Speaking from personal experience, pgcc compiled code occasionally causes weird problems on non-intel machines. I use AMD cpus, and have seen strange lockups occur when using Mandrake Linux. It appears that the X server wouldn't want to work for longer than a few hours at a time. Also, I notice no performance difference "at the helm" between that pentium optimized distro and Red Hat.
Yes, pgcc may give you a 30% faster completion times for the "tar" program, but: - how much of your cpu time is spend tarring and untarring? - how much of that performance is dependent on ram available for disc cache, ide/scsi bus performance, etc.?
I'll take a good stable distro anyday of the week over something theoretically faster, but not as stable.
NOTE: I have not tried Stampede Linux. I'm extrapolating experiences from Mandrake Linux, another pgcc optimized distro.
The point is, certainly from a physical comfort standpoint it's quite a nice place to be an employee
I'm sure take excellent physical care of their employees. I've heard wonderful stories about the work environment itself. However, they still partake in activities (such as the legisative attempts to cut the contract employees' earnings), that are abhorrent to this innocent bystander. Remember when the permatemps tried to sue for stock options? Those hard-slaving people who got hired for several months on a contract position, but stayed for several years? No health plan, no dental plan, no stock options. This is a company that can't even trust it's own employees to not go into a building they don't actually work in.
When you take a tour of a Istanbul, do they show you what goes on in a Turkish prison? I'm sure it's a fine place to visit if they want something from you.
Here on/., Micro$oft is disliked for the quality of the code they sell. (think if the stuff worked.)
If you think the quality of Microsoft's products is the *only* reason not to use them, you're not listening carefully enough. As recently as last week, they managed to buy their way into the George W. Bush campaign. They will push hard for him to win, because he's not going to push anyone in the judicial branch to do anything about Microsoft. Do you want *any* corporation to have that level of control with any politician? Let alone a corporation that has been judged as illegally acquiring and maintaining a monopoly
Contrary to popular belief, Microsoft is probably actualy nice to many of its employees. It is under such scrutiny that it can't afford not to. However, some of the less popular hardware companies (AOPen, and the other really small and unheard of ones that you can't find at Best Buy) probably aren't as benevolent.
What are you smoking, and where do I get some? Really, have you already forgotten the efforts of Microsoft to abolish time and a half overtime for their hourly contract employees? When they tried to get the state of Washington to exclude "information tech" workers wholesale from that particular benefit?
Please read a little from http://www.vcnet.com/bms/ before attempting to pass this off again.
Keep the money local to your area, and out of the pockets of the big corporation CEOs, whenever possible. There are a few local people I buy parts from, and I've assembled all my machines from their available supplies. It costs a little more if you build something from scratch, but for upgrading it's usually a good deal. Their prices are pretty low, and if something breaks, I can yell at someone's face if I need to. Never underestimate the power of face-to-face contact when dealing with product returns.
Is publicly available cryptography strong enough for me to start buying stuff with a credit card on the 'net?
Really, do you think anyone has the time to sniff through your network traffic for *one* credit card number? It'd be *much* easier to guess numbers at random for that much trouble. Not to mention the lure of finding an insecure web server out there, and retrieving a whole logfile full of CCs.
<heresy>I've personally sent CC info over the web IN THE CLEAR!</heresy> To date, I haven't seen any unauthorized charges on my statements. I can't say I'm really expecting to see any either. Worst case, a few phone calls to my credit card company will take care of them. Really, do you think the internet is any less secure than, say that shifty eyed clerk at the CD store? or your favourite restauraunt?
walk down the street in a crimeridden neighborhood looking like an easy target, then [...] pulling out a gun and holfding them until the police arrived
I assume you are doing this in a state where you are not violating any concealed carry laws in doing so. =) Statistically, concealed carry laws have the effect of lowering such crime rates, specifically because criminals are much more careful if they don't know whether or not a target is armed. But that's another matter. If you park a car in a "bad" neighborhood (or a "good" neighborhood, for that matter), and forget to lock your car door, can someone claim entrapment if they get caught stealing it? I think not. Besides, all that is required to get around the entrapment clause is that different officers make the arrest and set the trap. In this particular case, unauthorized use of my/my company's computing resources is still unauthorized use, regardless of whether I have left a diversion out there to attract the gullible.
Re:Old Motorola chips exhibited this behaviour
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I definitely remember him telling us about an ancient Motorola cpu (probably a 4 bit processor) that interpreted a specific unused opcode as two incompatible opcodes and tried to execute the microcode for both opcodes simultaneously, thus resulting in melted silicon. I also remember him telling us about Motorola's HCF (halt and catch fire) opcode. Maybe I'm combining anecdotes, but give me a break, this was twelve years ago. =)
Ric "the memory's the second to go, but i can't remember the first" Dude.
Old Motorola chips used to exhibit this behaviour
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Some old Motorola chips (pre 6502, anyway) used to have an unused opcode in their instruction set. As a brilliant design decision, the logic for processing the opcodes (PLA, STX, etc.) into microinstructions of the processor (put this register on the bus, clock the ALU, etc.) failed to decode the unimplemented opcode properly, and simultaneously fired off two microcontrol lines in the CPU. This resulted in an unrecoverable current overload in the heart of the CPU, and within seconds, caused the CPU the actually melt. Once diagnosed, the opcode was assigned the mnemonic, HCF for "halt and catch fire". (source Dr. Bill Hawkins, ENEE 446, UMCP).
