So, if this man could come to the US and BE TRAINED by a CITIZEN what could this man do that the CITIZEN could not?
You're kidding right? I'm guessing he could speak at least two languages, could claim to have unique contacts in India, and who knows, maybe he can dance a tango. The point is that the requirements for any job can be (and sometimes are) tailored so that only one possible condidate will meet all of the "requirements" of the position.
Take a look at some of the free job location services and think about the requirements you see in some of the listings. I bet you will find such a "tailored" list of requirements on your first try.
It's pretty clear that Bram's intention with BitTorrent was exactly for situations like this; a file is posted with a huge surge of immediate demand (i. e. slashdot linkage) and download speeds become intolerable
The better question is why don't the slashdot moderators create BitTorrent links for such stories? Hmm, I guess that would imply a modicum of respect for the bandwidth usage foisted onto their targets, so nevermind.
Why is it that the first response of just about everyone is "who cares"? Are there really that few of you who just do things because they are challenging?
There are a fairly wide variety of reasons to want to do this. The single most interesting reason for me is the ability to play *any* media using this single console. DVDs, VCDs, CDs, Streamed content, networked files, internet radio, flash, movie trailers...Anything I can play using a standard PC, *plus* i already have it connected into my system to play "Halo", "Brute Force", "Outlaw Golf", and a whole host of other games. Also, I can play all my old favorites, using various emulators...pacman, galaga, rastan, etc, etc...
All of this in a console that I already own. Why the hell would I *not* want to do this? Particularly if all it takes is a one time investment of 10 minutes getting the $10 memory card setup. Crist, it's not even a *stretch* for me to make the choice.
You know what's even better? I worked on the filesystem code for the xbox-linux project early on, before the prizes were offered. I *still* got $4500 for that work. That paid for my time and all the consoles I'll want to buy for the next 10 years. Never has a paycheck been so gratifying.
So tell me how foolish I am, berate my hobby as pointless or shortsighted. Then you go buy an xbox *and* a pc, that's fine. I'll just sit back and laugh at you.
You heard right. For anyone who hasn't heard of this there are several kinds, basically broken up by the maximum pressure. When I was involved with building automation systems this was one of the coolest things to play with (though they aren't toys).
Add a little pulverized rock into a 0.012 inch stream of water at 60,000 psi and you can cut through *anything*. Biggest thing I ever saw was a 17 inch thick slab of titanium plating. The edges end up smooth, cool (or at most warm to the touch) and, if you are cutting something really expensive (or toxic) you can reclaim 99.99% of the material you eroded away.
Waterjet is *the* coolest cutting technology in the world:) For info try: Flow Jet Edge
Wow, the DMCA huh? confirms what I've always thought...trash bins are security systems and your parents should have their a$$es sued off for making a circumvention device. Fvcking lawyers.
Mineral rights expire if not renewed regularly. If the rights are not worth renewing they don't persist forever. Systems that automatically clean themselves up are a Good Thing (TM)
I wholeheartedly agree. Why is it that we don't have a system like this for our laws? Wouldn't it make much more sense to say that no law could remain active for more than 20 years? It seems to me that this would greatly improve the laws here in the US...eliminate all the useless crud and make the legislature actually think about all the laws of the land every now and then.
As a bonus, old laws don't sit around and become cruft. Don't even ask me why I can't till my field with an elephant...I just know I can't.
There are so many metaphors for DeCSS being thrown around that I hardly know where to start. Most of these seem to be subtlely incorrect, not implying the proper levels of ownership and copyright respect. Consider:
DeCSS:DVD::Crowbar:House Close, but no cigar. We presume that for this use of a crowbar to be legal you must own or have rights to access the house. It is unclear which is meant simply because a house bears no resemblance to intelectual property. In other words, this house is real property...it can only be in the hands of one person at a time, that person has the right to access his property.
DeCSS:DVD::Criminal:Victim Not even close. Besides the fact that DeCSS is a process and Criminal is a person, A criminal's victim is presumed to have rights. What rights does a DVD posses? None. As with the previous one, this analogy *also* fails because of the differing nature of intellectual property and IP crimes to real property and real property crimes (theft).
Hmm, so what *are* the properties of the items with which we want to relate?
