Maybe I misinterpreted the original post, but I thought that this had more to do 64-bit vs. 32-bit (and the limitations of a 32-bit platform) than it has to do with AMD vs. Intel.
The kernel compiles on so many different architectures, but with most of them being 64-bit (PPC, sparc, MIPS...). However, i386 is the dominant architecture by sheer numbers. To maintain crosss-architecture compatibility, the code has to support the lowest quality architeture (i386). By pushing towards a 64-bit architecture, the limitations of 32-bit can be left behind (oh yeah, but the nasty issue of backwards compatibility).
all that information about the infrastructure weaknesses - I guess he did not get the memo about hush on the disclosure of information. After all, if noone knows or talks about the problem, then it goes away, right?
---
No, Microsoft is their own worst enemy. Between their new pricing stategies, extremely restrictive licenses, and the general loss of useful features, they are their own worst enemy. They have given the world compelling reason to turn to Linux and IBM.
An authentic copy should reproduce all my errors too, so that people would also understand that I am a sloppy typer too. That would reflect poorly on me, but then I should have double-checked it in the first place. After all, when people study old original manuscripts, they frequently read between the lines and look at the errors to understand the emotional state of the writer at the time of writing.
The problem with copyright is that is tries to accomplish two things: control distribution and maintain authenticity. These two goals need to be split up so that creative persons may choose to limit one or the other, or both, or neither.
For example, this post. I can care less how much this post is distributed. However, I do care that when it is distributed, it is distributed in verbatum, and that I am not bein misrepresented. I want to be able to control the authenticity of a work (to protect myself from libel and misrepresentation and plagarism, and to allow myself to receive credit for first stating an idea), but I do not want to inhibit the discussion or distribution of this post.
Another example - the ideal academic journal would allow me to maintain authenticity of my writings (so I can be credited with a discovery or recognised as an authority on a topic based on my work), but place no restrictions on the distribution of my academic publications. That way, more people can hear about my ideas and comment on them and build on them and apply those ideas.
Another example - a composer could write a song. Authenticity rights are granted. Distribution rights (or time-limited exclusive commercial distribution) are negotiated with a corporation willing to print CD's and ship them to stores around the world.
Maybe these are just rambling - post your comments below
This has nothing to do with light pollution. These places typically have NO ELECTRICITY OR OTHER INFRASTRUCTURE at all. No lights. They are completely dark at night.
This does, however, have everything with being able to learn how to read and write in the evenings.
The point of these LEDs is to allow for light so that the people can learn to read and write in the evenings, when the sun has gone down. It takes them all day to scrape together the food and water supplies for the day in these places. The only time they have to learn is after sunset.
Ask yourself this: Would these people be better off if they didn't learn HOW TO READ AND WRITE? I for one would rather they have this opportunity.
I saw this guy present this project a few months ago (as a presentation for Engineers Without Borders) and it is really important work.
One of the biggest problems in third world countries is that taking care of food and water is an all day task. There is no time for learning to read and write during the daylight hours. These lights allow people the opportunity to learn to read and write after the sun has set.
This is a very important task if we hope to help the people in remote areas. The target areas tend to be areas with no electricity, no running water, and very few fascilities at all.
And I have seen the LEDs that he uses light light up a mid-to-large size lecture theatre to the point that I could read a paper in fornt of me, 5 rows away from the source!
Hold a meeting explaining what is going on. Be sure and explain just how much your bandwidth bill is, and how much it should be. Convert the cost difference into the following statement:
"If we eliminate unnecessary all P2P filesharing traffic, our school district can afford to hire (two) more teachers."
"Says Shinozaki: "Our ability to target certain segments of the population allowed us to charge [Kirin] a higher price, and the response rate to our survey was very high." The company has done similar promotions for companies in other industries, like shampoo manufacturers, but now it sees the market research option as a potentially lucrative source of new revenues."
So they would be using my demographics/information against me to charge me a higer price? I don't think I like that.
If the trend here is that my information will be used against me to charge me higher prices for something, then perhaps I will not be providing any more information to be used against me.