Not quite as spectacular an effect as when the co-guitarist in my band failed to correctly calculate the new impedance of his rewired speaker cabinet correctly (2 ohms instead of his calculated 8 ohms). Applied a slight volume boost during a solo, and "pop!", followed by "what's that burning plastic smell?" =)
What also troubles me about Katz's essay is that he starts with the presumption that because kids are doing it, it must be right, and concludes that kids ought to be able to do it because they are.
I don't believe the premise is that "if the kids are doing it, it's ok". I believe the premise is "If the kids are doing something illegal, knowingly, what reason could there be?"
For example, many years ago, my friends and I would trade records (like CDs, but subject to quality degradation with repeated playing, and form factor large enough to include decent artwork). We'd listen to and record on audio tape the songs that we liked. What Jon is capturing here is the existence of a fundamental attribute of our society that encourages sharing of ideas and their expressions. It just happens that in our internet-enabled society, and due to advances in digital processing, lossless replication of (at least many forms of) content is by far easier than the traditional means of content distribution.
The fundamental problem facing content providers (movies, music, magazines, software, etc.) is the following: How can you facilitate the distribution of your content such that the risk associated with pirating that content become significant enough to discourage piracy?
For example: You hear a song on the radio. You like the song. You want to hear it again. Do you:
utilize some method of transportation, travel to your nearest music store (10 miles for me), and purchase a cd single (about $5-6), or a full length cd (about $12-17), total time invested of at least an hour ? OR
walk across the house to your computer, hit your favourite mp3 search engine, locate a site that offers the song of interest, and download it (as little as $0), total time as long as the download takes, during which you can do things not directly related to acquiring the song?
Which would you choose? To the content providers and controllers (record execs, movie house moguls, magazine editors, etc.): Do you honestly expect us to utilize method #1 if we have method #2 available to us? More importantly, now that the infrastructure exists to facilitate method #2 as distribution mechanism of least resistance, how do you possibly intend to retard it's growth?
What also troubles me about Katz's essay is that he starts with the presumption that because kids are doing it, it must be right, and concludes that kids ought to be able to do it because they are.
I don't believe the premise is that "if the kids are doing it, it's ok". I believe the premise is "If the kids are doing something illegal, knowingly, what reason could there be?"
For example, many years ago, my friends and I would trade records (like CDs, but subject to quality degradation with repeated playing, and form factor large enough to include decent artwork). We'd listen to and record on audio tape the songs that we liked. What Jon is capturing here is the existence of a fundamental attribute of our society that encourages sharing of ideas and their expressions. It just happens that in our internet-enabled society, and due to advances in digital processing, lossless replication of (at least many forms of) content is by far easier than the traditional means of content distribution.
The fundamental problem facing content providers (movies, music, magazines, software, etc.) is the following: How can you facilitate the distribution of your content such that the risk associated with pirating that content become significant enough to discourage piracy?
For example: You hear a song on the radio. You like the song. You want to hear it again. Do you:
utilize some method of transportation, travel to your nearest music store (10 miles for me), and purchase a cd single (about $5-6), or a full length cd (about $12-17), total time invested of at least an hour ? OR
walk across the house to your computer, hit your favourite mp3 search engine, locate a site that offers the song of interest, and download it (as little as $0), total time as long as the download takes, during which you can do things not directly related to acquiring the song?
Which would you choose? To the content providers and controllers (record execs, movie house moguls, magazine editors, etc.): Do you honestly expect us to utilize method #1 if we have method #2 available to us? More importantly, now that the infrastructure exists to facilitate method #2 as distribution mechanism of least resistance, how do you possibly intend to retard it's growth?
Is there more violence in the US? Probably. Is violence increased as a percentage of the population? I don't know. Is said violence a result of watching too much South Park/3 Stooges/Baywatch? Could be.
"I wrote a song about dental floss, but did anyone's teeth get cleaner?" -- FZ
Mindless Entertainment, and was that Thresh?
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Question: Who watches X-files for intellectual value? It was an extremely cheesy episode, and I loved every minute of it. Reminded me of, oh, say, Tron, or The Last Starfighter. Really low budget crap that's so bad, you spend the whole movie/show laughing at it.
Although I have to wonder, was that Thresh that starred as Player #2? Yakamuchi or whoever? Or just someone who looked a lot like him?
I'd like to formally urge you to oppose the passage of House Bill 19, Entitled: Maryland Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act, casually known as UCITA.
First and foremost, the bill is entirely unnecessary. The overwhelming majority of the protections offerred by this bill are already covered sufficiently under current copyright law.
This bill serves no purpose but to make it harder for software consumers to seek retribution and due compensation from the purveyors of sub-standard software. Specifically, the explicit enforcability of "shrink-wrap" use licenses, whose restrictions are not even known until software is purchased, taken home, and the box opened. These licenses are usually printed in extremely small type, and are full of legal verbage the average consumer would have difficulty understanding. Assuming the consumer would take the time to read the license in the first place. Typically their content can be summed up in the sentence, "I waive all privileges of fair use of the software if I break the seal on the disc." Copyright law sufficiently protects the publisher of such works from piracy. There is no need to add the enforcability of such restrictions to the law.
Also, the prohibitions on reverse-engineering are an affront to the entire computer industry. The burgeoning software empires today would never have existed had not Compaq engineers had the ability and legal right to reverse engineer the details of the original IBM PC. By being allowed the means to make similar machines for the purposes of interoperability, and doing so at a cheaper price, the "home PC" has turned into a real market.
