Look and listen closely. Wahlberg travels from ~2100 (2039? close enough) to 2400 something. He finds Planet of Apes.
While on PoA, he finds ruins of a Ship Looking for Him (SLH). Female Protagonist Ape comments at one point "that's impossible, these ruins are thousands of years old" [highlight added]. This means, SLH crashed at Some Unknown Time, BC. The ape takeover happened a long time ago, and if Wahlberg's character wasn't such a dunce he would have realized this.
Anyway, so he travels back in time, but not far enough... he's still in the new, Ape-ridden timeline (although why exactly apes would have an exactly identical history is silly beyond belief). He needs to keep travelling an unknown number of millenia in the past (till he reaches SUT, BC) to put a stop to the problem.
Simple, stock time travel. I think you guys need to watch more Back to the Future, and play a lot more Chrono Trigger.
First off I thought the movie was really mediocre. If that good. Guy lands on a planet with talking, sapient apes and is only a little stunned? Bleah. He should have been freaked out.
Anyway, do listen to what they say. The ending was completely predictable, and Wahlberg's character was an idiot for not putting 2 + 2 together.
The one female Ape who was helping them (sorry, I don't remember any of the character's names;-)) told Wahlberg that the ruins (of the ship) were thousands of years old. Now if he came from around 2100 sometime to 2400 sometime (judging from the clock displayed in the pod, another silly issue), then they crashed a very long time ago. (Like I'm going to believe they could build that sort of technology that could last that long, riiight. Power source maybe. Computers no.)
So basically he deserved what he got for not thinking. As has been explained, it was Earth all along (like we ever doubted, with the flora and fauna being so familiar). Ruins 1000's of years old obviously affected a large part of known history (how much wasn't given).
What I find also incomprehensibly stupid is the fact that everything developed identically with apes as it would have with humans. I'm sure I'm not the only one. America, s/human/ape/g? Bah.
IANAC(ryptographer), but this isn't quite as "simple" as you make it out, regardless.
Your first assumption is bad, to start with. Someone can always "just use more bits". Since OTP's are usually transported in whole, using a million bits for the offset isn't going to be an unduly burden. You could fit that on a 3.5" floppy with room to spare.
Now, a million bits is a lot of bits. Let's see... 2^(1024*1024) = 6.74e315653, if my calculations are correct. For reference, there are only about 1e130 atoms in the universe. Saying you could do a million comparisons per second (grab the PI subset, XOR, compare with your "known" string), you need 6.74e315647 seconds to search the keyspace (given there are no repetitions in PI). Now, IANAP(hysicist) either, but my guess is that's more time than you've got left in the universe on a good day.
So your third point isn't at all reasonable. And that merely assumes someone is using a single OTP. It also assumes they're using a simple XOR and not doing some convolution to produce multiple resulting pads, etc.
Finally, your forth point is much handwaving. Any given data might be valid. With a OTP, you can't tell! You could probably find many valid headers in even a much more limited keyspace: likely those sequence of bytes could at one offset appear to be a perfectly valid JPEG, the next a word document, the next a random stream of numbers. And who says it isn't the random number stream that's the right one?
So while this may seem like an obvious way to defeat it on the surface, it's much more time consuming and less productive than you might think, especially on arbitrary encrypted data.
IANAM(athemetician) either (I'm a programmer, dagnabit;-)), but I think the point here is that an arbitrary "slice of PI" is a random sequence. And with the properties of a pad, you're still going to be spending a very long time trying to decrypt it.
If I could get Linux for this thing, I could finally have the Ultimate Party Box. Just think:
Movies - DVDs are obviously there already. With Linux we could probably add VCDs.
Music - CDs, add mp3s, oggs, etc. Hook it up to some funky FX hardware and write some visualizers....
Games - Most obviously PS2 and PS1 games. Throw into the mix emulators for n64, snes, NES, genesis, MAME, etc., and you've got a box that can play almost every console game ever.
Mmmm. Throw in broadband and start streaming music and doing massive multiplayer gaming... mmm.
For SCEA reps who may be reading this: Linux is how to ensure the PlayStation 2 becomes and stays the market leader, and those are the reasons why.
The "whole point" is being top dog by attracting customers, usually done by offering a better product.
No, it's not. The whole point of being a business is for one single, unswerving goal: to make as much money as you possibly can. Customers are irrelevant, except for sucking as much money out of them as possible. Product is irrelevant, except where used to get customers to give you as much money as possible.
Don't take the romantic view of businesses "serving the public," "making a better product," or any such nonsense. They have no interest in making something better. They merely balance what they must put out against what they bring in, such that they're bringing in the most and putting out the least. If a given company could sell you a little box that did nothing for $1000, don't you think they would? (Jokes about Windows PCs aside;-)) Tech support? Customer service? Think that means they care about you? They don't. These things are merely to keep you coming back, and to comply with any laws that keep them from being sued into the ground, etc.
Is the point of a 100 meter race to beat your opponents mercilessly about the knees with a lead pipe so they can't run as well as you? No (unless you're Tonya Harding), the point is to run faster than they do.
The point of a 100 meter race is to get to the end before everyone else. There are usually usually rules about interference... and if there aren't, it would be foolish not to take every advantage against your opponent you could get, right? And even if there were, if you don't get caught, it's not a rule, right? (There are, of course, honorable people, who wish to win "fairly," but if the norm becomes interfering with competitors, then they'll either quit, seeing that winning "fairly" is impossible, or they'll quickly change their definition of what is fair.)
Same with business, except I've yet to see an honorable business. There is no law, unless you get caught. Every advantage is to be taken, to make as much money as quickly as possible. The ultimate logical end of this is to control the entire market, crushing competition, and extracting as much money as possible from everyone else.
I used to think differently about these things. Then I got to know some business people. Now I detest it all more than ever before.
Actually, it was "Sid" in this movie, for some odd reason.
And in fact, Cid was in FF1... he's the guy that tells you something like "If I had a floater, I could make anything fly" or whatever. (I believe a few other characters in that particular town point you in his direction, and the graphic used is nearly identical to the graphic used in FF3... and I mean the real FF3, NES version, not FF6, for the snes.)
Anyway, just an odd tidbit.
Actually the presence of Cid has always been neat, one of the defining factors of a Final Fantasy, IMO. In fact, it's my theory that all of the Final Fantasies are merely dreams of someone "real", who appears in the role of Cid.