IP: the property held by IP owner (the content)
protection method: CSS, a protective wrapper around IP stored within a DVD.
circumvention method: DeCSS, a utility to allow access to "wrapped" IP
content media storage: DVD
content access method: DVD player
the DVD represents two distinct things. Both the protected media and the right to access it are conveyed by the ownership of a DVD. This is an important distinction. No, i'd go so far as to say it is *the* important distinction. Consider the implications of it being otherwise.
Consider a theatre. The provision of media and the right to access it are separated (ticket and auditorium). I would expect it to be *clearly* indicated if purchasing the ticket (right to watch) did not also purchase access (access to watch). Wouldn't you? I suspect that ownership under every law in every common law county implies both rights simultaneously. Not doing so probably requires a special contract which specifically retracts the right to access for the property.
Since I have never signed (nor have I even seen) such a restricting contract governing my ownership of my DVD's, I must assume that my purchase of a DVD includes both the right to watch and access to watch.
The owners of the IP contained in DVD's are trying to obscure the fact that they want the courts to revoke an implied right. These IP owners want to separate these two rights, placing the right to watch with the DVD and the right to access with the dvd player. Where did I give up my *standard* (IP) property rights which would allow this?
Lets try a more coherent comparison. We need to find a system where right to access and right to view are separable. I posit that the standard book is a fine example. Suppose:
I enter a book store, pick up a book, read the first page and decide I'd like to buy it to finish reading it. I go to the counter with the book and pay for it, getting a polite "thank you" from the store owner. When I get home, I go sit in my favorite chair, open the book to find that all the pages are blank. In confusion I search the book for the reading instructions. Finding none I call the bookstore, where I am informed that I can only read the book under a special kind of light. The bookstore just happens to have those lights installed. The store owner kindly offers to sell me a lamp so I can read my book, seeming confused at my annoyance. I however look online and find out that a massive tacheon flux through the book causes the ink to become visible for 24 hours. I do a bit more research and find a diagram showing how to create a tacheon emmitter using duct tape and chicken wire. Now, I can read my book. Have I committed a crime?
I can't think of an example where that doesn't work in a 1,5,10,25 system
The reason you can't think of any examples in the 1,5,10,25 system is because 10 and 25 are both multiples of five.
Oh come on, it just requires a slight change in your definition of optimal. Let optimal in the realm of change be defined as the amount of change which first produces the correct total sum, and second, which weighs the least.
so by your method 30 cents would be a quarter and a nickel == 10.670g, but using 3 dimes = 6.804g.:)
Re:SCO has Dirty Hands. Will not be able to collec
on
SCO To Show Copied Code
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Hmm. I've seen this twice now, and it kind of bothers me. Standard disclaimers apply...IANAL.
Distribution under anything but a NDA strikes me as incompatible with a Trade Secret. Distributing your own Trade Secrets under the GPL is likely to get a judge to laugh at you.
I think this is called "poisoning the well" (per luxuriam). The basic idea is that someone will prevent you from making a defence by polluting your own resources (usually without your knowledge). I have no idea if it is illegal to do this in and of itself, but that doesn't matter at all.
The fact of SCO's release of their IP under the GPL on day X does not prevent them from prosecuting violations of their property rights which occured prior to that date.
Don't get me wrong, I completely disagree with SCO's stand here and their method of prosecuting the violation (not exactly defining the code under discussion), but that doesn't mean they don't have a legitimate complaint
I'm not sure it is in their interest to give preference to either group
Think again. As long as people don't really notice then they can keep a higher subscription rate with this system.
The active people, those who like and use the system often, are less likely to give it up over longer wait times. Those people probably have more movies they want to watch, so they can pick those with the lower wait times.
The inactive folks, those who rarely use the system, must be provided low wait times in order to keep them subscribed. The Surest way to make them leave is to tell them they have a long wait for the one thing they wanted.
This system seems designed to maintain the highest subscription rate, which is exactly what I would expect.
Does anyone who has used templates have anything to say about templates and bloat?
Absolutely. Templates only create code "bloat" in one of two situations. The first is high coupling between algorythm and it's underlying type and second is poor implementation.