Many other consumer oriented groups, intellectual property lawyers, and media publishers have expressed disapproval of this bill. I can't come close to reproducing the totality of the complaints against this bill. However, I urge you to take a few minutes and scan some of the specific letters of disapproval from them, archived at the following address:
http://www.nwu.org/pic/uccorgs.htm
As a summary, the bill has obtained rejections by such diverse orgainizations as: 50 intellectual property law professors, Consumer Project on Technology Ralph Nader, Consumers Union, Motion Picture Association of America, National Cable Television Association, National Writers Union, Newspaper Association of America, Recording Industry Association of America, and the Software Engineering Institute hard copy letter on file.
I admit it has advantages for parsing by humans. However, I can't help but wonder why we (programmers) have to spend so much time messing with text files. The simple act of editing a text file introduces several issues to your development process, most notably:
- does everyone's editors use tabs or spaces? - are tabs 8 characters? or 5? or 4? or 3? - are end-of-line markers LF? or CRLF? - are filesystems case sensitive? insensitive? - c/c++ coding style consistency? yeah, right.
When we started porting The Product (tm) to WinNT from a unix codebase, each of these issues caused problems in some way. The IRIX compiler won't accept an end-of-line that's a CRLF, as the CR kills the compiler. Case insensitive filesystems are one more thing I could cheerfully throttle Uncle Bill for. At any rate, these are matters that programmers shouldn't have to mess with. It beats the hell out of punching cards, but it's still a waste of our time.
With the advent of UML, there is now a rich, common graphical language for exchange of program design (at least for OO languages). My dream programming environment consists of manipulating graphical representations of the code in UML, perhaps flow charts for individual methods, and clicking the Generate Code button. The backend would handle all the trivialities of generating a workable code base, in my choice of implementation language(s). Generate IDL for interprocess method invokations as required by your model. Much the same as modelling a 3D environment, and clicking the Render button. Render the 3D model as png, jpeg, gif, whatever. Same with the code. "Render" the code in C/C++, Tcl, Perl, Python, Eiffel, whatever. Rational Rose is a good step, but that particular program's interface is far too complex for human usage.
There are projects out there attempting to specify XML standards for program design. Support them. Support the automated toolsets to generate them. Then start using them, avoid sweating the minutia and be even more productive.
Every year a new manager would take over the record store (remember records? =) just off the UMCP campus. Every year, I'd have to spend a week figuring out if my favourite bands were filed under Heavy Metal, Hard Rock, Rock & Pop, etc. or on the other side of my musical tastes, Rap, R & B, Sould, etc.
I always believed that when *I* owned a record store there would be two sections: Single Artist, and Multiple Artist. Single Artist alphabetically by Artist, Multiple Artist aphabetically by Compilation Title. Color code the spines by genres, if you want people to be able to browse by such, but if you intend to split the hairs of Hard Rock and Heavy Metal, give me a freakin' map!
1) Despite Sun's claim that their high-end servers are highly reliable and built with redundant components, customers report that failures in service processors, controllers, processor cards, and other components have caused entire production systems to fail. (Source: Gartner Group, press reports)
First, Microsoft starts by comparing Sun Hardware to Microsoft Software. Microsoft makes so much in the way of processors, controllers, etc. There is no indication of how many systems failed, but we are led to believe this is a frequent occurrence. Anyone else remember the Yorktown? No, Microsoft systems never fail, do they. Most of our problems at work with our company fileserver went away by moving the drives to a Linux box (instead of NT), and forbidding people from logging into its console. Amazing how much more stable NT is if you don't exercise the video drivers.
2) Analyst reports have repeatedly raised the issue of reliability problems with Sun platforms, and have gone so far as to recommend that customers not use Sun servers in environments that require high availability. (Source: Gartner Group)
And the independent praise of Microsoft product reliability is never ending. As someone once said, "Their biggest disservice to the computer industry is the perpetuation of this idea that computers are inherently unreliable." (May not have been Al Stevens, but was someone I frequently confuse with him.
3)In one day alone, Dec. 7, 1999, a leading auction site suffered a system outage of more than three hours when both Sun E10000 servers running the site's back-end auction system failed. Meanwhile, the company?s Web site front-end, running on a Windows NT®-based server farm, has provided continuous availability with no single point of failure. (Source: public postings, press reports)
And (with the possibile exception of the latest round of DDoS attacks), they've pretty much remained up and running 24/7 since then.
4) Multiple vendors offer availability guarantees for Windows platforms, including IBM, HP, Unisys, and Compaq. (Source: Vendor Web sites)
If that's the case, I'd be willing to bet the pre-install all the software you're allowed to run on the machine without voiding the guarantee. No installing your own programs. Believe me, after seeing some of the strange things that can happen if everyone's not using the same versions of the DLLs, they'd be insane not to make that a hard requirement. And the lack of a tool that will conclusively determine which DLLs will get loaded with a given executable under a given environment is ludicrous. There's a DEPENDS.EXE, but it won't even read an executable off a network drive, and it won't find a DLL off of a network drive, and if a different version of the DLL is already in memory, you're going to get that one no matter what. "That's funny, if I run the demo before I do the PowerPoint presentation, it works fine. But as soon as I load PowerPoint, it stops working." The MSVCRT.DLL that's in memory (with PP) overrides the version you dropped in the same directory as your executables. Genius.
The rest of their stats are probably not lies, but are just as irrelevant.
MS) Windows runs 25 percent of Web sites worldwide; Sun runs 19 percent. (Source: Netcraft 12/99)
Hmm, any reason they left Apache stats off the list?
