I'm been working all afternoon(!) on a micropayment model and could use some comments. The draft is here but won't be generally published for a day or two. Meanwhile, it is online now but otherwise unlinked.
My idea is to use the infamous 'web bug' but for good, not evil, for tracking use and accounting for charges.
If you see a problem with it, have a suggestion, or if I'm just not being clear about something, please reply to this comment.
If it has no obviously fatal flaw, I'll publish it shortly.
Disclaimer: I have no intention of trying to set something like this up myself *shudder* although I might consider using it or any other viable micropayment system for a tip jar on my game server.:)
Actually, the Thoroughbred core versions of the XP processors are *much* cooler than the Palomino. I have two 1700+ chips, one with each core, in identical (tiny) aluminum cases. The Palomino runs far hotter than the Tbred. Oddly, much hotter than seems to be accounted for by the 64 vs 49 watt power consumption they are respectively rated. The Palomino, btw, has now been upgraded with faster (and louder!) fans but the box still runs much hotter.
Bottom line, a Tbred is only useful for heating a small room. For a whole house, specify 'Palomino core'.
My biggest problem with Red Hat 8 was the GNOME terminal. It scrolls verrryyy Slooooollly. I play starship traders in telnet mode and it was like playing through a 4800 bps modem on a 128/512 DSL connection. I switched the shell icon to run the KDE Konsole and now have the best of both worlds -- fast, low-cpu telnet and no-effort anti-aliased fonts. Woohoo!
Even if higher-level abstractions were perfectly bug-free and non-leaky, there is another tradeoff that would forever preserve the niche of lower-level development tools. The granularity of the abstraction is an inherent tradeoff not just in machine time/efficiency, but in programmer learning curve as well.
Hmmm... I can't use this book -- I'm in too big of a hurry. I guess I'll have to wait until they release 'Teach Yourself UNIX System Administration in 24 consecutive hours'.
...by making up the URL's as I go along. In a multiplayer strategy game it is important that players not be able to simply look into the other sectors to see who is/what is hiding there. Not being a complete fool I didn't just make any URL resolve directly to the game sector in question. You have to log in, get issued a 'ship' and navigate to that sector.
Of course, I'm not a professional webmaster who knows all sorts of sophisticated web stuff, so it wasn't a problem for me. I guess it's much more complicated if you know what you're doing.
BTW, I'm wondering what part of 'Uniform Resource Locator' these yahoo's don't understand.
Actually, the original copyright would cover the sounds of the forest and audience, not silence. It would be rather difficult to reproduce an infringing work of the original 'piece'.
Silence, of course, has already been done in every medium -- including those, such as silent films, where sound wasn't a component.
The only thing the two 'works' have in common, other than the 'credit' to John Cage, is the idea. I don't know about the UK but in the US an idea isn't copyrightable. Our PTO might issue a patent on it, however.;)
I think his point was that the GPL is undermined by the fact that you can't modify your system under such a scheme -- and still participate in the 'commons'. That, effectively, makes your GPL'd system unusable if modified.
But, replace the word 'unusable' in your first paragraph with 'unmodifiable' and I think it represents the general thrust of the article more accurately.
OTOH, I hope (and believe) that you're right on your later point -- Microsoft won't succeed on this one.
A weblog is inherently visible to the entire world. It's hard enough getting a significant readership -- from whereever you can -- than getting the attention of a local group, not otherwise linked by their interests. Therefore, I would say that very few local weblogs would be successful. Exceptions might be a weblog in a small town with no other significant news source. Another exception might be a huge city like LA where only a tiny percentage of the population might be sufficient to make the weblog successful.
A city like mine of about 150K population and several local TV stations, many radio stations, a major newspaper, etc. would be a tough nut to crack. Meanwhile, our newspaper has an online edition, adding online competition.
Imagine the price for byte of an eight-character password that lets you change your grades, retroactively, to all 'A's. Satellite pictures and Human genome are lots of bytes.
Mine would list itself on the screen, reposition the cursor to the top of the program, and turn on some 'auto-carriage-return' feature that caused the system to behave like you were holding down the enter key. The first command in the program was 'list' or somesuch that would list out the approximately 12-line BASIC program. The last command in the program was 'new' which wiped out the program from memory -- but it was still listed on the screen. Once control was returned to the OS, it would start auto-CRing until it entered the program back into memory, then it would auto-CR over the 'run' command on the bottom of the screen, and, viola, it would start all over.
Useless, but cool, to have a program that would both delete itself, re-enter itself, and run itself. Heh.
Well, it looks like a shot at viability to me
on
United Linux is Here
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· Score: 2
This looks like a reduction of standards... something of a consolidation, even as it adds Yet Another Linux Distribution (YALD).
Notice the pattern of these four vendors. They nicely cover four continents, albeit Caldera covers N. America rather weakly, relative to the others in Asia (Turbo), Europe (SuSE), and S. America (Conectiva).
