My guess is that they benefit by being able to offload development of key libraries to willing, competent developers. Why should Sun waste time on their own crypto library when there's the OpenSSL group writing and debugging code and there are many more trying to find weaknesses in it?
The gesture isn't alturistic, I'm sure. Still, everyone benefits. Sun gets kudos for helping a project that is held highly by everyone else, and the project gets another algorithm under its hood.
I read the article, but "technology" was the only thing I read was "donated". WTF does that mean? Did they give them reference code with a GPL (or whetever the OpenSSL library uses)? Did they give up patent rights to the method? The article didn't explain just what the OpenSSL folks got.
I've always wondered what it would take to modify a sendmail or postfix configuration to become a "mail sink". Sure, there are tarpits that slow spammers down, but why not make a server that acts and smells like an open relay, but simply dumps the mail to/dev/null and tells the sender they were delivered? Maybe bandwidth might be an issue, but it may more effective than a tar pit.
A human watching over his spam software might notice if the target relay is delivering at a rate of 1 message per day and find another. If, however, he sees that the "server" is ripping through deliveries at a massive rate, he might stay with that server and all of his spam will vanish into the bit bucket.
I've been looking for a UNIX/Linux GPS package that's good enough to uproot MS Streets 2001 from my box. In fact, that's the only Windows app I use now with any frequency (helps out with the geocaching habbit).
For another higher-end app, check out FUGAWI (fugawi.com).
You may want to try VMWare or Win4Lin for Windows apps on Linux, the latter being *much* more lightweight than the former. I don't know if WIn4Lin can utilize the serial ports, but VMWare certainly can.
Perhaps I responded a bit too harshly. Your original point seemed to imply that nothing other than downloads acounted for a non-trivial use of overall bandwidth. I responded with anecdotal evidence that this is not always the case.
With the "always on" mentality of broadband users, and the fact that most clients simply hide in the system tray when you click the top-right "x" on the window rather than shut down, it wouldn't surprise me if a substantial amount of bandwidth wasn't directly related to a particular client downloading.
No, I don't allow downloads. I usually hop on to find some obscure file, then hop right off. I don't share files much these days, certainly not with my work machine.
I don't even allow caching -- too gray an area for my tastes, especially on my employer's equipment.
It has nothing to do w/the advertising, the searches, etc. It has to do SOLELY w/the LARGE downloads that users of P2P networks do.
IMO, you're very wrong.
The university I work for has it's spies watching the border routers, logging streams. Daily, they release a "top talker" list to a select few individuals (not myself) who notify the admins of aberrant hosts. This is to stop blatant abuse, as well as cut off possibly compromised hosts.
Occasionally, I would leave gnut running in a shell when I left for the day. I'd usually end up on "top talkers" with 1-2GB of traffic when no downloads were running! This was solely the chatter of the gnutellanet in action.
Of course, I do configure my client to talk to a rather wide neighborhood, but still...
For single people (or D.I.N.K.s -- Double Income No Kids), get as risky as you want. As with stocks, prospecting, and starting your own business, there's no real wealth to be found without risks. I've got a wife and 2 kids, so I tend to be more cautious.
I started my post-college career at a small private software firm as an admin/consultant. It was great for a while. I pissed off the CEO, though and got canned in '99 (the party line was for "insubordination"). The joys of being an "at will" employee.
I've been working for a state university ever since. Initially, the pay was worse (by $8k/yr), however, the benefits were so much better that it more than made up for it: $75/mo for family medical/dental vs around $300; 14% of my gross given (not matched) into a retirement fund vs the pitiful maxed-out 1% 401K matching. My pay has since surpassed that of my former employer.
My department (research computing) has weathered the recession well, whereas others on campus have lost their jobs or have been shuffled to other departments. We didn't get our annual cost-of-living raise this year, but I can't complain.
Though the pay is comfortable (still not great) and the work reasonably stimulating, I don't forsee myself here for very long. In spite of the fact that I could very likely become the cranky suspenders-wearing "unix guy" from the classic Dilbert strip, a secure and well-paid fixture on campus, I will likely move on in a few years. I like variety, and I suspect I'll hop to a small ISP or local business.
But the public sector has been good for me. There's no way I'd ever have admin'ed a 64-way Origin 2000 or other various other clusters or large servers at a mom-n-pop company. Big institutions allow one to get experience with big systems. I've found that experience with large systems scales down to small systems much easier than the opposite direction. So once I find another small company, I should have a lot of fun with it.
