I am not a physicist, but last I checked, ion drives are only useful once you've broken orbit. They do not have the power to launch a craft. This silly article makes it sound like this "new" technology will improve launch efficiency somehow, but that's clearly untrue. At best, it will decrease the amount of fuel a craft needs to run through its ion engines *after* it has reached orbit, which may decrease the amount of conventional fuel needed to reach orbit. But that's about it.
If the parents are the only ones that can create pages, then there is no legal issue with them accessing the pages. They would actually be the page owner, and would in essence be allowing their children to access their page.
If it degrades the ceramic containers in only 1400 years, then perhaps they should make it N times thicker if they want it to last N times longer. It may not even be linear, since the surface area increases faster than the diameter of the storage cylinder (assuming a cylinder), so making it N times thicker will make it last more than N times as long.
The article talks about a quarter million years, so you'd have to make the containers at most 178x thicker, but probably less. Sure, you may be talking about several feet thick ceramic, but so what? Am I missing something?
You cannot compare software and assembly line methodology. When testing your average piece of software, say,
a word processor, there are no arbitrary tolerances to test for, etc. And of course, as you have noted, software effectively copies perfectly, provably each time, so there will be no duplication error. But none of this has anything to do with my point, as you have so clearly pointed out in your assertion that none of this applies to software.
Complex software is impossible to certify as bug-free. You can never prove or disprove that any piece of software is bug free, because it is impossible thing to test. You can't even prove that the things you DO test for actually work correctly all of the time, because maybe they only work correctly under lab conditions or are so intermittent that you'd have to test for 100 years to find problems with them.
I read an assertion once that you can't even prove that helloworld.c, a single-line C program, is bug free. It follows from there that a million-line program is practically infinite in the ways it might not behave correctly. Because of the complexity, however, you are practically guaranteed that there are countless bugs to be found. Finding them all simply cannot happen. Anyone who does not grasp this cannot claim to understand software development. If you do not understand or agree, then ponder on the tree of woe.
Anyone who develops software knows the axiom - the number of bugs discovered in any piece of software is directly proportional to the amount of testing you perform on that software. From this, it follows that you can keep testing forever and at best only asymptotically approach bug-free code. Sounds hyperbolic, but I've observed it to be true in my experience. And as long as there are bugs, there are bound to be security bugs.
You can only minimize the risk that security issues will be found with any software. The best way to do this is to perform a rigorous code audit, preferably by security professionals. And if you can, make the software open source. You get a lot more eyes staring at it for free that way.
Re:I've been using vi for so long...
on
The Birth of vi
·
· Score: 1
It's worth noting that some vi users don't remap the Escape key
I've never known anyone who remapped their caps lock key to ESC. Not one. Most people I know leave it alone, but some map it to ctrl, like me, for easy reaching when you need to enter a control character. This is the first time I've heard anyone do anything so crazy as put ESC where ctrl should be.
Re:I've been using vi for so long...
on
The Birth of vi
·
· Score: 1
Woops, should have said, "with the ctrl key in the correct place".
Re:I've been using vi for so long...
on
The Birth of vi
·
· Score: 2, Funny
the most important thing I can remember I've done in my configuration was switching Esc and CapsLock
Now that's just plain wrong. The caps lock key is supposed to be mapped to ctrl! That's what any true Unix user would do, because it proves you learned Unix on a terminal designed for Unix with the caps lock in the correct place. PC users just don't understand.
Re:I've been using vi for so long...
on
The Birth of vi
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
it doesn't seem so different to need to hit C-X before some commands, than to hit ESC and
How horribly untrue. The ESC key is simple to hit. It's in the upper left corner; easy to hit without effort. Control-x is harder to hit because you have to bend your hand down and hit two keys simultaneously. I used to laugh at the many emacs users at my last company because they were always grunting every time they reached for that ^X, often followed by a "damn!" when they hit the wrong key or missed the control.
In vi you only have to hit ESC once to get into command mode. After that you can type commands to your heart's content without the oppression of hitting some hard-to-reach escape sequence every time you want to do something.
Admittedly, once you get used to it, I'm sure emacs is not all that bad. But emacs is just wrong. I want to use an editor to edit my files, not an operating system like emacs.
Re:Too bad vi sucks
on
The Birth of vi
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
modal editors is the worst idea in the history of computing. [sic]
This thinking is precisely why vi continues to be superior to other editors. For some godforsaken reason people seem to be afraid to make modal editors, so "modern" editors damn you to using a mouse or ugly awkward command sequences for everything. Can someone explain why modal editors are a bad thing? It is this very fact that's kept me using vi for decades now.