If I were to follow someone around and gain this detailed level of knowledge about their activities, I would be dragged into court for stalking. But if a corporation follows people around to find out what they are doing, it is called "targetted marketting" or "demographics information gathering" and it is just business. I don't want people or corporations following me around trying to gather information on me. If you actually want to know about me, ask me to my face and I will probably tell you. Otherwise, if you have to follow me around all day and look at my video rental history, list of books purchased lately, and recently purchased groceries, you are becoming a stalker.
Remember when the government followed people around to find out what they were up to? That was the Stasi.
- your 10 year comes home with a walkman full of smut and trash that just happened to appear over the course of a walk through the park
- you go cruisin for some Beatles and Sinatra tunes, and everything you come back with is a William Shatner cover tune, or worse, an ad or virus renamed to be what you are looking for.
You may see more success in the neighbourhood ftp server access via WiLans out there before this is anything more than an idea.
Of course, the military has already been looking into this. Albeit not for "mp3s".
Don't forget to answer the question "Is this system admissible in court"?. VHS tapes may be ancient technology, but chances are, a judge in court will know more about how your tape based system works that that system you made from freshmeat tarballs.
Nothing against open source, but the integrity of the video has to be proven in court or the guy who stole those laptops walks.
might I also add - Is this the trojan horse that will bring DRM to every desktop? They can talk about securing data, but whose data are they securing? Are they securing my data from vicious crackers, the entertainment industry's data from vicious me, or their own software from evil pirates?
is it just me, or do other people think the same thing when Microsoft and "trustworthy computing" are used in the same sentence. Does Microsoft mean that I can trust the integrity and security of my data on my machine running Microsoft software, or do they mean that Microsoft can trust that their software and their partners content are safe on my untrusted computer platform? Is this just a decoy for telling people they have to put up with these added security "features" that just happen to introduce DRM?
It is important to realise who can trust what here. Is this so that I can trust my computer is safe, or so other people can trust me with their content? MS is in the business of makeing money, after all. Do they make more money if I trust them or if the entertainment industry trusts them?
Remember that while the Berlin Wall was up, that the west attempted to broadcast their radio signals into East Germany. These radio stations told the East German people news of the rest of the world from a different perspective. Their signals were broadcasted from western countries to behind the Iron Curtain, and were considered pirate by the communist governments of the time. Many attempts were Still, many westerners considered that it was the right thing to do at the time and that certain governments were wrong.
The broadcasts persisted, and some might say that they had an important role in the fall of communism.
We must ensure that we do not build up walls of our own that blind us from what is going on outside.
But don't take my word for it. Read up on this topic and figure it out for yourself.
geolocation is a tool, and has not inherent good or evil in it. It can be USED in good or bad ways.
Say I were to use it to differentiate prices: people buying books who are coming from one state pay price $X, people coming from another state pay price $Y. Not because of different shipping costs (which may be equal), but because market research has told me that people from state X are willing to pay me more money for the the product.
Or it can be used to block access to material (iCraveTV) - only people from state X are allowed to see this.
Or it can be used in a good way. Think caching servers. If there is a cache server for a major website in every high usage area so that server response times are faster and overall network traffic is lower. However, a lot of sites do this already (fist page: choose your location server).
What is important is that geolocation is used in a good way, improving the lives of citizens, and not restricting what they can and cannot see/hear/know about when that information may be important to them.
So it can behave like many tools. With this hammer, I can build you a house (good) or hit you on the head (bad). With this international treaty, we can (re)build nations in peace, or we can use it to restrict and isolate a nation that does not see things from the true (read: MY) point of view.
So does anyone have any ideas about a good international treaty that can be used to help citizens of all countries? Maybe an extension to the UN Charter of Human Rights.
Go to your local hardware store and buy a hundred metres of twine or string or something. Run that parallel to your phone lines, and tie it off at each end (and LABEL!!).
That way, if you ever want to add something in the future, you just go to one end, untie the string from the wall, tie it to the new cable (and another piece of string), and pull it through.
This way you don't have to decide what to run until you need it, and you don't need to open your walls when you add the new wires. Just make sure that you don't have any sharp bends or corners along the path of the string.