But that's just my crazy speculation.;-)
Honestly, I think Sony has realized they can have the best of both worlds. They can capture market from the X-Box for the hobbiests, while still making a profit. How?
Easy. Because, really, how many people are going to buy a PS2 and not buy games for it?;-) Especially hobbiests who want to write their own little games: these are the ones most likely to want to check out all the hottest new titles too. Mass publication will still be limited to those who have contracts with Sony. Sony might even come up with minor distribution deals for the hobbiests (more money).
People who buy it as a set-top box for email and web browsing (who are also likely in the minority, judging from other similar set-top box sales) will probably have kids, and these kids will probably push to get games, too.
Sure, there are exceptions, but it would be highly unlikely that Sony hasn't done the math, or is following a route that won't still be in their best interests. Even if this route will cause them to lose some profits, it's likely that they'd lose even more to competitors if they chose not to.
To summarize: the game market doesn't go away. Just the opposite, they enlarge their market by stealing customers away from the competitors. Sony may be only acting in their best interests, but in this case, I think everyone wins.
While IANAL, it's obvious you're going on mostly hearsay, popular opinion, and misunderstandings (whether intentional or not). Let's see:
Consider that libraries are CREATED with the intent that someone else will use the API and header files.
Yes, they are, and it's not too unreasonable that the person who creates the library may wish it to only be used for Free Software purposes. Like, say, TrollTech. This fits perfectly with their intent. It's their code, if you want your own nice widget set that's closed, write it yourself, or pay TrollTech their due. Next up:
I have never agreed with RMS (and Trolltech's) assumptions that dynamic linking makes something a derived work.
Your opinions on the matter don't affect the matter, of course. Save this thought for later. Going on:
It would certainly make ALL third party software vendors beholden to OS vendors, for example.
Hmm, better not give software vendors any bright ideas here.
Every program ever written under linux would be a derivative work of the kernel, which is GPL. Imagine if someday the kernel developers decided that all of a sudden ALL works ever developed under linux were actually GPL'd (not that this is a likely scenario, but it is a possible one if RMS is right).
OK, this is complete tripe. The standard C/C++ library (glibc) is under the LGPL, Linus has made special provision for allowing use of the kernel interface however you'd like (allowing binary drivers for instance). Let me reiterate: this is just pure FUD.
Fortunately, RMS is wrong. GPL libraries do not make all dynamically linked programs derivative works, and I expect this lawsuit to uphold that point (and sanity in general).
Um, and RMS is wrong why? Remember, your opinions don't make it so. You certainly haven't shown it legally to not be the case. The only real reasoning you've shown is FUD. This assertion, therefore, doesn't seem to have a whole lot of weight behind it.
Remember, RMS has quite a legal team. He very well understands what the license means, and it's been analyzed by many other legal teams (IBM, who could find no holes; MS, who is running scared). Let's see what the real lawyers with informed opinions have to say.
OK, so there's a lot of surplus, and they aren't making a whole lot from it all. Solution? Report it's all running out, and prices will "skyrocket" (35 cents a cdr isn't that high, c'mon, last time I bought them anything under a buck was great). So people go out and buy a lot, thus creating their shortage. Nice work.
Then again, this could be even worse for them, people buy a whole lot, and then don't need any more for a couple years, and then they drop to nothing because there's no demand...;-)
Corporations have an innocent and noble aim, to make money. They have no interest in advancing political agendas or using that information to harm people. They use data to benefit people - through focused marketing. With information, they can give us the products we want.
Um. When you say, "Corporations have an innocent and noble aim, to make money", you're right; although I wouldn't really consider this either innocent or noble, but nonetheless, their goal is to make money. However, you then go on to say that they have our (our being consumers, etc.) interests in mind.
They don't. Not at all. Their goal is to make money. Period. Not to make products. Not to benefit the consumer. To get the consumer to give them as much money as they can, while doing as little as possible in return (because the more you do, the less profit you make). This is how business works today.
You can further see this by looking at all the silly patents and lawsuits that come up; these corporations have figured out that they don't even need to make anything to get money, they can just sue the pants off anyone who has an idea they've claimed. It's pretty sickening.
The information collected by corporations is simply to find where they can make the most money, not, as you assert, to "give us the products we want". If you were right, the RIAA would be donating music and money to napster for us all.
(This is not to say that some people in some corporations have more noble goals. It's just to say that this is not the corporate goal.)
Now the government is rather the opposite situation. Their goal is not to make money. It is to govern the people. Unfortunately, you have the opposite problem you had with corporations; the government as a whole might have a (somewhat) noble goal, but you get individuals and groups who struggle for more and more power.
Now claims of privatizing everything, without any thought as to the current state of the system, and what implications there would be for moving to a privatized system, and indeed what implications at all a privatized system would have, are just silly. (CA, power, deregulation.) Now, to put policing power in the hands of a corporation (whose goal is to do nothing but make money) just smacks of abuse.
You miss the point, as well. The government is owned by people, too. (Unless you think it is owned by aliens or something.) Just a lot more people. Each one of us. Corporations abuse us just as badly, just in different ways and for different goals.
"That is all we need to know" sounds like brainwashing or stubborn blindness to reality, too, if you ask me.
Why is it people continue to follow the Microsoft-think of "One World, One Operating System, One Product"? You do not need a single ubiquitous application or suite to solve interoperability problems! What you should promote instead is a single standard for documents themselves. Wait... isn't XML supposed to do this? (Or is that just a hollow promise? I'm not really an XML fan, an I'm not an application fan either, but this is ridiculous.)
Isn't it every other day with "New macro virus!" or "New Outlook security hole!" that we criticize the ubiquity of single applications? "Interoperability" means multiple products working together. Not the MS definition, "one product working with itself on every computer". That is not interoperability.
In fact, not having a standard application encourages interoperability. What would have happened if we'd settled on a single application for mail exchange? File transfer? HTML? (Oh, whoops, we tried that, and now have a horribly fragmented mess that's still being cleaned up.)
Right, we wouldn't want the server to starve, or be traumatized for life by being sealed in a small dark place. Imagine the psychological effect on the CPU!
I say we should lobby for the rights of servers everywhere. This is a serious issue! Think of all the server abuse that must go on. I know we've heard the stories. There are at least a few right here on slashdot. And people are so cavalier! It's just sickening! Computers are people too!
