Yes, we must protect our children from seeing adult womens' nipples! OUTLAW BREAST FEEDING IMMEDIATELY!!
Seriously, though, I think the reason we tend to shield children from pornography is because we've been told all our lives how these things will stunt their growth and cause them psychological problems later in life. These beliefs most likely started because parents don't feel comfortable talking about sex to others, especially their obsessively inquisitive children. So, to hide our modesty, when our kids ask us where babies come from, we make up stories about a stork. This satisfies the kid, and we don't embarass ourselves explaining something we're not comfortable talking about.
Once these views become ingrained in a culture, they turn into law. This, I believe, is the reason we have laws prohibiting minors from viewing any kind of nudity. It's sad, really.
If I have a card capable of rendering games at 200 FPS, what that says to me is that it could render a scene 4 times as complex and still maintain an acceptable frame rate of 50 FPS (of course, things aren't always so linear in 3D graphics, but you get the point). When such cards become commonplace, it will mean gamemakers will be able to create worlds with much a much deeper level of realism in terms of visual effects, turning those excessive frame rates into something useful.
I just love living in a free country -- a true democracy where, through the process of voting, we get to choose which people will control our lives. Now that's what I call freedom!
"rm -rf/" will not actually remove the data from your hard drive. It merely unlinks the files. Anyone who looks at the drive at the raw level will be able to see what was in your files. If you want to wipe out the data on your drive, do something more like "cat/dev/urandom >/dev/hda" (from a rescue disk) and repeat about 5 times (otherwise, it may still be possible lift the upper layers and recover the underlying data).
I remember reading a while back about a denial-of-service attack being propogated by way of a worm, much like Melissa, etc. This one was designed to sit quietly on each user's computer until a request from the internet activated them. Many experts believed the intention of these worms was to collaborate a massive DoS attack against some unfortunate victim, but since the actual code to be executed was not distributed with the worm, the exact purpose of this could not be known. It is possible that such a network could be used to flood a poll with bogus data, though I have to admit such a use seems like too much work for no more than it would accomplish.
Miguel says that Unix sucks because it is not built up of components, and programs do not use re-usable code. The idea of components, form my understanding, is the ability to string together several programs together to build a larger one. The Unix shell has had this capability for a very long time. Consider this:
cat/etc/passwd | grep daemon | cut -d: -f5
From the shell, most of the commands available are built in such a way so they can be combined to do larger, more sophisticated actions. Also, due to Unix's design, most everything acts like a file, allowing a large array of activities to share a common API. This, in addition to libraries, makes for incredible code reuse. So Miguel's statement that Unix doesn't have components and has no code reuse is misguided.
However, Miguel focuses heavily on X Windows, where he is more or less correct. X Windows programs are not built in a way to allow them to work together in most cases. One clear exception is window managers. X has the capability to embed one program inside another, but window managers tend to be the only programs to do this. But simply being able to display one program's widgets inside another program's window isn't enough. They must be able to communicate more information to each other to really be able to work together. The idea of components in X is a novel goal, and I wish Miguel the best of luck in making it happen for Unix.
I believe the best reviews are not what a journalist writes, but the testimony of the users. I rarely trust the word of a single person on the quality of a product, but if I read on a mailing list or news site where some number individuals who use the product say they like it, that carries more weight.
What I would love to see for Linux is rconsole. Imagine being able to reboot your machine, go into the bios and make changes, then bring it back up, all remotely. Unfortunately, Linux alone can't do this. This would require a bios capable to handling the rconsole itself. The high-end Unix platforms can do this. How long until we can get this capability on our PCs?
People who live in or around Kansas. I see no reason we can't have Linux shows in all areas of the country. While there aren't as many people around here, the inconvenience of having to go a thousand miles or more is enough to keep me away from the shows on the coast, and it's nice to have shows within reasonable driving distance that I can go to. I am both pleased we had a local show, and at the same time disappointed that it wasn't handled better.
Contrary to (apparently) popular belief, Kansas City is not made up of a bunch of farmers. KC and (especially) Overland Park are well developed technologically. We may not be as well developed as the coastal areas, but that doesn't mean we are a bunch of hicks, either. Besides, we need a few Linux events here in the midwest so those of us who can't find the time to travel 1000+ miles can still enjoy them.
