I've always hated reading a good science article where someone is promoting evolution and then it says that a certain species "adapted" to their environment. Species don't adapt at all. There is nothing you can do "adapt" to your environment. Either you are born "adapted" to your environment, in which you live, or you aren't "adapted" and you die. It's PAST tense. You are either born with the ability to survive in your environment via cognitive or bodily ability, or you aren't. Nothing you can do in life makes any difference. You don't adapt, it's the random shuffle and mutation of genes already dictates whether you live or die. That is assuming that your environment doesn't become less hospitable. Obviously environmental change has a lot to do with evolution as much as anything else. But it is still "bad science" when you view the species as having some capability to make a cognitive "decision" after birth to adapt.
You are spreading misinformation. Kerberos is an authentication system/protocol. LDAP is a directory service. The two are not the same. Technically you should never use LDAP for authentication since it wasn't designed for it. People do it, but that doesn't make it right.
Kerberos was made to guarantee the authenticity of a user or service that has been granted access to the network. The right way to secure LDAP would be to use Kerberos authentication. You can use SSL with LDAP but you are just passing around encrypted plain text passwords. SASL allows the client to select whatever the best protocol it can support.
What many in the industry have done with LDAP is wrecked it by using SSL with secret stores where the directory holds the encrypted passwords for every service you need to access. This basically amounts to nothing more than Microsofts old PWL files on Win9x. Its just a temporary patch for a long term problem, but many industry PHBs throw their hands up because even after a decade of Kerberos, very few products have been Kerberized. At least Microsoft was smart enough to realize with Win2k that in the long term, only Kerberos is the right way to do it.
In the end though, this turns out to be a hot debate of public key vs. private key authentication systems. Kerberos is a private key system that has done well, but not as well as public key used in the internet. People are simply extending LDAP and public key as an alternative authentication system to using Kerberos. While many people may think this is a better solution, I beg to differ.
So how about it slashdotters, which is it? Which system will win out, public, private, or a combination of both?
"It sounds like quakery, but so did flight and travel to the moon 150 years ago."
I can always tell we've not evolved as a species and are still thinking at the baboon level when I hear comments like this.
Flight was not regarded as quakery by those who understood some simple science. It was regarded as quakery by the lay person who doesn't understand much of anything. It was obvious that if birds could fly then there must have been some method by which we could construct a machine to also do so. Birds don't fly by some strange unseen spiritual energy that we'll never figure out. No, flight was merely an engineering problem as are most all other things that science has "figured out". In the real world, if you can solve it, using logic and deductive reasoning, then you can do it. It will take work, in the form of many hours of labor and thought, something the common idiot seems not inclined to do, but can lead us places that we've never been before. It still amazes me to this day that many pseudo science freaks don't understand what energy is. They speak of this thing or that thing as having energy but are completely oblivious to the fact that energy is a "difference" between to opposites. They can't seem to name what those opposites are when they say something like "she seems to have much spiritual energy". You might as well say the sky is blue.
Going to the moon was also an engineering problem. There were material solutions to every problem encountered on our quest to fulfill that dream. If you understand how things work, then that knowledge is "enabling". The knowledge allows you to progress into the future. It gives you wings to fly with. Ordinary folk don't get it, so they continue to "believe" in fairy tails and pots of gold at the end of rainbows. To be constructive you must do work. You must work to generate order, be constructive, in the face of entropy, the disorder that flows and pushes you down stream. Don't let the stream carry you. It is harder to create, than it is to destroy, or go with the flow. Being lazy is a sign of the devil so to speak. Belief is lazyness because you aren't using your mind to figure things out, you are just accepting something that someone has told you is true. Only you can decide whether things are true or not based on your own experiences. Be skeptical when people tell you things that you haven't a clue about. Go to school. Read science and engineering books.
Honestly, the line that spoke volumes to me was the line that Carl Sagan used in Cosmos... "We... accept the products of science, but reject its methods". If we could just make people who believe in crap live in the old world without science for a few years, I'm sure they would change their tune. Alas, hypocrisy is rampant these days. I'm sure I'll die before our species grows beyond such thinking.
Probably for the same reason that the metric system is so hard to adopt. If someone said Spanish was a better language do you really think everyone would switch? I mean English is full of exceptions and strange anomalies. If English is so bad we should want to change right? But we don't.
Here is what we know to be true beyond the shadow of doubt... Evolution. Why? Simple.
If the world were to end today, and there were only 1000 men and 1000 women alive, and all their memory was erased, and all the books on the planet were burned including science and religous texts, then this is what would happen. In the far future, if man still survives, there will be new religions of various kinds having no relationship at all to any of the known religions of today. The believers of such religions will still have creation stories that they hold to be true, and that some sort of god, or gods exist. However there will also be those who rediscover science. And after a time those who are scientists will stumble back upon evolution. It may have a different name, but it will be the exact same concept, and then a "theory".
Evolution is true because it isn't something that needs to be believed to be true. Anyone actually looking, trying to discover the way things really work, will find evolution again and again. Evolution describes the mechanism for understanding how things come to be the way they are. Evolution is true because reality is governed by rules of logic and reason, not fantasy. You cannot believe things into being the way you want them to be. Otherwise the word "truth" would have no meaning. Something is "true" when your world view of the way things are "agrees" with the way things really are...in reality. There is a world external to your own consciousness that allows us to define whether some things are true, or not.
Obviously I'm beginning to ramble on. The point is that the world isn't flat, it's round. Put all the "The World is Flat" stickers on all the textbooks you want. It won't change a thing. Evolution will be discovered and rediscovered again and again in any environment that nurtures a scientific method.
"This means the Big Bang was "tuned" to produce exactly this density. The odds of that happening by chance are estimated at 1 to 10^50."
This kind of thinking is freshman 101 philosphy talking. You obviously have little grasp of the very large numbers, even less grasp of the infinite. This kind of talk leads even more stupid people into believing in miracles, and gods, and all sorts of magical mystery tour fluff.
Experience thinkers go well beyond your primitive and immature logic. It is well known that in a universe of practically infinite time that all numbers less than infinity might as well be 1. So while I'm not a die hard believer in the big bang theory, whatever happened only had to happen once! And based on any kind of random chance, no tuning was neccessary. Better yet, in infinite time, not only does this theoretical universe come into existance, but it does so an infinte number of times. All that, and together with all the other random universe type probabilities.
The question, and this has been pondered many times by advanced theologians, philosophers, and scientists, is...is this universe the only logical possible universe that can exist? If this turns out to be true, then not only do gods get demoted to janitorial duty, but they don't even get paid. This is basically saying that any god would have no choice in the creation of a universe...there is only one possible one that could ever be created.