I'm not a "GNOMiE" either. I have major problems with GNOME---but one of them isn't the "grab for branding" that seems to be going on.
Now, I'm also somewhat of a Free Software bigot. And that's mostly the reason I don't have problems with Ximian, RedHat, or Eazel. They're still writing free software. They're funding free software development. As far as I know, most of the GNOME developers are either on the Eazel or Ximian staff anyway, so it is "by the hackers".
GNOME isn't much more than a collection of loosely-related apps using the same toolkit anyway (one of the problems I have with it), but Ximian and Eazel both contribute to this. What's the problem? Now you have a file manager and some better graphics, services, etc. They're GPL'd and stuff, so everyone can benefit. There's no fragmentation as far as I know (two competing standards for a GNOME object model, for instance), so what's the problem?
It would be rather unethical in my opinion if you had a company taking GNOME stuff, adding a few non-Free gizmos, and selling it. But I don't see that happening here. And no one can predict the future, so "yet" is irrelevant. If that time comes, criticize it then.
So, in summary, I think GNOME has problems, but not this one.;-)
Given this isn't a hoax (which is smells like, even though it's a little late for 4/1 stuff), he is using pure oil. Read what it says a little closer and you see "Usually, though, food oils are combined with diesel fuel, rather than used pure, as Benich is doing" (my emphasis of course). So usually it is mixed, but not in this case.
I'd love to see how it's done though. I don't think soybean oil is combustible, but if this isn't a hoax, I guess I'll be wrong. If it isn't, I wonder how fast it'll take the oil cartel lobbies to make soy products illegal (protect the children from Tofu, or something?;-))
In addition to it just being cool (which it is), it's very valuable. Think of all the tools you've got available. The entire set of GNU utilities, compilers, etc. All the libraries already written for Linux. You don't need to completely reinvent the wheel. Stuff like Qt/Embedded is already there, too. If you can build the box, stick Linux on it, you've got a huge amount of work you'd have to do already done.
You may not realize it, but there's usually a lot of behind-the-scenes development work required for developing things. If you have to rewrite everything, the OS, the compiler, the interface, that's work. Then imagine you're developer: now you have to relearn new API's, get acquainted with new tools, etc. Not to mention the fact that the OS and other source probably won't be available if it's proprietary, which means if you run into problems (which is highly likely on a new platform), you have no recourse.
With Linux on things, you already know what you're working with. You're familiar with it. You've developed for it before. If you've done development for desktop apps, embedded apps aren't going to be too big of a stretch (you'll learn some new API's probably), but you've got your development environment already figured out and ready to go. Build a cross-compiling gcc and you're set.
If you're a commercial vendor producing the latest-and-greatest PDA, not having to convince developers to relearn all your whizbang (or less-than-whizbang) tools is a major market advantage. And, users (in theory) can run all the stuff that's already available for other Linux PDA's, because it should be a fairly straightforward recompile (given you're using something portable like Qt/Embedded).
Sure, opening an xterm on a PDA and having bash there is neat, but there really are "practical" advantages, too.
Check out Loki, since they wrote (or at least have done heavy development) on SDL exactly for the purpose of porting "professional" games. Get some of their demos; buy some of their games. Just last week or so I got Descent 3, Terminus, and Soldier of Fortune (for about $10 each from ebgames.. can't pass up a deal like that), and am highly impressed with the quality. Pop in the SoF CD, run the cute little graphical installer, and go. It works. Flawlessly. Terminus too. (Actually that's slightly inaccurate, there were some minor GL problems with the G400 drivers in 32bpp mode that came up later, but switching to 16bpp seemed to fix them.) D3 I have problems with, related again to the XFree86 4.x G400 drivers, but still.
I've played some of their demos as well, and they're equally solid and polished. The SDL stuff is where it's at. Loki has proven it works for "real" games. The API and related packages you can get are great. Easy to install, easy to code for, flexible, Free(tm), portable, proven. What more could you ask for?
Except it's not removeable media. It's much more reliable than magnetic media, and pretty ubiquitous these days.
It's called (and I'm serious here) the Internet. Even if you have a slow connection (slow being your typical 56k modem) it's really worth it. It's easy to get ftp or http space these days on 24/7 servers with high bandwidth, even if it's 10-20M, it's enough that:
Everyone's got access to it
Many people with varying hardware can access it
Multiple people can simultaneously access it
If they've got decent bandwidth, it's much faster than a floppy
For instance, every month I create documents locally that are printed and copied at Kinko's or similar facilities (word of warning: avoid Kinko's. Their service sucks, and they've screwed us over more times than I can remember). Instead of taking a Zip disk, or 3.5", I just upload the Postscript over my pathetic 33.6 to public webspace, and grab it again with Netscape at the printer's. No worrying about whether they support this media format. No worrying about corrupt disks (which is the reason I don't use portable magnetic media anymore).
The two main concerns I can see are that the server may go down, or the location you're heading to might not have internet access. The former is fairly easy to eliminate (find multiple servers, or get something more reliable). The latter is becoming less and less of an issue, and already may be less of an issue for you than finding a box with a 3.5" floppy or Zip/Jazz/SuperDisk/etc.
The real danger is that we get stuck in a rut of thinking portable non-archival media (i.e. not CDROMs, etc.) is necessary for every day life, when other solutions (such as using the network) are already there. You're right: we don't need unnecessary toys. The solution is already in place, people just need to use it.
Well, one (probably undesirable) solution would be to fetchmail it all to one location (like your home box). Of course, that defeats the purpose of IMAP. I'm sure you've considered this already though. Hmm... too bad NMH doesn't do IMAP.
You're using MH folders and you say can't read it from a shell? I thought this was the point of using MH:-). Get NMH and read stuff from the command line to your heart's content. That's the only way I read mail now.
For more information, man nmh and look at the manpages for each program, or better yet, read the ORA book on the subject. It's very helpful.
Quick starter guide though:
folders - list your mail folders. Use -r to show subfolders. Folders are referred to with the syntax +foldername. The folder can be specified with most (if not all) commands at any time to explicitly say which folder you want to look at.
scan - scan the current folder for a list of messages. If you set up procmail to store messages in a sequence (such as unseen), you can say scan unseen to see new messages. See the ORA book for more info on this.
show - show a given message.
refile - move a message to another folder.
rmm - delete a message.