Unfortunately, objects placed in orbit tend to not stay in orbit for long periods of time. Expect this thing to stay up for maybe 10-15 years before its orbit decays and it burns up in the atmosphere. It seems more plausible to find existing weights already in space, like maybe a small asteroid.
I remember seeing an ad for a laptop computer a few years back with a solid state hard drive. The idea was that data could be accessed faster, and it would not drain the battery as fast. The only problem was that the drive was only 4 MB in size. It seemed like a good idea, but at only 4 MB, it also seemed like an idea that just wouldn't work.
Now we have these QikDRIVES capable of holding up to 8GB. Finally, enough space to be useful. But because they are using ECC SDRAM, the prices are going to be too expensive for all but the most serious of consumers. It's generally been accepted that hard drives are slower than RAM, so why not use cheaper RAM that runs at, say, 60ns (like the old EDO RAM)? We would still probably want to use ECC or something similar for data integrity. Would this cut the price sufficiently to make it attractive for the average person? Obviously, it would still cost more than a conventional hard drive, but hopefully not nearly as much as the current line of QikDRIVES.
Now I'm not saying to dump the existing line, since they will still be attractive to those who need the high performance. I'm just thinking of how to reduce prices. And over time, the prices on these things can be expected to drop anyway, perhaps even making them commonplace. Does this sound plausible?
But how do you know if you're allowed on a web page until you actually bring it up? It's like posting a billboard and saying only certain people are allowed to look at it. Plus, this case sounds like one aimed at killing off spiders completely. It starts off with just Ebay, then other companies decide they want to control who can visit their sites, and so on. Pretty soon, the people writing the spiders don't know which sites they can legally visit. That's what robots.txt is for, BTW.
Generally, if you put up a web page, it meant for everyone to see. If you want to limit who can see it, add logins and passwords. Think about sites like NY Times -- they require a free login to get access. This is one way to keep the spiders out, though I suspect it is also used to keep statistics on how many people view their stories.
This brings up a point I've thought about before. Judges are definitely NOT stupid people. However, they are expected to hear cases on every conceivable topic, and nobody can be an expert in every field. It would be cool if there was some way judges could specialize in the types of cases they hear. That way, cases like this one involving technology can be heard by judges familiar with it, thus limiting the likelyhood of a poor decision and a stifling precedent.
Of course, I don't know how feasable an idea like this would be.
This could have interesting consequences. Most sales-oriented sites use scripts which your average spider will avoid (due the the *.cgi URLs). On the other hand, to reduce the system load, some sites re-generate their pages at regular intervals (say, every minute) instead of every time a user loads the page. Looking at ebay's site, it appears their URLs end in *.html. Perhaps what is needed here is something in the robots.txt file (does ebay have one of these?). But then again, not all spiders respect this file, so I don't know. If the web site designers don't take the necessary precautions to protect the private information on their site from spiders, how can the spiders know not to catalog them?
But surely you must realize that even if slashdot removes the copies of the document (#1), there will be readers who will immediately re-post it. Even if it's attached to a different story. And there's really not much the Slashdot crew could do to prevent this. There's no way they could monitor every post without a staff of hundreds, and that's just absurd.
Does anyone know why they had to use a kernel module? What this means for me is that every time I upgrade my kernel, it will break my 3D acceleration. If they aren't giving us the source, then I can't recompile it to make it work again, and will be dependent on NVidia to recompile it for me. This is completely unacceptable. Does the DRI infrustructure in XFree 4.0 not provide what they need?
I watched in horror over the past several years as companies from all different areas stockpiled their patents. The stockpiling of patents is little different than stockpiling of weapons, and the result is quite similar. We are at the outset of a new war, not one of bullets and bombs, but one of intellectual property. And like any war, the side with overwhelming force is most likely to win. With patents as the new weapon of destruction, only the most powerful companies will remain in the end, reigning terror from their mighty monoplies across the land. Clearly something has to be done.
In a supreme court ruling made last year, software patents were deemed constitutional. Is it within the confines of the government to adjust the constitution to prevent a war and protect its citizens? Patents were originally created to protect small companies, yet is being used today for exactly the opposite reasons. Patents also have the detrimental effect of holding back technology by not allowing researchers to build onto existing technologies.