Their tech group also insists that you use a 4.0 browser, Acrobat Reader 4.0, "Windows Media Player or Real Media G2 Player", and "A 56K or higher dial-up modem".
So I thought I would try my browser, but it didn't work. I end up in an endless redirection loop (HTTP/1.1 302 Object moved).
So I ran the command ">lynx --version", and I see that I an running "Lynx Version 2.8.3rel.1 (23 Apr 2000)". Obviously not a 4.0 browser. And I guess that they don't want to hear from anyone with a 33.6 modem. I guess that they don't want my business, because I don't qualify enough to view their site.
But I don't want a window-less office. I happen to enjoy sunshine I want to be able to look outside and see the whole world that exists outside of my office. Then I can look out the window and think "wow, I should eat lunch outside today", or "look at that snow fall, it is going to be rough driving home tonight".
Oh wait, the article is about an office without MS Windows... sorry.
-
While most countries are not in need of a new Beowulf cluster, you can put your skills to good use. One of the biggest problems I have heard of in Nepal is education. There are signs in villages inviting travellers to stay a while and teach the people there, because they have no teachers in the village. But there is another problem. The people work all day, so the only time the have to learn to read is at night. But they need light in order to read.
There is a fantastic project call Light up the World run by a University of Calgary Electrical Engineering prof who is working on ways of cheaply getting lights and cheaply generated (usually by sweat and elbow grease) electricity to these villages, so that they can read at night. Check it out.
I pay per KWh (kilo Watt hour). No one cares if I am running 1 fridge or 5, 10 lights or 72 or none. I pay per kilowatt hour. I can use several devices at the same time. I can also let my neighbour plug his light bulbs into my grid, but his power consumption is additive on my bill.
pay per kWh. why not pay per GB? (as long as it isn't on the saem pay scale as those nasty text messaging phone prices per text message).
Most houses in North America/Europe/Oceania have multiple telephones in the house. I know my house has around 5 telephone devices (including modems, phones, answering machines...) connected through our single phone number. But yet, we share the same phone number and the same bill. It does not matter which telephone makes the call, all calls are under the same number, and we are billed per minute of long-distance time used.
How is this any different? I don't need to get the phone company's permission to install an additional telephone. And the data sent across a phone network (especially if it is a modem) is exactly the same kind of traffic as goees down a DSL pipe.
Unfortunately, most of the people smart enough to use PGP effectively on a regular basis are the same people who are smart enough to not open attachmentst that they are not 100% sure about.
Besides, if I am receiving PGP encrypted email, then the attachment should be sent to me encrypted, so it will be fairly suspicious if it arrives unencrypted (and ready to run).
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe I misinterpreted the original post, but I thought that this had more to do 64-bit vs. 32-bit (and the limitations of a 32-bit platform) than it has to do with AMD vs. Intel.
The kernel compiles on so many different architectures, but with most of them being 64-bit (PPC, sparc, MIPS...). However, i386 is the dominant architecture by sheer numbers. To maintain crosss-architecture compatibility, the code has to support the lowest quality architeture (i386). By pushing towards a 64-bit architecture, the limitations of 32-bit can be left behind (oh yeah, but the nasty issue of backwards compatibility).
Unless I just misinterpreted the post.
all that information about the infrastructure weaknesses - I guess he did not get the memo about hush on the disclosure of information. After all, if noone knows or talks about the problem, then it goes away, right? ---
No, Microsoft is their own worst enemy. Between their new pricing stategies, extremely restrictive licenses, and the general loss of useful features, they are their own worst enemy. They have given the world compelling reason to turn to Linux and IBM.
An authentic copy should reproduce all my errors too, so that people would also understand that I am a sloppy typer too. That would reflect poorly on me, but then I should have double-checked it in the first place. After all, when people study old original manuscripts, they frequently read between the lines and look at the errors to understand the emotional state of the writer at the time of writing.
of course, an editor's note might be valid:
and that I am not bein[g] misrepresented.
The problem with copyright is that is tries to accomplish two things: control distribution and maintain authenticity. These two goals need to be split up so that creative persons may choose to limit one or the other, or both, or neither.
