People should have figured out by now that stories with inflammatory headlines generate more readership. This was the case in the old newprint era and it's true in the Internet era.
Linux does have enemies. Of course Microsoft is one, but they have also been very much helped by Linux and *BSD because these have weakened or destroyed competitors in the server market who were starting to venture towards the desktop. Digital, Sun, HP, IBM, SCO, etc. all lost to Linux. Some of these companies learned that it was better to embrace the OSS movement sooner rather than later, and are now using Linux against the others. For example, IBM. But Microsoft is a different animal, and can't really use that tactic. So it is natural that Microsoft is the enemy of Linux. I say enemy as opposed to competitor, because the only way for Microsoft to defend itself against Linux is to destroy it. Microsoft can't make a bargain with Linux, or buy it out, etc.
But there are enemies of other OSS products as well. Do you think that MySQL doesn't bother Larry Ellison? Do you think that Symbian isn't concerned about embedded Linux AND embedded MS-Windows?
Good ideas ph1ux -- and I say this because they are somewhat similar to some of mine;)
If you start thinking in terms of DOCUMENTS instead of PACKETS, then distributing non-realtime content gets really interesting - I've come up with a bunch of algoritms for intelligent, distributed caching.
I wish there was some place better than slashdot to discuss all this: there are too many people asking things like "what is a mesh router?" for me to feel comfortable getting really technical.
Well, we have a mailing list at bawia.org...if you want, subscribe there and tell me you have interest in this stuff and we can take it to a private mailing list.
To do VOIP properly, should shouldn'act ack at all -- its more important that packets arrive on time than a small percentage get dropped.
In general, though, the ideas behind ax.25 are good, and maybe should be applied to other aspects of mesh networks.
if the language sounds clumsy, please excuse me, it's sunday morning and I haven't had my coffee yet!
BTW, I am working on adapting MIT roofnet mesh software/protocol to doing VOIP, we have a project with wind-powered nodes. Not to production yet, not even close. But if you're interested drop me some mail.
Ah well, yes the very important technical details are screwed up. Can't we find some more reputable source than a news outlet in India? Maybe the lack of attention to detail and quality control in this news piece indicates that it is a product of the Indian Contract Programming Industry.
There was a place I got a warrantee through...MAC Camera in New Jersey -- basically a rip off joint. I had to pay for shipping it there and then $50!! to have it shipped back, and they said that there was no problem, when it was most certainly busted (drive not recognized).
Just get the manufacturers warrantee. stay away from asses like mac camera. If I am ever in that area of new jersey I am going to go in and yell at them at the top of my lungs, I wasted $300 on the extended warrantee and then another $80 sending it to them and back.
The dominance of MSIE got Microsoft into hot water in the past. Now, they can sit back and just give a bit of market share away as to have ammunition to defend themselves. But there's a limit to what is reasonable for them to give away: If MSIE drops below 75% of market (or some similar figure), I imagine they'll have some defensive action.
Sure, I'd love it if an open-source browser took over. But I don't think it's going to happen.
Wouldn't boot on some systems: a generic P120 and a Thinkpad i1452.
MIT's Roofnet seems to have a lot of work going on with it, and it does work really well. I don't see what advantage that this new software has over roofnet.
Of course this is going to raise the pro- vs. anti-development arguments to try to claim we should do such-and-such for the good of mankind and animals and plants and life, or not do it.
But, like genetic engineering, it is inevitable: humans will become increasingly engineered on the genetic level, that the living space of man will expand to every corner of the earth and beyond..this is our destiny.
But politics will control WHICH humans will do it, who will be the perfect beings, who will conquer Mars, and at what point will a war with Earth break out?
Being anti-genetic engineering or anti-Mars-colonization is like being anti-gun or anti-drug: forces bound to lose because of the great advantages that a sole user of the technology will have, and their power as a group will be unstoppable, whether they are an organized force or not.
I'd really like to expound on this and probably correct some of my wording, but Slashdot isn't generally a place for well-though-out arguments.
Are any of these proven working with Atheros AR5212 chipset cards, notable the the D-link DWL-AG520? In hostap mode? and stable? Because that's what I've been trying to set up today.
Sam Leffler's MadWifi is an example of coming to an agreement with a company and producing a really good driver while keeping the 'secret sauce' secret. Yet Atheros isn't given credit in this article. This doesn't seem fair to me.