The basics: Use templates to perform the type specific portions of an algorythm, and use a common base class for the template which does all of the generic work. The less generic work in the algo the more code "bloat" will happen. But again, if the algo isn't generic then you would have needed multiple implementations just using c...you loose nothing by using templates, and you gain automatic extension to new types.
class MyBase { protected:
void genericPart(); };
template class MyTemplate : public MyBase { public:
inline void typeSpecificPart() { //do type specific stuff
genericPart();
} };
void MyBase::genericPart() { //perform generic algo components //when type specific data/behavior needed call
typeSpecificPart(); }
this works beautifully for most kinds of generic containers, since it places all of the type checking within the type aware template, but puts all of the generic container logic in a common set of routines. Properly implemented this can make a typesafe stack, queue, list, set, etc, routine which is *exactly* the same size and performance as a completely non type-safe container.
Understanding and properly using templates allows you to program at a higher level of abstraction. It will make you more marketable, more capable of effectively solving problems, and more likely to generate reusable solutions. Don't just dismiss them...if you think they aren't useful then you probably don't understand their use.
First of all, this seems like a reasonable thing to do in addition to other backup methods. What is it going to hurt you? lose a little bandwidth at night when no one is using it anyway? Whatever.
I do have visions of some poor soul generating a public and private key for this system and only storing the private key data on the machine being backed up:
"well, the fire took out everything, but not to worry, I've been using a distributed backup service for months now. We can just get online, download the data and decry...*dammit*"
From the mailing list discussion: > A user who can install a working xine package in 3 clicks won't care it runs > 0.001% slower, if it just works. A user who wants a movie player to install with 3 clicks can go use windows.
[rant mode engaged]
What is it that makes developers think that ease of installation and use isn't important? Why do you think Windows has done so well?
I've tried most of the major distributions, and I've finally ended up at gentoo. Sure it's a little bit of an uphill battle to get it initially installed, but the packaging system is so nice. One command and xine and all it's dependancies are installed...from sources...optimized for my machine.
Why should I have to do several hours of research trying to figure out how to get some piece of software to run? Shouldn't it just run out of the "box". Why do developers *insist* on foisting all this crap on their end users?
If you are going to distribute something distribute it *well*. If your response (as the distribution maintainer) is "its free so deal" then you shouldn't be making distributions. Either do it right or don't do it...don't do half measures.
1) most open source projects almost never reach 1.0. Even the successful ones. The vast majority continue stacking 9s on the end of their version numbers for all eternity
2) People have always been assholes, we just communicate faster and more widely now so you see it a lot more
3) People don't care if something is free or not. If it doesn't do what it seems like it should in a convenient way they will complain. I used to program control systems for industrial automation. When I started I would add useful features *beyond* those specifically called out in the requirements docs. Free. No cost. Worst plan ever...if it doesn't work for whatever reason the clients still complained just as much as about the parts the paid for.
Never give people something for free...people suck...if you give them an inch they want a ruler to make sure you gave it all to them. If you *do* give something to them for free you need to simply expect ingratitude. Welcome to human nature.
I fail to see why some magazine should be able to scan the public at large with no recourse, but I cannot investigate an issue that brought down my network for several hours.
Simple: 1) they have more money than you. 2) they didn't get caught.
Could it be that the effect in question has been patented for some other use? I'm not familiar with the patent quagmire, but multiple similar uses for the same physical phenomenon (light absorbtion into silicon) might be the issue...
...how do the linux developers know the problem is with the kernel, and not with the binary module? To aid in debugging, they put limits on what binary only drivers can do, which narrows the range of problems.
This is not true. Kernel developers will make no effort whatsoever to debug a tainted kernel (one in which a closed binary module was loaded). There is no intention to aid in debugging, because debugging has never and will never occur when the binary only module is loaded. Find another reason why you think this was done because this isn't it.
-SpeedBump
Re:Who needs domain names when you've got Google?
on
Plans For New TLDs
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· Score: 1
I google for websites much more often than using their domain name anyway
well, that's great and all, but what about those of us who don't have static IP addresses. I realize we aren't as important as you but perhaps some consistant naming system other than dotted quad is reasonable.
NASA should create a rogue nation for the explicit purpose of competiting with us to get to Mars
Hmm. What a great idea...or even better, lets just find an *existing* nation to do it. What do we need. Lots of natural resources, a well funded government, "volunteers" to fly the ships, little to no concern for human life.
Perfect. I have just the place. Vast territories, billions of people, government run economy, human rights violations on a weekly basis, and they seem to be gearing up to go into space as we speak.
It's about filtering, not ownership. Most *good* libraries do have material which they restrict to adults only (go ask for a copy of "The Joy of Sex" or even "Little Black Sambo"). This adult material has a physical presence and can, therefore, be physically restricted.