For example, this post. I can care less how much this post is distributed. However, I do care that when it is distributed, it is distributed in verbatum, and that I am not bein misrepresented. I want to be able to control the authenticity of a work (to protect myself from libel and misrepresentation and plagarism, and to allow myself to receive credit for first stating an idea), but I do not want to inhibit the discussion or distribution of this post.
Another example - the ideal academic journal would allow me to maintain authenticity of my writings (so I can be credited with a discovery or recognised as an authority on a topic based on my work), but place no restrictions on the distribution of my academic publications. That way, more people can hear about my ideas and comment on them and build on them and apply those ideas.
Another example - a composer could write a song. Authenticity rights are granted. Distribution rights (or time-limited exclusive commercial distribution) are negotiated with a corporation willing to print CD's and ship them to stores around the world.
Maybe these are just rambling - post your comments below
Google cache
Also, a news article
This has nothing to do with light pollution. These places typically have NO ELECTRICITY OR OTHER INFRASTRUCTURE at all. No lights. They are completely dark at night.
This does, however, have everything with being able to learn how to read and write in the evenings.
-----
The point of these LEDs is to allow for light so that the people can learn to read and write in the evenings, when the sun has gone down. It takes them all day to scrape together the food and water supplies for the day in these places. The only time they have to learn is after sunset.
Ask yourself this: Would these people be better off if they didn't learn HOW TO READ AND WRITE? I for one would rather they have this opportunity.
-----
I saw this guy present this project a few months ago (as a presentation for Engineers Without Borders) and it is really important work.
One of the biggest problems in third world countries is that taking care of food and water is an all day task. There is no time for learning to read and write during the daylight hours. These lights allow people the opportunity to learn to read and write after the sun has set.
This is a very important task if we hope to help the people in remote areas. The target areas tend to be areas with no electricity, no running water, and very few fascilities at all.
And I have seen the LEDs that he uses light light up a mid-to-large size lecture theatre to the point that I could read a paper in fornt of me, 5 rows away from the source!
-----
Hold a meeting explaining what is going on. Be sure and explain just how much your bandwidth bill is, and how much it should be. Convert the cost difference into the following statement:
"If we eliminate unnecessary all P2P filesharing traffic, our school district can afford to hire (two) more teachers."
----
"Says Shinozaki: "Our ability to target certain segments of the population allowed us to charge [Kirin] a higher price, and the response rate to our survey was very high." The company has done similar promotions for companies in other industries, like shampoo manufacturers, but now it sees the market research option as a potentially lucrative source of new revenues."
So they would be using my demographics/information against me to charge me a higer price? I don't think I like that.
If the trend here is that my information will be used against me to charge me higher prices for something, then perhaps I will not be providing any more information to be used against me.
If I were to follow someone around and gain this detailed level of knowledge about their activities, I would be dragged into court for stalking. But if a corporation follows people around to find out what they are doing, it is called "targetted marketting" or "demographics information gathering" and it is just business. I don't want people or corporations following me around trying to gather information on me. If you actually want to know about me, ask me to my face and I will probably tell you. Otherwise, if you have to follow me around all day and look at my video rental history, list of books purchased lately, and recently purchased groceries, you are becoming a stalker.
Remember when the government followed people around to find out what they were up to? That was the Stasi.
- your 10 year comes home with a walkman full of smut and trash that just happened to appear over the course of a walk through the park
- you go cruisin for some Beatles and Sinatra tunes, and everything you come back with is a William Shatner cover tune, or worse, an ad or virus renamed to be what you are looking for.
You may see more success in the neighbourhood ftp server access via WiLans out there before this is anything more than an idea.
Of course, the military has already been looking into this. Albeit not for "mp3s".
Nothing against open source, but the integrity of the video has to be proven in court or the guy who stole those laptops walks.
Time will tell.
It is important to realise who can trust what here. Is this so that I can trust my computer is safe, or so other people can trust me with their content? MS is in the business of makeing money, after all. Do they make more money if I trust them or if the entertainment industry trusts them?
The broadcasts persisted, and some might say that they had an important role in the fall of communism.