Bill Joy is probably old enough to be your grandfather. Just guessing from your high user ID.
Back in my day we had to type in upper case while walking uphill in both directions through 5 feet of ASCII.
I've been using vi for so long...
on
The Birth of vi
·
· Score: 5, Funny
I think in vi. When editing, commands just happen like thoughts. They are so ingrained in my brain I don't even remember the actual key sequences. When a vi newbie asks, "how do you do XYZ in vi?," I have to stop and think hard, because I don't even know the commands any more.
Vi is the ultimate editor, for one main reason. It's a modal editor, so commands can be mnemonic. With editors like emacs, you're always having to hit ^X before commands, or with MS word you're always having to lift your hand off the keyboard to move the silly mouse around. With vi, you don't need a steenking mouse. Your hands never leave the keyboard. And commands make sense and don't require that you hit some yucky control sequence to initiate.
Is it possible that both are correct? I have measured everything in my house (that has a standard plug) except for my fridge. I know it's a hog, no point in measuring. I have 5 computers, at least 2 of which are always running. I have a dozen small gadgets with wall warts to power them. And I have several UPSes, one of which is a power conditioner. My conclusion is that most of these devices are very power efficient, mostly consuming only several watts each. The computers are like running a lightbulb. Apart, none of these things sucks much power at all, especially compared to the fridge or the clothes dryer. But once you add them all up, the sheer number of googaws in the house sum up to a significant consumption of power. Granted, I have much more crap than your average person, but I think this summation effect may have some significance for your average person these days, if to a lesser extent.
I don't want more cores. I want more memory bandwidth. When crunching lots of data, that's all that matters.
Adding more cores when you are memorybound is totally useless. I'm experiencing this exact problem as I write this, because all those speedy cores in a single CPU share the same memory bus, and my company's application sifts through memory like nothing else. I get a paltry 20% scaling increase going from one core to two, but I get a full 98% adding a new CPU rather than just a core. I am afraid to think how useless quad cores are going to be. More than likely only a few percent scaling.
Even if you accept the $970 figure, I think this guy's statement should be better qualified. The laptop only costs $100. What he's saying is that perhaps people are not thinking about the operational cost if the laptop were to actually be used. I think it's a valid question, especially with a laptop like these that's much less useful than your average laptop unless it's connected to a network (no hard drive).
But I think it's a bit disingenuous for him to lump that theoretical cost in with the device itself, especially since the cost will vary dramatically depending on many factors. Not to mention that an $870 operational cost over the life of the computer seems very high, even under the worst of circumstances. Training? These are for kids, and they figure stuff out on their own pretty easily, so I question whether this is significant. Repairs? What's the most a repair could possibly cost? $100! Probably much less for your average repair, unless the laptop is crushed by a truck. Network? Certainly not hundreds of dollars per laptop! So 10X cost seems like a load of FUD to me, but cost of ownership should probably be considered in a realistic light somehow.
While I think the DMCA is a giant steamer, it does appear that it protects myspace if they qualify as a service provider. The wording of the DMCA defines a "service provider" as "...a provider of online services...". That is rather ironic, isn't it? Though the DMCA says they can't have profited from the copyrighted material in order to be protected; while they are obviously not selling music directly, music is one of the big things that draws in people and gives myspace its value. So Universal may have some argument there.
I always thought OSDL was a cool idea. The idea of being able to work for a company that just produces open source is pretty neat. It is saddening that they have to lay off people. It doesn't bode well for the model. One would think that with 70 sponsors, there would be enough revenue to fund such a small organization, but I supposed that depends on what it costs for a company to buy a sponsorship.
Sorry bobby, nice try, but you got me wrong. Just because someone here doesn't automatically believe what he sees doesn't mean he's got to be a poser. In any case, I'm still looking for that document that says why the court backed out of its earlier ruling. There are a lot of possible reasons and it seems like you're picking up the one you like most. You're not necessarily wrong, but given all the possibilities, it looks like you're putting the spin on it that YOU want. It's pretty clear that Yahoo bought musicmatch for the user base, not for the player, because they have their own player. If you look at press releases of Yahoo's acquisition, they seem to have made that pretty obvious. And Yahoo uses Gracenote, and meanwhile muscimatch is rotting on the vine. Occams razor eliminates complicated conspiracy theories.
Slashdot Mirror
rumors are out claiming Matt Damon, Adrien Brody and Gary Sinise will play Kirk, Spock, and Scotty, respectively
No no no nonononooooooooooooooooooo!
Sacrilege! Nobody else is to play these characters, ever! Especially not Matt Damon!
