In the same note, are there any organizations/companies that have played a major role in helping Linux become popular?
For instance, I know that in India, the magazine PC Quest was initially responsible for making Linux popular - they used to distribute Linux CDs (started out with Slackware and then moved on to Redhat) free with their magazines, and this helped spread the word:)
And how big a role do LUGs really play in actually making the general public (schools, businesses and the common user) aware of Linux? Are they actively involved (I know that ILUGC in India is quite proactive) or do they have any kind of tie-ups and the like with organizations to help spread Linux?
Hmmm, I've a Palm Vx, and use it to read when I fly. Its backlight is not too bright, and the text has a very soft greenish-glow, which makes it quite easy on the eye.
Its small, cheap, robust has good battery life and is easy to carry (since I do not really have to worry too much about losing it or breaking it:).
You can get one off eBay for as little $20 and odd, and its really handy.
Ofcourse - this is solely for the purposes of airport/flight reading, and I hardly use it for anything else. But its really simple and handy, and is a constant companion when I travel.
This guy is a perfect example of that. Ofcourse, he does it because he's a geek and because he has the means. But more than that, its a status symbol for such folks to be carrying the latest coolest gadget around.
You are right. Its not just AI, either, there are lots of other areas that demand heavy math.
My undergrad was in ECE, and I've had to use a lot of math in stuff that I program (Matlab for DSP, numerical methods in C and the like).
I've had significant experience in AI in the industry (~4 years as a research intern), and contrary to popular belief, good companies that build quality products do a lot of grassroot level stuff before getting down to code.
And now, I'm in grad school and I program graphics for my GRA in OpenGL and C++ (which is once again, lots of math and physics). I've an internship coming up at a well-known lab where I'm going to be working on simulating fluid dynamics in Java (which is, again math).
My masters project work is in AI, and uses statistics and various learning algorithms to create an existing behavioural programming language for adaptive agents - most of the time, I sit and work out the best possible algorithm or method of solving a particular deadlock or graphing problem, rather than code.
That done, I find the need to be pedantic - programming! = computer science. IMHO, CS is more of the cool math, algorithms and the like, while programming is implementing that using code - the latter can be learnt through experience, the former is better learnt in class.
My post talked about a situation if an asteroid were to be headed for Earth, what's likely to happen?
It was quite pertinent in discussing how inaction might be a consequence and a probable reason for why it maybe so.
It was perfectly on topic, unless you look at it from the perspective of an offended believer.
Neither did I mention any particular religion, nor any religious beliefs - I merely highlighted a particular reaction of eschatologist religions.
Its not flamebait unless you really think that my judgement of people and religions somehow does not fit in with the reactions in the real world, which again becomes judgemental and quite untrue, given the way religions work.
I was somehow under the impression that they would not really make their investments public, but I see no reason why they should not, so it makes sense.
I was not aware that In-Q-Tel was a seperate entity in itself, I always thought of it as being an arm of the CIA.
There are lots of programs in the Department of Defence that companies can apply to in order to get research money: you just need to know which back to scratch and get yourself noticed.
Just out of curiosity, any that you can think of off the top of your head?:)
Actually, their core contribution the Vapour Trace seems to be the development of some inhouse automatic sensors, embedded into polymer-like material.
They have a powerpoint on their Vapour Trace site that talks about how they have developed a new polymer that can detect contraband, while the material itself can be queried using RF signals.
I have not checked, but they seem to project this as a major step in vapour trace technology, and they may quite possibly have some patents to this end - I'm assuming, ofcourse!:)
I do not know much about the Acoustic Core technology per se. But the thing is even if their technology is not quite effective, it would not be too hard to convince the policing folks about how their "new" technology could help use the govt's paranoia in detecting stuff.
And as far as your question on Cryptography goes, I think they are suggesting something like a central server that would host the keys at runtime that you will run your data through. That's not something I would trust, but you never know what top managements would buy:)
Ideally it would not be keyless, merely runtime generated pads for data transfer of any kind (voice/information etc).
I guess you are right, in a sense it would be security through obscurity. But all it takes is one subpoena and they are toast. Not unless they are in the Island of Kinakuta;-)
Thank you for the link! I have read Kurzweil's Age of Spiritual Machines, where he discusses something like this.
