I think you are misinterpreting First Class to be First in class.
Most Indian Universities follow the percentage system -- and if you get more than 60% you get a first class, if you hold more than 75% it's first class with distinction and the like -- the particular thresholds vary for each place, depending on how hard it is to get over the threshold percentage.
And FYI, India has as much of the caste system influence in it's work culture as racism does in the US -- very little to none.
You assume that I support his views -- I do not, I'm skeptical about them being true.
However, I just brought up the possible reasons as to why he might have made those statements.
Yes, right now (and maybe for a long time to come) P2P can only be useful from the perspective of distribution and purchase, and not creation in itself. However, we can become more peer to peer than we are at the moment, and maybe that will see changes in the social, economic and technical paradigms than we do currently.
I guess that's what Nicholas is trying to say -- maybe we have reached the end of hierarchical organizations in *some* areas (mind you, some others need hierarchical ordering no matter what -- governments, for instance) -- and we need to try our hand at P2P. The companies that are willing to take this risk will be the one who will ride the way when it pays off.
Peer to peer technology challenges traditional norms, therefore any new technology that employs P2P is most likely to make a big splash.
Traditional innovations are stifled by centralization, so if the queen bee falls, everything else around it falls. However, P2P does not have that issue and therefore, any new technology that employs this is more likely to be popular, and will last longer.
I'm guessing he jumps to this conclusion from the outburst of P2P applications after Napster, and how all the media conglomerates are trying to drive P2P to the ground.
Look at today's distribution methods -- they are centralized. On the other hand, look at BitTorrent and other P2P technologies -- they are NOT centralized. Look at data processing -- distributed (non-centralized) processing can be used to beat the law.
Any area that you look at, the present day socio-economic technology model is outdated in the sense that it was not made with the assumption of such fast and instantaneous transfers across large distances, the way it's happening today with media.
However, the way of the future is understanding that P2P is inevitable, and using this to your advantage. The companies that would do this would be successful, and hence his statements.
Key to decentralized technology, I suppose, judging from the analogy.
When you have centralized entities, it does not take much to bring them down -- think Napster. However, when you have genuine P2P -- where there is no real central point of failure, it would become almost impossible to bring out the destruction of such a system.
And we are always used to central and organized systems (hell, we even have a hierarchy of people ruling, err governing us) -- he just says that this is deviant from the norm because we do not have any one point upon which everything is based.
Therefore, it is unique and will be harder to bring down than traditional systems. Does that help?:)
Companies cannot really see beyond their current customer base. They explicitly or implicitly do things to protect their current customers. And the last person to want real change is your customer. This is why most new ideas come from small companies that have nothing to lose.
The last person to want real change is not the customer, these days it seems to be the companies making that decision for the customer.
Think of any area, there are millions of customers who want a change for the better -- however the companies are just not letting the change happen and say that it's for the good of the customer, or that what the customer wants is illegal (and if it isn't illegal, they'll just pass a couple of laws and make it illegal).
And to be honest, small companies that bring about great innovations are being stifled, especially because they are shit scared of law suits. I'm surprised that Nicholas did not mention this in his interview.
True, they hold the key. But it does not take much to crush them down, either.
I'm guessing that they would not possibly be stopping you from using Linux.
It's just that if you had any problems setting it up in Linux, they will not help you (they == tech support). You will have to figure things out yourself, that's all.
Atleast that's how it is in other institutions which have similar rules in place.
Re:Renewed competion between broadband providers
on
Linux Unwired
·
· Score: 1
Wireless at school is simply very useful.
For instance, I take my notebook with me and I can access the net from my classrooms, cafeteria, park, conference rooms and just about any place.
And it sure as hell beats having to carry around a cable everywhere, and having to provide network access points all over the place.
I'm now at my internship, and a bunch of us in the apartment complex have pooled in and gotten a single Internet connection with a wireless router, so that the rest can access it.
And when I first came here, I did not know a single place where I could check my mail - so I just took my notebook and walked into a Starbucks around the place which had Wireless.
I guess you've never really had the need to use wireless, once you do you'd just realize how wonderful it simply is.
That's a genuine problem
on
Linux Unwired
·
· Score: 4, Informative
From the article --
Microsoft disputes the notion that there's a problem with the way Windows XP works with Wi-Fi.
That's a blatant lie, typical Microsoft attitude.
For the longest time, the wi-fi connection of my notebook would keep dropping and I thought it was because of a bad wireless card.
