Ultimately it is the immense responsibility of the media to present a fair picture. This seldom happens. Usually, the media itself is polarized and has its own prejudices which are driven by what will bag a larger audience. I don't think therefore that communication is the root. A case in point is the portrayal of the US war on Afghanistan. Now I know, many of you out there might not agree, but I thought that CNN's coverage of the American offensive was not without fault. They chose to overlook various, "insignificant" acts of aggression and violence that I'm sure might have transpired on hapless, innocent civilians in Afghanistan.
It is easy to accuse technology for our shortcomings, but that's not true. We must first learn to dissociate what we see on TV from what is really happening. So, the call is for depth and objectivity instead of reach.
Other than being a really cool idea, this is a great tactical move from Google. On the one hand, by restricting the number of queries made to Google, they ensure that their APIs aren't misused/compromised, it also gives companies an initiative to purchase Google products and deploy this API (probably an unrestricted-query API) on their own network. Furthermore, an API such as this will easily muscle out any sniff of a competition from other search engine wannabes. Google has managed to do all this and yet be as compliant to an Open Source initiative as possible. Remarkable.
a DoS attack no one can resist.... the/. effect of course - with half a million geeks around the world clicking on their mouse in one swift move and crash comes whatever machinery there is buttressing their site;)
Can we all just please realize that humans have been on the earth such a short period of time that we really have no idea how global climate is over a long period of time, so we have no real reference to figure out if humans are the cause of this "global warming"
To some extent that is true, post hoc ergo propter hoc and all that. But if you look at the article more closely, they mention that, and I quote..
"...The warming is most pronounced in northern latitudes, Dr. Beltrami says. On Ellesmere Island and in Alaska, ground temperatures are four to five degrees higher than they were in 1500. The rise is having a significant effect on permafrost, turning some northern areas that were once perpetually frozen into "several metres of muck," he says...."
Surely, this can't all be entirely due to the slow seething disturbances down below. I think humanity, especially post-Industrial Revolution generations have to take some quarter of the blame. It may of course be, that since the earth isn't entirely spherical and the poles are closer to the centre, they tend to get warmer "faster".
That's true. But I think a workaround for this would be to have md5 signatures computed for each of these parts and verify them before they are downloaded. I'm not sure if this isn't being done by others already.
could lead to substandard literature. I think what we need as something akin to the GNU Public License for writers as well but with some kind of a modification that enables them to collect what little royalty that can come their way at least then. The best way for writers out of this exploitation is to collectively refrain temporarily from bringing out any books through such autocratic ham-handed corporations and GPL their works instead. That way, they also reach out to a larger and (may I say) a much more enlightened audience. Not only will that emphasize their importance to the publishers but it will also, I am sure, succeed in exposing their misdemeanors.
"...Zennstrom did not provide details on how the Morpheus software could have been shut down as a result of the fee dispute. StreamCast has said that Kazaa BV was able to change settings stored deep inside Morpheus users' computers as they logged on to the file-trading network. "
Isn't this a case of intrusion into the user's computer. Wonder if they can do that.... I mean, like if its fair or not...
1. As mentioned in the story, turnitin.com acquires copyright of the content. I've read the license and nowhere do they guarantee that they shall not misuse content that's been uploaded. (Although they do prohibit any other person from using others' content... that'd be interesting actually, they'd be party to the plagiarizing!)
2. Part of the license also says that the content can be used by the US Government, particularly by a defense related agency. That only means, that the CIA could come snooping in on innocuous content and the next thing you know, they'd start suspecting us of treason and subterfuge.
Surely, any university worth its name in salt can come up with some kind of a plagiarism-detecting software system. Or better still... maybe someone could come up with an Open Source version of turnitin.com's software. What say guys?
Zia Atabay's story reminds me of the craziness and single-mindedness of David Lean's protagonists (Lawrence of Arabia, Bridge on the River Kwai). There is this megalomaniacal purpose to achieve what one has set out for, doesn't matter even if it is no longer practical. Yet, these are the men that shape history for us.. who, to satiate their ego, will not stint at anything to show us its possible to do what they do. I have the greatest admiration for Zia Atabay even though he started out to make some money of it, but eventually came clean.
Is it because they no longer consider Open Source viable or have they run starch dry of any funds, and consider it wasteful to be spending on something they feel is not going to give them a good Return of Investment in the short run.