This kind of thinking makes perfect sense when you go into deep analysis on how we are able to think and know truths. In our everyday lives we know things by definition. We made up those definitions based on sensory perception. Definitions need to be logically organized, otherwise the world is utterly incomprehensable. For example, the color of the sky can never be both black and white at the same time. We've created an intermediate word for that defined as "grey". Also, you cannot pick up a thing that is both square and round, or lift a thing that is both heavy and light. You would never say to a person "Go pickup that heavy box, it doesn't weigh much." Our entire experience of the universe is based on the languages of definition and logic. We see a "color". We define that "color". If the color changes, the only way to know that it did was to compare it to the originally defined color.
If there is only one logically possible universe, then what is the requirement that it changes over time? Quite possibly so that it can work out all the permutations of what -is- possible. But that is not a "purpose". That is only "what it does". The next question that arises is...if the universe is working out all logically possible combinations over time (perhaps at the quantum level), then are the number of logically possible combinations infinite?
Any beginning computer programmer knows that a memory with a finite number states cannot logically produce every number in existance. So if the universe has an infinite number of states, in a sea of inifinite time, is there an algorithm that would produce a series of logically possible states that occur once and only once...that cannot repeat? Even calculating PI will eventually produce a series of repetitive numbers that occur at ever decreasing frequency.
Is there only one logically possible universe?
For insight into this kind of thinking google on the "Bekenstein Bound" of quantum mechanics.
Also read...
"The Physics of Immortality", Frank J. Tipler
and,
"The Anthropic Cosmological Principle", John D. Barrow & Frank J. Tipler
Note: I personally don't always agree with the nature of the material presented in the above books. Nevertheless I find the reading to be absolutely facinating.
A recurring conspiracy of mine is that the 1990 debacle with the Hubble Space Telescope mirror being out of focus was intended. It was out of focus for astronomical observations, but was probably perfect for ground observations. This would allow the government to take the highest resolution pics available for the three years it was up there until they repaired the mirror.
Any takers on this idea?
When they went up to repair it, not only did they take "the fix", but they probably returned with some photographic negatives too.
Did you really think the government was going to spend all that money just for a big telescope to look at the stars?
Yes, it is on the list, but the real purpose it should be on there is not because of the stated reasons.
I personally really wanted to buy Half-Life 2. I was one of those gamers who was anxiously awaiting its release. I then found out that I would not be able to play the game at all in single player without registering. Ding! There goes my sale. Using a scheme like this is akin to needing to be on-line to play an audio CD. How many/.'ers will do that? But how many of you went out an purchased HL2 without making a big deal about it? Nail to coffin, hammer to nail. Your future privacy is being stripped away. I just want to say thanks to all those that know how to boycott. To those that don't, well you know what you deserve!
Then the astronauts in the international space station, or the shuttle, or anyone for that matter who travel into space are really playing russian roulette. If an object over the size of a meter, or a baseball, hit a spacecraft then I'm sure the spacecraft wouldn't survive the impact...depending of course on how fast it was traveling.
I always wondered why they threw out this idea so readily when the Columbia disaster happened. It is perfectly feasable that Columbia may have been hit. Personally, if I were an astronaut I would be worried about this phenomenon a lot. Granted the chances are slim, but in space there's no atmosphere to protect them. For that matter, I wondered why it was so easy for the Voyager 2(?) spacecraft to fly through the rings of Saturn. But I have read that there are kilometers of distance between the objects in the rings.
Also, have astronomers really accounted for the huge amount of space debris (matter) that are spat out by supernova in there calculations on the mass of the universe? I mean asteroids are dark, and one the size of a house isn't likely to be seen over a light year away. So if there were billions of them strewn between the stars how would we know? What if most of them have a large mass? Would far off stars ever twinkle if a really large asteriod came between us and the star? What is really out there in deep space that doesn't glow? What if all those proposed hypernovas I've heard about recently filled space-time many years ago with asteroid type matter. It just isn't seen until it clusters into galaxies and ignites as a suns and reflects as planets?
"Berkeley philosopher John Searle offered the best-known of these objections, proposing a contradictory thought experiment meant to demonstrate that a computer that passed Turing's test would have proved itself capable only of manipulating symbols through computation, and not of intelligence or understanding."
I would have thought Johns argument had been overturned and pushed aside by now. His arugment makes sense for computers that are programmed, but makes no sense for computers that "learn" how to process symbols by teaching it what those symbols mean.
In the case of humans, we have simply that the machine is a complex bio-chemical processor. It has no goals in and of itself. It simply exists. Its existance depends highly on whether it can obtain the necessary matter, and environmental conditions for it to do so. Memory is a key element in the ability for a human to survive. Memory allows us to interact with our environments and acknowledge that we've interacted with it before or not. It we have and it was bad, then hopefully we won't do it again. It we did and it was good, then we'll probably stay. In a large sense, the human brain simply acts as a machine that performs an overall negative feedback function. All data is ultimately reduced and equalized. However equalized is not a very good word here. The brain really performs a type of simulated anealing, trying to optimize the previously obtained data (memory) with new experiential data. I would suppose, at night while we sleep, the brain simply spends its time optimizing past data by annealing or some such process.
In this view our brains don't know anything, like Searls suggestion, the brain itself doesn't know what experiential data symbols mean. No, it simply uses that data against itself, in an optimized negative feedback manner, the result of which is thinking, and moving. The brain doesn't understand symbols and never will. But it is a machine that uses the data obtained via experience to build a sort of holographical framework of the external environment. That holographic framework is constantly optimized and compared with new data which causes responses and changes.
Further, memory (data storage) seems to be at the core of all our endeavors here on this planet. A person who would live forever for example would require a medium of storage which would also be infinite. There is no such storage medium. The very idea of a "soul" posited by most all religious institutions requires the medium to store experiential data, just as a CDROM stores bits on a disk. No data will ever be retained without a medium. The brain stores memories, and as long as it can be kept operating in good condition, it will most likely be able to remember past events and reflect on them. However with a limited medium, some of the optimization process will eventually destroy the original experiences over time. When we die, all of our experiences and optimizations about how we lived in our environment are returned to random chaos. We do not live after death without a medium.
A good book to scramble your brain on these issues is "The Physics of Immortality" by Frank J. Tipler. He's a bit out there "on a limb" for me, but the book is a good read nonetheless. There are references to the maximum storage capacity of the brain, as well as the quantum Bekenstien bound for ultimately the amount of data that can be stored given a limited volume of space-time.
All life is just data. How big is your hard drive?
"AMD did the smart move of extending the x86 platform with their new CPU architecture (complete with backward compatibility), and covering with it a lot of price segments."
Funny, this is the same thing that most/.'ers see Microsoft doing when trying to preserve the Windows legacy. But then Microsoft gets accused of "bloatware" and carrying with it a terribly complicated legacy architecture. But this x86 lineage is exactly that, a terribly complicated backwards compatibility register/alu model. Face it, AMDs support to continue this funky software/processor architecture is just as bad for us. At this point it looks like we should really be jumping to the Power architecture. Intel and HP aren't the only ones who've lost out on the Itanium deal. I would guess part of the reason Microsoft has considered the Power chip is because it lost a lot of time and effort trying to make Windows work on the Itanium. They must have wasted thousands of man-hours and millions of dollars on that effort.