Messages are referred to by number. There are plenty of other commands that do other interesting things (such as pick which lets you query the current mailbox with regexps on a per-component behavior), and every aspect can be customized (see again the ORA book).
The coolest thing is that because these are all shell commands, they can be scripted to do complex things your "conventional" mail client never could. As an added benefit, since they're not a monolithic program, there's no resident size.
Finally, if you want a nice monitor, I hacked MH-style mailbox support into Sjoerd Simon's Mailwatch plugin which you can use with gkrellm. (If you're in the console, use flists to show new mail.)
People always say, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it", but this is
not right. The saying should be, "If it ain't broke,
and isn't breaking, don't fix it."
That only half-applies here though. The question isn't about
fixing (if you interpret this as incremental), it's about throwing it
out and redoing things. But if something is breaking---that is, not
going to fulfill future needs, or not going to scale properly, or
going to present problems---it needs fixed, and that's where this
question comes into play.
Sometimes, an existing system is so poorly designed or
half-implemented such that doing any sort of maintenance at all would
take more time than redoing things. I've seen a couple of these, and
the choice seems obvious. You reimplement. Right? Maybe. You need
to determine whether you have the ability and resources to reimplement
the system. Junior developers can easily underestimate a task, and
this can end up wasting a lot of time and effort, which translates
into money. Before you even think about suggesting this, you need to
be sure you can pull it off, or you'll cause problems for everyone in
the future (including yourself).
If you can do it, then talk. Management understands
dollars-and-cents. That's what they're there to get. That's what the
company is there for. Translate maintenance on the existing system
into costing more than reimplementation. This is what they care
about.
You'd think they would have picked a different name. Something innocent sounding, like "The GNU Foundation", organized on a remote continent, where a bunch of scientists, researchers, and writers could work on it.
They could have even set up a second one, but I'm not sure where that'd be or what they'd do...;-)
Sorry bub, you've got a few problems in your assumptions and reasoning there.
You say in your first point that flash is not "native, open,
[or] standardized". Let's address these one-by-one. First,
what do you mean "native"? Native to what? The web browser?
Your operating system? Native to a web browser is silly, since
they support plugins for the most part (lynx people could define
external viewers). Native to your operating system is even
sillier, unless you want a kernel module for browsing the web.
Most of us run separate programs for doing such mundane tasks,
and there are a good number of flash players available for Linux
(and other operating systems, of course). Including GPL'd
ones.
Which brings us to the "open" part. Since Macromedia
released the Flash specification as an open format, I don't know
know what the problem is here. A number of libraries and
players (GPL'd either way) have been made. The specification
is freely available (I'll leave it up to the lawyers, one of
which I am not, to determine all the ins and outs of the SDK
licensing agreement, but I don't see anything that requires
you keep hush-hush about the file format)
for download from Macromedia. (The spec might be
available separately as well, but I'll leave the digging up to
you.)
Since we have an open, portable, ported format that seems to
have players on major platforms, including GPL'd players, and
a Free(tm) tools for developing the format, and since players
seem to come default with most installations (MacOS, Win*,
Linux), we seem to have something of a standard. Those of you
who use text browsers know enough to set an external player to
take care of it for you, or ignore a site altogether for the
less-motivated users.:-)
So I fail to see any reality behind your first point.
You state that using Flash means you don't care about your
customers. Now for me, someone who wanted to provide a nice,
well-designed visual and aural site for the common user, and
cared, would use something open and standardized, so that
everyone could view it. Point one established that Flash
qualifies for this. Really caring would find a way to
minimize the bandwidth usage, since most people still probably
don't have a lot of bandwidth. Since Flash provides nice vector
art and a compact format, it qualifies for this as well. So it
seems that wanted to design a nice multimedia site and
really cared would take the time to do it with Flash,
because we all know how buggy JavaScript support is.
So I fail to see any reality behind your second point,
either.
Thirdly, you state that using Flash cheats clients, who can't
search or use unsupported platforms to visit your site. Since
the majority of people are using Win*, MacOS, Linux, or one of
the other supported platforms, for the official viewer or for
the GPL'd ones, platform support doesn't seem to be an issue.
As many people have pointed out, there is no problem with
searching, through various methods, so take your pick. There
isn't any problem doing forms in Flash, and since you have a
Perl module to generate it, there's no reason you can't do it
directly either. You think databases are indexable? How much
of your site is static and how much is dynamic content?
Create an index and submit it to search engines if this is a
concern.
There isn't a problem designing a non-flash site to go along
with the flash site as well, for those who for some reason
can't upgrade their browser. I'd love to know any reasons why
people are stuck below something that can't handle Flash.
Resource usage of the viewer is fairly minimal.
So, well, basically, I can't find any reality behind your
third point, either.
Finally, you state that using Flash cheats yourself. You
can't think of any times that Flash is non-gratuitous. What's
wrong with wanting to make a cool-looking site that uses minimal
resources and runs on the majority of machines for the vast
majority of users?
XHTML and CSS? The number of platforms and browsers that
correctly support these (or even completely support plain HTML)
is far fewer than those that support Flash. You'll continue
to be plagued by the problems that have always plagued HTML
and multiple incompatible browsers. You can't have any
client-side dynamicity. JavaScript? Unless you're a
complete newbie, which I know you aren't, you know very
well that the resources it takes to do in JS what Flash can
do, as well as maintain multiple versions of the code for
multiple browsers, just isn't worth the time. So, I fail to
see how HTML, XHTML, and CSS work better than Flash.
Now perhaps you'll come back and say that we don't need all
that fancy multimedia crap, that back in the day you toggled in
bootloaders in octal on the front panel and considered "?" to be
a meaningful error message, so what's the point. So why even
bother with HTML, XHTML, and CSS? Plain text. FTP those
JPEGS or PNG's. Gopher.
The point is not always to convey raw information.
Sometimes, mood and experience are just as important.
Sometimes, just having fun is more important. Sometimes those
gratuitous graphics and sound aren't really gratuitous at all.
So, I don't really see any reality behind your fourth point
either.
Fact is, Flash works for what it does quite well, better than the
alternatives (which are basically JavaScript and Java). It's open,
and making it open was the best thing Macromedia could have done for
it. If they'd opened it sooner, perhaps thrown in a portable, free
authoring tool, it might be even more pervasive and widely-used.
