It's really gratifying to see a cable channel that's becoming more serious about its stated mission as the audience grows. It's a nice counterexample to certain music television stations that seem to have entirely forgotten about the music...
Heh. It is very unscientific. You don't know enough about it. Basically, it's another meaningless statistic, just like the FUD Microsoft uses.
It'd be more relevant if you included a traceroute to both (e.g. how far away is the new server compared to the old?), and if you could estimate or know the amount of traffic to each.
Well, duh.
Somebody suggested that the FreeBSD box appeared to be faster, so I double checked to see if he was imagining it. I probably shouldn't have even posted-- it was just a throwaway test. I figured "this is a very unscientific test" would do the job. I did not expect to see it moderated up and taken out of context, which was a mistake, I suppose.
What is interesting is that there appeared to be a much wider range of response times from the BSD box than from the MS. I offer no interpretation, but it would be interesting to re-examine the two in a controlled situation.
And oh yeah, "wrt" means "with reguard to", so you don't need to type "wrt to the index page..."
"With respect to" is actually what I meant. But you're right that it's grammatically incorrect.
This is very unscientific, and it's only wrt to the index page on both sites. It'd be interesting to see a detailed side-by-side comparison of the two sites. How often will you get to compare a BSD machine against a Microsoft machine maintained by Microsoft themselves, hosting exactly the same content.
Funny thing is, though, that I see the truth in all these arguements. PEOPLE pull the trigger, PEOPLE swap illegal files.
You make this out as a simple issue of responsibility, when it transcends that (I'm not speaking particularly of the Kazaa case, but of the defense of p2p software in general.)
A key principle behind the support for p2p software authors is that information-- including software-- should be protected as speech. Many people actually find it distasteful to support this sort of thing, but they believe that the right to a free flow of information is worth protecting-- even if that information does some harm.
Other people believe that the right to bear arms without burdensome regulation is an equally important right, which-- in the US-- they've been granted by the 2nd amendment. Therefore guns are commonly available to US citizens, and gun manufacturers remain in business despite the fact that their products also do harm.
These are two distinct exceptions to the normal rights that governments normally have to regulate their citizenry. Assuming that these rights are absolute, personal/corporate responsibility isn't as much of an issue. In the real world, however, people argue about the scope of these protections, however, and its in these areas that the controversy appears.
Once you leave these protected areas, personal/corporate responsibility becomes a whole lot less relevant. To make up a bizarre example, if an energy company wanted to sell toxic nuclear wastes on the open market, they would probably not be allowed to do so (nor protected from indemnity) because of the possibility that one of their customers might use the material for harmful purposes. This decision would probably meet no resistance from the courts, because few people recognizes a principle allowing for this sort of behavior.
In other news - guns are not illegal, since it is the users who break the law in shooting someone.
A lot of people would like to hold the manufacturers of p2p software responsible, but are prevented from doing so by the need to protect strong freedom of speech rights (including software distribution.)
Other people would like to hold gun manufacturers responsible, but are prevented from doing so by the need to protect the people's strong right to arm themselves.
I'm not going to say which right is more important-- that's up to the people of the various nations involved. But let's not munge two different sets of rights together.
Too bad it's such a crappy compiler. I can't express how frustrating it is when the only widely-used compiler available to you on a platform keeps spitting out some "Internal Compiler Error" on your code. It's like Logan Airport telling you that they just can't land your plane right now, but why don't you circle around until you run out of fuel.
The IDE isn't bad, but it's been around for a few years and could use an update. I've yet to figure out how to do parens/brace matching, but that's probably my laziness.
For an example of a really well thought out IDE, take a look at Metrowerks. If only VC++ had the user interface of CodeWarrior and the reliability of GCC (not to mention the price), it'd be unbeatable.
Teach all the Java you want. But why not teach it on a free OS, rather than one you have to pay for? That way if you ever want to teach people C, you can take advantage of free development tools (as opposed to VC++) and give them an education in other types of operating systems-- with no "what's this command-line thingy?" problems.