Also, what becomes of the employees in the Open Source wing? It would be awful if they're left high and dry... probably other companies like IBM and VA Linux should try absorbing them. Gee.. I always thought Corel with its eye-candy would be a great enticement for Linux. Ah well...
Apart from the obvious technological milestone that we need to cross, such a voyage would also be extremely demanding on the volunteers, not just physically, but also sociologically. I'm reminded of the movie, Shawshank Redemption, were the protagonist is sentenced to spend one month in a dark, dinghy 7ftX8ft cellar with no light, all by himself. It can drive one to the worst depths of desperation.
Even if such a voyage were possible and volunteers do (which is bound to happen), we must seriously examine how mentally flexible they are and how adaptable would they be to a hostile environment with no longer the comforts of yellow sunlight bearing down on them, and fresh air carrying the scent of flowers around. More so, how comfortable would they be with co-existing with each other, since it is imperative that in a situation such as this, the common good far exceeds the individual benefits accrued.
Netflix isn't the only one around. There's Rentmydvd.com which incidentally also has a branch in NY. There are some others that are small-scale like Cafedvd.com that operate on a pay-per-DVD option. And back to Netflix and Rentmydvd.com, the thing I like about them is the flexibility they offer. You can, for instance, change your subscription for a particular month to a 2 DVDs a time if its finals time or you're really tight with your work. And you end up paying lesser.
All said and done, what's really needed is a lot more of the classics being converted to DVDs. Usually, if the movie has a DVD version, Netflix has them. Its the ones that don't that are hard to get. It'd be great if these folks would pursue bringing out DVD editions of these movies.
PS: There's also talk abt Netflix opening up shop elsewhere in the country.
There is some ongoing work on hibernation and process checkpointing. ACPI4Linux is an attempt at implementing the ACPI specification for Linux. This is different from APM though, and the product is quite preliminary. There's also an interesting site on process checkpointing, migration and resumption. Basically, its implemented as a kernel module that upon invocation, freezes the scheduler, dumps all process-related information into a separate hibernation partition and shuts off.
In India, it was the burgeoning growth of the ubiquitous cybercafe that brought about more or less, a revolution. True, it was the novelty of seeing and listening to an entirely different medium but as the rage caught on, people and the government began to realize the potential reach of these cybercafes so much so that for some time, it was even subsidized. Today, India isn't far off from having near-complete access to the Internet, something quite unimaginable a few years ago.
Of course, perceptions vary soon as we take America as a case study. The cybercafe culture has come to symbolize a pseudo-liberation of a youth both from the family as well as from reality. Significantly, it is usually the adolescents in a confused period who throng to these places. Even though, hard-core First Amendment fanatics might come to criticize this move, it is necessary at least temporarily, to enforce peace and order.
yeah, I know this isn't going to go down very well with all you moderators out there, but really, it isn't/.'s responsibility to shepherd naive kernel-hackers wannabes. As it says, its news for nerds. Some might call me elitist, but we ain't heading anywhere if some doofus wants to know how to hack kernels and gets a hackneyed column with a gadzillion posters (including me) sending him their 2cs. Surely, you ought to treat the average/. reader with more respect:)
From Tim Berners-Lee's first post on the WWW project:
The project started with the philosophy that much academic information should
be freely available to anyone. It aims to allow information sharing within
internationally dispersed teams, and the dissemination of information by
support groups.
What's your take on the case between Ed Felten and RIAA? What we saw there was a poaching on the right to pure academic pursuit to safeguard selfish corporate interests. Do you see the legal infrastructure evolving to give (pardon the pun) the underdogs the upper hand?
I'm not sure I quite understand why New Line decided to open the movie earlier in UK? Peter Jackson is a Kiwi and most of the other principal characters behind the movie are not Brits, except of course Tolkien himself. So, was Peter Jackson over-anxious to hear it from the Brithish high priests? Or was it plain simple strategy following Harry Potter's early release in the UK. And while on that, its interesting to ponder that British literature is all of a sudden stealing the spotlight from cheap American paperback-films. It did take Tolkien and his modern-age counterpart, Rowlings though:)
'Coz I'm sure the jerks at M$ will have some subversive script that keeps popping up windows prompting you to sign up for M$'s free Passport services. The fall of Man...