... is great if you happen to be rich enough to own a printing press. The Internet changed that. Now, anyone, including me, can own a 'printing press'. If this decision stands, freedom of the press may be back exclusively in the hands of the powerful once again.
There are some great ideas in the Constitution of the United States. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press may be the most important of all.
"Sounds like enforced password formats and
mandatory changing of passwords would help, but how many companies actually make them policy and enforce it?"
I'm not convinced that mandatory chaning of passwords helps. It would seem that having to change a password every 30 days or so would encourage weak, easy to remember passwords. Or, the infamous sticky note on the monitor with the pw on it. Does anyone know of any actual research into the value of forced password changes and/or the optimum cycle time? Or, is this just something security admins cooked up to look like they were doing something?:)
Re:What I did/do
on
Disconnecting
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· Score: 4, Funny
I even beat that for ease-of-cancellation. Earthlink took it upon themselves to cancel my account and delete my data out of their database. They then spend the next two weeks re-entering my data and the other 6000(?) users who they had inadvertantly cancelled.
But even as efficient as that cancellation was, it was still unpleasant.;)
I refuse to believe that these yahoos both put their content on the net and then expect people to change the way they use the web while viewing their content! Especially since it is in their power to control access to their info while still making it available on the web.
We're supposed to believe that these people are so technically inept and unimaginative that:
They can't figure out how to do this with cookies, hidden data, dynamically changing links (bad idea since people would link to invalid url's), or referrer data? They also can't figure out that the net is inherently a public place unless they take measures to prevent that? They can't understand that a law won't change the way people not subject to the law operate? They can't understand that naive people will continue to deep link to their content until their lawyers contact them, endlessly?
Impossible. No functionally literate human is that stupid. Therefore, this must be a cpublicity stunt.:)
You've hit on the central concept of Starship Traders. Relative to these modern games, however, it's hopelessly simple. It relies entirely on the other players to make it interesting. While there is a fledgling graphical interface, the vast majority of players still use the more refined text interfaces, either browser or telnet.
Slashdot Mirror
2) Like repeating the 3rd grade, we already know the material and feel 'smart'.
3) We get to make offtopic posts without taking as big a karma hit.
4) We get to make offtopic posts without taking as big a karma hit. (ooops! sorry for the dupe!)
Send us your Linux Sysadmin articles.!
I think 14 years is enough.
Send us your Linux Sysadmin articles.
Send us your Linux Sysadmin articles!
My idea is to use the infamous 'web bug' but for good, not evil, for tracking use and accounting for charges.
If you see a problem with it, have a suggestion, or if I'm just not being clear about something, please reply to this comment.
If it has no obviously fatal flaw, I'll publish it shortly.
Disclaimer: I have no intention of trying to set something like this up myself *shudder* although I might consider using it or any other viable micropayment system for a tip jar on my game server.
Send us your Linux Sysadmin articles!
Actually, the Thoroughbred core versions of the XP processors are *much* cooler than the Palomino. I have two 1700+ chips, one with each core, in identical (tiny) aluminum cases. The Palomino runs far hotter than the Tbred. Oddly, much hotter than seems to be accounted for by the 64 vs 49 watt power consumption they are respectively rated. The Palomino, btw, has now been upgraded with faster (and louder!) fans but the box still runs much hotter.
Bottom line, a Tbred is only useful for heating a small room. For a whole house, specify 'Palomino core'.
Send us your Linux Sysadmin articles!
My biggest problem with Red Hat 8 was the GNOME terminal. It scrolls verrryyy Slooooollly. I play starship traders in telnet mode and it was like playing through a 4800 bps modem on a 128/512 DSL connection. I switched the shell icon to run the KDE Konsole and now have the best of both worlds -- fast, low-cpu telnet and no-effort anti-aliased fonts. Woohoo!
Red Hat 8 is a hint at desktop Linux's future.
'Known Space'. Larry Niven, et. al.
Yes, exactly... except for the part about other engineering disciplines. ;)
The trouble with that phrase is that 'software engineering' isn't properly one of them... or is it?
Sounds dangerous to play MC in a meeting... I can just see your panic as you frantically try to save your cities in the end-game. Does anyone notice?
;)
P.S. Will you share the source?
Even if higher-level abstractions were perfectly bug-free and non-leaky, there is another tradeoff that would forever preserve the niche of lower-level development tools. The granularity of the abstraction is an inherent tradeoff not just in machine time/efficiency, but in programmer learning curve as well.
Hmmm... I can't use this book -- I'm in too big of a hurry. I guess I'll have to wait until they release 'Teach Yourself UNIX System Administration in 24 consecutive hours'.