Well, but I said that 600 years is short because -
1. We need to get off this rock at a short notice, not just a few of us but most of us.
2. We would need to either have good space stations that can sustain us (short term) or terra-form a nearby planet (within our reach) or find a way to travel to another sector of the galaxy containing planets that are Earth-like. Remember, we will be going away for good.
3. Assuming that our population merely doubles, and we make spaceships that will take just half of the people away, each capable of 10,000 people (which is quite a reasonably high estimate) - we will need 500,000 ships. Thats an awful lot of resources that will be needed, both energy and material.
4. I have completely ignored the need for us to save such things as historical artifacts and memoirs from the home, etc. This is merely for the people.
The scale for such a transfer would be staggering, and no matter how advanced we are, we will need -
(a) Star Trek like travel (Warp/transporters) (b) Steady yet reliable source of food and energy (c) Sufficient space for such an endeavour (d) Sufficient *time* for such an endeavour
Therefore, no matter what, it will be a really really mammoth task - could atleast take 50+ years. We take years to build a freeway, or a skyscraper. Assuming we somehow have cool technology that could make this even 10000x faster, we will still need atleast 50-100 years for something on this scale to be built.
Hence my argument that six centuries is an awfully short time!
:) That brought a smile to my face. And to answer your question, well not too much!
However, it is quite funny that my comment was merely an observation of how eschatological religions would react to a situation like this, and the fact that it modded down once again proves that religious zealots abound this place.
It is the truth, religions and religious zealots would proclaim something or the other and cause mass uprisings, and that is probably one good reason why even if the space agencies knew about such a thing, they should not let it out.
And the last statement was merely an observation - with the current administration being right-wing conservative, and the religious climate in the rest of the world, no matter what comes to pass, people will use "faith" as an excuse and throw money at religious godheads and godmen.
I do not see any nation (well, maybe with the exception of China) where people will rather not spend money on religion than on real solutions - that is what pisses me off. If half the faith and the funds were directed towards legitimate purposes, it would atleast make the world a better place.
Their other products in the emerging technologies section include Acoustic Core - detecting illicit materials using their acoustic signatures, Vapour Trace - a way to search cargo for contraband materials and Crypto.Com - a double cipher keyless transmission system.
Thats a lot of cool science and technology for a relatively unheard of company, not to mention their technologies in the Border Security and Chemical Detection systems.
I had read a while back about the CIA and US Govt investing in startups - I think its quite possible that these guys are probably funded thus:)
Ofcourse! Actually, you are quite right in the last count.
Figuring out the path is not the issue, doing something about it is. Unfortunately, even if the space organizations did figure out (I do not know if they have already figured this out or not, yet), there is no guarantee that they will make it public for a while.
Nothing better to stir up those religious zealots saying that in FooBar years the world is going to come to an end. And even the saner public would most certainly be quite paranoid if such a prediction were to come to pass.
That is what makes it far worse than actually knowing about it - a large segment of the population may still remain ignorant and oblivious to this. And given the brilliant red-tape that exists in most government agencies, I really wonder if we would be doing anything about it (except, ofcourse, fund a bunch of religious institutions and proclaim that some voice in the sky is going to save us all).
Its quite unlikely to be as big as Paris or any other bigger city - the article clearly states its the size of a *small* city.
On Sept. 29, 2004 an asteroid the size of a small city will make the closest known pass of such a very large space rock anytime this century.
The article also says that -
Toutatis is about 2.9 miles long and 1.5 miles wide (4.6 by 2.4 kilometers).
Therefore, I think a small town would rather be more appropriate than a small city. Most cities today cover atleast tens of miles, if not hundreds. But then again, its relative.
What scares me is the following line from the site -
Researchers can't predict far enough into the future to rule out Toutatis ever slamming into Earth, so it is listed officially as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid. NASA says it won't hit for at least the next six centuries.
Six centuries is an awfully short time, and maybe encouraging space programs and building stations outside of Earth is probably a good idea.
And just how are they planning on getting these to replace the old MP3s?
As long as there is a way to encode them in the old way, people will do it. Duh!
