Launching massive spacecraft is quite feasable with the Orion drive. While the usual objection is the fallout from the nuclear explosions, this pales in comparison with a large asteroid hit. Plus, fallout can be limited and launched in a less sensitive area.
I had rpms for each service that "builds" from their binary tarball. But the installation is not consistent, and the RPM needs tweaking every time I upgrade.
If your unix sandbox is all its cracked up to be, you *ought* to be able to run the closed source binary client in a sandbox with no worries. I would feed safer, however, if the client was written in Java, and I could run it in a JVM sandbox inside a unix sandbox. That would make it a cross-platform binary to boot. Java actually does pretty well speed wise for long running programs of that nature. I suspect that the lack of built-in complex number support makes the coding rather a pain. Maybe we'll see a Fortran compiler for Java one of these days.
I am also reminded of the "science" behind "Honey, I shrunk the kids!". If you can shrink a hydrogen atom, you should be able to shrink all the others by corresponding amounts. That would add a new plot twist to the movie. His shrinking machine is hooked to the California power grid. Shrinking the kids releases vast amounts of energy used to power CA A/Cs, and getting them back to normal requires putting all that energy back. Where will it come from? Actually, there was just one thing that bothered me in that movie, that my "willing suspension of disbelief" was unable to handle. How were they able to breath the air and eat the food? Isaac Asimov did a much better (more believable) job in "Fantastic Voyage".
The neat thing is that the reaction ejects beta radiation (electrons) in all directions, but ejects the alpha particles with the plasma in one direction. The actual fusion generator is the size of a refrigerator, with the coffee can near one end. The larger device captures the beta radiation with a shell around the reactor and has a target at the other end to collect the alpha radiation. The result - fusion reaction produces current directly! The next refinement *decelerates* the speeding alpha particles through a magnetic field, converting their kinetic energy to electricity before it heats up the target. That is the "reverse particle accelerator" aspect. Beta radiation ejected in the same direction as the alpha beam is "lost" and becomes heat at the target. Future refinements will make the alpha beam as narrow as possible so as to minimize the number of beta particles it takes with it.
After the proof of concept, engineering challenges include materials to collect beta radiation without becoming dangerously radioactive, materials to collect alpha radiation (hopefully low speed after magnetic decceleration) without becoming dangerously radioactive, and shielding to stop the occasional neutrons (from impurities, and the random nature of nuclear reactions). Will also need to store energy to "crack the magnetic whip" to drive the reaction, and meter precise amounts of ionized fuel. I'm not convinced that too much fuel won't be dangerous.
While the "automatic" aspect is oversold, I would not want to give up the bug prevention aspect: you can't dereference stale pointers in Java. That and mandatory bounds checking makes me prefer VM based servers (not necessarily Java) for security reasons. IMHO, GC and mandatory bounds checking should be requirements for all public internet servers.
The key knowledge non computer geek (but otherwise intelligent) people lack is which files are executables. Frankly, not having used Windows since 1995, I am a little behind on that subject myself. So you've learned that JPG and MP3 and passive formats, and safe to click on. Who would'a thought that SCR wasn't? It helps if your browser accurately distinguishes between executable and passive content. Even passive content can be dangerous when your "player" has a buffer overflow type bug.
The main point, which I guess I didn't make clear, was that the server never needs to be rebooted. Only the LTSP workstations are rebooted.
The Linux server also servers as a firewall and webproxy for the terminals when booted in Windows. Only explicitly listed sites are allowed by the web proxy (like the tax software site). This prevents kids from downloading crap for Windows. Some school projects require them to complete assignments online - with ActiveX laden Windows only web sites. Makes me mad, but they can reboot the LTSP terminal and do it.
The Linux server provides a Samba filesystem for workstations when booted into Windows. I save my tax files on there so that they get backed up by the server. (Has a tape drive.)
The server, a Dell 500SC, cost me $600 including the tape drive. The LTSP workstations were free (plus labor to clean up virus/laden Windows - the only reason they were discarded). I had to pay for monitors. Very economical solution.
The kids have grown up with access to both Window 98 and Linux (Rh9, Gnome desktop, heaviliy updated). Generally, they regard Linux as cool, Windows as klunky. The only complaint about Linux is websites with Windows only media or plugins. And they understand why that is the websites fault. The most really really stupid thing some websites do is have MP3 media (which Linux plays fine), but then use some stupid executable launcher called HURL.EXE so that you can't just click on the link in Linux. That HURL.EXE is such a tempting target if you want your virus distributed quickly...
Notice that if I'm going to be investing $50000 in parts and equipment (say because I've just figured out to make a Farnsworth generator actually produce power), another $10000 for a patent makes a lot more sense. It is software patents that have such a ridiculous discrepancy between the cost of invention and the cost of a patent. That is why "people on /." (and Groklaw.net) are against *software* patents, not patents in general.
It is also software patents for which the Patent Office seems to have the most trouble distinguishing real inventions from the trivial. But even if that problem (USPTO ignorance of software technology) is fixed, there is simply no need for patent protection of software, because there is no hard cost of invention. It "only" costs time to write and debug code - and that debugged and working code is already protected by copyright. Software patents are purely a tool of oppression.
The absolute pitch is irrelevant. You do need to know the speed of sound.
Nope. You do need to know the speed of sound, however.
The king can only change it k times. The value of k influences how long it will take before the prisoners can be confident of a yes answer. This is a thinly disguised scenario for a "zero-knowledge" cryptographic authentication protocol.
Lying awake at night, you hear a motorcyle drive by. As it passes the house, the pitch of the motor drops by 1/2 step on a standard piano scale. How fast was the motorcycle traveling?
Furthermore, the Intelligent Design hypothesis is just as compatible with Flying Spaghetti Monsters and Space Aliens as it is with monotheism. It is even compatible with macro evolution. The point of disagreement between ID and traditional macro evolution is whether "chance plus selection" by themselves can create "information" (defined as intelligently chosen configurations of matter).
Even this conflict is a philosophical one. If the "blind watchmaker" model is right, then there is no such thing as meaning or intelligence in reality. What we perceive as such is simply a finely tuned and complex response to our environment. In that case, of course, what seems to be moral outrage over whether ID should or should not be taught as a mainstream model is also just an "interesting psychological phenomenon".
In any event, (returning to the implicit assumption that intelligence is real, since otherwise this discussion is meaningless), portraying ID as opposed to "evolution" is deceptive (even if most adherents see it that way). ID is only opposed to the "blind chance" aspect of traditional evolution. Mechanisms like chance and selection are not ruled out at all, and have been used by human intelligence to accomplish some impressive designs. If you believe there is really such a thing as intelligence (literally, the power to choose between), then you can recognize intelligent choice both intuitively and statistically. If you believe that no configuration of matter is any more significant than any other configuration, then both sides are equally interesting phenomena, and which prevails in the next century is a question of survival of the fittest rather than truth.
Like providing annual updates, for instance? An open source engine where you pay yearly for forms, instructions and rules would make a good model. Currently, vendors are too busy competing on peripheral things like interviews and eye candy.
Another, perhaps better model would be for the government to provide the forms, instructions and rules in machine readable format at no additional charge. Then, both open source and proprietary programs can compete with engines to execute them - providing eye candy and interview fluff, or not according to preferrence.