In my opinion, the whole problem with Itanium for me was the silly change to the new VLIW software model. That model was simply unproven in the industry, yet Intel and HP let a bunch of PHD level PHBs prove to them it was. I'm not at all sad to see the Itainum go, and I'm happy that Intel and HP got knocked down by little AMD.
We need to switch to a new CPU architecture though. The switch needs to be sooner than later. We need a clean, well thought out, and efficient design that scales well into the future. Hopefully it won't be anything like the ugly Intel register model. I used to love the Motorola 68xxx series chips way back in the day. They were very clean. If a new CPU is invented (doubtful, the cost of raising a child from zero these days is too high) it needs to run circles around whatever the currently fastest legacy chips are.
I seem to agree...
on
NYT on EA Games
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· Score: 2, Insightful
And what does the consumer end up getting? A cardboard box with some paper and plastic disks. Same as the music industry.
But if we are willing to pay outrageous prices for the games, then most of the problem is with us right? A few years back I was paying around $30 USD for games. Now I'm paying $50? Someone please tell me how games became $50 dollars?
This story ends up being the old standard. They can charge you what they want because you are willing to pay it. Companies have no desire to price their products realistically. And whatever became of the "volume" argument? Pricing lower because of volume? There are now more people on the planet that there ever have been in the history of mankind. Where is the volume pricing?
Thanks for the responses! The about:config really helped. Who would have guessed, a build-in XML type registry.
As for the answers to certain queries. I'll try to be more accurate in my statements:
* Changing the temporary cache path?
I like storing anything temporary on another drive, not my system drive. That way I can erase the whole thing at the end of my windows session if necessary.
* No option to clear cache when done?
The IE option is to "Emtpy Temporary Internet Files folder when browser is closed".
* Inability to prompt me if I want scripts to run?
I am refering to any scripts, all scripts, whatever scripts. A TV or newspaper isn't capable of running scripts, neither should a browser...in my humble opinion. Yes I love the FireFox Javascript fine-tuning control. I really wish IE had that. Of course I unchecked all the options for Javascript on FireFox.:)
* Prompted cookie setting control?
Yea, I missed the "Ask me every time" option. Thanks. It wasn't obvious that it was under that dropdown because it is labled "Keep cookies". The word "Keep" gives me the impression that the cookie had already been set.
* Inline images are either on or off. Eg, no ability to prevent animations (gif or otherwise) from running.
(This is frustrating. I want to see the original images, but I absolutely hate animations of any sort.)
Yes apparently FireFox doesn't have this option, even under about:config. The specific IE option is "Play animations in web pages". I have this turned off.
* No Zones feature so that I can configure certain security options for certain sites.
Zones are nice for intranet stuff where you know you are completely in a secured development environment. The restricted and trusted sites are also nice. I think the thing I like about zones is that it completely adjusts every browser setting for each zone. In fact, I would argue that there should be more zones, more user creatable/definable zones. Zones that users can setup and name. Zones are the limited equivalent of sandbox type controls.
* Installed security is to save passwords, allow web sites to install software, save form information, and Java is enabled?
(Of course IE is probably even more open, but the point is that FireFox is supposed to be secure right?)
I don't know about you, but when I end my browser session, I erase everything. I erase history, cookies, temporary internet files, passwords, form data...everything. I even erase the sites in my blocked lists. In fact, whenever I start my browser, I want it to startup as if I had never used it before. In many ways Firefox should have the option to browse similarly, like in Apples Safari browser where the browser does a complete privacy reset when done. I would love that!
* Many other configuration options are missing that would allow me to be prompted if I want to execute or do something.
Obviously I don't want to name them all. Just open up any IE and choose the security tab, then choose a zone. All the promptable settings are there. And yes I can be prompted to prevent active x controls to run. I just wish META refresh was promptable. Arguably it needs to be.
Firefox is a good start. I really don't want to download Mozilla to get more advanced options. I mean what is the point of FireFox then? I want to use FireFox, I just need more browsing control. I do not like a broswer that does things for me. One other annoying thing about FireFox, even though it isn't a biggie...the fonts don't look right on some sites. I hope they fix that.
Thanks for your input. I'm just that much more informed now!
I've been a long time IE user. Personally I've never had the problems with IE that others have had because I sat down and learned how to setup and use IE from the start. I memorized the operation of every last setting under the Tools->Internet Options dialog and adjusted them accordingly. I learned how to browse as securely as possible while watching what IE does very closely. Of course I'm not your average browser. Almost every setting I could find is set to prompt me, as I enjoy absolute control over things. This also alerts me to how complex some websites are in their attempt to invade your privacy. Just watching all the dialogs pop up for scripting and ActiveX is amazing. Also the hitbox'es, doubleclicks, and adtechs are really annoying.
Yesterday I downloaded and installed FireFox 1.0. I wanted to look at it and find out if it would suit me better since I still consider IE to be a little too proprietary in that it hides what it really does. So I am looking for something a bit more open.
After looking at all the features of FireFox I was amazed at how few things it allowed me to adjust. It doesn't have any of the options I am used to using under IE. Here are a few...
* Changing the temporary cache path? * No option to clear cache when done? * Inability to prompt me if I want scripts to run? * Prompted cookie setting control? * Inline images are either on or off. Eg, no ability to prevent animations (gif or otherwise) from running.
(This is frustrating. I want to see the original images, but I absolutely hate animations of any sort.) * No Zones feature so that I can configure certain security options for certain sites. * Installed security is to save passwords, allow web sites to install software, save form information, and Java is enabled?
(Of course IE is probably even more open, but the point is that FireFox is supposed to be secure right?) * Many other configuration options are missing that would allow me to be prompted if I want to execute or do something.
I notice that tabbed browsing ends up using even more desktop real estate. I've never needed tabbed browsing before, all my windows appear on my Explorer task bar...just like tabs. I suppose tabs would be useful for people whos operating systems don't have a taskbar enabled shell.
Other that than the above observations I found Firefox to work fine. It didn't crash at all, but was a bit slower to render than IE. Only once did it redirect me to a website I did not type in the URL for. I just shut it down and restarted to fix that problem.
I find that I don't think I'll be switching just yet because of the inability to actively control scripting and the in-line image problem. If those issues are taken care of in the future, I don't know why I would stay with IE. Until then.
I was first gen on FPS, playing the original Doom series, Hexen(s), Heretic, ROT, Duke Nukem, Wheel-of-Time, all Quake series versions, Tribes series, Unreal/Tournament(s); with lots of mods and multiplayer experiences. My most enjoyable experiences are the memories of playing QuakeWorld, Threewave, Loki's Minions, mods. But I also have some really intense memories of great deathmatch games in Quake II and III. Ah, nostalgia.