The internet doesn't allow this easy categorization. The librarians don't get to look over the material before putting it "on the shelves". This causes a serious problem with no good answer.
Option #1: Censor all questionable content.
Well, that's great and all, but as an adult I should be able to ask for, and recieve, all that other stuff. Who decides what I see and what I don't? When they decide books like:
Catcher in the Rye Carrie Brave New World The Color Purple Flowers for Algernon Forever
aren't for children shouldn't I be able to check them out and read/see them?
Option #2: Censor nothing.
Well, hell, that's really not good either. I'd like to avoid the situation of having (as someone else pointed out earlier) my 5 year old seeing some prankster's idea of a joke. Shouldn't I be able to decide when my child is and is not "old enough" to make their own decisions?
Option #3: Carry on as usual.
What we've done is made all libraries into "good" libraries via this medium called the internet. Why not do what the good libraries have been doing for years. Restrict the publicly available works and have a system to allow unrestricted access to those people who want it.
Great, I hear everyone out there saying "But then I'm monitored when I do something 'the man' doesn't like". Big deal. That's already an issue. They already keep track of who checks out books. There are still ways to garantee privacy, we just have to apply them to this new problem.
--
As an aside, I have to wonder why the *obviously* pornographic sites aren't required to be easilly identifiable and filterable. You don't go into the grocery store and get smacked in the face with a poster of two dogs, a rooster, three women, and a midget all engaged in some horribly distrubing sexual tryst. Why can't we push all the pornography into a single.xxx TLD (or even better a specific set of IP ranges) and provide a simple, effective means of simple filtering. This is a trivial change, yet it allows me to:
1) eliminate the vast majority of spam 2) filter all sites containing this material from my business, home, etc. 3) have some idea what I'm in for when I see a link, rather than just the unknown (www.whitehouse.com)
Set it up, and then change the charter of the other TLDs. I'm sure some kind of reasonable compromise can be made on what is and isn't pornography. We do it in the movies, we do it in print, why not online?
I roomed with the guy who wrote CHRHack back in college (hey Mike, what's up). I just can't play nethack now without the beautiful characters. I see on the options page where it displays the dungeon characters but there's no way to edit it. Arrg.
There should be a setting somewhere to tell it to use the "alternate characters" so I can see fountains and thrones the way they were meant to be:)
I have a divx version of "Legally Blonde" (yes, I own a copy of the dvd) which is almost indistinguishable from the dvd. That divx encode is stored on a bright pink 700 Meg CDR.
Now before you go around saying that quality is subjective, and I don't know what to look for, I'd like to mention that I work in the video capture and compression industry (coding drivers for various products, including mpeg-2 [en|de]coders). I'm familiar and, generally, fairly sensitised to the various artifacts resulting from DCT and wavelet compression, interlaced video, scaling, etc.
It sounds like you are used to seeing poor quality encodes. There is an art to getting the best quality out of the bandwidth allocated.
-SpeedBump
PS: I should concede, though, that the "Legally Blonde" divx that I have probably benefitted from the ability to do multi-pass encoding.
Either this was the easiest way to implement it (unlikely) or they saw that the real margins for this market are in selling digital paper on an ongoing basis (much more likely).
One of the problems with these kind of devices is that they (like mice) use a completely relative coordinate system. The dots allow you to have specific paper for various tasks. Imagine properly formatted page for email. It has TO, FROM, CC, BCC, Subject, etc. The dots give an absolute position and information about what the format of the page is. Thus, when the computer parses the data it can tell that this was an email, and it knows which part of your scribble was the subject, the body, and all the rest.
My question is can they make it to work with *both* the dots and without. Clearly it's technologically feasible...optical mice can work on most surfaces these days. If so I can use a bluetooth enabled version for all of my device types:
1) absolute coordinates with onscreen feedback
as graphics tablets, and possibly touch-screens 2) relative coordinates with onscreen feedback
as a replacement mouse 3) absolute coordinates with writing trail
on special paper (email/calendar/contact/art) 4) relative coordinates with writing trail
on regular paper (free-form notes/authoring)
Slashdot Mirror
So, if this man could come to the US and BE TRAINED by a CITIZEN what could this man do that the CITIZEN could not?