It could be overused, misused, and abused, but so can everything
else. I see much less abusive Flash than I do JavaScript and
animated GIFs. The point is that it can be well-used, and
for some things, it really is the most attractive solution.
That's assuming you could actually stay sane enough to use it for that period of time.:-) In fact, they could just include a microphone and after about a week you wouldn't need to use the hemisphere things at all, you could just sing your papers into the computer.
I wonder what C code would sound like, or shell commands. If you got good enough you wouldn't have to look at your code at all, you could just listen to it. Syntax "hilighting" could be done via different instruments and dynamics. Pretty soon people would stop writing code that worked and instead just concentrate on seeing whose code could make the weirdest noises. Just think what you could do with Perl...
This may seem ridiculous, but I'm sure we can all agree it's much better than having olfactory feedback.
Give each tag a unique key. When you buy it, it goes on your account. Where you go, who you are, what you use, wear, etc. Of course, as other commenters have said, these tags could be disabled, and I'm sure most will. But, as fortune puts it, just because you're paranoid doesn't meant they're not really after you.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Look and listen closely. Wahlberg travels from ~2100 (2039? close enough) to 2400 something. He finds Planet of Apes.
While on PoA, he finds ruins of a Ship Looking for Him (SLH). Female Protagonist Ape comments at one point "that's impossible, these ruins are thousands of years old" [highlight added]. This means, SLH crashed at Some Unknown Time, BC. The ape takeover happened a long time ago, and if Wahlberg's character wasn't such a dunce he would have realized this.
Anyway, so he travels back in time, but not far enough... he's still in the new, Ape-ridden timeline (although why exactly apes would have an exactly identical history is silly beyond belief). He needs to keep travelling an unknown number of millenia in the past (till he reaches SUT, BC) to put a stop to the problem.
Simple, stock time travel. I think you guys need to watch more Back to the Future, and play a lot more Chrono Trigger.
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First off I thought the movie was really mediocre. If that good. Guy lands on a planet with talking, sapient apes and is only a little stunned? Bleah. He should have been freaked out.
Anyway, do listen to what they say. The ending was completely predictable, and Wahlberg's character was an idiot for not putting 2 + 2 together.
The one female Ape who was helping them (sorry, I don't remember any of the character's names ;-)) told Wahlberg that the ruins (of the ship) were thousands of years old. Now if he came from around 2100 sometime to 2400 sometime (judging from the clock displayed in the pod, another silly issue), then they crashed a very long time ago. (Like I'm going to believe they could build that sort of technology that could last that long, riiight. Power source maybe. Computers no.)
So basically he deserved what he got for not thinking. As has been explained, it was Earth all along (like we ever doubted, with the flora and fauna being so familiar). Ruins 1000's of years old obviously affected a large part of known history (how much wasn't given).
What I find also incomprehensibly stupid is the fact that everything developed identically with apes as it would have with humans. I'm sure I'm not the only one. America, s/human/ape/g? Bah.
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IANAC(ryptographer), but this isn't quite as "simple" as you make it out, regardless.
Your first assumption is bad, to start with. Someone can always "just use more bits". Since OTP's are usually transported in whole, using a million bits for the offset isn't going to be an unduly burden. You could fit that on a 3.5" floppy with room to spare.
Now, a million bits is a lot of bits. Let's see... 2^(1024*1024) = 6.74e315653, if my calculations are correct. For reference, there are only about 1e130 atoms in the universe. Saying you could do a million comparisons per second (grab the PI subset, XOR, compare with your "known" string), you need 6.74e315647 seconds to search the keyspace (given there are no repetitions in PI). Now, IANAP(hysicist) either, but my guess is that's more time than you've got left in the universe on a good day.
So your third point isn't at all reasonable. And that merely assumes someone is using a single OTP. It also assumes they're using a simple XOR and not doing some convolution to produce multiple resulting pads, etc.
Finally, your forth point is much handwaving. Any given data might be valid. With a OTP, you can't tell! You could probably find many valid headers in even a much more limited keyspace: likely those sequence of bytes could at one offset appear to be a perfectly valid JPEG, the next a word document, the next a random stream of numbers. And who says it isn't the random number stream that's the right one?
So while this may seem like an obvious way to defeat it on the surface, it's much more time consuming and less productive than you might think, especially on arbitrary encrypted data.
IANAM(athemetician) either (I'm a programmer, dagnabit ;-)), but I think the point here is that an arbitrary "slice of PI" is a random sequence. And with the properties of a pad, you're still going to be spending a very long time trying to decrypt it.
If I could get Linux for this thing, I could finally have the Ultimate Party Box. Just think:
Mmmm. Throw in broadband and start streaming music and doing massive multiplayer gaming... mmm.
For SCEA reps who may be reading this: Linux is how to ensure the PlayStation 2 becomes and stays the market leader, and those are the reasons why.
No, it's not. The whole point of being a business is for one single, unswerving goal: to make as much money as you possibly can. Customers are irrelevant, except for sucking as much money out of them as possible. Product is irrelevant, except where used to get customers to give you as much money as possible.
Don't take the romantic view of businesses "serving the public," "making a better product," or any such nonsense. They have no interest in making something better. They merely balance what they must put out against what they bring in, such that they're bringing in the most and putting out the least. If a given company could sell you a little box that did nothing for $1000, don't you think they would? (Jokes about Windows PCs aside ;-)) Tech support? Customer service? Think that means they care about you? They don't. These things are merely to keep you coming back, and to comply with any laws that keep them from being sued into the ground, etc.
The point of a 100 meter race is to get to the end before everyone else. There are usually usually rules about interference... and if there aren't, it would be foolish not to take every advantage against your opponent you could get, right? And even if there were, if you don't get caught, it's not a rule, right? (There are, of course, honorable people, who wish to win "fairly," but if the norm becomes interfering with competitors, then they'll either quit, seeing that winning "fairly" is impossible, or they'll quickly change their definition of what is fair.)
Same with business, except I've yet to see an honorable business. There is no law, unless you get caught. Every advantage is to be taken, to make as much money as quickly as possible. The ultimate logical end of this is to control the entire market, crushing competition, and extracting as much money as possible from everyone else.
I used to think differently about these things. Then I got to know some business people. Now I detest it all more than ever before.
Actually, it was "Sid" in this movie, for some odd reason.
And in fact, Cid was in FF1... he's the guy that tells you something like "If I had a floater, I could make anything fly" or whatever. (I believe a few other characters in that particular town point you in his direction, and the graphic used is nearly identical to the graphic used in FF3... and I mean the real FF3, NES version, not FF6, for the snes.)