I guess I'm not sure where the benefit lies in using Windows for Java programming as opposed to one of the other operating systems.
Plus, it's so much nicer to be able to use machines remotely using telnet/ssh or X-Windows (you can use Terminal Server but I believe you wind up using up licenses if you want to let multiple people access a machine.)
Yeah, I used Unix (not Linux) in programming courses when I was in college, but most colleges now-a-days use Win2K labs and are phasing out their Unix labs (same programming courses in my college are using Visual Studio's version of C++).
This is a sad, but true phenomenon. And the root cause of it is not anything that Microsoft did-- it's the takeoff of Java. This is particularly ironic, because many of the Unix machines being tossed were made by Sun.
The strange thing about the Windows migration is that it's not necessary, unnecessarily expensive, and probably counterproductive. Installing Windows partititions in labs provides little benefit to students, whether they're programming in Java or C/C++. What it does allow for is a whole lot more gaming. It costs a lot more to pay for those Windows licenses (or, at least, Windows development tools), and in the end you graduate a class of students who never get comfortable with a shell, with C, or with many Open Source projects (which are a great way to develop programming chops).
None of thost last things need be required as part of a CS education, but they make a major difference in your skill level by the time you get out of school. Being steeped in Linux/BSD, C and X-Windows added a lot to my education.
What I want to know is when is a GPS company going to release a GPS for the car that does traffic analysis and automatically can route you around bad traffic spots?
Hopefully soon.
In fact, I imagine it won't be too many years before this sort of technology is built into state license-plates. There are a lot of potential benefits-- traffic balancing, intelligent traffic lights, instant accident-detection. And, of course, law enforcement. There'll be enormous privacy issues, but this sort of technology is far too useful for governments to pass up.
First, you'd need good, cheap packet radio networks that won't mind lots and lots of transmitters occasionally chipping in a tiny packet here and there. If I'm not mistaken, most existing networks (things like CDPD) have a reasonable amount of connection overhead that makes this difficult.
Second, you'd have an early-adopter problem where no GPS-enabled cars would be driving along a given route, and you would therefore be routed into a 2-hour traffic jam.
I imagine trusting a computer to route you through the side-streets will also lead to a whole new series of "Bonfire of the Vanities"-type disasters.
I think the ability to transmit your location to another radio is neat. But I'd be interested to see the patent claims on this technology. I can only hope that they're very specific, and refer only to this particular implementation. I can't believe they've patented the idea of transmitting a GPS position to another receiver.
With all of the money to be made in spy software, and the severely limited resources (and interest) of those who want to stop it, it's unlikely that this will be much of a fair fight.
As more and more chinese move into urban areas and the middle class, it is only natural to assume that the economy is going to continue to grow and surpas that of the USA
As more and more chinese move into urban areas and the middle class, it's only natural to assume that increasing amounts of the country's GDP are going to be directed at the population-- things like social services, health care, road building, etc.
That's the problem with productive, increasingly wealthy nations... They have a tendency to demand more and more of what they earn as the price of growth. Maybe China will be able to continue to treat their people like the citizens of a third world country while requiring them to power a first world economy.
This is One Time Pad and the similar story seems to be submitted almost every month on Slashdot. The idea is decades long, inpractical and safe.
Yes, the actual encryption being performed is similar to a OTP. That's not the news here, though. The problem with OTPs has always been how to generate and distribute the pads. Typically, this requires transmission via some separate secure link (for instance, a courier), and leaves you with a limited amount of pad-- once you run out, you need to go through the whole rigamarole again.
This is a technique by which a key can be generated and distributed without that messy step. In the end, the data's basically being put through the same encryption process as one would use with a OTP, but it's being done with a random signal that's being generated on the fly over a wire between two geographically separated points, but is (ideally) still secure even if somebody eavesdrops.