This seems more like an attempy by Fraunhofer to pacify the corporates and "make up" for their follies.
If the owner who originally purchased the rights to that MP3 file publishes it online in a shared environment, the file will display the original owners digital signature, thus allowing the individuals to be immediately identified.
And what if the user purchased the rights to an Audio CD containing that track and converted it into a good old MP3?
This new trackable, un-sharable "Super MP3" may be an attempt by the Fraunhofer Institute to make amends with the disgruntled music industry.
Are they going to sue all the existing MP3 players if they don't change into the new format? Now *that* would be funny.
Bite me.
The can of worms is open, you are not going to be able to contain piracy this way. Change the way music (and media in general) is being sold - think up a new business model, the old one has been proven time and again not to work.
And guess what? Tracking users or preventive DRM is not the solution.
What are they going to do if I changed the ID of my MP3 to reflect that of someone else? How long is it going to take to crack this thing? A week? A month?
Sheesh. Won't these people ever learn? What beats me is that smart research institutes like FI are coming up with crap like this.
And the Open Source Community best represents this, because a project never ends, but continues to develop in a myriad of directions.
Yes, but thats both a blessing and a curse. The commercial customers want stability, not a build release everyday. Even amongst the Linux community, how many people use the latest release of any software? Most people stick the the most stable release - I still use Debian Woody.
I have no problem with development, but the Open Source community should follow Debian's model and not release something (read Sarge) unless they're really sure its all done, and not release a version for every time feature add or small patch - have the fixes and patches as seperate entities and not as builds.
This was a problem that was told to me by the CEO of a certain reasonably big product development software company - he felt that this lack of stability (or the perceived lack of) is what is scaring corporate customers away. And he was like, if Redhat withdraws support for their old distributions, it is indirectly asking us to upgrade - and that is not stability.
Believe it or not, a lot of people out there compare stability to what IBM Mainframes provided - and sure, its not cutting edge and what not - but guess what? In a commercial enterprise, most often, it just needs to work and work well, for a lengthy periods of time. Period.
Yes, like we all understand what a 10 PRINT "HELLO" actually does behind the scenes.
Heh! I just came back from a gruelling day of interviews at Microsoft today.
And one of the guys *actually* asked me to implement virtual functions, multiple inheritance and multiple inheritance in C - from scratch.
Will you hash your virtual function references or will you use a graph? How will you optimize the use of virtual functions for instantiated objects through references, tagging of function space within the memory segments and the like.
The worst part is that this guy knew it all, and could tell you stuff on the top of his head.
So, you just might be surprised:) I know I was, and not so pleasantly, either!
The thing is that a lot of people on Slashdot *like* the ads that come on, or are willing to be subscribers.
I contemplated blocking the ads initially, but after a while I noticed that the ads were of interest to me and I actually went and got stuff through the click-throughs.
And now, am a subscriber - but even so, I have a minimal amount of ads disabled simply because I like the ads, and they are useful to me.
The folks at Slashdot know this too, and the way they see it is that if they provided good, relevant and useful ads, customers will not mind. And besides, hell I like this place;-)
I think one of the reasons the OpenSource community likes Sun is because they are the lesser evil.
In the eyes of the developer community, they are better than say, Microsoft or even IBM simply because Sun's standards are open, or at the very least more open than the competition.
Is it because that they are the underdogs? Maybe so. But be assured that tomorrow if they do come to the top, they will be ostracized even more.
And another thing is that, I do not think we can blame Sun for what they've done. Hey, you give your source out? That in no way means I have to or let you do what you let me do.
Slashdot Mirror
In the same note, are there any organizations/companies that have played a major role in helping Linux become popular?
:)
For instance, I know that in India, the magazine PC Quest was initially responsible for making Linux popular - they used to distribute Linux CDs (started out with Slackware and then moved on to Redhat) free with their magazines, and this helped spread the word
And how big a role do LUGs really play in actually making the general public (schools, businesses and the common user) aware of Linux? Are they actively involved (I know that ILUGC in India is quite proactive) or do they have any kind of tie-ups and the like with organizations to help spread Linux?
Hmmm, I've a Palm Vx, and use it to read when I fly. Its backlight is not too bright, and the text has a very soft greenish-glow, which makes it quite easy on the eye.