Anyway, just an odd tidbit.
Actually the presence of Cid has always been neat, one of the defining factors of a Final Fantasy, IMO. In fact, it's my theory that all of the Final Fantasies are merely dreams of someone "real", who appears in the role of Cid. But that's just my crazy speculation. ;-)
Honestly, I think Sony has realized they can have the best of both worlds. They can capture market from the X-Box for the hobbiests, while still making a profit. How?
Easy. Because, really, how many people are going to buy a PS2 and not buy games for it? ;-) Especially hobbiests who want to write their own little games: these are the ones most likely to want to check out all the hottest new titles too. Mass publication will still be limited to those who have contracts with Sony. Sony might even come up with minor distribution deals for the hobbiests (more money).
People who buy it as a set-top box for email and web browsing (who are also likely in the minority, judging from other similar set-top box sales) will probably have kids, and these kids will probably push to get games, too.
Sure, there are exceptions, but it would be highly unlikely that Sony hasn't done the math, or is following a route that won't still be in their best interests. Even if this route will cause them to lose some profits, it's likely that they'd lose even more to competitors if they chose not to.
To summarize: the game market doesn't go away. Just the opposite, they enlarge their market by stealing customers away from the competitors. Sony may be only acting in their best interests, but in this case, I think everyone wins.
While IANAL, it's obvious you're going on mostly hearsay, popular opinion, and misunderstandings (whether intentional or not). Let's see:
Yes, they are, and it's not too unreasonable that the person who creates the library may wish it to only be used for Free Software purposes. Like, say, TrollTech. This fits perfectly with their intent. It's their code, if you want your own nice widget set that's closed, write it yourself, or pay TrollTech their due. Next up:
Your opinions on the matter don't affect the matter, of course. Save this thought for later. Going on:
Hmm, better not give software vendors any bright ideas here.
OK, this is complete tripe. The standard C/C++ library (glibc) is under the LGPL, Linus has made special provision for allowing use of the kernel interface however you'd like (allowing binary drivers for instance). Let me reiterate: this is just pure FUD.
Um, and RMS is wrong why? Remember, your opinions don't make it so. You certainly haven't shown it legally to not be the case. The only real reasoning you've shown is FUD. This assertion, therefore, doesn't seem to have a whole lot of weight behind it.
Remember, RMS has quite a legal team. He very well understands what the license means, and it's been analyzed by many other legal teams (IBM, who could find no holes; MS, who is running scared). Let's see what the real lawyers with informed opinions have to say.
OK, so there's a lot of surplus, and they aren't making a whole lot from it all. Solution? Report it's all running out, and prices will "skyrocket" (35 cents a cdr isn't that high, c'mon, last time I bought them anything under a buck was great). So people go out and buy a lot, thus creating their shortage. Nice work.
Then again, this could be even worse for them, people buy a whole lot, and then don't need any more for a couple years, and then they drop to nothing because there's no demand... ;-)
OK OK enough conspiracy theories... ;-)
Um. When you say, "Corporations have an innocent and noble aim, to make money", you're right; although I wouldn't really consider this either innocent or noble, but nonetheless, their goal is to make money. However, you then go on to say that they have our (our being consumers, etc.) interests in mind.
They don't. Not at all. Their goal is to make money. Period. Not to make products. Not to benefit the consumer. To get the consumer to give them as much money as they can, while doing as little as possible in return (because the more you do, the less profit you make). This is how business works today.
You can further see this by looking at all the silly patents and lawsuits that come up; these corporations have figured out that they don't even need to make anything to get money, they can just sue the pants off anyone who has an idea they've claimed. It's pretty sickening.
The information collected by corporations is simply to find where they can make the most money, not, as you assert, to "give us the products we want". If you were right, the RIAA would be donating music and money to napster for us all.
(This is not to say that some people in some corporations have more noble goals. It's just to say that this is not the corporate goal.)
Now the government is rather the opposite situation. Their goal is not to make money. It is to govern the people. Unfortunately, you have the opposite problem you had with corporations; the government as a whole might have a (somewhat) noble goal, but you get individuals and groups who struggle for more and more power.
Now claims of privatizing everything, without any thought as to the current state of the system, and what implications there would be for moving to a privatized system, and indeed what implications at all a privatized system would have, are just silly. (CA, power, deregulation.) Now, to put policing power in the hands of a corporation (whose goal is to do nothing but make money) just smacks of abuse.
You miss the point, as well. The government is owned by people, too. (Unless you think it is owned by aliens or something.) Just a lot more people. Each one of us. Corporations abuse us just as badly, just in different ways and for different goals.
"That is all we need to know" sounds like brainwashing or stubborn blindness to reality, too, if you ask me.
Why is it people continue to follow the Microsoft-think of "One World, One Operating System, One Product"? You do not need a single ubiquitous application or suite to solve interoperability problems! What you should promote instead is a single standard for documents themselves. Wait... isn't XML supposed to do this? (Or is that just a hollow promise? I'm not really an XML fan, an I'm not an application fan either, but this is ridiculous.)
Isn't it every other day with "New macro virus!" or "New Outlook security hole!" that we criticize the ubiquity of single applications? "Interoperability" means multiple products working together. Not the MS definition, "one product working with itself on every computer". That is not interoperability.
In fact, not having a standard application encourages interoperability. What would have happened if we'd settled on a single application for mail exchange? File transfer? HTML? (Oh, whoops, we tried that, and now have a horribly fragmented mess that's still being cleaned up.)
One ubiquitous office suite is not the answer.
Right, we wouldn't want the server to starve, or be traumatized for life by being sealed in a small dark place. Imagine the psychological effect on the CPU!
I say we should lobby for the rights of servers everywhere. This is a serious issue! Think of all the server abuse that must go on. I know we've heard the stories. There are at least a few right here on slashdot. And people are so cavalier! It's just sickening! Computers are people too!
...right.
I'm not a "GNOMiE" either. I have major problems with GNOME---but one of them isn't the "grab for branding" that seems to be going on.
Now, I'm also somewhat of a Free Software bigot. And that's mostly the reason I don't have problems with Ximian, RedHat, or Eazel. They're still writing free software. They're funding free software development. As far as I know, most of the GNOME developers are either on the Eazel or Ximian staff anyway, so it is "by the hackers".