The patent office has agreed to scrutinize new patents better than they have in the past, yet this comes too late as much of the damage has already been done. The skirmishes we've seen so far are only a small taste of what's to come. If nothing is done to nullify the current situation, then I will have no sympathy for the government when it loses control.
Don't expect these devices to be much like what you have on your desktop. No command line and no X windows. More likely, they will their own custom user interface, probably with a touch screen or something similar. The only part of the systems that will be Linux will be kernel, and perhaps a few utilities hidden well away from the user. Remember, for appliances, manufacturers want to target the software to fit the intended use of the hardware.
Here's a little something I worked out a few years back. If you have a number, n, which is the product of two primes, you can extract the primes with this formula:
GCD(n, fact(floor(sqrt(n))))
where GCD is the greatest common divisor function (easily calculated using Euclidean math), fact is a factorial function (which can be calculated using the gamma function), and the rest should be obvious. This will return the smaller of the two factors. The other can be found simply by dividing the answer into n. Understand, though, that this is only guaranteed to work if n is the product of two primes -- other numbers may or may not work (24 is a good example of one that won't work).
But before you run off and celebrate that you have a quick way of breaking encryption codes, realize that most encryption uses extrememly large numbers, and calculating the factorial of such large numbers is rather futile.
Shipping and handling are often used to offset the cost of the product. This allows an online store to sell a product for a low price, then charge incredibly high S/H prices to make up for the difference. I was looking for some PC-100 memory a few months back, and found some places that had good prices, but they averaged about $30 for shipping and handling for a single DIMM. Actual shipping shouldn't be more than maybe $3 -- the rest went towards the cost of the memory. All of a sudden, the deals didn't seem so great any more.
I remember reading where Linus had said if he was going to put any journalling file system in 2.4, it would be Reiser, simply because it's the only one that has had a lot of testing. SusE has been including it in their distributions, hence the testing.
Anyone anxious to take the 2.4 plunge, but wondering what has changed might want to take a look at http://lwn.net/1999/0819/a/wwol2_4.html . It somewhat dated -- August of 1999 (anyone know where to find one more recent?), but hopefully most of its content will still be valid.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, we must protect our children from seeing adult womens' nipples! OUTLAW BREAST FEEDING IMMEDIATELY!!
Seriously, though, I think the reason we tend to shield children from pornography is because we've been told all our lives how these things will stunt their growth and cause them psychological problems later in life. These beliefs most likely started because parents don't feel comfortable talking about sex to others, especially their obsessively inquisitive children. So, to hide our modesty, when our kids ask us where babies come from, we make up stories about a stork. This satisfies the kid, and we don't embarass ourselves explaining something we're not comfortable talking about.
Once these views become ingrained in a culture, they turn into law. This, I believe, is the reason we have laws prohibiting minors from viewing any kind of nudity. It's sad, really.
--
If I have a card capable of rendering games at 200 FPS, what that says to me is that it could render a scene 4 times as complex and still maintain an acceptable frame rate of 50 FPS (of course, things aren't always so linear in 3D graphics, but you get the point). When such cards become commonplace, it will mean gamemakers will be able to create worlds with much a much deeper level of realism in terms of visual effects, turning those excessive frame rates into something useful.
--
I just love living in a free country -- a true democracy where, through the process of voting, we get to choose which people will control our lives. Now that's what I call freedom!
--
"rm -rf /" will not actually remove the data from your hard drive. It merely unlinks the files. Anyone who looks at the drive at the raw level will be able to see what was in your files. If you want to wipe out the data on your drive, do something more like "cat /dev/urandom >/dev/hda" (from a rescue disk) and repeat about 5 times (otherwise, it may still be possible lift the upper layers and recover the underlying data).
--
I remember reading a while back about a denial-of-service attack being propogated by way of a worm, much like Melissa, etc. This one was designed to sit quietly on each user's computer until a request from the internet activated them. Many experts believed the intention of these worms was to collaborate a massive DoS attack against some unfortunate victim, but since the actual code to be executed was not distributed with the worm, the exact purpose of this could not be known. It is possible that such a network could be used to flood a poll with bogus data, though I have to admit such a use seems like too much work for no more than it would accomplish.