My family lives modestly, so my current income (about $52k/yr) is equally modest and I don't need to pursue a 6-digit salary. And I'm not short-changing my life, either. I've got 20 acres of retirement land and we put good money away for kids college and nest egg. You just gotta know how to wisely manage money.
Of course, other lifestyles will vary.:) That's just my (abridged) story. I'd really recommend that everyone try employment in each sector, just so you get a feel for both sides: the secure bloat of most government institutions or the dog-eat-dog world of private comapanies. Both are interesting in their own ways, and both have good and bad points.
Re:One of my favourite quotes...
on
Want Freedom?
·
· Score: 2
You feeling big enough to go to war with, collectively, 2384.56 million people? Or were you planning to magically develop an Al Qaeda detector van and just drive around checking for those 3,000 terrorists?
Well, if the British can come up with a cat detector van, there's no reason an Al Qaeda detector van can't be created. Where the web page for the Ministry of Housinge?
Oh, man... one of my college roommates had a Northgate PC. They had the best damned keyboards I've ever seen. You could drive a tank over those things and they'd be fine. Every once in a while, say, after replacing a crappy PC keayboard, I get the wild hair to try to find them on the net. But I never can locate them. Too bad -- I'd pay good money for one of those.
If I remember... once a year the EE department at Purdue would toss CRTs from the top of a parking garage. Made for interesting pictures. Don't know if the tradition is still around, but it was kinda amusing.
Without an inverter I would be very afraid of the 'quality' of the electricity.
Tread carefully here. You can go to any truckstop and buy a 2000W inverter for about $300. If you were to buy a 2000W inverter to power your home with all its expensive electric appliances from batteries (PV, wind, etc.), you're gonna pay $2-$5k for the same output, especially if you go true sinewave. Power quality is one of the main things you buy from these systems.
Yes, I know, there are many other things in those fancy inverters that also push the price: grid intertie, overload/temperature monitoring, battery charging/conditioning, data loggin, etc.. However, the old saying "you get what you pay for" usually holds true for inverters.
That said, I frequently run a laptop off a $30 400W inverter I got at Wal Mart and I haven't had any issues yet. But I disagree with the parent post's implication that an inverter would provide "quality" power.
Before you spend $20k on a solar system, make sure you reduce your consumption first. In solar circles, the rule of thumb is that conservation costs 1/4 the amount of equivalent solar infrastructure.
Example: A $10 25W compact florescent will give you the same illumination as a 100W incadescent bulb. That's a savings of 75W. If you were to keep the incadescent and go to a solar system, that one light bulb will contribute $40 to the total price if the system (panels, batteries, inverters, etc.).
Multiply that by every light bulb and appliance in your house. It adds up very fast.
As a card-carrying NRA member myself, I have to agree with you. However, the poster asked about environmental causes.
I often find myself thinking about the environment. First, I started at home: changed out all incadescent lights for compact florescents; took advantage of Salt Lake's curb-side recycling program; compost everything we can. We've reduced our power bill by 25% and we can go 2-3 weeks without taking the trash cans to the curb.
I figure living as an example, and showing it doesn't take much "sacrifice", is a great way to start. You know, the whole "think global, act local" mantra.
We also patronize Native Seeds for our garden's seed supply. These folks propogate heirloom varieties of crop seed suited to the southwestern US region. Since I live in Utah (mostly desert), these varieties require less water, which is a good environmental goal. It also allows me to thumb my nose at Monsanto and other big Evil(tm) agriculture companies.:)
Also, I've looked seriously into mutual funds that target certain ethics of investors. A search on Google should yield many mutual funds which agree with your cause. Certainly not as direct as funding a proactive organization, but companies affect the environment, too.
I've personally contributed to NPR? (which does a good job at showcasing enviromental issues), the National Arbor Day Foundation (self explanatory), and the local chapter of the Humane Society (ferral pets cause local environmental damage).
I haven't put out a lot of money to these groups (maybe a couple of hundred a year, total), but every little bit counts. If everyone ponied up $50/year for a cause, the world just might improve a little.
A few years ago, I was researching the ACE "stack" (Asprin, Caffeine, and Ephedra). This is often used to either: a) loose weight; or b) increase effectiveness of strength training. L-Tyrosine is an amino acid which, when added to this mix (or caffeine alone), prolongs its effects and reduces the "jitters". So go visit your local health food store for similar stuff.