GNOME isn't much more than a collection of loosely-related apps using the same toolkit anyway (one of the problems I have with it), but Ximian and Eazel both contribute to this. What's the problem? Now you have a file manager and some better graphics, services, etc. They're GPL'd and stuff, so everyone can benefit. There's no fragmentation as far as I know (two competing standards for a GNOME object model, for instance), so what's the problem?
It would be rather unethical in my opinion if you had a company taking GNOME stuff, adding a few non-Free gizmos, and selling it. But I don't see that happening here. And no one can predict the future, so "yet" is irrelevant. If that time comes, criticize it then.
So, in summary, I think GNOME has problems, but not this one. ;-)
Given this isn't a hoax (which is smells like, even though it's a little late for 4/1 stuff), he is using pure oil. Read what it says a little closer and you see "Usually, though, food oils are combined with diesel fuel, rather than used pure, as Benich is doing" (my emphasis of course). So usually it is mixed, but not in this case.
I'd love to see how it's done though. I don't think soybean oil is combustible, but if this isn't a hoax, I guess I'll be wrong. If it isn't, I wonder how fast it'll take the oil cartel lobbies to make soy products illegal (protect the children from Tofu, or something? ;-))
In addition to it just being cool (which it is), it's very valuable. Think of all the tools you've got available. The entire set of GNU utilities, compilers, etc. All the libraries already written for Linux. You don't need to completely reinvent the wheel. Stuff like Qt/Embedded is already there, too. If you can build the box, stick Linux on it, you've got a huge amount of work you'd have to do already done.
You may not realize it, but there's usually a lot of behind-the-scenes development work required for developing things. If you have to rewrite everything, the OS, the compiler, the interface, that's work. Then imagine you're developer: now you have to relearn new API's, get acquainted with new tools, etc. Not to mention the fact that the OS and other source probably won't be available if it's proprietary, which means if you run into problems (which is highly likely on a new platform), you have no recourse.
With Linux on things, you already know what you're working with. You're familiar with it. You've developed for it before. If you've done development for desktop apps, embedded apps aren't going to be too big of a stretch (you'll learn some new API's probably), but you've got your development environment already figured out and ready to go. Build a cross-compiling gcc and you're set.
If you're a commercial vendor producing the latest-and-greatest PDA, not having to convince developers to relearn all your whizbang (or less-than-whizbang) tools is a major market advantage. And, users (in theory) can run all the stuff that's already available for other Linux PDA's, because it should be a fairly straightforward recompile (given you're using something portable like Qt/Embedded).
Sure, opening an xterm on a PDA and having bash there is neat, but there really are "practical" advantages, too.
Check out Loki, since they wrote (or at least have done heavy development) on SDL exactly for the purpose of porting "professional" games. Get some of their demos; buy some of their games. Just last week or so I got Descent 3, Terminus, and Soldier of Fortune (for about $10 each from ebgames.. can't pass up a deal like that), and am highly impressed with the quality. Pop in the SoF CD, run the cute little graphical installer, and go. It works. Flawlessly. Terminus too. (Actually that's slightly inaccurate, there were some minor GL problems with the G400 drivers in 32bpp mode that came up later, but switching to 16bpp seemed to fix them.) D3 I have problems with, related again to the XFree86 4.x G400 drivers, but still.
I've played some of their demos as well, and they're equally solid and polished. The SDL stuff is where it's at. Loki has proven it works for "real" games. The API and related packages you can get are great. Easy to install, easy to code for, flexible, Free(tm), portable, proven. What more could you ask for?
Except it's not removeable media. It's much more reliable than magnetic media, and pretty ubiquitous these days.
It's called (and I'm serious here) the Internet. Even if you have a slow connection (slow being your typical 56k modem) it's really worth it. It's easy to get ftp or http space these days on 24/7 servers with high bandwidth, even if it's 10-20M, it's enough that:
For instance, every month I create documents locally that are printed and copied at Kinko's or similar facilities (word of warning: avoid Kinko's. Their service sucks, and they've screwed us over more times than I can remember). Instead of taking a Zip disk, or 3.5", I just upload the Postscript over my pathetic 33.6 to public webspace, and grab it again with Netscape at the printer's. No worrying about whether they support this media format. No worrying about corrupt disks (which is the reason I don't use portable magnetic media anymore).
The two main concerns I can see are that the server may go down, or the location you're heading to might not have internet access. The former is fairly easy to eliminate (find multiple servers, or get something more reliable). The latter is becoming less and less of an issue, and already may be less of an issue for you than finding a box with a 3.5" floppy or Zip/Jazz/SuperDisk/etc.
The real danger is that we get stuck in a rut of thinking portable non-archival media (i.e. not CDROMs, etc.) is necessary for every day life, when other solutions (such as using the network) are already there. You're right: we don't need unnecessary toys. The solution is already in place, people just need to use it.
Well, one (probably undesirable) solution would be to fetchmail it all to one location (like your home box). Of course, that defeats the purpose of IMAP. I'm sure you've considered this already though. Hmm... too bad NMH doesn't do IMAP.
You're using MH folders and you say can't read it from a shell? I thought this was the point of using MH :-). Get NMH and read stuff from the command line to your heart's content. That's the only way I read mail now.
For more information, man nmh and look at the manpages for each program, or better yet, read the ORA book on the subject. It's very helpful.
Quick starter guide though:
Messages are referred to by number. There are plenty of other commands that do other interesting things (such as pick which lets you query the current mailbox with regexps on a per-component behavior), and every aspect can be customized (see again the ORA book).
The coolest thing is that because these are all shell commands, they can be scripted to do complex things your "conventional" mail client never could. As an added benefit, since they're not a monolithic program, there's no resident size.
Finally, if you want a nice monitor, I hacked MH-style mailbox support into Sjoerd Simon's Mailwatch plugin which you can use with gkrellm. (If you're in the console, use flists to show new mail.)
Have fun. :-)
People always say, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it", but this is not right. The saying should be, "If it ain't broke, and isn't breaking, don't fix it."
That only half-applies here though. The question isn't about fixing (if you interpret this as incremental), it's about throwing it out and redoing things. But if something is breaking---that is, not going to fulfill future needs, or not going to scale properly, or going to present problems---it needs fixed, and that's where this question comes into play.