I changed my wireless card, I tried everything possible.
What I had not noticed was everything I was in Linux, this never happened - no matter what! There are areas in my school where the wi-fi signal strength is particularly weak, and even in those areas I never lost connection from Linux.
Somehow, when I would boot into Windows, my wi-fi link would keep dropping. I still haven't figured the problem yet, I just use Linux instead everytime.
And so contrary to what Microsoft may say, there is a problem with Windows XP (I have the problem whether am on XP Home or XP Pro). I wonder whether they EVER admit their mistakes.
Maybe it does sound condescending, because the modernist approach is often considered to be quite elitist in nature.
However, in truth, I would certainly value the opinion of an educated junkie more than a church-going bum.
For the simple reason that the former has a larger world-view of things, while the latter's opinions and attitudes are constrained merely to his/her own set of problems and prejudices (mind you, I never said the former does not have prejudices, merely that they seem insignificant in the face of the latter).
I do not know, maybe it's wrong, maybe it's just unfair.
But the truth is, I'd rather trust elitist intelligence than prejudiced stupidity. My 0.02:)
I did not, I understand that the parent says that people have a right to their choices, no matter what.
I just tend to disagree, because most often what the majority construes as the best choice is good only within their narrow limited perspective.
Let's just say, I do not believe in equal voting rights -- if someone is smarter and holds a PhD in economics from Harvard, he is definitely more entitled to make economic decisions than Joe Schmoe who drives a truck and flips burgers. Mind you, Joe Schmoe is just better suited for his or her own area, maybe the local problems and what not.
Joe just sees the smaller picture, which is probably the entire world to him. And his decisions are based merely on that.
To be honest, I would rather take the decisions from a liberal hippie than a mormon. If we gave into every little thing that all the conservatives were bothered about, we'd be nothing more than a conservative state.
Most people are far too dumb to know that they ought to be bothered by things far worse than a lone nipple. Instead, they make a hue and cry over things that hardly matter, while there are pressing issues at hand that nobody seems to care about.
Moral indignation is pretentious for the most part, no matter what the reason is. It's ironic that those that stand on the moral highgrounds have often no justification for why someone who isn't so is inferior to them. Almost as bad as religious zealots.
Ironic, isn't it? People do not seem to notice or care when their privacy or rights are being violated.
However, they do not hesitate to show their pretentious moral indignation at the slightest opportunity of things that should not even bother them (ah, a certain nipple incident comes to mind).
RFIDs maybe good for some applications, but down the line, when you have a quintillion things tracking you you can kiss whatever little privacy you have goodbye.
As it is, our habits are being tracked, our browsing habits are being tracked and we have cams everywhere. RFID is only going to make it easier for the powers-that-be to watch us and control.
And honestly, I would not be surprised when RFIDs are in place, some act will be passed that will make simply take advantage of this to exploit whatever little rights we have.
And when they do pass a law that says
"Henceforth, all humans should walk around with an embedded trackable microchip.
people will not bat an eyelid and obey it. Trust me, it will happen.
The inventor gets a fair benefit out of his invention, while the rest can explore and make use of it to everyone else's (and their) benefit down the line.
These days, patents seem to exhibit the idea that the inventor should get a cut for every penny that's been made out of his/her invention. If this were the case, civilization would have long stalled.
The ideal patent would be one where the inventor gets a fair benefit, and others can have a free go at the invention so that they can improvise and better it for everyone else.
I do not see why he should be worried, especially since he's made enough already.
And besides, more often than not it's quite easy to find a decent firewall script on the web.
Btw -- I will admit that I was not aware of XP having a firewall, but how late is that? I switched to Linux in 1999, and back then the best choice was either NT or 98, and both sucked. Win 2000 was a little stable, but still did not provide me even the basic set of tools that Linux came with.
Win XP SP2 is going to have a feature that's almost 6-7+ years behind Linux.
How is that a FUD? Windows even now does not give me the power over network configuration that Linux does. And it's the truth.
True. And it does not even come with a basic firewall.
All it takes for me to have a basic and simple firewall up and running in Linux is a bunch of lines of shell script, and there you go.
There isn't even the equivalent of ipchains/iptables/ipfwadm in Windows. They obfuscate every bloody thing, and it's impossible for you to access that stuff in a trivial fashion, the way it's done in Linux.
Maybe it's because if they did make that easier, people would be writing viruses to exploit that. Heh.