Also, It claims that these wifi chipsets are not Software Defined Radios -- well from what I can see, they are indeed SDRs. So it makes sense to restrict knowledge of things that allow people to mess about too much. And of course the government needs to be able to detect your signal so they only allow a few spreading codes to be used and make sure there's no way for the user to change them.
Yes, I'd like to have the details of Atheros and other wifi SDRs but that's not practical. What IS practical is opening up everything needed for compatibility reasons.
Mod the parent up. This is precisely why they're denying it: they don't want to provide legal fuel to SCO's arguments! -- Paul
No, I was reading somewhere (groklaw, perhaps) that actions to ameliorate a controversy can't be used as evidence of knowledgeable wrongdoing. So you can rewrite code to sidestep a patent infingement complaint, but that doesn't mean you are acknoledging the legitimacy of the patent or the claims of infringement. And this makes sense.
For example; currently, abortion is a sin and is murder. Yet, if you look back only two hundred years (less in many cases), it was one of the purposes of the nunnery (convent). Women would have their illegitimate children, and they'd either be sent to an orphanage, or they'd be killed on the spot. The woman would then leave the convent with reputation preserved. The woman who went to term with the child, would have a "Bastard" and would have a poor reputation. I've read a few stories about thousaqnds of baby skeletons being unearthed around convents--these were babies that came to term.
Actually, abortion was pretty much legal up until the second half of the 19th century. I was surprised to find this out, but I am pretty sure I can trust the legal historians of the U.S. Supreme Court. They mention this history in Roe v. Wade.
Designing a good solar power system is not a trivial task. Obviously you need panels, but there are polycrystalline and mono, the mono being nicer but more expensive. There's the weatherproofing: you need a strong covering that is quite transparent over a wide colour range - even UV, and something that will not decay over time, nor allow water to bead. The support mechanism needs to be strong, and provide maintenance access. Photovoltaic cells are much more efficient when cold, so ventilation is important, but with ventilation comes weatherproofing woes.
Next problem is that the sun moves across the sky, and for maximum efficiency you want to track it, which can be done in one of several ways. Many people use a motor to tilt the panel, on at least one axis, though two is better. This of course requires some power, some mechanical and electrical systems which cost more and are subject to breakdown, and some controlling logic. Another method is to use pseudo-mirrors (I say pseudo because they only have to reflect the light energy, not the image, so there are different priorities in design of the mirrors) made of polished metal. These have the advantage of concentrating more light to the cells, but this advantage can be wasted if you reach the light saturation point of the photovoltaics, or heat them up too much. These mirrors require mechanical and electrical systems, but are also subject to interference or even damage from wind.
Then there's the charging system: photovoltaics rarely put out the voltage you want, and that voltage varies with the temperature and the amount of light hitting them. Pretty much every electricity consuming device has its own expectations in terms of voltage and current, so there needs to be some power electronics involved, along with controlling logic. And as soon as you get to some decent current, these become large and expensive pieces of silicon.
Don't get me wrong, I am a big fan of photovoltaics, I am just trying to show that, if you want to do it the right way, there's a lot more involved than putting a PV cell on your roof and connecting it to the power leads of your embedded system. I learned all this when I was building rooftop server for a wifi mesh networking system using MIT's roofnet software. The problem is, not much funding was available.
I am getting pretty sick of seeing people advertising the freeipods, freeminimacs, and web hosting in their slashdot sigs. I don't want to see your ads, but if your going to do that crap, at least don't be a rip-off, go pay slashdot for one of those ads on the sidebar.
When I mod, I will mod down any post with an ad in it.
The possibility of primitive life traveling through space in a theory called 'panspermia'. Though it's quite a stretch to consider viruses a form of life, it is known that some of them can survive some time in interplanetary space.
There is some evidence that genetic material rains down on the earth a lot, and that some of it may cause infectious diseases...though that is just a bit too wierd for me take take seriously (at this point).
Media Lab founding: you're right, it wasn't founded in the 1960s. I started one sentence and finished another. I meant to say how a lot of hacking (as in, learning and creating for the sheer fun of it) was deeply rooted at MIT in the 1960s.
Regarding Stata Centre: Oops, my bad. I thought they had been shoehorned in their along with CSAIL. I wonder how I thought that.