...before there were golf balls, how did people desribe hail? :)
Let's see, runs under Java virtual machine, uses Java libraries and objects... Wouldn't that make it, um, Java?
I am not a physicist, but last I checked, ion drives are only useful once you've broken orbit. They do not have the power to launch a craft. This silly article makes it sound like this "new" technology will improve launch efficiency somehow, but that's clearly untrue. At best, it will decrease the amount of fuel a craft needs to run through its ion engines *after* it has reached orbit, which may decrease the amount of conventional fuel needed to reach orbit. But that's about it.
If the parents are the only ones that can create pages, then there is no legal issue with them accessing the pages. They would actually be the page owner, and would in essence be allowing their children to access their page.
the Athens Banner-Herald quotes Facebook's CPO saying that federal law forbids the company to allow anyone but the account creator to access it..
This isn't at all what the article quotes. It says:
Under the Federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act, we cannot give anyone access to or control of an individual's profile on Facebook
I don't see how this would preclude rules that require all future account creations to be done by an adult...
If it degrades the ceramic containers in only 1400 years, then perhaps they should make it N times thicker if they want it to last N times longer. It may not even be linear, since the surface area increases faster than the diameter of the storage cylinder (assuming a cylinder), so making it N times thicker will make it last more than N times as long.
The article talks about a quarter million years, so you'd have to make the containers at most 178x thicker, but probably less. Sure, you may be talking about several feet thick ceramic, but so what? Am I missing something?
You cannot compare software and assembly line methodology. When testing your average piece of software, say, a word processor, there are no arbitrary tolerances to test for, etc. And of course, as you have noted, software effectively copies perfectly, provably each time, so there will be no duplication error. But none of this has anything to do with my point, as you have so clearly pointed out in your assertion that none of this applies to software.
Complex software is impossible to certify as bug-free. You can never prove or disprove that any piece of software is bug free, because it is impossible thing to test. You can't even prove that the things you DO test for actually work correctly all of the time, because maybe they only work correctly under lab conditions or are so intermittent that you'd have to test for 100 years to find problems with them.
I read an assertion once that you can't even prove that helloworld.c, a single-line C program, is bug free. It follows from there that a million-line program is practically infinite in the ways it might not behave correctly. Because of the complexity, however, you are practically guaranteed that there are countless bugs to be found. Finding them all simply cannot happen. Anyone who does not grasp this cannot claim to understand software development. If you do not understand or agree, then ponder on the tree of woe.
Anyone who develops software knows the axiom - the number of bugs discovered in any piece of software is directly proportional to the amount of testing you perform on that software. From this, it follows that you can keep testing forever and at best only asymptotically approach bug-free code. Sounds hyperbolic, but I've observed it to be true in my experience. And as long as there are bugs, there are bound to be security bugs.
You can only minimize the risk that security issues will be found with any software. The best way to do this is to perform a rigorous code audit, preferably by security professionals. And if you can, make the software open source. You get a lot more eyes staring at it for free that way.
It's worth noting that some vi users don't remap the Escape key
I've never known anyone who remapped their caps lock key to ESC. Not one. Most people I know leave it alone, but some map it to ctrl, like me, for easy reaching when you need to enter a control character. This is the first time I've heard anyone do anything so crazy as put ESC where ctrl should be.
Woops, should have said, "with the ctrl key in the correct place".
the most important thing I can remember I've done in my configuration was switching Esc and CapsLock
Now that's just plain wrong. The caps lock key is supposed to be mapped to ctrl! That's what any true Unix user would do, because it proves you learned Unix on a terminal designed for Unix with the caps lock in the correct place. PC users just don't understand.
it doesn't seem so different to need to hit C-X before some commands, than to hit ESC and
How horribly untrue. The ESC key is simple to hit. It's in the upper left corner; easy to hit without effort. Control-x is harder to hit because you have to bend your hand down and hit two keys simultaneously. I used to laugh at the many emacs users at my last company because they were always grunting every time they reached for that ^X, often followed by a "damn!" when they hit the wrong key or missed the control.
In vi you only have to hit ESC once to get into command mode. After that you can type commands to your heart's content without the oppression of hitting some hard-to-reach escape sequence every time you want to do something.
Admittedly, once you get used to it, I'm sure emacs is not all that bad. But emacs is just wrong. I want to use an editor to edit my files, not an operating system like emacs.
modal editors is the worst idea in the history of computing. [sic]
This thinking is precisely why vi continues to be superior to other editors. For some godforsaken reason people seem to be afraid to make modal editors, so "modern" editors damn you to using a mouse or ugly awkward command sequences for everything. Can someone explain why modal editors are a bad thing? It is this very fact that's kept me using vi for decades now.
sounds like Grandpa Simpson
Bill Joy is probably old enough to be your grandfather. Just guessing from your high user ID.