You're kidding right? I'm guessing he could speak at least two languages, could claim to have unique contacts in India, and who knows, maybe he can dance a tango. The point is that the requirements for any job can be (and sometimes are) tailored so that only one possible condidate will meet all of the "requirements" of the position.
Take a look at some of the free job location services and think about the requirements you see in some of the listings. I bet you will find such a "tailored" list of requirements on your first try.
It's pretty clear that Bram's intention with BitTorrent was exactly for situations like this; a file is posted with a huge surge of immediate demand (i. e. slashdot linkage) and download speeds become intolerable
The better question is why don't the slashdot moderators create BitTorrent links for such stories? Hmm, I guess that would imply a modicum of respect for the bandwidth usage foisted onto their targets, so nevermind.
*Sigh*
Why is it that the first response of just about everyone is "who cares"? Are there really that few of you who just do things because they are challenging?
There are a fairly wide variety of reasons to want to do this. The single most interesting reason for me is the ability to play *any* media using this single console. DVDs, VCDs, CDs, Streamed content, networked files, internet radio, flash, movie trailers...Anything I can play using a standard PC, *plus* i already have it connected into my system to play "Halo", "Brute Force", "Outlaw Golf", and a whole host of other games. Also, I can play all my old favorites, using various emulators...pacman, galaga, rastan, etc, etc...
All of this in a console that I already own. Why the hell would I *not* want to do this? Particularly if all it takes is a one time investment of 10 minutes getting the $10 memory card setup. Crist, it's not even a *stretch* for me to make the choice.
You know what's even better? I worked on the filesystem code for the xbox-linux project early on, before the prizes were offered. I *still* got $4500 for that work. That paid for my time and all the consoles I'll want to buy for the next 10 years. Never has a paycheck been so gratifying.
So tell me how foolish I am, berate my hobby as pointless or shortsighted. Then you go buy an xbox *and* a pc, that's fine. I'll just sit back and laugh at you.
You heard right. For anyone who hasn't heard of this there are several kinds, basically broken up by the maximum pressure. When I was involved with building automation systems this was one of the coolest things to play with (though they aren't toys).
:) For info try:
Add a little pulverized rock into a 0.012 inch stream of water at 60,000 psi and you can cut through *anything*. Biggest thing I ever saw was a 17 inch thick slab of titanium plating. The edges end up smooth, cool (or at most warm to the touch) and, if you are cutting something really expensive (or toxic) you can reclaim 99.99% of the material you eroded away.
Waterjet is *the* coolest cutting technology in the world
Flow
Jet Edge
Wow, the DMCA huh? confirms what I've always thought...trash bins are security systems and your parents should have their a$$es sued off for making a circumvention device. Fvcking lawyers.
Mineral rights expire if not renewed regularly. If the rights are not worth renewing they don't persist forever. Systems that automatically clean themselves up are a Good Thing (TM)
I wholeheartedly agree. Why is it that we don't have a system like this for our laws? Wouldn't it make much more sense to say that no law could remain active for more than 20 years? It seems to me that this would greatly improve the laws here in the US...eliminate all the useless crud and make the legislature actually think about all the laws of the land every now and then.
As a bonus, old laws don't sit around and become cruft. Don't even ask me why I can't till my field with an elephant...I just know I can't.
There are so many metaphors for DeCSS being thrown around that I hardly know where to start. Most of these seem to be subtlely incorrect, not implying the proper levels of ownership and copyright respect. Consider:
DeCSS:DVD::Crowbar:House
Close, but no cigar. We presume that for this use of a crowbar to be legal you must own or have rights to access the house. It is unclear which is meant simply because a house bears no resemblance to intelectual property. In other words, this house is real property...it can only be in the hands of one person at a time, that person has the right to access his property.
DeCSS:DVD::Criminal:Victim
Not even close. Besides the fact that DeCSS is a process and Criminal is a person, A criminal's victim is presumed to have rights. What rights does a DVD posses? None. As with the previous one, this analogy *also* fails because of the differing nature of intellectual property and IP crimes to real property and real property crimes (theft).
Hmm, so what *are* the properties of the items with which we want to relate?
IP:
the property held by IP owner (the content)
protection method:
CSS, a protective wrapper around IP stored within a DVD.
circumvention method:
DeCSS, a utility to allow access to "wrapped" IP
content media storage:
DVD
content access method:
DVD player
the DVD represents two distinct things. Both the protected media and the right to access it are conveyed by the ownership of a DVD. This is an important distinction. No, i'd go so far as to say it is *the* important distinction. Consider the implications of it being otherwise.