I think there should be some activist group out there that runs around with Max Headroom-style cameras (recording timestamp, position, heading) recording (and even broadcasting live) the watchers (police, security guards, owners and execs of the companies who monitor people). I doubt these people would like a bunch of strangers watching their movements.
For the "I have nothing to hide yadda-yadda..." people, I just can't see why anyone would like (or, at least, wouldn't mind) to be monitored so much, even if it's a public place. It sure doesn't make me feel safe. I find government and businesses tracking me far more scary than a potential mugger on the street. To each his own, I guess.
Call me paranoid, but I often travel through town on smaller roads that I know don't have those damned "traffic" cams pointed at the intersections. I know there are probably plenty of less conspicuous cameras out there that catch me (and it will only get worse), but I exercise as much dilligance as I can without going totally crazy.
Because I actually just want to, you know, watch the damn movie.
Well, you should have done what I did, then. I bought a copy of the movie for $11USD from a Malaysian site. The transfer wasn't perfect, but it keeps me from rushing out to get version 1.00 of the "official release". I'll wait for version 1.3 to buy the real release -- or maybe I'll buy it for the likely price of $20 at the site I bought the first movie.
For those curious, search for David Chaum's "digicash". I think Applied Crypto talks about Chaum's stuff (or at least digital cash, anyway).
digicash.com has been registered (and even up) for years, but it never got off the ground. On paper, it sounds awesome. However, the little tinfoil-hat-wearing voice in me thinks the goverment (and credit card companies) are scared shitless of a fully anonymous e-cash system, even if it has all the benefits (authentication, repudiation, etc.) of the strong crypto system so they are making sure digicash never becomes useful.
There is such a huge demand for anonymous transactions (think gambling, drugs, prostitution, privacy nuts like myself, etc.), that I highly doubt that it will ever go away. Even our senators and congressmen need to get laid while they're in D.C. or running the campaign trail.:)
However, if US currency does become solely an electronic and trackable medium, I'm almost certain a replacement will quickly find its way into circulation. Perhaps even good old barter.
Earlier this year when that South American country's currency went down the toilet (Brazil, maybe?), people started using some kind of tickets or vouchers since the real currency was worthless. I heard this on NPR, but I don't have a reference handy.
My local grocery (Albertsons) recently began pushing their Member cards. They get pushed hard at the checkout counter, and each time I kindly refuse. In fact, I use Albertsons over Smith's because the latter had higer prices but had the cards to make you think you were getting a deal. Now, they're nearly the same. I've tried to be up on the price changes at Albertson's. If the prices aren't increasing slowly, there sure is a psychological impression that they are.
People give me an odd look when I tell them that I live a mostly cash-only lifestyle. Each paycheck I withdraw all but the small amount which goes on a credit card. No before you call me a hypocrite, I use the CC for transactions that are already recorded, no matter how I pay (savings bonds purchases, paying bills, etc.).
However, I always use cash for gassing up the car, for normal retail purchases (food, hardware supplies, elecetronics/software, etc.). For mail order and some bills I use USPS money orders. At least with money orders, my bank doesn't know I paid $55 for last month's water bill even if the water company does. That's just one less piece of information some company can exploit.
It's getting bad out there. I was alarmed when I bought a DVD player at Wal Mart and they entered the serial # into the register!
It's revelations like this story that make me glad I tolerate the odd looks for my perceived "odd" behavior. Some day, one of you discount card users is gonna get a notice from your health insurance about a premium increase because they know that you buy a gallon of Rocky Road icecream every week. Trust me -- it will happen some day!
My favorite still is the dubbed line "eat my socks" for "eat my shorts" delivered by Judd Nelson in the TV versiomn of The Breakfast Club. I can't understand why they still play that version. Too cheap to re-edit it, I guess.
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The gesture isn't alturistic, I'm sure. Still, everyone benefits. Sun gets kudos for helping a project that is held highly by everyone else, and the project gets another algorithm under its hood.
I read the article, but "technology" was the only thing I read was "donated". WTF does that mean? Did they give them reference code with a GPL (or whetever the OpenSSL library uses)? Did they give up patent rights to the method? The article didn't explain just what the OpenSSL folks got.
He was the plumber in the last season of Ally McBeal, wasn't he? :)
A human watching over his spam software might notice if the target relay is delivering at a rate of 1 message per day and find another. If, however, he sees that the "server" is ripping through deliveries at a massive rate, he might stay with that server and all of his spam will vanish into the bit bucket.
A: 9.8 m/s^2
(rimshot)
For another higher-end app, check out FUGAWI (fugawi.com).