--
However, Miguel focuses heavily on X Windows, where he is more or less correct. X Windows programs are not built in a way to allow them to work together in most cases. One clear exception is window managers. X has the capability to embed one program inside another, but window managers tend to be the only programs to do this. But simply being able to display one program's widgets inside another program's window isn't enough. They must be able to communicate more information to each other to really be able to work together. The idea of components in X is a novel goal, and I wish Miguel the best of luck in making it happen for Unix.
--
I believe the best reviews are not what a journalist writes, but the testimony of the users. I rarely trust the word of a single person on the quality of a product, but if I read on a mailing list or news site where some number individuals who use the product say they like it, that carries more weight.
--
What I would love to see for Linux is rconsole. Imagine being able to reboot your machine, go into the bios and make changes, then bring it back up, all remotely. Unfortunately, Linux alone can't do this. This would require a bios capable to handling the rconsole itself. The high-end Unix platforms can do this. How long until we can get this capability on our PCs?
Just a thought.
--
People who live in or around Kansas. I see no reason we can't have Linux shows in all areas of the country. While there aren't as many people around here, the inconvenience of having to go a thousand miles or more is enough to keep me away from the shows on the coast, and it's nice to have shows within reasonable driving distance that I can go to. I am both pleased we had a local show, and at the same time disappointed that it wasn't handled better.
--
Contrary to (apparently) popular belief, Kansas City is not made up of a bunch of farmers. KC and (especially) Overland Park are well developed technologically. We may not be as well developed as the coastal areas, but that doesn't mean we are a bunch of hicks, either. Besides, we need a few Linux events here in the midwest so those of us who can't find the time to travel 1000+ miles can still enjoy them.
--
Subject says it all.
--
Unfortunately, objects placed in orbit tend to not stay in orbit for long periods of time. Expect this thing to stay up for maybe 10-15 years before its orbit decays and it burns up in the atmosphere. It seems more plausible to find existing weights already in space, like maybe a small asteroid.
--
I remember seeing an ad for a laptop computer a few years back with a solid state hard drive. The idea was that data could be accessed faster, and it would not drain the battery as fast. The only problem was that the drive was only 4 MB in size. It seemed like a good idea, but at only 4 MB, it also seemed like an idea that just wouldn't work.
Now we have these QikDRIVES capable of holding up to 8GB. Finally, enough space to be useful. But because they are using ECC SDRAM, the prices are going to be too expensive for all but the most serious of consumers. It's generally been accepted that hard drives are slower than RAM, so why not use cheaper RAM that runs at, say, 60ns (like the old EDO RAM)? We would still probably want to use ECC or something similar for data integrity. Would this cut the price sufficiently to make it attractive for the average person? Obviously, it would still cost more than a conventional hard drive, but hopefully not nearly as much as the current line of QikDRIVES.
Now I'm not saying to dump the existing line, since they will still be attractive to those who need the high performance. I'm just thinking of how to reduce prices. And over time, the prices on these things can be expected to drop anyway, perhaps even making them commonplace. Does this sound plausible?
--
But how do you know if you're allowed on a web page until you actually bring it up? It's like posting a billboard and saying only certain people are allowed to look at it. Plus, this case sounds like one aimed at killing off spiders completely. It starts off with just Ebay, then other companies decide they want to control who can visit their sites, and so on. Pretty soon, the people writing the spiders don't know which sites they can legally visit. That's what robots.txt is for, BTW.
Generally, if you put up a web page, it meant for everyone to see. If you want to limit who can see it, add logins and passwords. Think about sites like NY Times -- they require a free login to get access. This is one way to keep the spiders out, though I suspect it is also used to keep statistics on how many people view their stories.
--
This brings up a point I've thought about before. Judges are definitely NOT stupid people. However, they are expected to hear cases on every conceivable topic, and nobody can be an expert in every field. It would be cool if there was some way judges could specialize in the types of cases they hear. That way, cases like this one involving technology can be heard by judges familiar with it, thus limiting the likelyhood of a poor decision and a stifling precedent.
Of course, I don't know how feasable an idea like this would be.