Quantum cryptography is another example of a nifty concept that (in the end) relies on the old OTP technique. A random signal is generated and measured in two different places by measuring quantum characteristics of entangled particles. This is the cool part. Then that signal, which is truly random, can't be intercepted, and doesn't require a courier to deliver, is used as a OTP, which is the bread-and-butter part.
You might as well criticize a story on the development of fusion powered cars because the car still rests on old-fashioned wheels... which've been around for sooo many years.
You're not really getting it. Maybe it's a good thing for your company to let you surf. But it's certainly not your right.
Who said it was his right?
It seemed like a reasonable post. Companies can adopt silly policies, and employees can adopt bad attitudes.
HR can implement various performance checks and terminate people who don't live up to standards. But if they create an endemic mentality of distrust and lack-of-enthusiasm, they'll be hard pressed to fix it. Enthusiasm is a powerful productive force that smart companies don't squander.
Let's say that I only distribute via CD-ROM. If I pay a subcontractor $500 to reproduce the source code onto a cd-rom, then my cost is $500.
I think that'd be up to a judge, though I'm no lawyer. I can't imagine that that sort of tactic isn't tried in other legal circumstances, and that there isn't some legal principle governing it.
This is the section of the license, which might be more helpful than the FAQ (bold/italics mine):
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
It's possible that earlier versions of the GPL read differently. I don't know about that, and I don't know which version theKompany uses. However, from reading the above I would imagine that some reasonable limits can be placed on the physical cost of the distribution.
On at least a weekly basis we get someone telling us that we have to give them the source code because it is GPL. Some of them become verbally violent and abusive when I point out that the GPL provides for us to charge for the source code, we just have to make it available, and this we have done.
What Shawn said is correct. The GPL only requires you to provide the source code on request (for a reasonable fee). However, most companies realize that it's a whole lot less trouble to put the source up on a website than to deal with obnoxious people on the phone. This is an excellent example of that phenomenon, and though I agree that folks shouldn't try to hack into a server to get the source, people do have the right to vent their frustration over the phone. If theKCompany doesn't like it, they can easily address the problem.
I'm also curious why some of these folks didn't just write away for the code and post it on their own site. This is the best way to guarantee that code is easily available. Perhaps some did, and the "hackers" were just too lazy to google for it. Or maybe the "hackers" were just typical malicious types who would have gone after any company with every bit as much gusto.
No, they're in another smart card chip (called a Secure Application Module or SAM) which should have its own protocol for authenticating the user of the reader and should also peridodically require a status check with a central host (which has other keys which secure the authentication with the SAMs) or they shut down.
But the point is that the keys are on the card containing the encrypted information. So in other words, no matter how thoroughly the information is encrypted, it's no more secure than the hardware that protects the keys, correct?
If you don't know why I'm making this point, it's in response to the original poster's assertion that the encryption (and not the hardware) is what makes these cards secure.
In particular, this is why I objected to the SSL comparison. With SSL, the keys are located in the RAM of the machines doing the communication. Since a would-be eavesdropper probably doesn't have physical access to the two machines, he/she must break the code itself (and therefore, the quality of the encryption becomes very important.) With Smartcards, it doesn't matter how thoroughly you encrypt the data if people gain access to the physically "protected" areas of the card and get the keys. In that situation, you might just as well use a 512-bit key as a 128-bit key.
Correct me if I'm wrong, and then tell me how secure these physical measures are, particularly given that these cards will probably be a long-term solution (I imagine they won't be upgraded/replaced too frequently due to the cost.)
There is a rumour that ITV Digital are less diligent than they need to be in tracking down and killing pirate cards, as these cards increase their marketshare against that of Sky (Murdoch's satellite TV company, the dominant "extra" TV company in the UK).
If they want to increase their market share, why not just offer the service free or at a discount?
The move may have allowed thousands of viewers to watch for free programmes broadcast by paid-for digital television operators, including struggling UK service ITV Digital.
"ITV Digital may be more popular than had been thought," a source close to the case told BBC News Online.
