Well, this brings up interesting issues over whether the code was actually extended, over whether the GPL covers software embedded in a hardware system (gee, sounds like patent law) etc. etc. Again, if they just sold a product using that software, without modifying it, then they're under no obligation to do anything. Presumably, the value of their product is not in the software, so opening up any extensions they DID make would probably not harm them at all--after all, they're the ones selling the hardware that makes the product valuable.
Of course, with there being no legal test of the GPL yet, a company with some resources could just ignore the GPL "at their peril" and see what happens. Could be it gets overturned in court, if they're willing to pay the legal bills.
Presumably, the emails and other stuff I write are copyrighted by me, whether I do it explicitly or not. Therefore, if the government wants to break or otherwise undo my encryption, they're in violation of the DMCA, right?
I've tried many Ad blockers, and a big challenge is always trying to strike a balance between blocking stuff you might want to see and getting rid of stuff you don't want to see. That is, I don't want to disable popups on, say, ticketmaster.com, because that might screw up my transaction. However, I do want to block popups and ads from a lot of other companies.
There are also some ad-supported sites I visit regularly and want to support, whose ads I don't mind seeing.
Now, I don't work for any ad-blocking company, and I've tried several products (as I said). However, my current blocker seems to work pretty well. I'm currently using AdSubtract, from adsubtract.com. After using it for a few months and occasionally trawling my cookies for more customization, I've been browsing with almost exactly the right amount of popups--ones that I WANT to see!
Rather than a (de)centralized authentication system, I'd just take a standard for automatically sending my personal data (or part thereof) to sites that need it and automatically creating a login with a given name/password combination. That would save me nearly as much time, with even fewer privacy concerns.
I think the Weirding modules were probably ignored because they were an invention of David Lynch's version, and didn't exist in the book...
The largest problem with both movies (the Lynch and Harrison versions) was their lack of showing how important water is. The Harrison version did cover some elements of it, but the point didn't hit home.
Mixing Dune Messiah and Children of Dune might be kind of a weird idea. Their plots are quite different, although if the miniseries were extended beyond three nights, this might work...
The question of solar power is not whether it is useful or not, or clean or not. It's really a matter of whether it's economical or not.
In the Dominican Republic, a small island isolated from the immense power grids of places like the USA and Europe, with limited ability and resources to produce its own power, it's perfectly feasible (even with the high cost of replacing solar panels in the long run). However, we have a huge infrastructure for pumping, transporting, and burning petroleum.
High efficiency, low-maintenance solar cells are a good direction in which to spend research $$, but I think it'll take a major shift in economics to make this work--especially with competing fuel sources like fuel cells on the very-near horizon.
Is the end-goal of this anti-piracy endeavor by Microsoft to end up making more money by getting an extra $100 from home users who don't know better? They've obviously removed the activation nag in the MOLP media for Office 2000 (although it was present in my copy that I bought off the shelf), so it's not for corporations. So, let's play "what will be the likely outcome:"
1. Consumer outrage?
2. Everybody who's anybody will pirate the activation-less MOLP media?
3. The crack for disabling the activation will be released about two weeks before Windows XP goes gold?
4. All of the above.
I will also comment that this won't have a statistically significant affect on Linux marketshare--no matter how stupid Microsoft is, Linux is going to have to stop sucking before it gets on the desktop.
Many laws like this are broken because they attempt to do the enforcement-equivalent of "deep pocketing" -- go after the biggest entity involved? People trading MP3s or Nazi Memorabilia? It's too expensive (and impractical) in our current system of law to prosecute the individual offenders, so we prosecute the broker.
The law is trying to adapt itself in an evolutionary way to revolutionary problems. With a little luck, this'll start the collapse of the whole damn system altogether:)
What the hell are you people talking about? You're SUPPORTING this? Just because it's Linux, right?
If this were Microsoft shilling Windows XP with a Windows logo on the sidewalks, you'd be up in arms faster than you could say "Bill Gates Sucks!" You'd all be complaining about how they're taking up public spaces, they have no right to paste their evil empire symbols all over the place without paying for the advertising space, etc. etc. etc.
I'm sorry, but I've been reading about XP for at least a year now. Why is everybody just hearing about this?
A thin diamond layer would probably do the trick
on
Tombstones That Last?
·
· Score: 1
Arthur C. Clarke would probably recommend a normal stone tombstone encased in a thin (1mm or less) layer of diamond. The diamond will be transparent, reasonably tough to scratch, and quite weather-resistant.
Of course, acquiring such is a more difficult proposition. They're making lots of strides with new carbon compounds (bucky-whatnots). Or, you could wait until Jupiter explodes (9 years by A.C. Clarke's count) and then go get the diamond ejected from the planet core.
I know that large primes are often used for encryption (and decryption) of data, but, uhh...