Sometimes, an existing system is so poorly designed or half-implemented such that doing any sort of maintenance at all would take more time than redoing things. I've seen a couple of these, and the choice seems obvious. You reimplement. Right? Maybe. You need to determine whether you have the ability and resources to reimplement the system. Junior developers can easily underestimate a task, and this can end up wasting a lot of time and effort, which translates into money. Before you even think about suggesting this, you need to be sure you can pull it off, or you'll cause problems for everyone in the future (including yourself).
If you can do it, then talk. Management understands dollars-and-cents. That's what they're there to get. That's what the company is there for. Translate maintenance on the existing system into costing more than reimplementation. This is what they care about.
You'd think they would have picked a different name. Something innocent sounding, like "The GNU Foundation", organized on a remote continent, where a bunch of scientists, researchers, and writers could work on it.
They could have even set up a second one, but I'm not sure where that'd be or what they'd do... ;-)
"For the past 4 days, many of Undernet's servers have been hit with constant DDoS..."
[...]
Update: 01/08 09:49 PM by michael: The news story we linked to was ancient.
Not anymore. ;-)
Sorry bub, you've got a few problems in your assumptions and reasoning there.
You say in your first point that flash is not "native, open, [or] standardized". Let's address these one-by-one. First, what do you mean "native"? Native to what? The web browser? Your operating system? Native to a web browser is silly, since they support plugins for the most part (lynx people could define external viewers). Native to your operating system is even sillier, unless you want a kernel module for browsing the web. Most of us run separate programs for doing such mundane tasks, and there are a good number of flash players available for Linux (and other operating systems, of course). Including GPL'd ones.
Which brings us to the "open" part. Since Macromedia released the Flash specification as an open format, I don't know know what the problem is here. A number of libraries and players (GPL'd either way) have been made. The specification is freely available (I'll leave it up to the lawyers, one of which I am not, to determine all the ins and outs of the SDK licensing agreement, but I don't see anything that requires you keep hush-hush about the file format) for download from Macromedia. (The spec might be available separately as well, but I'll leave the digging up to you.)
Since we have an open, portable, ported format that seems to have players on major platforms, including GPL'd players, and a Free(tm) tools for developing the format, and since players seem to come default with most installations (MacOS, Win*, Linux), we seem to have something of a standard. Those of you who use text browsers know enough to set an external player to take care of it for you, or ignore a site altogether for the less-motivated users. :-)
So I fail to see any reality behind your first point.
You state that using Flash means you don't care about your customers. Now for me, someone who wanted to provide a nice, well-designed visual and aural site for the common user, and cared, would use something open and standardized, so that everyone could view it. Point one established that Flash qualifies for this. Really caring would find a way to minimize the bandwidth usage, since most people still probably don't have a lot of bandwidth. Since Flash provides nice vector art and a compact format, it qualifies for this as well. So it seems that wanted to design a nice multimedia site and really cared would take the time to do it with Flash, because we all know how buggy JavaScript support is.
So I fail to see any reality behind your second point, either.
Thirdly, you state that using Flash cheats clients, who can't search or use unsupported platforms to visit your site. Since the majority of people are using Win*, MacOS, Linux, or one of the other supported platforms, for the official viewer or for the GPL'd ones, platform support doesn't seem to be an issue. As many people have pointed out, there is no problem with searching, through various methods, so take your pick. There isn't any problem doing forms in Flash, and since you have a Perl module to generate it, there's no reason you can't do it directly either. You think databases are indexable? How much of your site is static and how much is dynamic content? Create an index and submit it to search engines if this is a concern.
There isn't a problem designing a non-flash site to go along with the flash site as well, for those who for some reason can't upgrade their browser. I'd love to know any reasons why people are stuck below something that can't handle Flash. Resource usage of the viewer is fairly minimal.
So, well, basically, I can't find any reality behind your third point, either.
Finally, you state that using Flash cheats yourself. You can't think of any times that Flash is non-gratuitous. What's wrong with wanting to make a cool-looking site that uses minimal resources and runs on the majority of machines for the vast majority of users?
XHTML and CSS? The number of platforms and browsers that correctly support these (or even completely support plain HTML) is far fewer than those that support Flash. You'll continue to be plagued by the problems that have always plagued HTML and multiple incompatible browsers. You can't have any client-side dynamicity. JavaScript? Unless you're a complete newbie, which I know you aren't, you know very well that the resources it takes to do in JS what Flash can do, as well as maintain multiple versions of the code for multiple browsers, just isn't worth the time. So, I fail to see how HTML, XHTML, and CSS work better than Flash.
Now perhaps you'll come back and say that we don't need all that fancy multimedia crap, that back in the day you toggled in bootloaders in octal on the front panel and considered "?" to be a meaningful error message, so what's the point. So why even bother with HTML, XHTML, and CSS? Plain text. FTP those JPEGS or PNG's. Gopher.
The point is not always to convey raw information. Sometimes, mood and experience are just as important. Sometimes, just having fun is more important. Sometimes those gratuitous graphics and sound aren't really gratuitous at all.
So, I don't really see any reality behind your fourth point either.
Fact is, Flash works for what it does quite well, better than the alternatives (which are basically JavaScript and Java). It's open, and making it open was the best thing Macromedia could have done for it. If they'd opened it sooner, perhaps thrown in a portable, free authoring tool, it might be even more pervasive and widely-used.
It could be overused, misused, and abused, but so can everything else. I see much less abusive Flash than I do JavaScript and animated GIFs. The point is that it can be well-used, and for some things, it really is the most attractive solution.
That's assuming you could actually stay sane enough to use it for that period of time. :-) In fact, they could just include a microphone and after about a week you wouldn't need to use the hemisphere things at all, you could just sing your papers into the computer.
I wonder what C code would sound like, or shell commands. If you got good enough you wouldn't have to look at your code at all, you could just listen to it. Syntax "hilighting" could be done via different instruments and dynamics. Pretty soon people would stop writing code that worked and instead just concentrate on seeing whose code could make the weirdest noises. Just think what you could do with Perl...
This may seem ridiculous, but I'm sure we can all agree it's much better than having olfactory feedback.
Give each tag a unique key. When you buy it, it goes on your account. Where you go, who you are, what you use, wear, etc. Of course, as other commenters have said, these tags could be disabled, and I'm sure most will. But, as fortune puts it, just because you're paranoid doesn't meant they're not really after you. ;-)