Consider a theatre. The provision of media and the right to access it are separated (ticket and auditorium). I would expect it to be *clearly* indicated if purchasing the ticket (right to watch) did not also purchase access (access to watch). Wouldn't you? I suspect that ownership under every law in every common law county implies both rights simultaneously. Not doing so probably requires a special contract which specifically retracts the right to access for the property.
Since I have never signed (nor have I even seen) such a restricting contract governing my ownership of my DVD's, I must assume that my purchase of a DVD includes both the right to watch and access to watch.
The owners of the IP contained in DVD's are trying to obscure the fact that they want the courts to revoke an implied right. These IP owners want to separate these two rights, placing the right to watch with the DVD and the right to access with the dvd player. Where did I give up my *standard* (IP) property rights which would allow this?
Lets try a more coherent comparison. We need to find a system where right to access and right to view are separable. I posit that the standard book is a fine example. Suppose:
I enter a book store, pick up a book, read the first page and decide I'd like to buy it to finish reading it. I go to the counter with the book and pay for it, getting a polite "thank you" from the store owner. When I get home, I go sit in my favorite chair, open the book to find that all the pages are blank. In confusion I search the book for the reading instructions. Finding none I call the bookstore, where I am informed that I can only read the book under a special kind of light. The bookstore just happens to have those lights installed. The store owner kindly offers to sell me a lamp so I can read my book, seeming confused at my annoyance. I however look online and find out that a massive tacheon flux through the book causes the ink to become visible for 24 hours. I do a bit more research and find a diagram showing how to create a tacheon emmitter using duct tape and chicken wire. Now, I can read my book. Have I committed a crime?
IP:
the content of the book.
protection method:
special ink
circumvention method:
tacheon emmitter
content storage media:
book
content acc
The reason you can't think of any examples in the 1,5,10,25 system is because 10 and 25 are both multiples of five.
Oh come on, it just requires a slight change in your definition of optimal. Let optimal in the realm of change be defined as the amount of change which first produces the correct total sum, and second, which weighs the least.
weights (as of 1996):
$0.01 = 2.500g
$0.05 = 5.000g
$0.10 = 2.268g
$0.25 = 5.670g
so by your method 30 cents would be a quarter and a nickel == 10.670g, but using 3 dimes = 6.804g.
Hmm. I've seen this twice now, and it kind of bothers me. Standard disclaimers apply...IANAL.
Distribution under anything but a NDA strikes me as incompatible with a Trade Secret. Distributing your own Trade Secrets under the GPL is likely to get a judge to laugh at you.
I think this is called "poisoning the well" (per luxuriam). The basic idea is that someone will prevent you from making a defence by polluting your own resources (usually without your knowledge). I have no idea if it is illegal to do this in and of itself, but that doesn't matter at all.
The fact of SCO's release of their IP under the GPL on day X does not prevent them from prosecuting violations of their property rights which occured prior to that date.
Don't get me wrong, I completely disagree with SCO's stand here and their method of prosecuting the violation (not exactly defining the code under discussion), but that doesn't mean they don't have a legitimate complaint
I'm not sure it is in their interest to give preference to either group
Think again. As long as people don't really notice then they can keep a higher subscription rate with this system.
The active people, those who like and use the system often, are less likely to give it up over longer wait times. Those people probably have more movies they want to watch, so they can pick those with the lower wait times.
The inactive folks, those who rarely use the system, must be provided low wait times in order to keep them subscribed. The Surest way to make them leave is to tell them they have a long wait for the one thing they wanted.
This system seems designed to maintain the highest subscription rate, which is exactly what I would expect.
Does anyone who has used templates have anything to say about templates and bloat?
//do type specific stuff
//perform generic algo components
//when type specific data/behavior needed call
Absolutely. Templates only create code "bloat" in one of two situations. The first is high coupling between algorythm and it's underlying type and second is poor implementation.