Regarding State Centre being beautiful: well, I think it's not quite as bad as Boston City Hall or the Science Center at Harvard, and it's certainly nicer than the WW2 temporary buildings it replaced, but it represents the kind of 'art-ictecture' that I hate. But mostly I hate it because it's an overpriced and defective disaster.
As far as the city of Cambridge vs. the Universities: It is true that there has been much confrontation over the years. MIT lately has been given much leeway (the former Bradford Cafe building in Central Square is owned by MIT, and has been an eyesore for many years. Not maintaining a building like that is against the law. MIT keeps on making promises to do things about it, but they never come to fruition). Harvard does a lot more for the community, as they have the Extention School. MIT got rid of the Lowell Institute some years ago, I believe that was their attempt at a community education outreach.
And as far as those buildings go, I don't think there's much the city could really do if MIT had decided to buy and use them. These are already zoned industrial/office/R&D (I think, I can check the zoning maps to be sure), there would be little else than renovation required to make them functional. While you need building permits for major renovations, the city would have to have a LEGITIMATE reason to deny them. A grudge is not a legitimate reason, and the city would lose in court, and probably have to pay damages.
But it's probably too late, I imagine someone is going to go rehab them into biotech space. But if MIT were to have purchased them from Polaroid a few years ago when it was going tits up, it would have been to both partys' advantage. C'est la vie.
Back to MLE: I wonder if the closure of MLE is going to mean transfer of people, projects, and money back to Cambridge. That could be seen by some as a good thing.
Does it come with a faux beard for those who don't have strong enough or correctly placed hair follicles? Or are you just expected to move some down from the top of your head?
Because both BSD and Beer require a big bushy beard. The belly is self-sustaining.
The problem is that it's just too expensive. MIT ex-president Vest had a very dot-com attitude towards spending, having investing a lot of the Universities money in very questionable companies with a lot of prestige, and many projects of quaint but questionable utility. Anyone who knows the story of the Stata building (a.k.a. the Gates building), that expensive, ugly, leaking monstrosity, can tell you MIT has made mistakes.
My feeling is the MLE was one of them. Dublin has become a VERY expensive place to live and do business. This is especially true if your capital pool is is dollars. Cambridge (Massachusetts, home of MIT) is expensive too, but not as expensive as Dublin.
Back in the 1960s, the Media Lab was a place of innovation because of the people involved, not the amount of money thrown at it. Since then, there have been a number of prima donnas who want the newest, best stuff. The formerly very drrop pockets of MIT made them used to getting what they demanded. But the pockets are light now. It's no surprise that the most remote wings of the organization will be the first to get clipped.
If I were running an organization such as the Media Lab, what I would do is NOT to try to shift focus on more commercially viable projects. There's enough commercial labs out there, doing a good job on this. What I would do is find a way run it on a shoestring budget. For instance, just up the street from that horrible Stata building are the old, empty and decaying Polaroid buildings. Those could have been bought and made useable for a fraction of the money it took to build Stata (yes, I know, State is an endowed building. Still, they could have done it). Instead of picking Dublin for RLE, pick a cheaper part of Europe that is less likely to skyrocket in costs because of its small size. But a country that is stable and has a good infrastructure. Someplace like the eastern part of Germany where you can buy land really cheap, and the government has a very long-term view towards helping the economy.
And trim down those salaries! There's no need to be demanding $130k/year when you can buy a nice house for $80k.
To summarize: cheaper area, less glitz, lower salaries, but still a playground for the mind.
Anybody who brings up Microsoft Bob in a Linux vs. Windows discussion not only instantly ends the discussion, but loses whatever their point of view is. Blakey Rat's Law.
I have a better suggestion, how about we just consider that MS people can't defend MS as a shole when this is brought up, which is why they want it not possible to make it a part of the argument.
But even if that were true, it is besides the case here - when Microsoft Bob can be used as a hacking tool, it's pretty funny and pathetic.
Sorry, I'll probably annoy the pinguinistas, but taking a Linux system as root online back then, meant you had a script kiddie logged in withing hours at most.
I Call Bullshit. Not only do I doubt your claim would be true for any Linux-based operating system, you would have us believe that would be the case for all of them. That's next to impossible. If you make such fantastic claims, you need to back them up. I bet you can't. You're just talking out your ass.
