This reminds me of a woman I have heard of; she has an IQ of around 75 and a PHD. People ask her how she could possible do that with such a low IQ. "It just takes longer."
You mean like when Professor Felten was threatened because he met the challenge to break SDMI?
Proffesor Felten was threatened when he attempted to publish his results - The specific charge, as I recall, was distribution of a circumvention device. This is different, one notable difference being that most universities won't try to sue you for entering their contest.
do you optimize a chip for an operating system, anyway?
You profile it and then make the commonly used code paths go faster.
What probably actually happened is that AMD profiled a bunch of code and used it to optimize their CPU. since XP probably has similar code paths, you just don't mention that it's also optimized for the bulk of x86 code
if the seller buying stuff at Fry's and turning it for a profit is making it available to people who don't have access to the temple that is Fry's (me, for example), why shouldn't he be entitled to make money doing it?
Didn't you just describe a distributor? This isn't profiteering, it's just normal business. Profiteering would be those Coke machines that tied the price to the temperature.
That being said, I find the thought that every media has a serial number scary and is traceable
This requries more explanation - who cares if you can trace a cd containing whistleblower style material to a Comp-USA in the same town as the company? Pay for it with cash and forget about it. What would be scary is a watermark that ties cdroms to a specific burner or computer
I implemented Blowfish back in high school, using readily-available information
The problem with that is that your implementation may be flawed - this accounts for the bulk of the cracked encryption. That's why it's best to use known good encryption.
complexity of the solution often is only meaningful when n is large.
for instance, an a^N problem will be practical for N60. if a=2, then doubling the available processing power adds one to these limits. This is not hard
For most practical problems, P/NP is not a consideration in program design, as programs are likely more closely tied to system parameters (speed of disk, amount of memory)
Sorry, that's where you mess up. P/Np doesn't affect most practical problems because most practical problems are P. NP problems rapidly overwhelm considerations like IO speed, mainly because they tend to have geometric resource requirements.
Now I will restate my original point more forcefully: The difference between P and NP is the difference between 3 hours and 3000 years
/NP has little impact on what types of programs people write. 'P' programs often hide huge performance costs in constants, and personally I wrote the distinction off long ago as an academic curiosity.
Then you're an idiot. The difference between P and NP is the difference between 3 hours and 30 years. Getting back to the NP hard problem of Intrusion Detection, it's not so much the speed as the skill; we can't make software smart enough to detect intruders without also detecting lots of normal people. If we could, then so could the intruders - we still need humans.
cdrom.com runs on FreeBSD, which is not a small server
cdrom.com is an FTP site - not exactly rocket science. What would impress me is large simulations running on big, expensive hardware, not serving FTP to 4000 users.
When a program that I buy/download doesn't work, I immediately search for a patch. VERY reasonable behaviour.
When considering a new kernel version on a production box, thie first thing I do is test the hell out of it on a spare box. Anything less is unacceptable.
if Open Source developers have no liability as you say, the business world will have a very difficult embracing it
Well, in the New World Order where software companies are required to exercise due diligence regarding security, you get the accountability that you pay for - hire a company to support your stuff just like you would now.
If you ever see AOL add on TV, you will see they are selling you two key things: email and chat. Do I need a broadband for that?!
No, you don't need broadband speed for that. The thing that you will want is the always-on nature. I personally would be fine with a 256k line that had 30ms latency and always worked for $30-40/month
Seriously, if I ran a server that needed any kind of reliability, I'd build a 1U box and ship it off to a hosting facility.
Jesus christ, they aren't sending Federal Marshalls storming into a business for no reason. That could not happen without some sort of precident. I don't believe that the BSA has ever done this and not uncovered mountains of software license violations.
Actually, they are. The last time this ran, someone recounted how the BSA raided their company (with federal marshalls), shut it down for 3 days, destroyed several Sun workstations while trying to run their software on them and then tried to walk away. Oh, and they didn't actually find anything.
OK, not to be subversive here, but isn't kicking someone out of the dorms for 'netting too much kind of like kicking someone out of college for drinking too much?
That's perfectly understandable when their bar tab exceeds their tuition.