Slashdot Mirror
Ultimately it is the immense responsibility of the media to present a fair picture. This seldom happens. Usually, the media itself is polarized and has its own prejudices which are driven by what will bag a larger audience. I don't think therefore that communication is the root. A case in point is the portrayal of the US war on Afghanistan. Now I know, many of you out there might not agree, but I thought that CNN's coverage of the American offensive was not without fault. They chose to overlook various, "insignificant" acts of aggression and violence that I'm sure might have transpired on hapless, innocent civilians in Afghanistan.
It is easy to accuse technology for our shortcomings, but that's not true.
We must first learn to dissociate what we see on TV from what is really
happening. So, the call is for depth and objectivity instead of reach.
Other than being a really cool idea, this is a great tactical move from Google. On the one hand, by restricting the number of queries made to Google, they ensure that their APIs aren't misused/compromised, it also gives companies an initiative to purchase Google products and deploy this API (probably an unrestricted-query API) on their own network. Furthermore, an API such as this will easily muscle out any sniff of a competition from other search engine wannabes. Google has managed to do all this and yet be as compliant
to an Open Source initiative as possible. Remarkable.
a DoS attack no one can resist.... the /. effect of course - with half a million geeks around the world clicking on their mouse in one swift move and crash comes whatever machinery there is buttressing their site ;)
Can we all just please realize that humans have been on the earth such a short period of time that we really have no idea how global climate is over a long period of time, so we have no real reference to figure out if humans are the cause of this "global warming"
To some extent that is true, post hoc ergo propter hoc and all that. But if you look at the article more closely, they mention that, and I quote..
"...The warming is most pronounced in northern latitudes, Dr. Beltrami says. On Ellesmere Island and in Alaska, ground temperatures are four to five degrees higher than they were in 1500. The rise is having a significant effect on permafrost, turning some northern areas that were once perpetually frozen into "several metres of muck," he says...."
Surely, this can't all be entirely due to the slow seething disturbances down below. I think humanity, especially post-Industrial Revolution generations have to take some quarter of the blame. It may of course be, that since the earth isn't entirely spherical and the poles are closer to the centre, they tend to get warmer "faster".
That's true. But I think a workaround for this would be to have md5 signatures computed for each of these parts and verify them before they are downloaded. I'm not sure if this isn't being done by others already.
One of my professors in undergraduate school often quipped that IBM's OS/2 was exactly that, an OS by half.
could lead to substandard literature. I think what we need as something akin to the GNU Public License for writers as well but with some kind of a modification that enables them to collect what little royalty that can come their way at least then. The best way for writers out of this exploitation is to collectively refrain temporarily from bringing out any books through such autocratic ham-handed corporations and GPL their works instead. That way, they also reach out to a larger and (may I say) a much more enlightened audience. Not only will that emphasize their importance to the publishers but it will also, I am sure, succeed in exposing their misdemeanors.
"..."Express Checkout" on Barnes and Nobel's....
like dynamite?
"...Zennstrom did not provide details on how the Morpheus software could have been shut down as a result of the fee dispute. StreamCast has said that Kazaa BV was able to change settings stored deep inside Morpheus users' computers as they logged on to the file-trading network. "
Isn't this a case of intrusion into the user's computer. Wonder if they can do that.... I mean, like if its fair or not...
chiefly for two reasons:
1. As mentioned in the story, turnitin.com acquires copyright of the content. I've read the license and nowhere do they guarantee that they shall not misuse content that's been uploaded. (Although they do prohibit any other person from using others' content... that'd be interesting actually, they'd be party to the plagiarizing!)
2. Part of the license also says that the content can be used by the US Government, particularly by a defense related agency. That only means, that the CIA could come snooping in on innocuous content and the next thing you know, they'd start suspecting us of treason and subterfuge.
Surely, any university worth its name in salt can come up with some kind of a plagiarism-detecting software system. Or better still... maybe someone could come up with an Open Source version of turnitin.com's software. What say guys?
Zia Atabay's story reminds me of the craziness and single-mindedness of David Lean's protagonists (Lawrence of Arabia, Bridge on the River Kwai). There is this megalomaniacal purpose to achieve what one has set out for, doesn't matter even if it is no longer practical. Yet, these are the men that shape history for us.. who, to satiate their ego, will not stint at anything to show us its possible to do what they do. I have the greatest admiration for Zia Atabay even though he started out to make some money of it, but eventually came clean.