--
This could have interesting consequences. Most sales-oriented sites use scripts which your average spider will avoid (due the the *.cgi URLs). On the other hand, to reduce the system load, some sites re-generate their pages at regular intervals (say, every minute) instead of every time a user loads the page. Looking at ebay's site, it appears their URLs end in *.html. Perhaps what is needed here is something in the robots.txt file (does ebay have one of these?). But then again, not all spiders respect this file, so I don't know. If the web site designers don't take the necessary precautions to protect the private information on their site from spiders, how can the spiders know not to catalog them?
--
But surely you must realize that even if slashdot removes the copies of the document (#1), there will be readers who will immediately re-post it. Even if it's attached to a different story. And there's really not much the Slashdot crew could do to prevent this. There's no way they could monitor every post without a staff of hundreds, and that's just absurd.
--
Really? I think I'm going to send M$ some emails with the following message at the end of each:
"By receiving this email, you agree to send me one million dollars"
And see how much money they send me. I bet it won't be much (i.e., $0).
--
Does anyone know why they had to use a kernel module? What this means for me is that every time I upgrade my kernel, it will break my 3D acceleration. If they aren't giving us the source, then I can't recompile it to make it work again, and will be dependent on NVidia to recompile it for me. This is completely unacceptable. Does the DRI infrustructure in XFree 4.0 not provide what they need?
--
I watched in horror over the past several years as companies from all different areas stockpiled their patents. The stockpiling of patents is little different than stockpiling of weapons, and the result is quite similar. We are at the outset of a new war, not one of bullets and bombs, but one of intellectual property. And like any war, the side with overwhelming force is most likely to win. With patents as the new weapon of destruction, only the most powerful companies will remain in the end, reigning terror from their mighty monoplies across the land. Clearly something has to be done.
In a supreme court ruling made last year, software patents were deemed constitutional. Is it within the confines of the government to adjust the constitution to prevent a war and protect its citizens? Patents were originally created to protect small companies, yet is being used today for exactly the opposite reasons. Patents also have the detrimental effect of holding back technology by not allowing researchers to build onto existing technologies.
The patent office has agreed to scrutinize new patents better than they have in the past, yet this comes too late as much of the damage has already been done. The skirmishes we've seen so far are only a small taste of what's to come. If nothing is done to nullify the current situation, then I will have no sympathy for the government when it loses control.
--
Don't expect these devices to be much like what you have on your desktop. No command line and no X windows. More likely, they will their own custom user interface, probably with a touch screen or something similar. The only part of the systems that will be Linux will be kernel, and perhaps a few utilities hidden well away from the user. Remember, for appliances, manufacturers want to target the software to fit the intended use of the hardware.
--
Here's a little something I worked out a few years back. If you have a number, n, which is the product of two primes, you can extract the primes with this formula:
GCD(n, fact(floor(sqrt(n))))
where GCD is the greatest common divisor function (easily calculated using Euclidean math), fact is a factorial function (which can be calculated using the gamma function), and the rest should be obvious. This will return the smaller of the two factors. The other can be found simply by dividing the answer into n. Understand, though, that this is only guaranteed to work if n is the product of two primes -- other numbers may or may not work (24 is a good example of one that won't work).
But before you run off and celebrate that you have a quick way of breaking encryption codes, realize that most encryption uses extrememly large numbers, and calculating the factorial of such large numbers is rather futile.
--
Shipping and handling are often used to offset the cost of the product. This allows an online store to sell a product for a low price, then charge incredibly high S/H prices to make up for the difference. I was looking for some PC-100 memory a few months back, and found some places that had good prices, but they averaged about $30 for shipping and handling for a single DIMM. Actual shipping shouldn't be more than maybe $3 -- the rest went towards the cost of the memory. All of a sudden, the deals didn't seem so great any more.
--
I remember reading where Linus had said if he was going to put any journalling file system in 2.4, it would be Reiser, simply because it's the only one that has had a lot of testing. SusE has been including it in their distributions, hence the testing.
--
Anyone anxious to take the 2.4 plunge, but wondering what has changed might want to take a look at http://lwn.net/1999/0819/a/wwol2_4.html . It somewhat dated -- August of 1999 (anyone know where to find one more recent?), but hopefully most of its content will still be valid.
--