Hmm. ITV's premuim channels clearly make their money from subscription fees, so who cares if your service is popular with people who aren't willing to buy it? ITV's regular stations appear to have commercials, so maybe it wouldn't hurt them to drop their prices and encourage folks to watch them legally.
If Bnetd would incorporate a key check that would prevent dupe keys, betas, and the no key at all folks, I would be suprised if Blizzard didn't drop their complaints.
It's Open Source. Any key check routine could be easily snipped out, which is why Blizzard is none too keen on the idea.
You bought a license to play a copy of a Blizzard game, and you are allowed to exercise that license according to the terms laid out by Blizzard.
Which is tough for the people who bought Blizzard games and use them with bnetd. But what the hell does it have to do with shutting down the bnetd project? I don't see any allegation that the bnetd folks broke licensing agreements.
Slashdot Mirror
It's really gratifying to see a cable channel that's becoming more serious about its stated mission as the audience grows. It's a nice counterexample to certain music television stations that seem to have entirely forgotten about the music...
It'd be more relevant if you included a traceroute to both (e.g. how far away is the new server compared to the old?), and if you could estimate or know the amount of traffic to each.
Well, duh.
Somebody suggested that the FreeBSD box appeared to be faster, so I double checked to see if he was imagining it. I probably shouldn't have even posted-- it was just a throwaway test. I figured "this is a very unscientific test" would do the job. I did not expect to see it moderated up and taken out of context, which was a mistake, I suppose.
What is interesting is that there appeared to be a much wider range of response times from the BSD box than from the MS. I offer no interpretation, but it would be interesting to re-examine the two in a controlled situation.
And oh yeah, "wrt" means "with reguard to", so you don't need to type "wrt to the index page..."
"With respect to" is actually what I meant. But you're right that it's grammatically incorrect.
Good point. Run the test at 3am, with a heavy load test. I can't imagine there'll be that much extraneous load to worry about.
URL 1: http://130.94.214.143/ (IIS)
connects_completed: 12373, responses_completed: 12373 (41.2433/sec), total_errors: 0
msecs/connect: 87.503 mean, 3082.84 max, 81.047 min, 81.308 95min, 84.234 95max
msecs/response: 87.5983 mean, 3098.43 max, 81.848 min, 82.295 95min, 91.204 95max
URL 2: http://198.63.57.204/ (BSD)
connects_completed: 12322, responses_completed: 12322 (41.0733/sec), total_errors: 0
msecs/connect: 17.4765 mean, 21009.6 max, 9.477 min, 9.75 95min, 12.135 95max
msecs/response: 47.6064 mean, 3013.33 max, 12.329 min, 12.651 95min, 162.082 95max
This is very unscientific, and it's only wrt to the index page on both sites. It'd be interesting to see a detailed side-by-side comparison of the two sites. How often will you get to compare a BSD machine against a Microsoft machine maintained by Microsoft themselves, hosting exactly the same content.
Once you leave these protected areas, personal/corporate responsibility becomes a whole lot more relevant.
You make this out as a simple issue of responsibility, when it transcends that (I'm not speaking particularly of the Kazaa case, but of the defense of p2p software in general.)
A key principle behind the support for p2p software authors is that information-- including software-- should be protected as speech. Many people actually find it distasteful to support this sort of thing, but they believe that the right to a free flow of information is worth protecting-- even if that information does some harm.
Other people believe that the right to bear arms without burdensome regulation is an equally important right, which-- in the US-- they've been granted by the 2nd amendment. Therefore guns are commonly available to US citizens, and gun manufacturers remain in business despite the fact that their products also do harm.
These are two distinct exceptions to the normal rights that governments normally have to regulate their citizenry. Assuming that these rights are absolute, personal/corporate responsibility isn't as much of an issue. In the real world, however, people argue about the scope of these protections, however, and its in these areas that the controversy appears.