I played Halo all the way through when the PC version came out. I have to say that Halo is a FPS for a new generation, somewhat like FPS for dummies, but it doesn't really compare to the older PC stuff. I was immediately shocked by the simplicities of the architecture and textures of the buildings, and how small the maps were. Some of them seemed like shoeboxes with teleporters. The only saving grace of the game were the vehicles.
Oddly, I happen to play Halo quite a bit these days online, but that is only because the older games are not where people are playing anymore. I'd rather be playing something better, but I'm sort'of out of time these days. I only get a few hours a week to play. Even if I wanted to play the older games, they are full of bots and cheating.
I'm waiting on Half-Life II and Tribes III. These games should really rock. I don't think I'll be buying Halo 2 since I'm not sure how much more they can squeeze out of the aging X-Box. And I'm sure when it arrives for the PC it will just be the same old boxed game it was when the first one came out for the PC.
Don't you understand that playing a one string guitar is easier that 6? The Apple mentality is that we as users.... have no mentality, or dexterity. We are the equivalent to Steven Hawking, using a one button click device for user input. Why would we need anything else?
Your explanations are eloquent in the prose! I could not have said it better myself.
I only have one thing that may make what you are saying sharper. When you ask the question of "why" you are actually looking for "intent". Do the things we observe in the universe require "intent"? This may be the million dollar question, as in, the question that the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy tries to come up with. If phenomenon in the universe do not require intent, then that means that gods are now dethroned. If a thing can exist by itself, on its own in an evolutionary way for the entire history of the universe (even if continuous), then what other explanations are required?
As a long time science buff I'm pretty well read on the various "big" theories out there relating to how the universe works. Your explanation is a good one, and tends to follow the standard space-time is a fabric, blah, blah, blah. But the things that annoy me most about modern concepts are the big ambiguities that result of some simple explanations. For example, take the concept of the "stretching" of space-time. If we up all the dimensions by 1, going from a flat sheet to a volume. We would expect that the word "stretching" doesn't fit very well. We alrady have 3 dimensions of space and 1 of time. So basically what stetching means in 3 dimensional terms is "densities" of space. More precisely we find that when large masses are placed in a space-time fabric (volume) the space around it gets more dense. If space is more "dense" around large masses then that means there is "more space" within a given volume. But what volume? Gravity waves would be seen as simply variaitions in the densities of space-time.
This all seems very strange until you read up on some of the modern concepts of vacum physics. Space is not seen as being emtpy at all. Space is actually something. Where matter within space is simply some strange configuration of whatever space is. This is sort of like ice in water, where water can be viewed as space, and ice is the matter within it. If this is true, as in the way things actually work, then everything that exists is really just one thing...the stuff that space is made of. Apparently though, this "stuff" is non-continuous, becuase how can you stretch it otherwise? It seems to have a finiteness so that, like air pressure, it gets more dense the closer you get to a massive object. In my view, the Bekenstein bound, a model for the granularity of quantum events, seems to be linked to the finiteness of space-time. The Bekenstein bound proposes that any given volume of space can only have a finite number of states. This brings about the model of a computer screen where you only have a certain number of pixels within a given area. To expand further, based on the Bekenstien bound, it would be only possible to have a finite number of physical manifestations (objects) within a given volume of space-time. In the same way, you can only have a limited number of possible pictures viewable on a computer screen within a given resolution.
Does the universe actually work this way? If it does, then this suggests the possiblity that the volume of the entire universe is a large finite state machine. Within the lifetime of the universe, the machine is working out all the possible logical permutations of reality as time progresses. What we don't know is: Is the volume of the entire universe infinite? What would be the end result of the permutations?
The contrary argument would be that space-time could actually be continuous, but that there only exists so-called quantum interfaces at a certain level. Below the level of the interfaces, we cannot know about any of the other features of space-time. The interfaces block further exploration into space-time because our measuring devices only operate at the level of the interfaces. This model is very much like working with Legos(TM). Legos blocks are finite, and they allow you to build large numbers of possible devices (objects) within a given volume of space. But Legos can only interact at the connection level. Where there are no connections, Legos cannot be known.
The more I read, the more I'm finding that modern science is telling the above story over and over again as we come to understand things better. Do you guys read the same picture, or am I just reading the wrong books?
True...and false. You are correct, VNC gives you a running average of your overall display. Sometimes this can be a great benefit as you have described. Sometimes though you need to request and entire screen update which is a little annoying. However RD can be put into different modes so that different effects can be turned off. These modes are called the "Experience Levels", and can be used to reduce the traffic depending on your network connection. You can turn off the desktop background, disable window contents dragging, disable menu and window animations, disable themes, and enable bitmap caching. All these things tend to improve the performance over VNC.
One of the extra problems with RD though is that it uses TCP. I have had the experience of being on a bad network connection where TCP would not get through, but UDP would. In that case, VNC worked great.
Remote desktop is not the same beast as VNC. VNC and derivatives are based on getting bits and pieces of your desktop video image that change, then compressing them (or not), and sending them to the other end. Once on the other end, they are decompressed (or not) and blitted to a video buffer to build up an image. That's it. That is all VNC does. It gives you an image of what is going on on the remote end.
Remote desktop however is a bit different. It doesn't give you just an image of what is occuring on the other end. Remote desktop is a stripped down single user terminal server. When you connect to an XP or 2000 machine using RD, then the remote XP machine redirects all local console functions of that machine to your client. This has the effect of knocking out whoever is sitting at the local console of the machine you are RD'ing into. In effect, all video operations are redirected to an off-screen video buffer, then compressed, and sent on their way using the remote desktop protocol. The sucky thing about this is that remote desktop only allows one and only one console session to exist.
Remote desktop also encrypts the entire session using 128 bit encryption. It even allows you to redirect your local disks and printers to the remote machine for use. You can use this feature for a sort'of poor mans VPN. All the data moved through the redirected drives will be encrypted and moved over the RDP port.
Remote desktop is faster than VNC because Microsoft is able to perform tricks in kernel space. For example, if you fire up windows media player to view a video file, then that data doesn't have to be rendered at all on the remote machine. Microsoft simply streams it to your client machine using RDP. The same thing however won't work with Apple QuickTime or RealPlayer. I'm also not entirely sure whether the windows are even drawn to video first. Microsoft may be pulling some redirection of GDI commands so that RD acts somewhat like X in that respect.
Our site uses VNC for user desktop support since the video is shared with the user. We use remote desktop for server management. Remote desktops feature for helping the user is problematic at best becuase they have to invite you to join first. It whole invitation thing is simply cumbersome. That's why it is just simpler to use VNC.
So, there are positives and negatives to using VNC or RD.
Slashdot Mirror
I've always hated reading a good science article where someone is promoting evolution and then it says that a certain species "adapted" to their environment. Species don't adapt at all. There is nothing you can do "adapt" to your environment. Either you are born "adapted" to your environment, in which you live, or you aren't "adapted" and you die. It's PAST tense. You are either born with the ability to survive in your environment via cognitive or bodily ability, or you aren't. Nothing you can do in life makes any difference. You don't adapt, it's the random shuffle and mutation of genes already dictates whether you live or die. That is assuming that your environment doesn't become less hospitable. Obviously environmental change has a lot to do with evolution as much as anything else. But it is still "bad science" when you view the species as having some capability to make a cognitive "decision" after birth to adapt.