Windows makes me buy third party software for even simple needs like a firewall, when I can do it in a minute in Linux on my own. Why would I want to use Windows, unless I'm forced to (at work or whatever)?
And as a student, I can get almost all of the software that I want for free, without having to worry about shitty licenses or any other issues.
More importantly, it gives me the ability to customize.
If my task is CPU/memory intensive (graphics), I choose a very simple window manager. Am I working on boring stuff like writing documents? I choose a window manager with bells and whistles to entertain me while am at it.
Do I have to repeat a task? All it takes for me is a simple two liner script to do it, while on Windows I almost always end up having to install Cygwin to do my tasks (do not give me the batch file crap, batch does not do regex or any of that stuff, nor can I pipe my outputs and inputs).
And more than anything, I get to mess around with the system the way *I* please -- if I do not like the messages during bootup, I can change that. And if I do not like the look and feel of my system, I just change it - at the bare metal level.
And another thing that pisses me off to no end in Windows is permissions. I have to be logged in as administrator to install the simplest of applications. WTF!? Whereas in Linux, I just get what I want and run (or sometimes compile and then run) the binary.
And more than anything, I philosophically disagree with the way Microsoft works -- yeah yeah, it's business and all is fair yada yada yada. But still, their practices are not honourable, nor respectful. And for that reason, I try to stay off all Microsoft products:)
With LH flaunting out as having only managed code, are they looking at Avalon to be a new fresh/clean API over Dx, or what?
Right now -- they say that use Dx if you want complex stuff, but Dx is not managed code. But Avalon is -- so are they looking at making Avalon the new standard or something?
Slashdot Mirror
I think you are misinterpreting First Class to be First in class.
Most Indian Universities follow the percentage system -- and if you get more than 60% you get a first class, if you hold more than 75% it's first class with distinction and the like -- the particular thresholds vary for each place, depending on how hard it is to get over the threshold percentage.
And FYI, India has as much of the caste system influence in it's work culture as racism does in the US -- very little to none.
Almost the same as mine.
:-(
Scientific American, Nature, National Georgraphic *and* Rock & Ice. As an avid rock climber, I simply love that magazine, it's beautiful.
On the other hand, it does make me spend a significant amount on climbing gear
You assume that I support his views -- I do not, I'm skeptical about them being true.
However, I just brought up the possible reasons as to why he might have made those statements.
Yes, right now (and maybe for a long time to come) P2P can only be useful from the perspective of distribution and purchase, and not creation in itself. However, we can become more peer to peer than we are at the moment, and maybe that will see changes in the social, economic and technical paradigms than we do currently.
I guess that's what Nicholas is trying to say -- maybe we have reached the end of hierarchical organizations in *some* areas (mind you, some others need hierarchical ordering no matter what -- governments, for instance) -- and we need to try our hand at P2P. The companies that are willing to take this risk will be the one who will ride the way when it pays off.
Peer to peer technology challenges traditional norms, therefore any new technology that employs P2P is most likely to make a big splash.
Traditional innovations are stifled by centralization, so if the queen bee falls, everything else around it falls. However, P2P does not have that issue and therefore, any new technology that employs this is more likely to be popular, and will last longer.
I'm guessing he jumps to this conclusion from the outburst of P2P applications after Napster, and how all the media conglomerates are trying to drive P2P to the ground.
Look at today's distribution methods -- they are centralized. On the other hand, look at BitTorrent and other P2P technologies -- they are NOT centralized. Look at data processing -- distributed (non-centralized) processing can be used to beat the law.
Any area that you look at, the present day socio-economic technology model is outdated in the sense that it was not made with the assumption of such fast and instantaneous transfers across large distances, the way it's happening today with media.
However, the way of the future is understanding that P2P is inevitable, and using this to your advantage. The companies that would do this would be successful, and hence his statements.
Key to decentralized technology, I suppose, judging from the analogy.
:)
When you have centralized entities, it does not take much to bring them down -- think Napster. However, when you have genuine P2P -- where there is no real central point of failure, it would become almost impossible to bring out the destruction of such a system.
And we are always used to central and organized systems (hell, we even have a hierarchy of people ruling, err governing us) -- he just says that this is deviant from the norm because we do not have any one point upon which everything is based.
Therefore, it is unique and will be harder to bring down than traditional systems. Does that help?
I do not agree with some of what he says.