:).
Its small, cheap, robust has good battery life and is easy to carry (since I do not really have to worry too much about losing it or breaking it
You can get one off eBay for as little $20 and odd, and its really handy.
Ofcourse - this is solely for the purposes of airport/flight reading, and I hardly use it for anything else. But its really simple and handy, and is a constant companion when I travel.
Very true.
This guy is a perfect example of that. Ofcourse, he does it because he's a geek and because he has the means. But more than that, its a status symbol for such folks to be carrying the latest coolest gadget around.
You are right. Its not just AI, either, there are lots of other areas that demand heavy math.
My undergrad was in ECE, and I've had to use a lot of math in stuff that I program (Matlab for DSP, numerical methods in C and the like).
I've had significant experience in AI in the industry (~4 years as a research intern), and contrary to popular belief, good companies that build quality products do a lot of grassroot level stuff before getting down to code.
And now, I'm in grad school and I program graphics for my GRA in OpenGL and C++ (which is once again, lots of math and physics). I've an internship coming up at a well-known lab where I'm going to be working on simulating fluid dynamics in Java (which is, again math).
My masters project work is in AI, and uses statistics and various learning algorithms to create an existing behavioural programming language for adaptive agents - most of the time, I sit and work out the best possible algorithm or method of solving a particular deadlock or graphing problem, rather than code.
That done, I find the need to be pedantic - programming! = computer science. IMHO, CS is more of the cool math, algorithms and the like, while programming is implementing that using code - the latter can be learnt through experience, the former is better learnt in class.
My post talked about a situation if an asteroid were to be headed for Earth, what's likely to happen?
It was quite pertinent in discussing how inaction might be a consequence and a probable reason for why it maybe so.
It was perfectly on topic, unless you look at it from the perspective of an offended believer.
Neither did I mention any particular religion, nor any religious beliefs - I merely highlighted a particular reaction of eschatologist religions.
Its not flamebait unless you really think that my judgement of people and religions somehow does not fit in with the reactions in the real world, which again becomes judgemental and quite untrue, given the way religions work.
Funny thing is that Matt does talk about a company called Crypto.Com, Inc.
:)
Is Eurotech related to these guys, or is something really fishy here?
Ah, thank you.
:)
I was somehow under the impression that they would not really make their investments public, but I see no reason why they should not, so it makes sense.
I was not aware that In-Q-Tel was a seperate entity in itself, I always thought of it as being an arm of the CIA.
There are lots of programs in the Department of Defence that companies can apply to in order to get research money: you just need to know which back to scratch and get yourself noticed.
Just out of curiosity, any that you can think of off the top of your head?
Actually, their core contribution the Vapour Trace seems to be the development of some inhouse automatic sensors, embedded into polymer-like material.
:)
:)
;-)
They have a powerpoint on their Vapour Trace site that talks about how they have developed a new polymer that can detect contraband, while the material itself can be queried using RF signals.
I have not checked, but they seem to project this as a major step in vapour trace technology, and they may quite possibly have some patents to this end - I'm assuming, ofcourse!
I do not know much about the Acoustic Core technology per se. But the thing is even if their technology is not quite effective, it would not be too hard to convince the policing folks about how their "new" technology could help use the govt's paranoia in detecting stuff.
And as far as your question on Cryptography goes, I think they are suggesting something like a central server that would host the keys at runtime that you will run your data through. That's not something I would trust, but you never know what top managements would buy
Ideally it would not be keyless, merely runtime generated pads for data transfer of any kind (voice/information etc).
I guess you are right, in a sense it would be security through obscurity. But all it takes is one subpoena and they are toast. Not unless they are in the Island of Kinakuta
Thank you for the link! I have read Kurzweil's Age of Spiritual Machines, where he discusses something like this.
Well, but I said that 600 years is short because -
1. We need to get off this rock at a short notice, not just a few of us but most of us.
2. We would need to either have good space stations that can sustain us (short term) or terra-form a nearby planet (within our reach) or find a way to travel to another sector of the galaxy containing planets that are Earth-like. Remember, we will be going away for good.