The basics: Use templates to perform the type specific portions of an algorythm, and use a common base class for the template which does all of the generic work. The less generic work in the algo the more code "bloat" will happen. But again, if the algo isn't generic then you would have needed multiple implementations just using c...you loose nothing by using templates, and you gain automatic extension to new types.
class MyBase {
protected:
void genericPart();
};
template
class MyTemplate : public MyBase {
public:
inline void typeSpecificPart() {
genericPart();
}
};
void MyBase::genericPart() {
typeSpecificPart();
}
this works beautifully for most kinds of generic containers, since it places all of the type checking within the type aware template, but puts all of the generic container logic in a common set of routines. Properly implemented this can make a typesafe stack, queue, list, set, etc, routine which is *exactly* the same size and performance as a completely non type-safe container.
Understanding and properly using templates allows you to program at a higher level of abstraction. It will make you more marketable, more capable of effectively solving problems, and more likely to generate reusable solutions. Don't just dismiss them...if you think they aren't useful then you probably don't understand their use.
-SpeedBump
First of all, this seems like a reasonable thing to do in addition to other backup methods. What is it going to hurt you? lose a little bandwidth at night when no one is using it anyway? Whatever.
I do have visions of some poor soul generating a public and private key for this system and only storing the private key data on the machine being backed up:
"well, the fire took out everything, but not to worry, I've been using a distributed backup service for months now. We can just get online, download the data and decry...*dammit*"
From the mailing list discussion:
> A user who can install a working xine package in 3 clicks won't care it runs
> 0.001% slower, if it just works.
A user who wants a movie player to install with 3 clicks can go use windows.
[rant mode engaged]
What is it that makes developers think that ease of installation and use isn't important? Why do you think Windows has done so well?
I've tried most of the major distributions, and I've finally ended up at gentoo. Sure it's a little bit of an uphill battle to get it initially installed, but the packaging system is so nice. One command and xine and all it's dependancies are installed...from sources...optimized for my machine.
Why should I have to do several hours of research trying to figure out how to get some piece of software to run? Shouldn't it just run out of the "box". Why do developers *insist* on foisting all this crap on their end users?
If you are going to distribute something distribute it *well*. If your response (as the distribution maintainer) is "its free so deal" then you shouldn't be making distributions . Either do it right or don't do it...don't do half measures.
Several comments here:
1) most open source projects almost never reach 1.0. Even the successful ones. The vast majority continue stacking 9s on the end of their version numbers for all eternity
2) People have always been assholes, we just communicate faster and more widely now so you see it a lot more
3) People don't care if something is free or not. If it doesn't do what it seems like it should in a convenient way they will complain. I used to program control systems for industrial automation. When I started I would add useful features *beyond* those specifically called out in the requirements docs. Free. No cost. Worst plan ever...if it doesn't work for whatever reason the clients still complained just as much as about the parts the paid for.
Never give people something for free...people suck...if you give them an inch they want a ruler to make sure you gave it all to them. If you *do* give something to them for free you need to simply expect ingratitude. Welcome to human nature.
All of these are illegal under the DMCA.
IANAL, but I'm certain they are all legal with the copyright owners permission...they are, after all, working at the behest of the copyright owner.
I fail to see why some magazine should be able to scan the public at large with no recourse, but I cannot investigate an issue that brought down my network for several hours.
Simple:
1) they have more money than you.
2) they didn't get caught.
Could it be that the effect in question has been patented for some other use? I'm not familiar with the patent quagmire, but multiple similar uses for the same physical phenomenon (light absorbtion into silicon) might be the issue...
...how do the linux developers know the problem is with the kernel, and not with the binary module? To aid in debugging, they put limits on what binary only drivers can do, which narrows the range of problems.
This is not true. Kernel developers will make no effort whatsoever to debug a tainted kernel (one in which a closed binary module was loaded). There is no intention to aid in debugging, because debugging has never and will never occur when the binary only module is loaded. Find another reason why you think this was done because this isn't it.
-SpeedBump
I google for websites much more often than using their domain name anyway
well, that's great and all, but what about those of us who don't have static IP addresses. I realize we aren't as important as you but perhaps some consistant naming system other than dotted quad is reasonable.
NASA should create a rogue nation for the explicit purpose of competiting with us to get to Mars
Hmm. What a great idea...or even better, lets just find an *existing* nation to do it. What do we need. Lots of natural resources, a well funded government, "volunteers" to fly the ships, little to no concern for human life.
Perfect. I have just the place. Vast territories, billions of people, government run economy, human rights violations on a weekly basis, and they seem to be gearing up to go into space as we speak.
Maybe I should start learning Chinese.