Once you leave these protected areas, personal/corporate responsibility becomes a whole lot less relevant. To make up a bizarre example, if an energy company wanted to sell toxic nuclear wastes on the open market, they would probably not be allowed to do so (nor protected from indemnity) because of the possibility that one of their customers might use the material for harmful purposes. This decision would probably meet no resistance from the courts, because few people recognizes a principle allowing for this sort of behavior.
A lot of people would like to hold the manufacturers of p2p software responsible, but are prevented from doing so by the need to protect strong freedom of speech rights (including software distribution.)
Other people would like to hold gun manufacturers responsible, but are prevented from doing so by the need to protect the people's strong right to arm themselves.
I'm not going to say which right is more important-- that's up to the people of the various nations involved. But let's not munge two different sets of rights together.
Too bad it's such a crappy compiler. I can't express how frustrating it is when the only widely-used compiler available to you on a platform keeps spitting out some "Internal Compiler Error" on your code. It's like Logan Airport telling you that they just can't land your plane right now, but why don't you circle around until you run out of fuel.
The IDE isn't bad, but it's been around for a few years and could use an update. I've yet to figure out how to do parens/brace matching, but that's probably my laziness.
For an example of a really well thought out IDE, take a look at Metrowerks. If only VC++ had the user interface of CodeWarrior and the reliability of GCC (not to mention the price), it'd be unbeatable.
I guess I'm not sure where the benefit lies in using Windows for Java programming as opposed to one of the other operating systems.
Plus, it's so much nicer to be able to use machines remotely using telnet/ssh or X-Windows (you can use Terminal Server but I believe you wind up using up licenses if you want to let multiple people access a machine.)
This is a sad, but true phenomenon. And the root cause of it is not anything that Microsoft did-- it's the takeoff of Java. This is particularly ironic, because many of the Unix machines being tossed were made by Sun.
The strange thing about the Windows migration is that it's not necessary, unnecessarily expensive, and probably counterproductive. Installing Windows partititions in labs provides little benefit to students, whether they're programming in Java or C/C++. What it does allow for is a whole lot more gaming. It costs a lot more to pay for those Windows licenses (or, at least, Windows development tools), and in the end you graduate a class of students who never get comfortable with a shell, with C, or with many Open Source projects (which are a great way to develop programming chops).
None of thost last things need be required as part of a CS education, but they make a major difference in your skill level by the time you get out of school. Being steeped in Linux/BSD, C and X-Windows added a lot to my education.
Hopefully soon.
In fact, I imagine it won't be too many years before this sort of technology is built into state license-plates. There are a lot of potential benefits-- traffic balancing, intelligent traffic lights, instant accident-detection. And, of course, law enforcement. There'll be enormous privacy issues, but this sort of technology is far too useful for governments to pass up.
First, you'd need good, cheap packet radio networks that won't mind lots and lots of transmitters occasionally chipping in a tiny packet here and there. If I'm not mistaken, most existing networks (things like CDPD) have a reasonable amount of connection overhead that makes this difficult.
Second, you'd have an early-adopter problem where no GPS-enabled cars would be driving along a given route, and you would therefore be routed into a 2-hour traffic jam.
I imagine trusting a computer to route you through the side-streets will also lead to a whole new series of "Bonfire of the Vanities"-type disasters.
I think the ability to transmit your location to another radio is neat. But I'd be interested to see the patent claims on this technology. I can only hope that they're very specific, and refer only to this particular implementation. I can't believe they've patented the idea of transmitting a GPS position to another receiver.
With all of the money to be made in spy software, and the severely limited resources (and interest) of those who want to stop it, it's unlikely that this will be much of a fair fight.
As more and more chinese move into urban areas and the middle class, it's only natural to assume that increasing amounts of the country's GDP are going to be directed at the population-- things like social services, health care, road building, etc.
That's the problem with productive, increasingly wealthy nations... They have a tendency to demand more and more of what they earn as the price of growth. Maybe China will be able to continue to treat their people like the citizens of a third world country while requiring them to power a first world economy.
But I wouldn't bet on it.