Is it because they no longer consider Open Source viable or have they run starch dry of any funds, and consider it wasteful to be spending on something they feel is not going to give them a good Return of Investment in the short run.
Also, what becomes of the employees in the Open Source wing? It would be awful if they're left high and dry... probably other companies like IBM and VA Linux should try absorbing them. Gee.. I always thought Corel with its eye-candy would be a great enticement for Linux. Ah well...
Even if such a voyage were possible and volunteers do (which is bound to happen), we must seriously examine how mentally flexible they are and how adaptable would they be to a hostile environment with no longer the comforts of yellow sunlight bearing down on them, and fresh air carrying the scent of flowers around. More so, how comfortable would they be with co-existing with each other, since it is imperative that in a situation such as this, the common good far exceeds the individual benefits accrued.
Netflix isn't the only one around. There's Rentmydvd.com which incidentally also has a branch in NY. There are some others that are small-scale like Cafedvd.com that operate on a pay-per-DVD option. And back to Netflix and Rentmydvd.com, the thing I like about them is the flexibility they offer. You can, for instance, change your subscription for a particular month to a 2 DVDs a time if its finals time or you're really tight with your work. And you end up paying lesser.
All said and done, what's really needed is a lot more of the classics being converted to DVDs. Usually, if the movie has a DVD version, Netflix has them. Its the ones that don't that are hard to get. It'd be great if these folks would pursue bringing out DVD editions of these movies.
PS: There's also talk abt Netflix opening up shop elsewhere in the country.
maybe, they should stop calling themselves Wired.
There is some ongoing work on hibernation and process checkpointing. ACPI4Linux
is an attempt at implementing the ACPI specification for Linux. This is different from APM though, and the product is quite preliminary. There's also an interesting site on process checkpointing, migration and resumption. Basically, its implemented as a kernel module that upon invocation, freezes the scheduler, dumps all process-related information into a separate hibernation partition and shuts off.
HTH,
Shankar
In India, it was the burgeoning growth of the ubiquitous cybercafe that brought about more or less, a revolution. True, it was the novelty of seeing and listening to an entirely different medium but as the rage caught on, people and the government began to realize the potential reach of these cybercafes so much so that for some time, it was even subsidized. Today, India isn't far off from having near-complete access to the Internet, something quite unimaginable a few years ago.
Of course, perceptions vary soon as we take America as a case study. The cybercafe culture has come to symbolize a pseudo-liberation of a youth both from the family as well as from reality. Significantly, it is usually the adolescents in a confused period who throng to these places. Even though, hard-core First Amendment fanatics might come to criticize this move, it is necessary at least temporarily, to enforce peace and order.
yeah, I know this isn't going to go down very well with all you moderators out there, but really, it isn't /.'s responsibility to shepherd naive kernel-hackers wannabes. As it says, its news for nerds. Some might call me elitist, but we ain't heading anywhere if some doofus wants to know how to hack kernels and gets a hackneyed column with a gadzillion posters (including me) sending him their 2cs. Surely, you ought to treat the average /. reader with more respect :)
Be Gone!
Santa Claus riding on penguins
From Tim Berners-Lee's first post on the WWW project:
The project started with the philosophy that much academic information should
be freely available to anyone. It aims to allow information sharing within
internationally dispersed teams, and the dissemination of information by
support groups.
Is someone from the RIAA listening?
Gosh must they have some kind of backup there! I'm reading this post within seconds of being posted on /., and it hasn't been hit... at least not yet.
What's your take on the case between Ed Felten and RIAA? What we saw there was a poaching on the right to pure academic pursuit to safeguard selfish corporate interests. Do you see the legal infrastructure evolving to give (pardon the pun) the underdogs the upper hand?
I'm not sure I quite understand why New Line decided to open the movie earlier in UK? Peter Jackson is a Kiwi and most of the other principal characters behind the movie are not Brits, except of course Tolkien himself. So, was Peter Jackson over-anxious to hear it from the Brithish high priests? Or was it plain simple strategy following Harry Potter's early release in the UK. And while on that, its interesting to ponder that British literature is all of a sudden stealing the spotlight from cheap American paperback-films. It did take Tolkien and his modern-age counterpart, Rowlings though :)
'Coz I'm sure the jerks at M$ will have some subversive script that keeps popping up windows prompting you to sign up for M$'s free Passport services. The fall of Man...