MS) 45 percent of secure Web sites run on Windows; Sun runs 11 percent. (Source: Netcraft 12/99)
If you had the Government in your pocket, and could push strong (or even any) crypto beyond the borders of the U.S., you too could run a majority of secure web sites. Not to say that MS does, only that they could.
MS)52 of the top 100 Internet shopping sites run on Windows. (Source: Media Metrix; Netcraft)
MS)57 percent of top business-to-business marketplaces run on Windows. (Source: Goldman Sachs; Netcraft)
Some of the biggest e-businesses and dot coms run on Windows...[list of websites elided]...
Obviously, the only type of website that matters any more is one that sells stuff. Yes it's some measure of reliability in the long run, but are you really trying to tell me that these businesses run MS from the front end web pages to the back end databases?
> musicians will make their money from live performances.
Obviously spoken by someone who has never tried to make money by playing live music.
Sure, wedding bands and "jukebox" bands can make enough to live on, if it supplements a menial day job, or they live in the band's van. But if you play your own music, it's difficult to get enough people together in one club to make any "real" money doing it.
In a former life, I was performing artist in the Baltimore/D.C. area. I can't remember a single area band whose members didn't hold down day jobs. Most chose occupations that would help the band in some way. If one of your bandmates works at Kinko's, flyer costs tend to drop to the negligible range. Someone does a little writing or advertising sales for a local music magazine, and you can get a small block of advertising in exchange.
In a way, the 'net changes a lot of this, as you are no longer forced to convince dozens/hundreds of people in a small geographic area to put up with a dingy, smoky, beer stained environment to make a buck with your music. Now you just have to convince people that the few demo songs they can download off your website are good enough to justify purchasing a full length release...
With video, there are several methods which may defray the production costs of a program, such that the copying of a program does not impact the production company.
We don't pay for television program viewing per show. Advertisers pay to interrupt the show every 7-10 minutes to let us know about their great products. By using product placement in movies, e.g. a close up of a bag of Brand X Potato Chips, advertising costs can be used to defray the production costs associated with video. Another great way to save no production costs in the first place is to stop paying movie stars $20 million per movie. Some movies (e.g. Star Wars, and anything made by Disney in the last 10 years) are effectively no more than 100 minute long advertisements for the merchandise associated with the movie. Action Figures, Video Games, T-Shirts, etc. are all "difficult to copy" goods that can be sold to make back production costs. I suspect Lucasfilm could sell DVDs for TPM at cost + $0.01 and still make back much more than the movie cost to produce via merchandise sales.
Audio, however, presents a slightly more difficult problem. Product placement doesn't fit in very well, although artists could acquire corporate sponsorships to make a living. Bands don't generally make money through touring, as the tours have traditionally been the advertisements for the records/CDs/tapes.
The fundamental tradeoff that the RIAA is looking at, is that it's easier to surf the mp3 search engines for popular songs, and download them, than it is to purchase the music legitimately. DVDs don't present as much of a problem in this area, as it would take weeks to download a movie via modem. Combine that with expensive DVD blank media, and it just isn't cost effective to duplicate DVDs electronically. Audio data, however, is relatively low bandwidth, and is easy to share, as teenagers/college students have always done. Blank tapes have a surcharge built into the price to defray the cost of piracy to the record labels (and by proxy, to their bands), but a totally electronic distribution scheme would be impossible to track and tax accordingly.
Another thing to consider is that a fair amount of music in mp3 format can be obtained legally from web sites that cater to the DIY (do-it-yourself) recording industry. What's the difference between downloading the newest songs from that garage band in Timbuktu and buying the latest Limp Bizkit CD? The price is the popularity of the band, sharing a common musical experience with others across the globe. Back in the days of vinyl, artists could offer more than just music. Different colors of vinyl pressings, elaborate artwork (e.g. Roger Dean or H.R.Giger), and creative jacket design (e.g. Velvet Underground, Rolling Stones) could be used to make the legitimate purchase "worth it".
IANAL, but I believe the "if you can't afford one, one will be provided for you" clause only applies to criminal cases. For a civil suit, you'd be representing yourself. And you know what they say about someone yho represents themself in court...
As a side note, most jurisdictions will exclude you from Public Defender consideration if you have pretty much any source of income. You need to be *really* poor to qualify.
This is a question from my PHIL101 final exam back in 1988. Each TA wrote one question. This one came from mine. I spent half the final exam period working on the final, and the other half memorizing this very question. I'm firmly convinced that at least one of the Wachowski brothers was in my class, and said, "We should make a movie about that." I've included footnotes for references that are now dated.
Question 2 ----------
part a: Explain ____'s definition of reality as "true knowledge"
part b: Explain whether either of the individuals in the following situation have true knowledge as directed.
Bill and Ted hop on their interplanetary space Harleys and head off to the planet Pluto. When they arrive, they see some lights in the distance, and investigate. Upon closer inspection, they see what appears to be an exact replica of the Campus Village shopping center (1). Bill and Ted decide to pick up a local copy of the National Inquirer, but when they get into People's (2), they are abducted by a bunch of Telly Savalas (3) look alikes, who take them to what appears to be the game show set for Let's Make A Deal (4). Ted has all of his sensory organs disconnect from his body and put in a box. Bill is told that they will reconnect them if he can guess which curtain Ted's sensory organs are hiding behind. While Bill is thinking about his choice, someone brushes past curtain #2, revealing what appear to be Ted's sensory organs in a box. In truth, it's a hologram. The organs are actually in a smaller box, behind the hologram. Does Bill have True Knowledge as to the whereabouts of Ted's sensory organs?