Well, I'm sure Diffie and Hellman did NOT have this in mind when they were thinking about encryption, but it's cool nonetheless...
I suppose the next thing we'll see is QuantumDeCSS, where the DeCSS code is encoded in the polarity of photons. Any attempt for the MPAA to view the code summarily destroys it, though:)
The best technicians I've ever known always have two lists in their head:
What are the possible causes of the problem and how likely is each one?
How hard are these to check?
The best technicans balance these, usually picking the most likely cause of the problem first, then working their way down. Occasionally, they will take an "easier" thing to check because it'll take less time. Correctly balancing these lists often leads to the quickest, process-of-elimination style victory.
It's probably more the problem that Salt Lake City, and Utah as a whole, has few redeeming characteristics other than the high population of LDS folks (and that's only a benefit for other LDS folks). Imagine you're a CEO:
"I could set up shop in the Silicon Valley, a scant 30 minute drive from San Francisco, one of the coolest places on Earth, right next to all my business partners, or I could go out to the barren desert of Utah where it smells like rotten eggs half the year from the big smelly lake."
I think I'm going to GPL the statement "i=i+1" and its variants, "i++" and "++i." Then, anybody who derives a program from my code will necessarily have to GPL theirs....
This is an interesting concept. It's like flat-rate Internet service. Remember when all the dialups (Compu$erve, Q-Link, etc.) used to charge by the minute? How happy I was when flat-rate Internet service came out and I could surf all I wanted for $20/mo.
I wonder how much I'd actually pay for all-you-can-eat music. I suppose that I spend on the order of $250 a year on music (not a big music lover, but I like CD's.)
As such, for all-I-can-eat music like this, even $120/yr ($10/mo) would not be such a bad deal.
I pay a flat rate for my cable, my Internet service, my apartment rent, etc. This rate doesn't change no matter how much TV I watch, how much I'm online, how much time I spend at home, etc. Why doesn't my music or software work this way?
As an interesting side issue, what would you pay for the equivalent of a Microsoft MSDN Universal Subscription? I'd pay $100 a year for all the Office, Windows, SQL Server, and FrontPage I could eat...
XML-RPC, SOAP, and the Rest...
on
ESR On XML-RPC
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· Score: 2
I've used XML-RPC before, written my own version of it, and used SOAP extensively (and even posted a few patches to the IBM SOAP for Java implementation).
My conclusion has been that while RPC is slow, XML-RPC (and its variants) are necessarily slower. The idea itself is good, and it may be useful for so-called "web services" where there is a strict client-server relationship between communicating machines and there are few RPC's bouncing around the network. However, the overhead of a full XML parser, plus a protocol implementation, plus a marshaller and demarshaller to and from XML (especially since no language really provides this) is a big problem for XML-RPC and its kin.
According to Dave Winer...
"Conceptually, there's no difference between a local procedure call and a remote one, but they are implemented differently, perform differently (RPC is much slower) and therefore are used for different things."
Bzzt! A local procedure call can pass references, pointers, etc. A remote procedure call is not just slower, but it also limits what kind of data you can reasonably expect to pass in the parameters. A pointer to a database driver, for instance, or a function pointer (for callbacks) are entirely different beasts!
From the slashdot header:
"It's deliberately minimalist but nevertheless quite powerful, offering a way for the vast majority of RPC applications that can get by on passing around boolean/integer/float/string datatypes to do their thing in a way that is lightweight and easy to to understand and monitor"
Lightweight? Simple to understand and monitor? First of all, XML parsers are NEVER lightweight, especially if you want to do SOAP and use things like namespaces. Second of all, if you're doing only booleans/integers/floats/strings as the above suggests, then you're fine. More complex datatype marshalling? Ouch!
I'm going to leave XML-RPC, SOAP, and its kin behind for a while and see what happens. Until then, caveat earlius adopterus!
When I was a kid, about 11 years old, I started writing text adventures inspired by Infocom with very simple verb-noun parsers. I passed'em around to all my friends, and they liked playing them too. In fact, I credit a lot of my current vocabulary to Infocom games.
Another honorable mention goes to Magnetic Scrolls, simply because they made The Pawn, which was equally cool. Of course, they were from Britain, so you had to enter the commands in British English. A friend and I spent hours one day trying to figure out how to move a particular boulder. The correct command was some variant of:
"Use the shovel with the shirt to lever the boulder."
Needless to say, the use of 'lever' as a verb was discovered only after several trips to the dictionary and the parser warning us repeatedly that "lever" was not a noun--which, to us americans, it plainly was.
My other favorite gag from the Pawn was the three colors, which is something you could only get from a text game:
>open bag
You open the bag. You find a red, a blue, and a green.
>look at red
The red is just like the blue except it's red.