Why is this continually pressed? why do we continue to hear about this crap technology long after it has been shown to be harmful? It will interfere with many radio services, is expensive to implement, won't be cost efective in the rural areas it was touted as being beneficial for, and won't provide performance comparable to existing technologies..well then there's this..gigabit? well, i just don't believe it.
Slashdot Mirror
People should have figured out by now that stories with inflammatory headlines generate more readership. This was the case in the old newprint era and it's true in the Internet era.
Linux does have enemies. Of course Microsoft is one, but they have also been very much helped by Linux and *BSD because these have weakened or destroyed competitors in the server market who were starting to venture towards the desktop. Digital, Sun, HP, IBM, SCO, etc. all lost to Linux. Some of these companies learned that it was better to embrace the OSS movement sooner rather than later, and are now using Linux against the others. For example, IBM. But Microsoft is a different animal, and can't really use that tactic. So it is natural that Microsoft is the enemy of Linux. I say enemy as opposed to competitor, because the only way for Microsoft to defend itself against Linux is to destroy it. Microsoft can't make a bargain with Linux, or buy it out, etc.
But there are enemies of other OSS products as well. Do you think that MySQL doesn't bother Larry Ellison? Do you think that Symbian isn't concerned about embedded Linux AND embedded MS-Windows?
I think the terrorists were identified. It's unemployed american workers wanting their jobs back.
Good ideas ph1ux -- and I say this because they are somewhat similar to some of mine ;)
If you start thinking in terms of DOCUMENTS instead of PACKETS, then distributing non-realtime content gets really interesting - I've come up with a bunch of algoritms for intelligent, distributed caching.
I wish there was some place better than slashdot to discuss all this: there are too many people asking things like "what is a mesh router?" for me to feel comfortable getting really technical.
Well, we have a mailing list at bawia.org...if you want, subscribe there and tell me you have interest in this stuff and we can take it to a private mailing list.
To do VOIP properly, should shouldn'act ack at all -- its more important that packets arrive on time than a small percentage get dropped.
In general, though, the ideas behind ax.25 are good, and maybe should be applied to other aspects of mesh networks.
if the language sounds clumsy, please excuse me, it's sunday morning and I haven't had my coffee yet!
BTW, I am working on adapting MIT roofnet mesh software/protocol to doing VOIP, we have a project with wind-powered nodes. Not to production yet, not even close. But if you're interested drop me some mail.
Ah well, yes the very important technical details are screwed up. Can't we find some more reputable source than a news outlet in India? Maybe the lack of attention to detail and quality control in this news piece indicates that it is a product of the Indian Contract Programming Industry.
There was a place I got a warrantee through...MAC Camera in New Jersey -- basically a rip off joint. I had to pay for shipping it there and then $50!! to have it shipped back, and they said that there was no problem, when it was most certainly busted (drive not recognized).
Just get the manufacturers warrantee. stay away from asses like mac camera. If I am ever in that area of new jersey I am going to go in and yell at them at the top of my lungs, I wasted $300 on the extended warrantee and then another $80 sending it to them and back.
The dominance of MSIE got Microsoft into hot water in the past. Now, they can sit back and just give a bit of market share away as to have ammunition to defend themselves. But there's a limit to what is reasonable for them to give away: If MSIE drops below 75% of market (or some similar figure), I imagine they'll have some defensive action.
Sure, I'd love it if an open-source browser took over. But I don't think it's going to happen.
Wouldn't boot on some systems: a generic P120 and a Thinkpad i1452.
MIT's Roofnet seems to have a lot of work going on with it, and it does work really well. I don't see what advantage that this new software has over roofnet.
Of course this is going to raise the pro- vs. anti-development arguments to try to claim we should do such-and-such for the good of mankind and animals and plants and life, or not do it.
But, like genetic engineering, it is inevitable: humans will become increasingly engineered on the genetic level, that the living space of man will expand to every corner of the earth and beyond..this is our destiny.
But politics will control WHICH humans will do it, who will be the perfect beings, who will conquer Mars, and at what point will a war with Earth break out?
Being anti-genetic engineering or anti-Mars-colonization is like being anti-gun or anti-drug: forces bound to lose because of the great advantages that a sole user of the technology will have, and their power as a group will be unstoppable, whether they are an organized force or not.