Evolution
You are spreading misinformation. Kerberos is an authentication system/protocol. LDAP is a directory service. The two are not the same. Technically you should never use LDAP for authentication since it wasn't designed for it. People do it, but that doesn't make it right.
Kerberos was made to guarantee the authenticity of a user or service that has been granted access to the network. The right way to secure LDAP would be to use Kerberos authentication. You can use SSL with LDAP but you are just passing around encrypted plain text passwords. SASL allows the client to select whatever the best protocol it can support.
What many in the industry have done with LDAP is wrecked it by using SSL with secret stores where the directory holds the encrypted passwords for every service you need to access. This basically amounts to nothing more than Microsofts old PWL files on Win9x. Its just a temporary patch for a long term problem, but many industry PHBs throw their hands up because even after a decade of Kerberos, very few products have been Kerberized. At least Microsoft was smart enough to realize with Win2k that in the long term, only Kerberos is the right way to do it.
In the end though, this turns out to be a hot debate of public key vs. private key authentication systems. Kerberos is a private key system that has done well, but not as well as public key used in the internet. People are simply extending LDAP and public key as an alternative authentication system to using Kerberos. While many people may think this is a better solution, I beg to differ.
So how about it slashdotters, which is it? Which system will win out, public, private, or a combination of both?
"It sounds like quakery, but so did flight and travel to the moon 150 years ago."
I can always tell we've not evolved as a species and are still thinking at the baboon level when I hear comments like this.
Flight was not regarded as quakery by those who understood some simple science. It was regarded as quakery by the lay person who doesn't understand much of anything. It was obvious that if birds could fly then there must have been some method by which we could construct a machine to also do so. Birds don't fly by some strange unseen spiritual energy that we'll never figure out. No, flight was merely an engineering problem as are most all other things that science has "figured out". In the real world, if you can solve it, using logic and deductive reasoning, then you can do it. It will take work, in the form of many hours of labor and thought, something the common idiot seems not inclined to do, but can lead us places that we've never been before. It still amazes me to this day that many pseudo science freaks don't understand what energy is. They speak of this thing or that thing as having energy but are completely oblivious to the fact that energy is a "difference" between to opposites. They can't seem to name what those opposites are when they say something like "she seems to have much spiritual energy". You might as well say the sky is blue.
Going to the moon was also an engineering problem. There were material solutions to every problem encountered on our quest to fulfill that dream. If you understand how things work, then that knowledge is "enabling". The knowledge allows you to progress into the future. It gives you wings to fly with. Ordinary folk don't get it, so they continue to "believe" in fairy tails and pots of gold at the end of rainbows. To be constructive you must do work. You must work to generate order, be constructive, in the face of entropy, the disorder that flows and pushes you down stream. Don't let the stream carry you. It is harder to create, than it is to destroy, or go with the flow. Being lazy is a sign of the devil so to speak. Belief is lazyness because you aren't using your mind to figure things out, you are just accepting something that someone has told you is true. Only you can decide whether things are true or not based on your own experiences.
Be skeptical when people tell you things that you haven't a clue about. Go to school. Read science and engineering books.
Honestly, the line that spoke volumes to me was the line that Carl Sagan used in Cosmos... "We... accept the products of science, but reject its methods". If we could just make people who believe in crap live in the old world without science for a few years, I'm sure they would change their tune. Alas, hypocrisy is rampant these days. I'm sure I'll die before our species grows beyond such thinking.
Probably for the same reason that the metric system is so hard to adopt. If someone said Spanish was a better language do you really think everyone would switch? I mean English is full of exceptions and strange anomalies. If English is so bad we should want to change right? But we don't.
http://www.spacetoday.org/DeepSpace/Telescopes/Lov ellTelescopeJBO.html :)
I will pay Apple $2.00 a song to get non-DRM'ed music. Think they will go for it?
Here is what we know to be true beyond the shadow of doubt... Evolution. Why? Simple.
If the world were to end today, and there were only 1000 men and 1000 women alive, and all their memory was erased, and all the books on the planet were burned including science and religous texts, then this is what would happen. In the far future, if man still survives, there will be new religions of various kinds having no relationship at all to any of the known religions of today. The believers of such religions will still have creation stories that they hold to be true, and that some sort of god, or gods exist. However there will also be those who rediscover science. And after a time those who are scientists will stumble back upon evolution. It may have a different name, but it will be the exact same concept, and then a "theory".
Evolution is true because it isn't something that needs to be believed to be true. Anyone actually looking, trying to discover the way things really work, will find evolution again and again. Evolution describes the mechanism for understanding how things come to be the way they are. Evolution is true because reality is governed by rules of logic and reason, not fantasy. You cannot believe things into being the way you want them to be. Otherwise the word "truth" would have no meaning. Something is "true" when your world view of the way things are "agrees" with the way things really are...in reality. There is a world external to your own consciousness that allows us to define whether some things are true, or not.
Obviously I'm beginning to ramble on. The point is that the world isn't flat, it's round. Put all the "The World is Flat" stickers on all the textbooks you want. It won't change a thing. Evolution will be discovered and rediscovered again and again in any environment that nurtures a scientific method.
"This means the Big Bang was "tuned" to produce exactly this density. The odds of that happening by chance are estimated at 1 to 10^50."
This kind of thinking is freshman 101 philosphy talking. You obviously have little grasp of the very large numbers, even less grasp of the infinite. This kind of talk leads even more stupid people into believing in miracles, and gods, and all sorts of magical mystery tour fluff.
Experience thinkers go well beyond your primitive and immature logic. It is well known that in a universe of practically infinite time that all numbers less than infinity might as well be 1. So while I'm not a die hard believer in the big bang theory, whatever happened only had to happen once! And based on any kind of random chance, no tuning was neccessary. Better yet, in infinite time, not only does this theoretical universe come into existance, but it does so an infinte number of times. All that, and together with all the other random universe type probabilities.
The question, and this has been pondered many times by advanced theologians, philosophers, and scientists, is...is this universe the only logical possible universe that can exist? If this turns out to be true, then not only do gods get demoted to janitorial duty, but they don't even get paid. This is basically saying that any god would have no choice in the creation of a universe...there is only one possible one that could ever be created.
This kind of thinking makes perfect sense when you go into deep analysis on how we are able to think and know truths. In our everyday lives we know things by definition. We made up those definitions based on sensory perception. Definitions need to be logically organized, otherwise the world is utterly incomprehensable. For example, the color of the sky can never be both black and white at the same time. We've created an intermediate word for that defined as "grey". Also, you cannot pick up a thing that is both square and round, or lift a thing that is both heavy and light. You would never say to a person "Go pickup that heavy box, it doesn't weigh much." Our entire experience of the universe is based on the languages of definition and logic. We see a "color". We define that "color". If the color changes, the only way to know that it did was to compare it to the originally defined color.