Ted's brain is electrically stimulated to make him believe that he's on the game show, Let's Make A Deal, and that his sensory organs will be reconnected if Bill guesses what curtain they are hiding behind. Does Ted have True Knowledge as to his whereabouts?
(1) a shopping center just off the UMCP campus. (2) a drug store chain, now CVS Pharmacy. (3) Kojak, a bald police detective(?) from a popular '70s show. (4) Another popular '70s show, "would you like to trade all that you have now for what's behind curtain #2."
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Speaking from personal experience, pgcc compiled code occasionally causes weird problems on non-intel machines. I use AMD cpus, and have seen strange lockups occur when using Mandrake Linux. It appears that the X server wouldn't want to work for longer than a few hours at a time. Also, I notice no performance difference "at the helm" between that pentium optimized distro and Red Hat.
Yes, pgcc may give you a 30% faster completion times for the "tar" program, but:
- how much of your cpu time is spend tarring and untarring?
- how much of that performance is dependent on ram available for disc cache, ide/scsi bus performance, etc.?
I'll take a good stable distro anyday of the week over something theoretically faster, but not as stable.
NOTE: I have not tried Stampede Linux. I'm extrapolating experiences from Mandrake Linux, another pgcc optimized distro.
I'm sure take excellent physical care of their employees. I've heard wonderful stories about the work environment itself. However, they still partake in activities (such as the legisative attempts to cut the contract employees' earnings), that are abhorrent to this innocent bystander. Remember when the permatemps tried to sue for stock options? Those hard-slaving people who got hired for several months on a contract position, but stayed for several years? No health plan, no dental plan, no stock options. This is a company that can't even trust it's own employees to not go into a building they don't actually work in.
When you take a tour of a Istanbul, do they show you what goes on in a Turkish prison? I'm sure it's a fine place to visit if they want something from you.
Do you? Would you care to enlighten those of us who don't?
If you think the quality of Microsoft's products is the *only* reason not to use them, you're not listening carefully enough. As recently as last week, they managed to buy their way into the George W. Bush campaign. They will push hard for him to win, because he's not going to push anyone in the judicial branch to do anything about Microsoft. Do you want *any* corporation to have that level of control with any politician? Let alone a corporation that has been judged as illegally acquiring and maintaining a monopoly
afford not to. However, some of the less popular hardware companies (AOPen, and the other really small and unheard of ones
that you can't find at Best Buy) probably aren't as benevolent.
What are you smoking, and where do I get some? Really, have you already forgotten the efforts of Microsoft to abolish time and a half overtime for their hourly contract employees? When they tried to get the state of Washington to exclude "information tech" workers wholesale from that particular benefit?
Please read a little from http://www.vcnet.com/bms/ before attempting to pass this off again.
Keep the money local to your area, and out of the pockets of the big corporation CEOs, whenever possible. There are a few local people I buy parts from, and I've assembled all my machines from their available supplies. It costs a little more if you build something from scratch, but for upgrading it's usually a good deal. Their prices are pretty low, and if something breaks, I can yell at someone's face if I need to. Never underestimate the power of face-to-face contact when dealing with product returns.
Really, do you think anyone has the time to sniff through your network traffic for *one* credit card number? It'd be *much* easier to guess numbers at random for that much trouble. Not to mention the lure of finding an insecure web server out there, and retrieving a whole logfile full of CCs.
<heresy>I've personally sent CC info over the web IN THE CLEAR!</heresy> To date, I haven't seen any unauthorized charges on my statements. I can't say I'm really expecting to see any either. Worst case, a few phone calls to my credit card company will take care of them. Really, do you think the internet is any less secure than, say that shifty eyed clerk at the CD store? or your favourite restauraunt?
I assume you are doing this in a state where you are not violating any concealed carry laws in doing so. =) Statistically, concealed carry laws have the effect of lowering such crime rates, specifically because criminals are much more careful if they don't know whether or not a target is armed. But that's another matter. If you park a car in a "bad" neighborhood (or a "good" neighborhood, for that matter), and forget to lock your car door, can someone claim entrapment if they get caught stealing it? I think not. Besides, all that is required to get around the entrapment clause is that different officers make the arrest and set the trap. In this particular case, unauthorized use of my/my company's computing resources is still unauthorized use, regardless of whether I have left a diversion out there to attract the gullible.
I definitely remember him telling us about an ancient Motorola cpu (probably a 4 bit processor) that interpreted a specific unused opcode as two incompatible opcodes and tried to execute the microcode for both opcodes simultaneously, thus resulting in melted silicon. I also remember him telling us about Motorola's HCF (halt and catch fire) opcode. Maybe I'm combining anecdotes, but give me a break, this was twelve years ago. =)
Ric "the memory's the second to go, but i can't remember the first" Dude.
or for those with just a basic interpreter:
10 PRINT "DIE";:GOTO 10
Some old Motorola chips (pre 6502, anyway) used to have an unused opcode in their instruction set. As a brilliant design decision, the logic for processing the opcodes (PLA, STX, etc.) into microinstructions of the processor (put this register on the bus, clock the ALU, etc.) failed to decode the unimplemented opcode properly, and simultaneously fired off two microcontrol lines in the CPU. This resulted in an unrecoverable current overload in the heart of the CPU, and within seconds, caused the CPU the actually melt. Once diagnosed, the opcode was assigned the mnemonic, HCF for "halt and catch fire". (source Dr. Bill Hawkins, ENEE 446, UMCP).