I'd really like to expound on this and probably correct some of my wording, but Slashdot isn't generally a place for well-though-out arguments.
Are any of these proven working with Atheros AR5212 chipset cards, notable the the D-link DWL-AG520? In hostap mode? and stable? Because that's what I've been trying to set up today.
Sam Leffler's MadWifi is an example of coming to an agreement with a company and producing a really good driver while keeping the 'secret sauce' secret. Yet Atheros isn't given credit in this article. This doesn't seem fair to me.
Also, It claims that these wifi chipsets are not Software Defined Radios -- well from what I can see, they are indeed SDRs. So it makes sense to restrict knowledge of things that allow people to mess about too much. And of course the government needs to be able to detect your signal so they only allow a few spreading codes to be used and make sure there's no way for the user to change them.
Yes, I'd like to have the details of Atheros and other wifi SDRs but that's not practical. What IS practical is opening up everything needed for compatibility reasons.
No, I was reading somewhere (groklaw, perhaps) that actions to ameliorate a controversy can't be used as evidence of knowledgeable wrongdoing. So you can rewrite code to sidestep a patent infingement complaint, but that doesn't mean you are acknoledging the legitimacy of the patent or the claims of infringement. And this makes sense.
Actually, abortion was pretty much legal up until the second half of the 19th century. I was surprised to find this out, but I am pretty sure I can trust the legal historians of the U.S. Supreme Court. They mention this history in Roe v. Wade.
Designing a good solar power system is not a trivial task. Obviously you need panels, but there are polycrystalline and mono, the mono being nicer but more expensive. There's the weatherproofing: you need a strong covering that is quite transparent over a wide colour range - even UV, and something that will not decay over time, nor allow water to bead. The support mechanism needs to be strong, and provide maintenance access. Photovoltaic cells are much more efficient when cold, so ventilation is important, but with ventilation comes weatherproofing woes.
Next problem is that the sun moves across the sky, and for maximum efficiency you want to track it, which can be done in one of several ways. Many people use a motor to tilt the panel, on at least one axis, though two is better. This of course requires some power, some mechanical and electrical systems which cost more and are subject to breakdown, and some controlling logic. Another method is to use pseudo-mirrors (I say pseudo because they only have to reflect the light energy, not the image, so there are different priorities in design of the mirrors) made of polished metal. These have the advantage of concentrating more light to the cells, but this advantage can be wasted if you reach the light saturation point of the photovoltaics, or heat them up too much. These mirrors require mechanical and electrical systems, but are also subject to interference or even damage from wind.
Then there's the charging system: photovoltaics rarely put out the voltage you want, and that voltage varies with the temperature and the amount of light hitting them. Pretty much every electricity consuming device has its own expectations in terms of voltage and current, so there needs to be some power electronics involved, along with controlling logic. And as soon as you get to some decent current, these become large and expensive pieces of silicon.
Don't get me wrong, I am a big fan of photovoltaics, I am just trying to show that, if you want to do it the right way, there's a lot more involved than putting a PV cell on your roof and connecting it to the power leads of your embedded system. I learned all this when I was building rooftop server for a wifi mesh networking system using MIT's roofnet software. The problem is, not much funding was available.
I am getting pretty sick of seeing people advertising the freeipods, freeminimacs, and web hosting in their slashdot sigs. I don't want to see your ads, but if your going to do that crap, at least don't be a rip-off, go pay slashdot for one of those ads on the sidebar.
When I mod, I will mod down any post with an ad in it.
The possibility of primitive life traveling through space in a theory called 'panspermia'. Though it's quite a stretch to consider viruses a form of life, it is known that some of them can survive some time in interplanetary space.
There is some evidence that genetic material rains down on the earth a lot, and that some of it may cause infectious diseases...though that is just a bit too wierd for me take take seriously (at this point).
Media Lab founding: you're right, it wasn't founded in the 1960s. I started one sentence and finished another. I meant to say how a lot of hacking (as in, learning and creating for the sheer fun of it) was deeply rooted at MIT in the 1960s.
Regarding Stata Centre: Oops, my bad. I thought they had been shoehorned in their along with CSAIL. I wonder how I thought that.
Regarding State Centre being beautiful: well, I think it's not quite as bad as Boston City Hall or the Science Center at Harvard, and it's certainly nicer than the WW2 temporary buildings it replaced, but it represents the kind of 'art-ictecture' that I hate. But mostly I hate it because it's an overpriced and defective disaster.