>look at blue
The blue is just like the green except it's blue.
>look at green
The green is just like the red except it's green.
Of course, the solution was:
>mix the red, the green, and the blue
You mix the red, the green, and the blue, making a White.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, this brings up interesting issues over whether the code was actually extended, over whether the GPL covers software embedded in a hardware system (gee, sounds like patent law) etc. etc. Again, if they just sold a product using that software, without modifying it, then they're under no obligation to do anything. Presumably, the value of their product is not in the software, so opening up any extensions they DID make would probably not harm them at all--after all, they're the ones selling the hardware that makes the product valuable.
Of course, with there being no legal test of the GPL yet, a company with some resources could just ignore the GPL "at their peril" and see what happens. Could be it gets overturned in court, if they're willing to pay the legal bills.
Presumably, the emails and other stuff I write are copyrighted by me, whether I do it explicitly or not. Therefore, if the government wants to break or otherwise undo my encryption, they're in violation of the DMCA, right?
...I run Windows :)
There are also some ad-supported sites I visit regularly and want to support, whose ads I don't mind seeing.
Now, I don't work for any ad-blocking company, and I've tried several products (as I said). However, my current blocker seems to work pretty well. I'm currently using AdSubtract, from adsubtract.com. After using it for a few months and occasionally trawling my cookies for more customization, I've been browsing with almost exactly the right amount of popups--ones that I WANT to see!
Q: Complete the following sequence:
.NET
Xenix, the Windows Sound System, Microsoft Bob, __________
A:
Rather than a (de)centralized authentication system, I'd just take a standard for automatically sending my personal data (or part thereof) to sites that need it and automatically creating a login with a given name/password combination. That would save me nearly as much time, with even fewer privacy concerns.
I think the Weirding modules were probably ignored because they were an invention of David Lynch's version, and didn't exist in the book...
The largest problem with both movies (the Lynch and Harrison versions) was their lack of showing how important water is. The Harrison version did cover some elements of it, but the point didn't hit home.
Mixing Dune Messiah and Children of Dune might be kind of a weird idea. Their plots are quite different, although if the miniseries were extended beyond three nights, this might work...
The question of solar power is not whether it is useful or not, or clean or not. It's really a matter of whether it's economical or not.
In the Dominican Republic, a small island isolated from the immense power grids of places like the USA and Europe, with limited ability and resources to produce its own power, it's perfectly feasible (even with the high cost of replacing solar panels in the long run). However, we have a huge infrastructure for pumping, transporting, and burning petroleum.
High efficiency, low-maintenance solar cells are a good direction in which to spend research $$, but I think it'll take a major shift in economics to make this work--especially with competing fuel sources like fuel cells on the very-near horizon.
Is the end-goal of this anti-piracy endeavor by Microsoft to end up making more money by getting an extra $100 from home users who don't know better? They've obviously removed the activation nag in the MOLP media for Office 2000 (although it was present in my copy that I bought off the shelf), so it's not for corporations. So, let's play "what will be the likely outcome:"
1. Consumer outrage?
2. Everybody who's anybody will pirate the activation-less MOLP media?
3. The crack for disabling the activation will be released about two weeks before Windows XP goes gold?
4. All of the above.
I will also comment that this won't have a statistically significant affect on Linux marketshare--no matter how stupid Microsoft is, Linux is going to have to stop sucking before it gets on the desktop.
A. C. Clarke says you can store an entire human consciousness in a petabyte. This should be a big enough address space, then, for a while anyway.
Many laws like this are broken because they attempt to do the enforcement-equivalent of "deep pocketing" -- go after the biggest entity involved? People trading MP3s or Nazi Memorabilia? It's too expensive (and impractical) in our current system of law to prosecute the individual offenders, so we prosecute the broker.
:)
The law is trying to adapt itself in an evolutionary way to revolutionary problems. With a little luck, this'll start the collapse of the whole damn system altogether
...is if they mandated that all their users used Linux+Netscape to access the site. What a slashdot fiasco that would be...
Oh, wait, no it wouldn't be.
I agree, though. If you're building an app, it's just so hard to decide whether to build for 95% of the population or 2%...
If this were Microsoft shilling Windows XP with a Windows logo on the sidewalks, you'd be up in arms faster than you could say "Bill Gates Sucks!" You'd all be complaining about how they're taking up public spaces, they have no right to paste their evil empire symbols all over the place without paying for the advertising space, etc. etc. etc.
At least get your priorities straight!
I'm sorry, but I've been reading about XP for at least a year now. Why is everybody just hearing about this?
Arthur C. Clarke would probably recommend a normal stone tombstone encased in a thin (1mm or less) layer of diamond. The diamond will be transparent, reasonably tough to scratch, and quite weather-resistant.