Companies cannot really see beyond their current customer base. They explicitly or implicitly do things to protect their current customers. And the last person to want real change is your customer. This is why most new ideas come from small companies that have nothing to lose.
The last person to want real change is not the customer, these days it seems to be the companies making that decision for the customer.
Think of any area, there are millions of customers who want a change for the better -- however the companies are just not letting the change happen and say that it's for the good of the customer, or that what the customer wants is illegal (and if it isn't illegal, they'll just pass a couple of laws and make it illegal).
And to be honest, small companies that bring about great innovations are being stifled, especially because they are shit scared of law suits. I'm surprised that Nicholas did not mention this in his interview.
True, they hold the key. But it does not take much to crush them down, either.
I'm guessing that they would not possibly be stopping you from using Linux.
It's just that if you had any problems setting it up in Linux, they will not help you (they == tech support). You will have to figure things out yourself, that's all.
Atleast that's how it is in other institutions which have similar rules in place.
Wireless at school is simply very useful.
For instance, I take my notebook with me and I can access the net from my classrooms, cafeteria, park, conference rooms and just about any place.
And it sure as hell beats having to carry around a cable everywhere, and having to provide network access points all over the place.
I'm now at my internship, and a bunch of us in the apartment complex have pooled in and gotten a single Internet connection with a wireless router, so that the rest can access it.
And when I first came here, I did not know a single place where I could check my mail - so I just took my notebook and walked into a Starbucks around the place which had Wireless.
I guess you've never really had the need to use wireless, once you do you'd just realize how wonderful it simply is.
From the article --
Microsoft disputes the notion that there's a problem with the way Windows XP works with Wi-Fi.
That's a blatant lie, typical Microsoft attitude.
For the longest time, the wi-fi connection of my notebook would keep dropping and I thought it was because of a bad wireless card.
I changed my wireless card, I tried everything possible.
What I had not noticed was everything I was in Linux, this never happened - no matter what! There are areas in my school where the wi-fi signal strength is particularly weak, and even in those areas I never lost connection from Linux.
Somehow, when I would boot into Windows, my wi-fi link would keep dropping. I still haven't figured the problem yet, I just use Linux instead everytime.
And so contrary to what Microsoft may say, there is a problem with Windows XP (I have the problem whether am on XP Home or XP Pro). I wonder whether they EVER admit their mistakes.
Maybe it does sound condescending, because the modernist approach is often considered to be quite elitist in nature.
:)
However, in truth, I would certainly value the opinion of an educated junkie more than a church-going bum.
For the simple reason that the former has a larger world-view of things, while the latter's opinions and attitudes are constrained merely to his/her own set of problems and prejudices (mind you, I never said the former does not have prejudices, merely that they seem insignificant in the face of the latter).
I do not know, maybe it's wrong, maybe it's just unfair.
But the truth is, I'd rather trust elitist intelligence than prejudiced stupidity. My 0.02
I did not, I understand that the parent says that people have a right to their choices, no matter what.
I just tend to disagree, because most often what the majority construes as the best choice is good only within their narrow limited perspective.
Let's just say, I do not believe in equal voting rights -- if someone is smarter and holds a PhD in economics from Harvard, he is definitely more entitled to make economic decisions than Joe Schmoe who drives a truck and flips burgers. Mind you, Joe Schmoe is just better suited for his or her own area, maybe the local problems and what not.
Joe just sees the smaller picture, which is probably the entire world to him. And his decisions are based merely on that.
To be honest, I would rather take the decisions from a liberal hippie than a mormon. If we gave into every little thing that all the conservatives were bothered about, we'd be nothing more than a conservative state.
This is offtopic, but what happened to the article on Opensource Pharmacy?
The subscribers could see an article, and out of the blue it disappeared and this article came in it's place.
Did anyone else notice this? Weird.
That's the problem.
Most people are far too dumb to know that they ought to be bothered by things far worse than a lone nipple. Instead, they make a hue and cry over things that hardly matter, while there are pressing issues at hand that nobody seems to care about.
Moral indignation is pretentious for the most part, no matter what the reason is. It's ironic that those that stand on the moral highgrounds have often no justification for why someone who isn't so is inferior to them. Almost as bad as religious zealots.
I can see a thing or two wrong with that.
Heh! How true.
Ironic, isn't it? People do not seem to notice or care when their privacy or rights are being violated.
However, they do not hesitate to show their pretentious moral indignation at the slightest opportunity of things that should not even bother them (ah, a certain nipple incident comes to mind).