It's about filtering, not ownership. Most *good* libraries do have material which they restrict to adults only (go ask for a copy of "The Joy of Sex" or even "Little Black Sambo"). This adult material has a physical presence and can, therefore, be physically restricted.
.xxx TLD (or even better a specific set of IP ranges) and provide a simple, effective means of simple filtering. This is a trivial change, yet it allows me to:
The internet doesn't allow this easy categorization. The librarians don't get to look over the material before putting it "on the shelves". This causes a serious problem with no good answer.
Option #1: Censor all questionable content.
Well, that's great and all, but as an adult I should be able to ask for, and recieve, all that other stuff. Who decides what I see and what I don't? When they decide books like:
Catcher in the Rye
Carrie
Brave New World
The Color Purple
Flowers for Algernon
Forever
aren't for children shouldn't I be able to check them out and read/see them?
Option #2: Censor nothing.
Well, hell, that's really not good either. I'd like to avoid the situation of having (as someone else pointed out earlier) my 5 year old seeing some prankster's idea of a joke. Shouldn't I be able to decide when my child is and is not "old enough" to make their own decisions?
Option #3: Carry on as usual.
What we've done is made all libraries into "good" libraries via this medium called the internet. Why not do what the good libraries have been doing for years. Restrict the publicly available works and have a system to allow unrestricted access to those people who want it.
Great, I hear everyone out there saying "But then I'm monitored when I do something 'the man' doesn't like". Big deal. That's already an issue. They already keep track of who checks out books. There are still ways to garantee privacy, we just have to apply them to this new problem.
--
As an aside, I have to wonder why the *obviously* pornographic sites aren't required to be easilly identifiable and filterable. You don't go into the grocery store and get smacked in the face with a poster of two dogs, a rooster, three women, and a midget all engaged in some horribly distrubing sexual tryst. Why can't we push all the pornography into a single
1) eliminate the vast majority of spam
2) filter all sites containing this material from my business, home, etc.
3) have some idea what I'm in for when I see a link, rather than just the unknown (www.whitehouse.com)
Set it up, and then change the charter of the other TLDs. I'm sure some kind of reasonable compromise can be made on what is and isn't pornography. We do it in the movies, we do it in print, why not online?
And then you can use the AAlib to render it back into beautiful ASCII graphics.
I roomed with the guy who wrote CHRHack back in college (hey Mike, what's up). I just can't play nethack now without the beautiful characters. I see on the options page where it displays the dungeon characters but there's no way to edit it. Arrg.
:)
:)
There should be a setting somewhere to tell it to use the "alternate characters" so I can see fountains and thrones the way they were meant to be
The "Mines" look so much better that way too.
Nethack rules!
I have a divx version of "Legally Blonde" (yes, I own a copy of the dvd) which is almost indistinguishable from the dvd. That divx encode is stored on a bright pink 700 Meg CDR.
Now before you go around saying that quality is subjective, and I don't know what to look for, I'd like to mention that I work in the video capture and compression industry (coding drivers for various products, including mpeg-2 [en|de]coders). I'm familiar and, generally, fairly sensitised to the various artifacts resulting from DCT and wavelet compression, interlaced video, scaling, etc.
It sounds like you are used to seeing poor quality encodes. There is an art to getting the best quality out of the bandwidth allocated.
-SpeedBump
PS: I should concede, though, that the "Legally Blonde" divx that I have probably benefitted from the ability to do multi-pass encoding.
Either this was the easiest way to implement it (unlikely) or they saw that the real margins for this market are in selling digital paper on an ongoing basis (much more likely).
One of the problems with these kind of devices is that they (like mice) use a completely relative coordinate system. The dots allow you to have specific paper for various tasks. Imagine properly formatted page for email. It has TO, FROM, CC, BCC, Subject, etc. The dots give an absolute position and information about what the format of the page is. Thus, when the computer parses the data it can tell that this was an email, and it knows which part of your scribble was the subject, the body, and all the rest.
My question is can they make it to work with *both* the dots and without. Clearly it's technologically feasible...optical mice can work on most surfaces these days. If so I can use a bluetooth enabled version for all of my device types:
1) absolute coordinates with onscreen feedback
as graphics tablets, and possibly touch-screens
2) relative coordinates with onscreen feedback
as a replacement mouse
3) absolute coordinates with writing trail
on special paper (email/calendar/contact/art)
4) relative coordinates with writing trail
on regular paper (free-form notes/authoring)