Not quite as spectacular an effect as when the co-guitarist in my band failed to correctly calculate the new impedance of his rewired speaker cabinet correctly (2 ohms instead of his calculated 8 ohms). Applied a slight volume boost during a solo, and "pop!", followed by "what's that burning plastic smell?" =)
I don't believe the premise is that "if the kids are doing it, it's ok". I believe the premise is "If the kids are doing something illegal, knowingly, what reason could there be?"
For example, many years ago, my friends and I would trade records (like CDs, but subject to quality degradation with repeated playing, and form factor large enough to include decent artwork). We'd listen to and record on audio tape the songs that we liked. What Jon is capturing here is the existence of a fundamental attribute of our society that encourages sharing of ideas and their expressions. It just happens that in our internet-enabled society, and due to advances in digital processing, lossless replication of (at least many forms of) content is by far easier than the traditional means of content distribution.
The fundamental problem facing content providers (movies, music, magazines, software, etc.) is the following: How can you facilitate the distribution of your content such that the risk associated with pirating that content become significant enough to discourage piracy?
For example: You hear a song on the radio. You like the song. You want to hear it again. Do you:
Which would you choose? To the content providers and controllers (record execs, movie house moguls, magazine editors, etc.): Do you honestly expect us to utilize method #1 if we have method #2 available to us? More importantly, now that the infrastructure exists to facilitate method #2 as distribution mechanism of least resistance, how do you possibly intend to retard it's growth?
I don't believe the premise is that "if the kids are doing it, it's ok". I believe the premise is "If the kids are doing something illegal, knowingly, what reason could there be?"
For example, many years ago, my friends and I would trade records (like CDs, but subject to quality degradation with repeated playing, and form factor large enough to include decent artwork). We'd listen to and record on audio tape the songs that we liked. What Jon is capturing here is the existence of a fundamental attribute of our society that encourages sharing of ideas and their expressions. It just happens that in our internet-enabled society, and due to advances in digital processing, lossless replication of (at least many forms of) content is by far easier than the traditional means of content distribution.
The fundamental problem facing content providers (movies, music, magazines, software, etc.) is the following: How can you facilitate the distribution of your content such that the risk associated with pirating that content become significant enough to discourage piracy?
For example: You hear a song on the radio. You like the song. You want to hear it again. Do you:
Which would you choose? To the content providers and controllers (record execs, movie house moguls, magazine editors, etc.): Do you honestly expect us to utilize method #1 if we have method #2 available to us? More importantly, now that the infrastructure exists to facilitate method #2 as distribution mechanism of least resistance, how do you possibly intend to retard it's growth?
"I wrote a song about dental floss, but did anyone's teeth get cleaner?" -- FZ
Question: Who watches X-files for intellectual value? It was an extremely cheesy episode, and I loved every minute of it. Reminded me of, oh, say, Tron, or The Last Starfighter. Really low budget crap that's so bad, you spend the whole movie/show laughing at it.
Although I have to wonder, was that Thresh that starred as Player #2? Yakamuchi or whoever? Or just someone who looked a lot like him?
I'd like to formally urge you to oppose the passage of
House Bill 19, Entitled: Maryland Uniform Computer
Information Transactions Act, casually known as UCITA.
First and foremost, the bill is entirely unnecessary. The
overwhelming majority of the protections offerred by this
bill are already covered sufficiently under current
copyright law.
This bill serves no purpose but to make it harder for
software consumers to seek retribution and due compensation
from the purveyors of sub-standard software. Specifically,
the explicit enforcability of "shrink-wrap" use licenses,
whose restrictions are not even known until software is
purchased, taken home, and the box opened. These licenses
are usually printed in extremely small type, and are full
of legal verbage the average consumer would have difficulty
understanding. Assuming the consumer would take the time
to read the license in the first place. Typically their
content can be summed up in the sentence, "I waive all
privileges of fair use of the software if I break the
seal on the disc." Copyright law sufficiently protects
the publisher of such works from piracy. There is no need
to add the enforcability of such restrictions to the law.
Also, the prohibitions on reverse-engineering are an
affront to the entire computer industry. The burgeoning
software empires today would never have existed had not
Compaq engineers had the ability and legal right to
reverse engineer the details of the original IBM PC.
By being allowed the means to make similar machines for
the purposes of interoperability, and doing so at a
cheaper price, the "home PC" has turned into a real market.
Many other consumer oriented groups, intellectual property
lawyers, and media publishers have expressed disapproval of
this bill. I can't come close to reproducing the totality
of the complaints against this bill. However, I urge you
to take a few minutes and scan some of the specific letters
of disapproval from them, archived at the following address:
http://www.nwu.org/pic/uccorgs.htm
As a summary, the bill has obtained rejections by such
diverse orgainizations as: 50 intellectual property law
professors, Consumer Project on Technology Ralph Nader,
Consumers Union, Motion Picture Association of America,
National Cable Television Association, National Writers
Union, Newspaper Association of America, Recording
Industry Association of America, and the Software
Engineering Institute hard copy letter on file.
Sincerely,
I admit it has advantages for parsing by humans. However, I can't help but wonder why we (programmers) have to spend so much time messing with text files. The simple act of editing a text file introduces several issues to your development process, most notably:
- does everyone's editors use tabs or spaces?
- are tabs 8 characters? or 5? or 4? or 3?
- are end-of-line markers LF? or CRLF?
- are filesystems case sensitive? insensitive?
- c/c++ coding style consistency? yeah, right.