Yes, the actual encryption being performed is similar to a OTP. That's not the news here, though. The problem with OTPs has always been how to generate and distribute the pads. Typically, this requires transmission via some separate secure link (for instance, a courier), and leaves you with a limited amount of pad-- once you run out, you need to go through the whole rigamarole again.
This is a technique by which a key can be generated and distributed without that messy step. In the end, the data's basically being put through the same encryption process as one would use with a OTP, but it's being done with a random signal that's being generated on the fly over a wire between two geographically separated points, but is (ideally) still secure even if somebody eavesdrops.
Quantum cryptography is another example of a nifty concept that (in the end) relies on the old OTP technique. A random signal is generated and measured in two different places by measuring quantum characteristics of entangled particles. This is the cool part. Then that signal, which is truly random, can't be intercepted, and doesn't require a courier to deliver, is used as a OTP, which is the bread-and-butter part.
You might as well criticize a story on the development of fusion powered cars because the car still rests on old-fashioned wheels... which've been around for sooo many years.
Who said it was his right?
It seemed like a reasonable post. Companies can adopt silly policies, and employees can adopt bad attitudes.
HR can implement various performance checks and terminate people who don't live up to standards. But if they create an endemic mentality of distrust and lack-of-enthusiasm, they'll be hard pressed to fix it. Enthusiasm is a powerful productive force that smart companies don't squander.
I think that'd be up to a judge, though I'm no lawyer. I can't imagine that that sort of tactic isn't tried in other legal circumstances, and that there isn't some legal principle governing it.
What Shawn said is correct. The GPL only requires you to provide the source code on request (for a reasonable fee). However, most companies realize that it's a whole lot less trouble to put the source up on a website than to deal with obnoxious people on the phone. This is an excellent example of that phenomenon, and though I agree that folks shouldn't try to hack into a server to get the source, people do have the right to vent their frustration over the phone. If theKCompany doesn't like it, they can easily address the problem.
I'm also curious why some of these folks didn't just write away for the code and post it on their own site. This is the best way to guarantee that code is easily available. Perhaps some did, and the "hackers" were just too lazy to google for it. Or maybe the "hackers" were just typical malicious types who would have gone after any company with every bit as much gusto.
But the point is that the keys are on the card containing the encrypted information. So in other words, no matter how thoroughly the information is encrypted, it's no more secure than the hardware that protects the keys, correct?
If you don't know why I'm making this point, it's in response to the original poster's assertion that the encryption (and not the hardware) is what makes these cards secure.
In particular, this is why I objected to the SSL comparison. With SSL, the keys are located in the RAM of the machines doing the communication. Since a would-be eavesdropper probably doesn't have physical access to the two machines, he/she must break the code itself (and therefore, the quality of the encryption becomes very important.) With Smartcards, it doesn't matter how thoroughly you encrypt the data if people gain access to the physically "protected" areas of the card and get the keys. In that situation, you might just as well use a 512-bit key as a 128-bit key.
Correct me if I'm wrong, and then tell me how secure these physical measures are, particularly given that these cards will probably be a long-term solution (I imagine they won't be upgraded/replaced too frequently due to the cost.)
If they want to increase their market share, why not just offer the service free or at a discount?
You mean the EUCD. This is, after all, a European case. I don't know if this directive has been passed into law by the participant countries yet.
"ITV Digital may be more popular than had been thought," a source close to the case told BBC News Online.
Hmm. ITV's premuim channels clearly make their money from subscription fees, so who cares if your service is popular with people who aren't willing to buy it? ITV's regular stations appear to have commercials, so maybe it wouldn't hurt them to drop their prices and encourage folks to watch them legally.
It's Open Source. Any key check routine could be easily snipped out, which is why Blizzard is none too keen on the idea.
Which is tough for the people who bought Blizzard games and use them with bnetd. But what the hell does it have to do with shutting down the bnetd project? I don't see any allegation that the bnetd folks broke licensing agreements.