You may want to try VMWare or Win4Lin for Windows apps on Linux, the latter being *much* more lightweight than the former. I don't know if WIn4Lin can utilize the serial ports, but VMWare certainly can.
With the "always on" mentality of broadband users, and the fact that most clients simply hide in the system tray when you click the top-right "x" on the window rather than shut down, it wouldn't surprise me if a substantial amount of bandwidth wasn't directly related to a particular client downloading.
I don't even allow caching -- too gray an area for my tastes, especially on my employer's equipment.
IMO, you're very wrong.
The university I work for has it's spies watching the border routers, logging streams. Daily, they release a "top talker" list to a select few individuals (not myself) who notify the admins of aberrant hosts. This is to stop blatant abuse, as well as cut off possibly compromised hosts.
Occasionally, I would leave gnut running in a shell when I left for the day. I'd usually end up on "top talkers" with 1-2GB of traffic when no downloads were running! This was solely the chatter of the gnutellanet in action.
Of course, I do configure my client to talk to a rather wide neighborhood, but still...
I started my post-college career at a small private software firm as an admin/consultant. It was great for a while. I pissed off the CEO, though and got canned in '99 (the party line was for "insubordination"). The joys of being an "at will" employee.
I've been working for a state university ever since. Initially, the pay was worse (by $8k/yr), however, the benefits were so much better that it more than made up for it: $75/mo for family medical/dental vs around $300; 14% of my gross given (not matched) into a retirement fund vs the pitiful maxed-out 1% 401K matching. My pay has since surpassed that of my former employer.
My department (research computing) has weathered the recession well, whereas others on campus have lost their jobs or have been shuffled to other departments. We didn't get our annual cost-of-living raise this year, but I can't complain.
Though the pay is comfortable (still not great) and the work reasonably stimulating, I don't forsee myself here for very long. In spite of the fact that I could very likely become the cranky suspenders-wearing "unix guy" from the classic Dilbert strip, a secure and well-paid fixture on campus, I will likely move on in a few years. I like variety, and I suspect I'll hop to a small ISP or local business.
But the public sector has been good for me. There's no way I'd ever have admin'ed a 64-way Origin 2000 or other various other clusters or large servers at a mom-n-pop company. Big institutions allow one to get experience with big systems. I've found that experience with large systems scales down to small systems much easier than the opposite direction. So once I find another small company, I should have a lot of fun with it.
My family lives modestly, so my current income (about $52k/yr) is equally modest and I don't need to pursue a 6-digit salary. And I'm not short-changing my life, either. I've got 20 acres of retirement land and we put good money away for kids college and nest egg. You just gotta know how to wisely manage money.
Of course, other lifestyles will vary. :) That's just my (abridged) story. I'd really recommend that everyone try employment in each sector, just so you get a feel for both sides: the secure bloat of most government institutions or the dog-eat-dog world of private comapanies. Both are interesting in their own ways, and both have good and bad points.
Well, if the British can come up with a cat detector van, there's no reason an Al Qaeda detector van can't be created. Where the web page for the Ministry of Housinge?
Oh, man... one of my college roommates had a Northgate PC. They had the best damned keyboards I've ever seen. You could drive a tank over those things and they'd be fine. Every once in a while, say, after replacing a crappy PC keayboard, I get the wild hair to try to find them on the net. But I never can locate them. Too bad -- I'd pay good money for one of those.
If I remember... once a year the EE department at Purdue would toss CRTs from the top of a parking garage. Made for interesting pictures. Don't know if the tradition is still around, but it was kinda amusing.
Tread carefully here. You can go to any truckstop and buy a 2000W inverter for about $300. If you were to buy a 2000W inverter to power your home with all its expensive electric appliances from batteries (PV, wind, etc.), you're gonna pay $2-$5k for the same output, especially if you go true sinewave. Power quality is one of the main things you buy from these systems.
Yes, I know, there are many other things in those fancy inverters that also push the price: grid intertie, overload/temperature monitoring, battery charging/conditioning, data loggin, etc.. However, the old saying "you get what you pay for" usually holds true for inverters.
That said, I frequently run a laptop off a $30 400W inverter I got at Wal Mart and I haven't had any issues yet. But I disagree with the parent post's implication that an inverter would provide "quality" power.
Example: A $10 25W compact florescent will give you the same illumination as a 100W incadescent bulb. That's a savings of 75W. If you were to keep the incadescent and go to a solar system, that one light bulb will contribute $40 to the total price if the system (panels, batteries, inverters, etc.).