As far as the city of Cambridge vs. the Universities: It is true that there has been much confrontation over the years. MIT lately has been given much leeway (the former Bradford Cafe building in Central Square is owned by MIT, and has been an eyesore for many years. Not maintaining a building like that is against the law. MIT keeps on making promises to do things about it, but they never come to fruition). Harvard does a lot more for the community, as they have the Extention School. MIT got rid of the Lowell Institute some years ago, I believe that was their attempt at a community education outreach.
And as far as those buildings go, I don't think there's much the city could really do if MIT had decided to buy and use them. These are already zoned industrial/office/R&D (I think, I can check the zoning maps to be sure), there would be little else than renovation required to make them functional. While you need building permits for major renovations, the city would have to have a LEGITIMATE reason to deny them. A grudge is not a legitimate reason, and the city would lose in court, and probably have to pay damages.
But it's probably too late, I imagine someone is going to go rehab them into biotech space. But if MIT were to have purchased them from Polaroid a few years ago when it was going tits up, it would have been to both partys' advantage. C'est la vie.
Back to MLE: I wonder if the closure of MLE is going to mean transfer of people, projects, and money back to Cambridge. That could be seen by some as a good thing.
Does it come with a faux beard for those who don't have strong enough or correctly placed hair follicles? Or are you just expected to move some down from the top of your head?
Because both BSD and Beer require a big bushy beard. The belly is self-sustaining.
I can only hope that these newly unemployed start their own competition to Oracle.
And explain ABBA, the worst band of all time (narrowly beating out The Village People).
The problem is that it's just too expensive. MIT ex-president Vest had a very dot-com attitude towards spending, having investing a lot of the Universities money in very questionable companies with a lot of prestige, and many projects of quaint but questionable utility. Anyone who knows the story of the Stata building (a.k.a. the Gates building), that expensive, ugly, leaking monstrosity, can tell you MIT has made mistakes.
My feeling is the MLE was one of them. Dublin has become a VERY expensive place to live and do business. This is especially true if your capital pool is is dollars. Cambridge (Massachusetts, home of MIT) is expensive too, but not as expensive as Dublin.
Back in the 1960s, the Media Lab was a place of innovation because of the people involved, not the amount of money thrown at it. Since then, there have been a number of prima donnas who want the newest, best stuff. The formerly very drrop pockets of MIT made them used to getting what they demanded. But the pockets are light now. It's no surprise that the most remote wings of the organization will be the first to get clipped.
If I were running an organization such as the Media Lab, what I would do is NOT to try to shift focus on more commercially viable projects. There's enough commercial labs out there, doing a good job on this. What I would do is find a way run it on a shoestring budget. For instance, just up the street from that horrible Stata building are the old, empty and decaying Polaroid buildings. Those could have been bought and made useable for a fraction of the money it took to build Stata (yes, I know, State is an endowed building. Still, they could have done it). Instead of picking Dublin for RLE, pick a cheaper part of Europe that is less likely to skyrocket in costs because of its small size. But a country that is stable and has a good infrastructure. Someplace like the eastern part of Germany where you can buy land really cheap, and the government has a very long-term view towards helping the economy.
And trim down those salaries! There's no need to be demanding $130k/year when you can buy a nice house for $80k.
To summarize: cheaper area, less glitz, lower salaries, but still a playground for the mind.
I have a better suggestion, how about we just consider that MS people can't defend MS as a shole when this is brought up, which is why they want it not possible to make it a part of the argument.
But even if that were true, it is besides the case here - when Microsoft Bob can be used as a hacking tool, it's pretty funny and pathetic.
I Call Bullshit. Not only do I doubt your claim would be true for any Linux-based operating system, you would have us believe that would be the case for all of them. That's next to impossible. If you make such fantastic claims, you need to back them up. I bet you can't. You're just talking out your ass.
Why is this continually pressed? why do we continue to hear about this crap technology long after it has been shown to be harmful? It will interfere with many radio services, is expensive to implement, won't be cost efective in the rural areas it was touted as being beneficial for, and won't provide performance comparable to existing technologies..well then there's this..gigabit? well, i just don't believe it.
Isn't Brittany Spears a place in England?