Of course, acquiring such is a more difficult proposition. They're making lots of strides with new carbon compounds (bucky-whatnots). Or, you could wait until Jupiter explodes (9 years by A.C. Clarke's count) and then go get the diamond ejected from the planet core.
I know that large primes are often used for encryption (and decryption) of data, but, uhh...
Well, I'm sure Diffie and Hellman did NOT have this in mind when they were thinking about encryption, but it's cool nonetheless...
I suppose the next thing we'll see is QuantumDeCSS, where the DeCSS code is encoded in the polarity of photons. Any attempt for the MPAA to view the code summarily destroys it, though
The best technicans balance these, usually picking the most likely cause of the problem first, then working their way down. Occasionally, they will take an "easier" thing to check because it'll take less time. Correctly balancing these lists often leads to the quickest, process-of-elimination style victory.
It's probably more the problem that Salt Lake City, and Utah as a whole, has few redeeming characteristics other than the high population of LDS folks (and that's only a benefit for other LDS folks). Imagine you're a CEO:
"I could set up shop in the Silicon Valley, a scant 30 minute drive from San Francisco, one of the coolest places on Earth, right next to all my business partners, or I could go out to the barren desert of Utah where it smells like rotten eggs half the year from the big smelly lake."
Which would you choose?
I think I'm going to GPL the statement "i=i+1" and its variants, "i++" and "++i." Then, anybody who derives a program from my code will necessarily have to GPL theirs....
I wonder how much I'd actually pay for all-you-can-eat music. I suppose that I spend on the order of $250 a year on music (not a big music lover, but I like CD's.)
As such, for all-I-can-eat music like this, even $120/yr ($10/mo) would not be such a bad deal.
I pay a flat rate for my cable, my Internet service, my apartment rent, etc. This rate doesn't change no matter how much TV I watch, how much I'm online, how much time I spend at home, etc. Why doesn't my music or software work this way?
As an interesting side issue, what would you pay for the equivalent of a Microsoft MSDN Universal Subscription? I'd pay $100 a year for all the Office, Windows, SQL Server, and FrontPage I could eat...
I've used XML-RPC before, written my own version of it, and used SOAP extensively (and even posted a few patches to the IBM SOAP for Java implementation). My conclusion has been that while RPC is slow, XML-RPC (and its variants) are necessarily slower. The idea itself is good, and it may be useful for so-called "web services" where there is a strict client-server relationship between communicating machines and there are few RPC's bouncing around the network. However, the overhead of a full XML parser, plus a protocol implementation, plus a marshaller and demarshaller to and from XML (especially since no language really provides this) is a big problem for XML-RPC and its kin. According to Dave Winer... "Conceptually, there's no difference between a local procedure call and a remote one, but they are implemented differently, perform differently (RPC is much slower) and therefore are used for different things." Bzzt! A local procedure call can pass references, pointers, etc. A remote procedure call is not just slower, but it also limits what kind of data you can reasonably expect to pass in the parameters. A pointer to a database driver, for instance, or a function pointer (for callbacks) are entirely different beasts! From the slashdot header: "It's deliberately minimalist but nevertheless quite powerful, offering a way for the vast majority of RPC applications that can get by on passing around boolean/integer/float/string datatypes to do their thing in a way that is lightweight and easy to to understand and monitor" Lightweight? Simple to understand and monitor? First of all, XML parsers are NEVER lightweight, especially if you want to do SOAP and use things like namespaces. Second of all, if you're doing only booleans/integers/floats/strings as the above suggests, then you're fine. More complex datatype marshalling? Ouch! I'm going to leave XML-RPC, SOAP, and its kin behind for a while and see what happens. Until then, caveat earlius adopterus!
When I was a kid, about 11 years old, I started writing text adventures inspired by Infocom with very simple verb-noun parsers. I passed'em around to all my friends, and they liked playing them too. In fact, I credit a lot of my current vocabulary to Infocom games.
Another honorable mention goes to Magnetic Scrolls, simply because they made The Pawn, which was equally cool. Of course, they were from Britain, so you had to enter the commands in British English. A friend and I spent hours one day trying to figure out how to move a particular boulder. The correct command was some variant of:
"Use the shovel with the shirt to lever the boulder."
Needless to say, the use of 'lever' as a verb was discovered only after several trips to the dictionary and the parser warning us repeatedly that "lever" was not a noun--which, to us americans, it plainly was.
My other favorite gag from the Pawn was the three colors, which is something you could only get from a text game:
>open bag
You open the bag. You find a red, a blue, and a green.
>look at red
The red is just like the blue except it's red.
>look at blue
The blue is just like the green except it's blue.
>look at green
The green is just like the red except it's green.
Of course, the solution was:
>mix the red, the green, and the blue
You mix the red, the green, and the blue, making a White.
Which, of course, was a light source.