Back in my day we had to type in upper case while walking uphill in both directions through 5 feet of ASCII.
I think in vi. When editing, commands just happen like thoughts. They are so ingrained in my brain I don't even remember the actual key sequences. When a vi newbie asks, "how do you do XYZ in vi?," I have to stop and think hard, because I don't even know the commands any more.
Vi is the ultimate editor, for one main reason. It's a modal editor, so commands can be mnemonic. With editors like emacs, you're always having to hit ^X before commands, or with MS word you're always having to lift your hand off the keyboard to move the silly mouse around. With vi, you don't need a steenking mouse. Your hands never leave the keyboard. And commands make sense and don't require that you hit some yucky control sequence to initiate.
I love my vi.
Is it possible that both are correct? I have measured everything in my house (that has a standard plug) except for my fridge. I know it's a hog, no point in measuring. I have 5 computers, at least 2 of which are always running. I have a dozen small gadgets with wall warts to power them. And I have several UPSes, one of which is a power conditioner. My conclusion is that most of these devices are very power efficient, mostly consuming only several watts each. The computers are like running a lightbulb. Apart, none of these things sucks much power at all, especially compared to the fridge or the clothes dryer. But once you add them all up, the sheer number of googaws in the house sum up to a significant consumption of power. Granted, I have much more crap than your average person, but I think this summation effect may have some significance for your average person these days, if to a lesser extent.
This is why Dog created wings and jet engines.
See the Keyspan USB server. It's been around a while.
I don't want more cores. I want more memory bandwidth. When crunching lots of data, that's all that matters. Adding more cores when you are memorybound is totally useless. I'm experiencing this exact problem as I write this, because all those speedy cores in a single CPU share the same memory bus, and my company's application sifts through memory like nothing else. I get a paltry 20% scaling increase going from one core to two, but I get a full 98% adding a new CPU rather than just a core. I am afraid to think how useless quad cores are going to be. More than likely only a few percent scaling.
Even if you accept the $970 figure, I think this guy's statement should be better qualified. The laptop only costs $100. What he's saying is that perhaps people are not thinking about the operational cost if the laptop were to actually be used. I think it's a valid question, especially with a laptop like these that's much less useful than your average laptop unless it's connected to a network (no hard drive).
But I think it's a bit disingenuous for him to lump that theoretical cost in with the device itself, especially since the cost will vary dramatically depending on many factors. Not to mention that an $870 operational cost over the life of the computer seems very high, even under the worst of circumstances. Training? These are for kids, and they figure stuff out on their own pretty easily, so I question whether this is significant. Repairs? What's the most a repair could possibly cost? $100! Probably much less for your average repair, unless the laptop is crushed by a truck. Network? Certainly not hundreds of dollars per laptop! So 10X cost seems like a load of FUD to me, but cost of ownership should probably be considered in a realistic light somehow.
While I think the DMCA is a giant steamer, it does appear that it protects myspace if they qualify as a service provider. The wording of the DMCA defines a "service provider" as "...a provider of online services...". That is rather ironic, isn't it? Though the DMCA says they can't have profited from the copyrighted material in order to be protected; while they are obviously not selling music directly, music is one of the big things that draws in people and gives myspace its value. So Universal may have some argument there.
Doesn't mean I don't have inside knowledge... but nope. :P
I always thought OSDL was a cool idea. The idea of being able to work for a company that just produces open source is pretty neat. It is saddening that they have to lay off people. It doesn't bode well for the model. One would think that with 70 sponsors, there would be enough revenue to fund such a small organization, but I supposed that depends on what it costs for a company to buy a sponsorship.
Sorry bobby, nice try, but you got me wrong. Just because someone here doesn't automatically believe what he sees doesn't mean he's got to be a poser. In any case, I'm still looking for that document that says why the court backed out of its earlier ruling. There are a lot of possible reasons and it seems like you're picking up the one you like most. You're not necessarily wrong, but given all the possibilities, it looks like you're putting the spin on it that YOU want. It's pretty clear that Yahoo bought musicmatch for the user base, not for the player, because they have their own player. If you look at press releases of Yahoo's acquisition, they seem to have made that pretty obvious. And Yahoo uses Gracenote, and meanwhile muscimatch is rotting on the vine. Occams razor eliminates complicated conspiracy theories.