If there is only one logically possible universe, then what is the requirement that it changes over time? Quite possibly so that it can work out all the permutations of what -is- possible. But that is not a "purpose". That is only "what it does". The next question that arises is...if the universe is working out all logically possible combinations over time (perhaps at the quantum level), then are the number of logically possible combinations infinite?
Any beginning computer programmer knows that a memory with a finite number states cannot logically produce every number in existance. So if the universe has an infinite number of states, in a sea of inifinite time, is there an algorithm that would produce a series of logically possible states that occur once and only once...that cannot repeat? Even calculating PI will eventually produce a series of repetitive numbers that occur at ever decreasing frequency.
Is there only one logically possible universe?
For insight into this kind of thinking google on the "Bekenstein Bound" of quantum mechanics.
Also read...
"The Physics of Immortality", Frank J. Tipler
and,
"The Anthropic Cosmological Principle", John D. Barrow & Frank J. Tipler
Note: I personally don't always agree with the nature of the material presented in the above books. Nevertheless I find the reading to be absolutely facinating.
A recurring conspiracy of mine is that the 1990 debacle with the Hubble Space Telescope mirror being out of focus was intended. It was out of focus for astronomical observations, but was probably perfect for ground observations. This would allow the government to take the highest resolution pics available for the three years it was up there until they repaired the mirror.
Any takers on this idea?
When they went up to repair it, not only did they take "the fix", but they probably returned with some photographic negatives too.
Did you really think the government was going to spend all that money just for a big telescope to look at the stars?
Yea, those super secret spy satellites did us a whole lot of good in Iraq...a desert, no trees, little clouds. Yea, alot of good.
Sorry, just being cynical.
"HL2's Steam system being on this list"
/.'ers will do that? But how many of you went out an purchased HL2 without making a big deal about it? Nail to coffin, hammer to nail. Your future privacy is being stripped away. I just want to say thanks to all those that know how to boycott. To those that don't, well you know what you deserve!
Yes, it is on the list, but the real purpose it should be on there is not because of the stated reasons.
I personally really wanted to buy Half-Life 2. I was one of those gamers who was anxiously awaiting its release. I then found out that I would not be able to play the game at all in single player without registering. Ding! There goes my sale. Using a scheme like this is akin to needing to be on-line to play an audio CD. How many
Then the astronauts in the international space station, or the shuttle, or anyone for that matter who travel into space are really playing russian roulette. If an object over the size of a meter, or a baseball, hit a spacecraft then I'm sure the spacecraft wouldn't survive the impact...depending of course on how fast it was traveling.
I always wondered why they threw out this idea so readily when the Columbia disaster happened. It is perfectly feasable that Columbia may have been hit. Personally, if I were an astronaut I would be worried about this phenomenon a lot. Granted the chances are slim, but in space there's no atmosphere to protect them. For that matter, I wondered why it was so easy for the Voyager 2(?) spacecraft to fly through the rings of Saturn. But I have read that there are kilometers of distance between the objects in the rings.
Also, have astronomers really accounted for the huge amount of space debris (matter) that are spat out by supernova in there calculations on the mass of the universe? I mean asteroids are dark, and one the size of a house isn't likely to be seen over a light year away. So if there were billions of them strewn between the stars how would we know? What if most of them have a large mass? Would far off stars ever twinkle if a really large asteriod came between us and the star? What is really out there in deep space that doesn't glow? What if all those proposed hypernovas I've heard about recently filled space-time many years ago with asteroid type matter. It just isn't seen until it clusters into galaxies and ignites as a suns and reflects as planets?
In the article it was stated...
"Berkeley philosopher John Searle offered the best-known of these objections, proposing a contradictory thought experiment meant to demonstrate that a computer that passed Turing's test would have proved itself capable only of manipulating symbols through computation, and not of intelligence or understanding."
I would have thought Johns argument had been overturned and pushed aside by now. His arugment makes sense for computers that are programmed, but makes no sense for computers that "learn" how to process symbols by teaching it what those symbols mean.
In the case of humans, we have simply that the machine is a complex bio-chemical processor. It has no goals in and of itself. It simply exists. Its existance depends highly on whether it can obtain the necessary matter, and environmental conditions for it to do so. Memory is a key element in the ability for a human to survive. Memory allows us to interact with our environments and acknowledge that we've interacted with it before or not. It we have and it was bad, then hopefully we won't do it again. It we did and it was good, then we'll probably stay. In a large sense, the human brain simply acts as a machine that performs an overall negative feedback function. All data is ultimately reduced and equalized. However equalized is not a very good word here. The brain really performs a type of simulated anealing, trying to optimize the previously obtained data (memory) with new experiential data. I would suppose, at night while we sleep, the brain simply spends its time optimizing past data by annealing or some such process.
In this view our brains don't know anything, like Searls suggestion, the brain itself doesn't know what experiential data symbols mean. No, it simply uses that data against itself, in an optimized negative feedback manner, the result of which is thinking, and moving. The brain doesn't understand symbols and never will. But it is a machine that uses the data obtained via experience to build a sort of holographical framework of the external environment. That holographic framework is constantly optimized and compared with new data which causes responses and changes.
Further, memory (data storage) seems to be at the core of all our endeavors here on this planet. A person who would live forever for example would require a medium of storage which would also be infinite. There is no such storage medium. The very idea of a "soul" posited by most all religious institutions requires the medium to store experiential data, just as a CDROM stores bits on a disk. No data will ever be retained without a medium. The brain stores memories, and as long as it can be kept operating in good condition, it will most likely be able to remember past events and reflect on them. However with a limited medium, some of the optimization process will eventually destroy the original experiences over time. When we die, all of our experiences and optimizations about how we lived in our environment are returned to random chaos. We do not live after death without a medium.
A good book to scramble your brain on these issues is "The Physics of Immortality" by Frank J. Tipler. He's a bit out there "on a limb" for me, but the book is a good read nonetheless. There are references to the maximum storage capacity of the brain, as well as the quantum Bekenstien bound for ultimately the amount of data that can be stored given a limited volume of space-time.
All life is just data. How big is your hard drive?
"AMD did the smart move of extending the x86 platform with their new CPU architecture (complete with backward compatibility), and covering with it a lot of price segments."
/.'ers see Microsoft doing when trying to preserve the Windows legacy. But then Microsoft gets accused of "bloatware" and carrying with it a terribly complicated legacy architecture. But this x86 lineage is exactly that, a terribly complicated backwards compatibility register/alu model. Face it, AMDs support to continue this funky software/processor architecture is just as bad for us. At this point it looks like we should really be jumping to the Power architecture. Intel and HP aren't the only ones who've lost out on the Itanium deal. I would guess part of the reason Microsoft has considered the Power chip is because it lost a lot of time and effort trying to make Windows work on the Itanium. They must have wasted thousands of man-hours and millions of dollars on that effort.