Multiply that by every light bulb and appliance in your house. It adds up very fast.
I often find myself thinking about the environment. First, I started at home: changed out all incadescent lights for compact florescents; took advantage of Salt Lake's curb-side recycling program; compost everything we can. We've reduced our power bill by 25% and we can go 2-3 weeks without taking the trash cans to the curb.
I figure living as an example, and showing it doesn't take much "sacrifice", is a great way to start. You know, the whole "think global, act local" mantra.
We also patronize Native Seeds for our garden's seed supply. These folks propogate heirloom varieties of crop seed suited to the southwestern US region. Since I live in Utah (mostly desert), these varieties require less water, which is a good environmental goal. It also allows me to thumb my nose at Monsanto and other big Evil(tm) agriculture companies. :)
Also, I've looked seriously into mutual funds that target certain ethics of investors. A search on Google should yield many mutual funds which agree with your cause. Certainly not as direct as funding a proactive organization, but companies affect the environment, too.
I've personally contributed to NPR? (which does a good job at showcasing enviromental issues), the National Arbor Day Foundation (self explanatory), and the local chapter of the Humane Society (ferral pets cause local environmental damage).
I haven't put out a lot of money to these groups (maybe a couple of hundred a year, total), but every little bit counts. If everyone ponied up $50/year for a cause, the world just might improve a little.
Never tried it myself, though.
For the "I have nothing to hide yadda-yadda..." people, I just can't see why anyone would like (or, at least, wouldn't mind) to be monitored so much, even if it's a public place. It sure doesn't make me feel safe. I find government and businesses tracking me far more scary than a potential mugger on the street. To each his own, I guess.
Call me paranoid, but I often travel through town on smaller roads that I know don't have those damned "traffic" cams pointed at the intersections. I know there are probably plenty of less conspicuous cameras out there that catch me (and it will only get worse), but I exercise as much dilligance as I can without going totally crazy.
Malaysian copy shops are wonderful things. So I get to have my cake and eat it, too. I'll probably do the same once they get ahold of the 4-disc set.
Well, you should have done what I did, then. I bought a copy of the movie for $11USD from a Malaysian site. The transfer wasn't perfect, but it keeps me from rushing out to get version 1.00 of the "official release". I'll wait for version 1.3 to buy the real release -- or maybe I'll buy it for the likely price of $20 at the site I bought the first movie.
For those curious, search for David Chaum's "digicash". I think Applied Crypto talks about Chaum's stuff (or at least digital cash, anyway).
digicash.com has been registered (and even up) for years, but it never got off the ground. On paper, it sounds awesome. However, the little tinfoil-hat-wearing voice in me thinks the goverment (and credit card companies) are scared shitless of a fully anonymous e-cash system, even if it has all the benefits (authentication, repudiation, etc.) of the strong crypto system so they are making sure digicash never becomes useful.
However, if US currency does become solely an electronic and trackable medium, I'm almost certain a replacement will quickly find its way into circulation. Perhaps even good old barter.
Earlier this year when that South American country's currency went down the toilet (Brazil, maybe?), people started using some kind of tickets or vouchers since the real currency was worthless. I heard this on NPR, but I don't have a reference handy.
People give me an odd look when I tell them that I live a mostly cash-only lifestyle. Each paycheck I withdraw all but the small amount which goes on a credit card. No before you call me a hypocrite, I use the CC for transactions that are already recorded, no matter how I pay (savings bonds purchases, paying bills, etc.).
However, I always use cash for gassing up the car, for normal retail purchases (food, hardware supplies, elecetronics/software, etc.). For mail order and some bills I use USPS money orders. At least with money orders, my bank doesn't know I paid $55 for last month's water bill even if the water company does. That's just one less piece of information some company can exploit.
It's getting bad out there. I was alarmed when I bought a DVD player at Wal Mart and they entered the serial # into the register!
It's revelations like this story that make me glad I tolerate the odd looks for my perceived "odd" behavior. Some day, one of you discount card users is gonna get a notice from your health insurance about a premium increase because they know that you buy a gallon of Rocky Road icecream every week. Trust me -- it will happen some day!
My favorite still is the dubbed line "eat my socks" for "eat my shorts" delivered by Judd Nelson in the TV versiomn of The Breakfast Club. I can't understand why they still play that version. Too cheap to re-edit it, I guess.
Crocodile Hunter Sims! Or maybe Good Eats Sims.