When we started porting The Product (tm) to WinNT from a unix codebase, each of these issues caused
problems in some way. The IRIX compiler won't accept an end-of-line that's a CRLF, as the CR kills the compiler. Case insensitive filesystems are one more thing I could cheerfully throttle Uncle Bill for. At any rate, these are matters that programmers shouldn't have to mess with.
It beats the hell out of punching cards, but it's still a waste of our time.
With the advent of UML, there is now a rich, common graphical language for exchange of program design (at least for OO languages). My dream programming environment consists of manipulating graphical representations of the code in UML, perhaps flow charts for individual methods, and clicking the Generate Code button. The backend would handle all the trivialities of generating a workable code base, in my choice of implementation language(s). Generate IDL for interprocess method invokations as required by your model. Much the same as modelling a 3D environment, and clicking the Render button. Render the 3D model as png, jpeg, gif, whatever. Same with the code. "Render" the code in C/C++, Tcl, Perl, Python, Eiffel, whatever. Rational Rose is a good step, but that particular program's interface is far too complex for human usage.
There are projects out there attempting to specify XML standards for program design. Support them. Support the automated toolsets to generate them. Then start using them, avoid sweating the minutia and be even more productive.
Ahh, the good old college days...
Every year a new manager would take over the record store (remember records? =) just off the UMCP campus. Every year, I'd have to spend a week figuring out if my favourite bands were filed under Heavy Metal, Hard Rock, Rock & Pop, etc. or on the other side of my musical tastes, Rap, R & B, Sould, etc.
I always believed that when *I* owned a record store there would be two sections: Single Artist, and Multiple Artist. Single Artist alphabetically by Artist, Multiple Artist aphabetically by Compilation Title. Color code the spines by genres, if you want people to be able to browse by such, but if you intend to split the hairs of Hard Rock and Heavy Metal, give me a freakin' map!
1) Despite Sun's claim that their high-end servers are highly reliable and built with redundant components, customers report that failures in service processors, controllers, processor cards, and other components have caused entire production systems to fail. (Source: Gartner Group, press reports)
First, Microsoft starts by comparing Sun Hardware to Microsoft Software. Microsoft makes so much in the way of processors, controllers, etc. There is no indication of how many systems failed, but we are led to believe this is a frequent occurrence. Anyone else remember the Yorktown? No, Microsoft systems never fail, do they. Most of our problems at work with our company fileserver went away by moving the drives to a Linux box (instead of NT), and forbidding people from logging into its console. Amazing how much more stable NT is if you don't exercise the video drivers.
2) Analyst reports have repeatedly raised the issue of reliability problems with Sun platforms, and have gone so far as to recommend that customers not use Sun servers in environments that require high availability. (Source: Gartner Group)
And the independent praise of Microsoft product reliability is never ending. As someone once said, "Their biggest disservice to the computer industry is the perpetuation of this idea that computers are inherently unreliable." (May not have been Al Stevens, but was someone I frequently confuse with him.
3)In one day alone, Dec. 7, 1999, a leading auction site suffered a system outage of more than three hours when both Sun E10000 servers running the site's back-end auction system failed. Meanwhile, the company?s Web site front-end, running on a Windows NT®-based server farm, has provided continuous availability with no single point of failure. (Source: public postings, press reports)
And (with the possibile exception of the latest round of DDoS attacks), they've pretty much remained up and running 24/7 since then.
4) Multiple vendors offer availability guarantees for Windows platforms, including IBM, HP, Unisys, and Compaq. (Source: Vendor Web sites)
If that's the case, I'd be willing to bet the pre-install all the software you're allowed to run on the machine without voiding the guarantee. No installing your own programs. Believe me, after seeing some of the strange things that can happen if everyone's not using the same versions of the DLLs, they'd be insane not to make that a hard requirement. And the lack of a tool that will conclusively determine which DLLs will get loaded with a given executable under a given environment is ludicrous. There's a DEPENDS.EXE, but it won't even read an executable off a network drive, and it won't find a DLL off of a network drive, and if a different version of the DLL is already in memory, you're going to get that one no matter what. "That's funny, if I run the demo before I do the PowerPoint presentation, it works fine. But as soon as I load PowerPoint, it stops working." The MSVCRT.DLL that's in memory (with PP) overrides the version you dropped in the same directory as your executables. Genius.
The rest of their stats are probably not lies, but are just as irrelevant.
MS) Windows runs 25 percent of Web sites worldwide; Sun runs 19 percent. (Source: Netcraft 12/99)
Hmm, any reason they left Apache stats off the list?
MS) 45 percent of secure Web sites run on Windows; Sun runs 11 percent. (Source: Netcraft 12/99)
If you had the Government in your pocket, and could push strong (or even any) crypto beyond the borders of the U.S., you too could run a majority of secure web sites. Not to say that MS does, only that they could.
MS)52 of the top 100 Internet shopping sites run on Windows. (Source: Media Metrix; Netcraft)
MS)57 percent of top business-to-business marketplaces run on Windows. (Source: Goldman Sachs; Netcraft)
Some of the biggest e-businesses and dot coms run on Windows ...[list of websites elided]...
Obviously, the only type of website that matters any more is one that sells stuff. Yes it's some measure of reliability in the long run, but are you really trying to tell me that these businesses run MS from the front end web pages to the back end databases?
RATM, definitely, but I think Jello Biafra has more class than that. =)
However, I could see DK flashing closeups of their Doc Martens for a small fee...
> musicians will make their money from live performances.