Funny, this is the same thing that most
In my opinion, the whole problem with Itanium for me was the silly change to the new VLIW software model. That model was simply unproven in the industry, yet Intel and HP let a bunch of PHD level PHBs prove to them it was. I'm not at all sad to see the Itainum go, and I'm happy that Intel and HP got knocked down by little AMD.
We need to switch to a new CPU architecture though. The switch needs to be sooner than later. We need a clean, well thought out, and efficient design that scales well into the future. Hopefully it won't be anything like the ugly Intel register model. I used to love the Motorola 68xxx series chips way back in the day. They were very clean. If a new CPU is invented (doubtful, the cost of raising a child from zero these days is too high) it needs to run circles around whatever the currently fastest legacy chips are.
And what does the consumer end up getting? A cardboard box with some paper and plastic disks. Same as the music industry.
But if we are willing to pay outrageous prices for the games, then most of the problem is with us right? A few years back I was paying around $30 USD for games. Now I'm paying $50? Someone please tell me how games became $50 dollars?
This story ends up being the old standard. They can charge you what they want because you are willing to pay it. Companies have no desire to price their products realistically. And whatever became of the "volume" argument? Pricing lower because of volume? There are now more people on the planet that there ever have been in the history of mankind. Where is the volume pricing?
I just don't understand business.
+1
"Now it turns out these APIs did not withstand that test."
Oh, you must mean just about every C standard library call, that by the way, originated in the Unix world right?
We now know just how safe all those string libraries are.
+1
Thanks for the responses! The about:config really helped. Who would have guessed, a build-in XML type registry.
:)
As for the answers to certain queries. I'll try to be more accurate in my statements:
* Changing the temporary cache path?
I like storing anything temporary on another drive, not my system drive. That way I can erase the whole thing at the end of my windows session if necessary.
* No option to clear cache when done?
The IE option is to "Emtpy Temporary Internet Files folder when browser is closed".
* Inability to prompt me if I want scripts to run?
I am refering to any scripts, all scripts, whatever scripts. A TV or newspaper isn't capable of running scripts, neither should a browser...in my humble opinion. Yes I love the FireFox Javascript fine-tuning control. I really wish IE had that. Of course I unchecked all the options for Javascript on FireFox.
* Prompted cookie setting control?
Yea, I missed the "Ask me every time" option. Thanks. It wasn't obvious that it was under that dropdown because it is labled "Keep cookies". The word "Keep" gives me the impression that the cookie had already been set.
* Inline images are either on or off. Eg, no ability to prevent animations (gif or otherwise) from running.
(This is frustrating. I want to see the original images, but I absolutely hate animations of any sort.)
Yes apparently FireFox doesn't have this option, even under about:config. The specific IE option is "Play animations in web pages". I have this turned off.
* No Zones feature so that I can configure certain security options for certain sites.
Zones are nice for intranet stuff where you know you are completely in a secured development environment. The restricted and trusted sites are also nice. I think the thing I like about zones is that it completely adjusts every browser setting for each zone. In fact, I would argue that there should be more zones, more user creatable/definable zones. Zones that users can setup and name. Zones are the limited equivalent of sandbox type controls.
* Installed security is to save passwords, allow web sites to install software, save form information, and Java is enabled?
(Of course IE is probably even more open, but the point is that FireFox is supposed to be secure right?)
I don't know about you, but when I end my browser session, I erase everything. I erase history, cookies, temporary internet files, passwords, form data...everything. I even erase the sites in my blocked lists. In fact, whenever I start my browser, I want it to startup as if I had never used it before. In many ways Firefox should have the option to browse similarly, like in Apples Safari browser where the browser does a complete privacy reset when done. I would love that!
* Many other configuration options are missing that would allow me to be prompted if I want to execute or do something.
Obviously I don't want to name them all. Just open up any IE and choose the security tab, then choose a zone. All the promptable settings are there. And yes I can be prompted to prevent active x controls to run. I just wish META refresh was promptable. Arguably it needs to be.
Firefox is a good start. I really don't want to download Mozilla to get more advanced options. I mean what is the point of FireFox then? I want to use FireFox, I just need more browsing control. I do not like a broswer that does things for me. One other annoying thing about FireFox, even though it isn't a biggie...the fonts don't look right on some sites. I hope they fix that.
Thanks for your input. I'm just that much more informed now!
+2
I've been a long time IE user. Personally I've never had the problems with IE that others have had because I sat down and learned how to setup and use IE from the start. I memorized the operation of every last setting under the Tools->Internet Options dialog and adjusted them accordingly. I learned how to browse as securely as possible while watching what IE does very closely. Of course I'm not your average browser. Almost every setting I could find is set to prompt me, as I enjoy absolute control over things. This also alerts me to how complex some websites are in their attempt to invade your privacy. Just watching all the dialogs pop up for scripting and ActiveX is amazing. Also the hitbox'es, doubleclicks, and adtechs are really annoying.
Yesterday I downloaded and installed FireFox 1.0. I wanted to look at it and find out if it would suit me better since I still consider IE to be a little too proprietary in that it hides what it really does. So I am looking for something a bit more open.
After looking at all the features of FireFox I was amazed at how few things it allowed me to adjust. It doesn't have any of the options I am used to using under IE. Here are a few...
* Changing the temporary cache path?
* No option to clear cache when done?
* Inability to prompt me if I want scripts to run?
* Prompted cookie setting control?
* Inline images are either on or off. Eg, no ability to prevent animations (gif or otherwise) from running.
(This is frustrating. I want to see the original images, but I absolutely hate animations of any sort.)
* No Zones feature so that I can configure certain security options for certain sites.
* Installed security is to save passwords, allow web sites to install software, save form information, and Java is enabled?
(Of course IE is probably even more open, but the point is that FireFox is supposed to be secure right?)
* Many other configuration options are missing that would allow me to be prompted if I want to execute or do something.
I notice that tabbed browsing ends up using even more desktop real estate. I've never needed tabbed browsing before, all my windows appear on my Explorer task bar...just like tabs. I suppose tabs would be useful for people whos operating systems don't have a taskbar enabled shell.
Other that than the above observations I found Firefox to work fine. It didn't crash at all, but was a bit slower to render than IE. Only once did it redirect me to a website I did not type in the URL for. I just shut it down and restarted to fix that problem.
I find that I don't think I'll be switching just yet because of the inability to actively control scripting and the in-line image problem. If those issues are taken care of in the future, I don't know why I would stay with IE. Until then.
+1
I was first gen on FPS, playing the original Doom series, Hexen(s), Heretic, ROT, Duke Nukem, Wheel-of-Time, all Quake series versions, Tribes series, Unreal/Tournament(s); with lots of mods and multiplayer experiences. My most enjoyable experiences are the memories of playing QuakeWorld, Threewave, Loki's Minions, mods. But I also have some really intense memories of great deathmatch games in Quake II and III. Ah, nostalgia.