3. Assuming that our population merely doubles, and we make spaceships that will take just half of the people away, each capable of 10,000 people (which is quite a reasonably high estimate) - we will need 500,000 ships. Thats an awful lot of resources that will be needed, both energy and material.
4. I have completely ignored the need for us to save such things as historical artifacts and memoirs from the home, etc. This is merely for the people.
The scale for such a transfer would be staggering, and no matter how advanced we are, we will need -
(a) Star Trek like travel (Warp/transporters)
(b) Steady yet reliable source of food and energy
(c) Sufficient space for such an endeavour
(d) Sufficient *time* for such an endeavour
Therefore, no matter what, it will be a really really mammoth task - could atleast take 50+ years. We take years to build a freeway, or a skyscraper. Assuming we somehow have cool technology that could make this even 10000x faster, we will still need atleast 50-100 years for something on this scale to be built.
Hence my argument that six centuries is an awfully short time!
*whew*
:) That brought a smile to my face. And to answer your question, well not too much!
However, it is quite funny that my comment was merely an observation of how eschatological religions would react to a situation like this, and the fact that it modded down once again proves that religious zealots abound this place.
It is the truth, religions and religious zealots would proclaim something or the other and cause mass uprisings, and that is probably one good reason why even if the space agencies knew about such a thing, they should not let it out.
And the last statement was merely an observation - with the current administration being right-wing conservative, and the religious climate in the rest of the world, no matter what comes to pass, people will use "faith" as an excuse and throw money at religious godheads and godmen.
I do not see any nation (well, maybe with the exception of China) where people will rather not spend money on religion than on real solutions - that is what pisses me off. If half the faith and the funds were directed towards legitimate purposes, it would atleast make the world a better place.
Who the hell are these guys?
:)
Their other products in the emerging technologies section include Acoustic Core - detecting illicit materials using their acoustic signatures, Vapour Trace - a way to search cargo for contraband materials and Crypto.Com - a double cipher keyless transmission system.
Thats a lot of cool science and technology for a relatively unheard of company, not to mention their technologies in the Border Security and Chemical Detection systems.
I had read a while back about the CIA and US Govt investing in startups - I think its quite possible that these guys are probably funded thus
Kinda cool yet spooky.
Ofcourse! Actually, you are quite right in the last count.
Figuring out the path is not the issue, doing something about it is. Unfortunately, even if the space organizations did figure out (I do not know if they have already figured this out or not, yet), there is no guarantee that they will make it public for a while.
Nothing better to stir up those religious zealots saying that in FooBar years the world is going to come to an end. And even the saner public would most certainly be quite paranoid if such a prediction were to come to pass.
That is what makes it far worse than actually knowing about it - a large segment of the population may still remain ignorant and oblivious to this. And given the brilliant red-tape that exists in most government agencies, I really wonder if we would be doing anything about it (except, ofcourse, fund a bunch of religious institutions and proclaim that some voice in the sky is going to save us all).
Its quite unlikely to be as big as Paris or any other bigger city - the article clearly states its the size of a *small* city.
On Sept. 29, 2004 an asteroid the size of a small city will make the closest known pass of such a very large space rock anytime this century.
The article also says that -
Toutatis is about 2.9 miles long and 1.5 miles wide (4.6 by 2.4 kilometers).
Therefore, I think a small town would rather be more appropriate than a small city. Most cities today cover atleast tens of miles, if not hundreds. But then again, its relative.
What scares me is the following line from the site -
Researchers can't predict far enough into the future to rule out Toutatis ever slamming into Earth, so it is listed officially as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid. NASA says it won't hit for at least the next six centuries.
Six centuries is an awfully short time, and maybe encouraging space programs and building stations outside of Earth is probably a good idea.
Hey! You forgot SCO :)
Two words - legacy and popularity.
And just how are they planning on getting these to replace the old MP3s?
As long as there is a way to encode them in the old way, people will do it. Duh!
This seems more like an attempy by Fraunhofer to pacify the corporates and "make up" for their follies.
If the owner who originally purchased the rights to that MP3 file publishes it online in a shared environment, the file will display the original owners digital signature, thus allowing the individuals to be immediately identified.
And what if the user purchased the rights to an Audio CD containing that track and converted it into a good old MP3?