Obviously spoken by someone who has never tried to make money by playing live music.
Sure, wedding bands and "jukebox" bands can make enough to live on, if it supplements a menial day job, or they live in the band's van. But if you play your own music, it's difficult to get enough people together in one club to make any "real" money doing it.
In a former life, I was performing artist in the Baltimore/D.C. area. I can't remember a single area band whose members didn't hold down day jobs. Most chose occupations that would help the band in some way. If one of your bandmates works at Kinko's, flyer costs tend to drop to the negligible range. Someone does a little writing or advertising sales for a local music magazine, and you can get a small block of advertising in exchange.
In a way, the 'net changes a lot of this, as you are no longer forced to convince dozens/hundreds of people in a small geographic area to put up with a dingy, smoky, beer stained environment to make a buck with your music. Now you just have to convince people that the few demo songs they can download off your website are good enough to justify purchasing a full length release...
With video, there are several methods which may defray the production costs of a program, such that the copying of a program does not impact the production company.
We don't pay for television program viewing per show. Advertisers pay to interrupt the show every 7-10 minutes to let us know about their great products. By using product placement in movies, e.g. a close up of a bag of Brand X Potato Chips, advertising costs can be used to defray the production costs associated with video. Another great way to save no production costs in the first place is to stop paying movie stars $20 million per movie. Some movies (e.g. Star Wars, and anything made by Disney in the last 10 years) are effectively no more than 100 minute long advertisements for the merchandise associated with the movie. Action Figures, Video Games, T-Shirts, etc. are all "difficult to copy" goods that can be sold to make back production costs. I suspect Lucasfilm could sell DVDs for TPM at cost + $0.01 and still make back much more than the movie cost to produce via merchandise sales.
Audio, however, presents a slightly more difficult problem. Product placement doesn't fit in very well, although artists could acquire corporate sponsorships to make a living. Bands don't generally make money through touring, as the tours have traditionally been the advertisements for the records/CDs/tapes.
The fundamental tradeoff that the RIAA is looking at, is that it's easier to surf the mp3 search engines for popular songs, and download them, than it is to purchase the music legitimately. DVDs don't present as much of a problem in this area, as it would take weeks to download a movie via modem. Combine that with expensive DVD blank media, and it just isn't cost effective to duplicate DVDs electronically. Audio data, however, is relatively low bandwidth, and is easy to share, as teenagers/college students have always done. Blank tapes have a surcharge built into the price to defray the cost of piracy to the record labels (and by proxy, to their bands), but a totally electronic distribution scheme would be impossible to track and tax accordingly.
Another thing to consider is that a fair amount of music in mp3 format can be obtained legally from web sites that cater to the DIY (do-it-yourself) recording industry. What's the difference between downloading the newest songs from that garage band in Timbuktu and buying the latest Limp Bizkit CD? The price is the popularity of the band, sharing a common musical experience with others across the globe. Back in the days of vinyl, artists could offer more than just music. Different colors of vinyl pressings, elaborate artwork (e.g. Roger Dean or H.R.Giger), and creative jacket design (e.g. Velvet Underground, Rolling Stones) could be used to make the legitimate purchase "worth it".
What incentives do they offer us now?
check out www.fair.org for some frightening facts about the press, and who owns them, and how that affects the news you read/see daily.
IANAL, but I believe the "if you can't afford one,
one will be provided for you" clause only applies
to criminal cases. For a civil suit, you'd be
representing yourself. And you know what they say
about someone yho represents themself in court...
As a side note, most jurisdictions will exclude
you from Public Defender consideration if you have
pretty much any source of income. You need to
be *really* poor to qualify.
This is a question from my PHIL101 final exam back in 1988.
Each TA wrote one question. This one came from mine. I
spent half the final exam period working on the final, and
the other half memorizing this very question. I'm firmly
convinced that at least one of the Wachowski brothers was
in my class, and said, "We should make a movie about that."
I've included footnotes for references that are now dated.
Question 2
----------
part a: Explain ____'s definition of reality as "true knowledge"
part b: Explain whether either of the individuals in the
following situation have true knowledge as directed.
Bill and Ted hop on their interplanetary space Harleys and
head off to the planet Pluto. When they arrive, they see
some lights in the distance, and investigate. Upon closer
inspection, they see what appears to be an exact replica of
the Campus Village shopping center (1). Bill and Ted decide
to pick up a local copy of the National Inquirer, but when
they get into People's (2), they are abducted by a bunch of
Telly Savalas (3) look alikes, who take them to what appears
to be the game show set for Let's Make A Deal (4). Ted has
all of his sensory organs disconnect from his body and put
in a box. Bill is told that they will reconnect them if he
can guess which curtain Ted's sensory organs are hiding
behind. While Bill is thinking about his choice, someone
brushes past curtain #2, revealing what appear to be Ted's
sensory organs in a box. In truth, it's a hologram. The
organs are actually in a smaller box, behind the hologram.
Does Bill have True Knowledge as to the whereabouts of Ted's
sensory organs?
Ted's brain is electrically stimulated to make him believe
that he's on the game show, Let's Make A Deal, and that
his sensory organs will be reconnected if Bill guesses what
curtain they are hiding behind. Does Ted have True Knowledge
as to his whereabouts?
(1) a shopping center just off the UMCP campus.
(2) a drug store chain, now CVS Pharmacy.
(3) Kojak, a bald police detective(?) from a popular '70s show.
(4) Another popular '70s show, "would you like to trade all
that you have now for what's behind curtain #2."