We must ensure that we do not build up walls of our own that blind us from what is going on outside.
But don't take my word for it. Read up on this topic and figure it out for yourself.
Say I were to use it to differentiate prices: people buying books who are coming from one state pay price $X, people coming from another state pay price $Y. Not because of different shipping costs (which may be equal), but because market research has told me that people from state X are willing to pay me more money for the the product.
Or it can be used to block access to material (iCraveTV) - only people from state X are allowed to see this.
Or it can be used in a good way. Think caching servers. If there is a cache server for a major website in every high usage area so that server response times are faster and overall network traffic is lower. However, a lot of sites do this already (fist page: choose your location server).
What is important is that geolocation is used in a good way, improving the lives of citizens, and not restricting what they can and cannot see/hear/know about when that information may be important to them.
So it can behave like many tools. With this hammer, I can build you a house (good) or hit you on the head (bad). With this international treaty, we can (re)build nations in peace, or we can use it to restrict and isolate a nation that does not see things from the true (read: MY) point of view.
So does anyone have any ideas about a good international treaty that can be used to help citizens of all countries? Maybe an extension to the UN Charter of Human Rights.
Go to your local hardware store and buy a hundred metres of twine or string or something. Run that parallel to your phone lines, and tie it off at each end (and LABEL!!).
That way, if you ever want to add something in the future, you just go to one end, untie the string from the wall, tie it to the new cable (and another piece of string), and pull it through.
This way you don't have to decide what to run until you need it, and you don't need to open your walls when you add the new wires. Just make sure that you don't have any sharp bends or corners along the path of the string.
So I thought I would try my browser, but it didn't work. I end up in an endless redirection loop (HTTP/1.1 302 Object moved).
So I ran the command ">lynx --version", and I see that I an running "Lynx Version 2.8.3rel.1 (23 Apr 2000)". Obviously not a 4.0 browser. And I guess that they don't want to hear from anyone with a 33.6 modem. I guess that they don't want my business, because I don't qualify enough to view their site.
Can anyone render it in Opera 4 or higher?
But I don't want a window-less office. I happen to enjoy sunshine I want to be able to look outside and see the whole world that exists outside of my office. Then I can look out the window and think "wow, I should eat lunch outside today", or "look at that snow fall, it is going to be rough driving home tonight".
Oh wait, the article is about an office without MS Windows... sorry.
-
While most countries are not in need of a new Beowulf cluster, you can put your skills to good use. One of the biggest problems I have heard of in Nepal is education. There are signs in villages inviting travellers to stay a while and teach the people there, because they have no teachers in the village. But there is another problem. The people work all day, so the only time the have to learn to read is at night. But they need light in order to read.
There is a fantastic project call Light up the World run by a University of Calgary Electrical Engineering prof who is working on ways of cheaply getting lights and cheaply generated (usually by sweat and elbow grease) electricity to these villages, so that they can read at night. Check it out.
maybe an electric analogy is better.
I pay per KWh (kilo Watt hour). No one cares if I am running 1 fridge or 5, 10 lights or 72 or none. I pay per kilowatt hour. I can use several devices at the same time. I can also let my neighbour plug his light bulbs into my grid, but his power consumption is additive on my bill.
pay per kWh. why not pay per GB? (as long as it isn't on the saem pay scale as those nasty text messaging phone prices per text message).
Most houses in North America/Europe/Oceania have multiple telephones in the house. I know my house has around 5 telephone devices (including modems, phones, answering machines...) connected through our single phone number. But yet, we share the same phone number and the same bill. It does not matter which telephone makes the call, all calls are under the same number, and we are billed per minute of long-distance time used.
How is this any different? I don't need to get the phone company's permission to install an additional telephone. And the data sent across a phone network (especially if it is a modem) is exactly the same kind of traffic as goees down a DSL pipe.
Unfortunately, most of the people smart enough to use PGP effectively on a regular basis are the same people who are smart enough to not open attachmentst that they are not 100% sure about.
Besides, if I am receiving PGP encrypted email, then the attachment should be sent to me encrypted, so it will be fairly suspicious if it arrives unencrypted (and ready to run).
--------