This new trackable, un-sharable "Super MP3" may be an attempt by the Fraunhofer Institute to make amends with the disgruntled music industry.
Are they going to sue all the existing MP3 players if they don't change into the new format? Now *that* would be funny.
Bite me.
The can of worms is open, you are not going to be able to contain piracy this way. Change the way music (and media in general) is being sold - think up a new business model, the old one has been proven time and again not to work.
And guess what? Tracking users or preventive DRM is not the solution.
What are they going to do if I changed the ID of my MP3 to reflect that of someone else? How long is it going to take to crack this thing? A week? A month?
Sheesh. Won't these people ever learn? What beats me is that smart research institutes like FI are coming up with crap like this.
Ofcourse, I do realize that, but he wasn't too particular of the specifics.
:)
I guess he wanted to see my problem solving skills giving a particular set of tools and constraints, and how I thought the problem out.
But it sure as hell was an interesting experience!
Quoteth the poster --
And the Open Source Community best represents this, because a project never ends, but continues to develop in a myriad of directions.
Yes, but thats both a blessing and a curse. The commercial customers want stability, not a build release everyday. Even amongst the Linux community, how many people use the latest release of any software? Most people stick the the most stable release - I still use Debian Woody.
I have no problem with development, but the Open Source community should follow Debian's model and not release something (read Sarge) unless they're really sure its all done, and not release a version for every time feature add or small patch - have the fixes and patches as seperate entities and not as builds.
This was a problem that was told to me by the CEO of a certain reasonably big product development software company - he felt that this lack of stability (or the perceived lack of) is what is scaring corporate customers away. And he was like, if Redhat withdraws support for their old distributions, it is indirectly asking us to upgrade - and that is not stability.
Believe it or not, a lot of people out there compare stability to what IBM Mainframes provided - and sure, its not cutting edge and what not - but guess what? In a commercial enterprise, most often, it just needs to work and work well, for a lengthy periods of time. Period.
Well, given the position I was interviewing for (SDE), he assumed that I ought to know this stuff or atleast be able to solve this stuff on the fly.
:)
And interviews at MSFT are one on one, and the last thing I wanted to tell him at that point was that I wouldn't be able to solve it
However, I did solve it in the end, so looking back it was a learning experience.
I was interviewing for a Software Design Engineer, and this was their system's group working on optimizing and manage generated code.
Funnily, this isn't one of my core areas, but I guess the guy assumed that since am into AI, I should know this stuff.
Yes, like we all understand what a 10 PRINT "HELLO" actually does behind the scenes.
:) I know I was, and not so pleasantly, either!
Heh! I just came back from a gruelling day of interviews at Microsoft today.
And one of the guys *actually* asked me to implement virtual functions, multiple inheritance and multiple inheritance in C - from scratch.
Will you hash your virtual function references or will you use a graph? How will you optimize the use of virtual functions for instantiated objects through references, tagging of function space within the memory segments and the like.
The worst part is that this guy knew it all, and could tell you stuff on the top of his head.
So, you just might be surprised
Yes.
The thing is that a lot of people on Slashdot *like* the ads that come on, or are willing to be subscribers.
;-)
I contemplated blocking the ads initially, but after a while I noticed that the ads were of interest to me and I actually went and got stuff through the click-throughs.
And now, am a subscriber - but even so, I have a minimal amount of ads disabled simply because I like the ads, and they are useful to me.
The folks at Slashdot know this too, and the way they see it is that if they provided good, relevant and useful ads, customers will not mind. And besides, hell I like this place
Exactly!
I think one of the reasons the OpenSource community likes Sun is because they are the lesser evil.
In the eyes of the developer community, they are better than say, Microsoft or even IBM simply because Sun's standards are open, or at the very least more open than the competition.
Is it because that they are the underdogs? Maybe so. But be assured that tomorrow if they do come to the top, they will be ostracized even more.
And another thing is that, I do not think we can blame Sun for what they've done. Hey, you give your source out? That in no way means I have to or let you do what you let me do.
Hey I for one would say its awesome.
:-p
I can "naturally" add a few inches more without having to answer any of that pesky spam
Gives a whole new meaning to the term home-grown!