RFIDs maybe good for some applications, but down the line, when you have a quintillion things tracking you you can kiss whatever little privacy you have goodbye.
As it is, our habits are being tracked, our browsing habits are being tracked and we have cams everywhere. RFID is only going to make it easier for the powers-that-be to watch us and control.
And honestly, I would not be surprised when RFIDs are in place, some act will be passed that will make simply take advantage of this to exploit whatever little rights we have.
And when they do pass a law that says
"Henceforth, all humans should walk around with an embedded trackable microchip.
people will not bat an eyelid and obey it. Trust me, it will happen.
Why?
Maybe you will be, when you're 83!
Exactly!
And this is how patents should be, IMHO.
The inventor gets a fair benefit out of his invention, while the rest can explore and make use of it to everyone else's (and their) benefit down the line.
These days, patents seem to exhibit the idea that the inventor should get a cut for every penny that's been made out of his/her invention. If this were the case, civilization would have long stalled.
The ideal patent would be one where the inventor gets a fair benefit, and others can have a free go at the invention so that they can improvise and better it for everyone else.
I do not see why he should be worried, especially since he's made enough already.
The Google News link just shows the link again to the Gamespot link.
Do the submitters (or the editors) ever check to see what's in the links?
Oh, you could have it :)
:-D
I must say it would make a kickass sig. And the irony is that my specialization is in HCI
It's not trivial, but it's not hard, either.
And besides, more often than not it's quite easy to find a decent firewall script on the web.
Btw -- I will admit that I was not aware of XP having a firewall, but how late is that? I switched to Linux in 1999, and back then the best choice was either NT or 98, and both sucked. Win 2000 was a little stable, but still did not provide me even the basic set of tools that Linux came with.
Win XP SP2 is going to have a feature that's almost 6-7+ years behind Linux.
How is that a FUD? Windows even now does not give me the power over network configuration that Linux does. And it's the truth.
If God intended use to use GUI, the bible would have had Icons.
:)
ROTFL!!!! Mind if I borrowed it for a sig, sometime?
True. And it does not even come with a basic firewall.
All it takes for me to have a basic and simple firewall up and running in Linux is a bunch of lines of shell script, and there you go.
There isn't even the equivalent of ipchains/iptables/ipfwadm in Windows. They obfuscate every bloody thing, and it's impossible for you to access that stuff in a trivial fashion, the way it's done in Linux.
Maybe it's because if they did make that easier, people would be writing viruses to exploit that. Heh.
Windows makes me buy third party software for even simple needs like a firewall, when I can do it in a minute in Linux on my own. Why would I want to use Windows, unless I'm forced to (at work or whatever)?
Exactly.
:)
And as a student, I can get almost all of the software that I want for free, without having to worry about shitty licenses or any other issues.
More importantly, it gives me the ability to customize.
If my task is CPU/memory intensive (graphics), I choose a very simple window manager. Am I working on boring stuff like writing documents? I choose a window manager with bells and whistles to entertain me while am at it.
Do I have to repeat a task? All it takes for me is a simple two liner script to do it, while on Windows I almost always end up having to install Cygwin to do my tasks (do not give me the batch file crap, batch does not do regex or any of that stuff, nor can I pipe my outputs and inputs).
And more than anything, I get to mess around with the system the way *I* please -- if I do not like the messages during bootup, I can change that. And if I do not like the look and feel of my system, I just change it - at the bare metal level.
And another thing that pisses me off to no end in Windows is permissions. I have to be logged in as administrator to install the simplest of applications. WTF!? Whereas in Linux, I just get what I want and run (or sometimes compile and then run) the binary.
And more than anything, I philosophically disagree with the way Microsoft works -- yeah yeah, it's business and all is fair yada yada yada. But still, their practices are not honourable, nor respectful. And for that reason, I try to stay off all Microsoft products
> nubile female assassins in skin-tight leather catsuits
That explains Seven of Nine. Wait, isn't she German, too? Hmmm!
Damn.
Exactly my point.
With LH flaunting out as having only managed code, are they looking at Avalon to be a new fresh/clean API over Dx, or what?
Right now -- they say that use Dx if you want complex stuff, but Dx is not managed code. But Avalon is -- so are they looking at making Avalon the new standard or something?
While I have to admit it sounds cool, I can't really think of a real need for this.
;-)
And while you are at it, I think I speak for everyone when I say I can't think of a real need for Longhorn either