...by making up the URL's as I go along. In a multiplayer strategy game it is important that players not be able to simply look into the other sectors to see who is/what is hiding there. Not being a complete fool I didn't just make any URL resolve directly to the game sector in question. You have to log in, get issued a 'ship' and navigate to that sector.
Of course, I'm not a professional webmaster who knows all sorts of sophisticated web stuff, so it wasn't a problem for me. I guess it's much more complicated if you know what you're doing.
BTW, I'm wondering what part of 'Uniform Resource Locator' these yahoo's don't understand.
Actually, the original copyright would cover the sounds of the forest and audience, not silence. It would be rather difficult to reproduce an infringing work of the original 'piece'.
;)
Silence, of course, has already been done in every medium -- including those, such as silent films, where sound wasn't a component.
The only thing the two 'works' have in common, other than the 'credit' to John Cage, is the idea. I don't know about the UK but in the US an idea isn't copyrightable. Our PTO might issue a patent on it, however.
I think his point was that the GPL is undermined by the fact that you can't modify your system under such a scheme -- and still participate in the 'commons'. That, effectively, makes your GPL'd system unusable if modified.
But, replace the word 'unusable' in your first paragraph with 'unmodifiable' and I think it represents the general thrust of the article more accurately.
OTOH, I hope (and believe) that you're right on your later point -- Microsoft won't succeed on this one.
A weblog is inherently visible to the entire world. It's hard enough getting a significant readership -- from whereever you can -- than getting the attention of a local group, not otherwise linked by their interests. Therefore, I would say that very few local weblogs would be successful. Exceptions might be a weblog in a small town with no other significant news source. Another exception might be a huge city like LA where only a tiny percentage of the population might be sufficient to make the weblog successful.
A city like mine of about 150K population and several local TV stations, many radio stations, a major newspaper, etc. would be a tough nut to crack. Meanwhile, our newspaper has an online edition, adding online competition.
Imagine the price for byte of an eight-character password that lets you change your grades, retroactively, to all 'A's. Satellite pictures and Human genome are lots of bytes.
...who wrote a weird Atari program.
Mine would list itself on the screen, reposition the cursor to the top of the program, and turn on some 'auto-carriage-return' feature that caused the system to behave like you were holding down the enter key. The first command in the program was 'list' or somesuch that would list out the approximately 12-line BASIC program. The last command in the program was 'new' which wiped out the program from memory -- but it was still listed on the screen. Once control was returned to the OS, it would start auto-CRing until it entered the
program back into memory, then it would auto-CR over the 'run' command on the bottom of the screen, and, viola, it would start all over.
Useless, but cool, to have a program that would both delete itself, re-enter itself, and run itself. Heh.
This looks like a reduction of standards... something of a consolidation, even as it adds Yet Another Linux Distribution (YALD).
Notice the pattern of these four vendors. They nicely cover four continents, albeit Caldera covers N. America rather weakly, relative to the others in Asia (Turbo), Europe (SuSE), and S. America (Conectiva).
... is great if you happen to be rich enough to own a printing press. The Internet changed that. Now, anyone, including me, can own a 'printing press'. If this decision stands, freedom of the press may be back exclusively in the hands of the powerful once again.
There are some great ideas in the Constitution of the United States. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press may be the most important of all.
I'm not convinced that mandatory chaning of passwords helps. It would seem that having to change a password every 30 days or so would encourage weak, easy to remember passwords. Or, the infamous sticky note on the monitor with the pw on it. Does anyone know of any actual research into the value of forced password changes and/or the optimum cycle time? Or, is this just something security admins cooked up to look like they were doing something?
I even beat that for ease-of-cancellation. Earthlink took it upon themselves to cancel my account and delete my data out of their database. They then spend the next two weeks re-entering my data and the other 6000(?) users who they had inadvertantly cancelled.
;)
But even as efficient as that cancellation was, it was still unpleasant.
...To get slashdotted?
:)
I refuse to believe that these yahoos both put their content on the net and then expect people to change the way they use the web while viewing their content! Especially since it is in their power to control access to their info while still making it available on the web.
We're supposed to believe that these people are so technically inept and unimaginative that:
They can't figure out how to do this with cookies, hidden data, dynamically changing links (bad idea since people would link to invalid url's), or referrer data? They also can't figure out that the net is inherently a public place unless they take measures to prevent that? They can't understand that a law won't change the way people not subject to the law operate? They can't understand that naive people will continue to deep link to their content until their lawyers contact them, endlessly?
Impossible. No functionally literate human is that stupid. Therefore, this must be a cpublicity stunt.
Hmmm.... that gives me an idea for patenting several very useful bodily functions. Think of the licensing fees!
You've hit on the central concept of Starship Traders. Relative to these modern games, however, it's hopelessly simple. It relies entirely on the other players to make it interesting. While there is a fledgling graphical interface, the vast majority of players still use the more refined text interfaces, either browser or telnet.