I played Halo all the way through when the PC version came out. I have to say that Halo is a FPS for a new generation, somewhat like FPS for dummies, but it doesn't really compare to the older PC stuff. I was immediately shocked by the simplicities of the architecture and textures of the buildings, and how small the maps were. Some of them seemed like shoeboxes with teleporters. The only saving grace of the game were the vehicles.
Oddly, I happen to play Halo quite a bit these days online, but that is only because the older games are not where people are playing anymore. I'd rather be playing something better, but I'm sort'of out of time these days. I only get a few hours a week to play. Even if I wanted to play the older games, they are full of bots and cheating.
I'm waiting on Half-Life II and Tribes III. These games should really rock. I don't think I'll be buying Halo 2 since I'm not sure how much more they can squeeze out of the aging X-Box. And I'm sure when it arrives for the PC it will just be the same old boxed game it was when the first one came out for the PC.
Off soapbox.
+1
Don't you understand that playing a one string guitar is easier that 6? The Apple mentality is that we as users .... have no mentality, or dexterity. We are the equivalent to Steven Hawking, using a one button click device for user input. Why would we need anything else?
Your explanations are eloquent in the prose! I could not have said it better myself.
I only have one thing that may make what you are saying sharper. When you ask the question of "why" you are actually looking for "intent". Do the things we observe in the universe require "intent"? This may be the million dollar question, as in, the question that the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy tries to come up with. If phenomenon in the universe do not require intent, then that means that gods are now dethroned. If a thing can exist by itself, on its own in an evolutionary way for the entire history of the universe (even if continuous), then what other explanations are required?
+1
As a long time science buff I'm pretty well read on the various "big" theories out there relating to how the universe works. Your explanation is a good one, and tends to follow the standard space-time is a fabric, blah, blah, blah. But the things that annoy me most about modern concepts are the big ambiguities that result of some simple explanations. For example, take the concept of the "stretching" of space-time. If we up all the dimensions by 1, going from a flat sheet to a volume. We would expect that the word "stretching" doesn't fit very well. We alrady have 3 dimensions of space and 1 of time. So basically what stetching means in 3 dimensional terms is "densities" of space. More precisely we find that when large masses are placed in a space-time fabric (volume) the space around it gets more dense. If space is more "dense" around large masses then that means there is "more space" within a given volume. But what volume? Gravity waves would be seen as simply variaitions in the densities of space-time.
This all seems very strange until you read up on some of the modern concepts of vacum physics. Space is not seen as being emtpy at all. Space is actually something. Where matter within space is simply some strange configuration of whatever space is. This is sort of like ice in water, where water can be viewed as space, and ice is the matter within it. If this is true, as in the way things actually work, then everything that exists is really just one thing...the stuff that space is made of. Apparently though, this "stuff" is non-continuous, becuase how can you stretch it otherwise? It seems to have a finiteness so that, like air pressure, it gets more dense the closer you get to a massive object. In my view, the Bekenstein bound, a model for the granularity of quantum events, seems to be linked to the finiteness of space-time. The Bekenstein bound proposes that any given volume of space can only have a finite number of states. This brings about the model of a computer screen where you only have a certain number of pixels within a given area. To expand further, based on the Bekenstien bound, it would be only possible to have a finite number of physical manifestations (objects) within a given volume of space-time. In the same way, you can only have a limited number of possible pictures viewable on a computer screen within a given resolution.
Does the universe actually work this way? If it does, then this suggests the possiblity that the volume of the entire universe is a large finite state machine. Within the lifetime of the universe, the machine is working out all the possible logical permutations of reality as time progresses. What we don't know is: Is the volume of the entire universe infinite? What would be the end result of the permutations?
The contrary argument would be that space-time could actually be continuous, but that there only exists so-called quantum interfaces at a certain level. Below the level of the interfaces, we cannot know about any of the other features of space-time. The interfaces block further exploration into space-time because our measuring devices only operate at the level of the interfaces. This model is very much like working with Legos(TM). Legos blocks are finite, and they allow you to build large numbers of possible devices (objects) within a given volume of space. But Legos can only interact at the connection level. Where there are no connections, Legos cannot be known.
The more I read, the more I'm finding that modern science is telling the above story over and over again as we come to understand things better. Do you guys read the same picture, or am I just reading the wrong books?
+1
True...and false. You are correct, VNC gives you a running average of your overall display. Sometimes this can be a great benefit as you have described. Sometimes though you need to request and entire screen update which is a little annoying. However RD can be put into different modes so that different effects can be turned off. These modes are called the "Experience Levels", and can be used to reduce the traffic depending on your network connection. You can turn off the desktop background, disable window contents dragging, disable menu and window animations, disable themes, and enable bitmap caching. All these things tend to improve the performance over VNC.
One of the extra problems with RD though is that it uses TCP. I have had the experience of being on a bad network connection where TCP would not get through, but UDP would. In that case, VNC worked great.
Your mileage may vary.
Remote desktop is not the same beast as VNC. VNC and derivatives are based on getting bits and pieces of your desktop video image that change, then compressing them (or not), and sending them to the other end. Once on the other end, they are decompressed (or not) and blitted to a video buffer to build up an image. That's it. That is all VNC does. It gives you an image of what is going on on the remote end.
Remote desktop however is a bit different. It doesn't give you just an image of what is occuring on the other end. Remote desktop is a stripped down single user terminal server. When you connect to an XP or 2000 machine using RD, then the remote XP machine redirects all local console functions of that machine to your client. This has the effect of knocking out whoever is sitting at the local console of the machine you are RD'ing into. In effect, all video operations are redirected to an off-screen video buffer, then compressed, and sent on their way using the remote desktop protocol. The sucky thing about this is that remote desktop only allows one and only one console session to exist.
Remote desktop also encrypts the entire session using 128 bit encryption. It even allows you to redirect your local disks and printers to the remote machine for use. You can use this feature for a sort'of poor mans VPN. All the data moved through the redirected drives will be encrypted and moved over the RDP port.
Remote desktop is faster than VNC because Microsoft is able to perform tricks in kernel space. For example, if you fire up windows media player to view a video file, then that data doesn't have to be rendered at all on the remote machine. Microsoft simply streams it to your client machine using RDP. The same thing however won't work with Apple QuickTime or RealPlayer. I'm also not entirely sure whether the windows are even drawn to video first. Microsoft may be pulling some redirection of GDI commands so that RD acts somewhat like X in that respect.
Our site uses VNC for user desktop support since the video is shared with the user. We use remote desktop for server management. Remote desktops feature for helping the user is problematic at best becuase they have to invite you to join first. It whole invitation thing is simply cumbersome. That's why it is just simpler to use VNC.
So, there are positives and negatives to using VNC or RD.
+1
Apple would have us buy one string guitars because they are easier to play! :)