Don't be so dramatic. The same technology used to irradiate your Compact Flash at the post office is the same technology used to heat your damn burrito at CIrcle K. Take your tinfoil hat off and relax.
Yeah, but you don't see me putting CF cards in the microwave, do you?
Prices would drop even further if a cheezy 1 IDE channel Make Stuff Work style Motherboard was made
The exist - you can get basic mobos with 2 PCI slots and some IDE for cheap. There's not much point in doing less - it saves you little and limits your target market too much
I can almost guarantee that a significant proportion of your people are wearing headphones and using CD or MP3 players.
I worked in that environment and I had headphones - decent Sony 'studio' headphones, but they weren't attached to anything. I just needed to block the ambient noise.
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This reminds me of a woman I have heard of; she has an IQ of around 75 and a PHD. People ask her how she could possible do that with such a low IQ. "It just takes longer."
You mean like when Professor Felten was threatened because he met the challenge to break SDMI?
Proffesor Felten was threatened when he attempted to publish his results - The specific charge, as I recall, was distribution of a circumvention device. This is different, one notable difference being that most universities won't try to sue you for entering their contest.
Oops - Mea culpa
these kids would have been thrown in jail for violating the DMCA
shut up timothy - the DMCA doesn't apply when the copyright holder asks you to break the encryption.
This was told to me as the adventures of two interns at Microsoft.
do you optimize a chip for an operating system, anyway?
You profile it and then make the commonly used code paths go faster.
What probably actually happened is that AMD profiled a bunch of code and used it to optimize their CPU. since XP probably has similar code paths, you just don't mention that it's also optimized for the bulk of x86 code
So, how well does the Duron fare in a dual configuration? I'm considering an upgrade and I'd be interested to hear your experiences.
if the seller buying stuff at Fry's and turning it for a profit is making it available to people who don't have access to the temple that is Fry's (me, for example), why shouldn't he be entitled to make money doing it?
Didn't you just describe a distributor? This isn't profiteering, it's just normal business. Profiteering would be those Coke machines that tied the price to the temperature.
That being said, I find the thought that every media has a serial number scary and is traceable
This requries more explanation - who cares if you can trace a cd containing whistleblower style material to a Comp-USA in the same town as the company? Pay for it with cash and forget about it. What would be scary is a watermark that ties cdroms to a specific burner or computer
I implemented Blowfish back in high school, using readily-available information
The problem with that is that your implementation may be flawed - this accounts for the bulk of the cracked encryption. That's why it's best to use known good encryption.
complexity of the solution often is only meaningful when n is large.
for instance, an a^N problem will be practical for N60. if a=2, then doubling the available processing power adds one to these limits. This is not hard
For most practical problems, P/NP is not a consideration in program design, as programs are likely more closely tied to system parameters (speed of disk, amount of memory)
Sorry, that's where you mess up. P/Np doesn't affect most practical problems because most practical problems are P. NP problems rapidly overwhelm considerations like IO speed, mainly because they tend to have geometric resource requirements.
Now I will restate my original point more forcefully: The difference between P and NP is the difference between 3 hours and 3000 years
Then you're an idiot. The difference between P and NP is the difference between 3 hours and 30 years. Getting back to the NP hard problem of Intrusion Detection, it's not so much the speed as the skill; we can't make software smart enough to detect intruders without also detecting lots of normal people. If we could, then so could the intruders - we still need humans.
cdrom.com runs on FreeBSD, which is not a small server
cdrom.com is an FTP site - not exactly rocket science. What would impress me is large simulations running on big, expensive hardware, not serving FTP to 4000 users.
When a program that I buy/download doesn't work, I immediately search for a patch. VERY reasonable behaviour.
When considering a new kernel version on a production box, thie first thing I do is test the hell out of it on a spare box. Anything less is unacceptable.
Open source OpenGL already exists - it's called Mesa
Last I heard, Mesa wasn't claiming OpenGL compatibility specifically to avoid legal hassles
if Open Source developers have no liability as you say, the business world will have a very difficult embracing it
Well, in the New World Order where software companies are required to exercise due diligence regarding security, you get the accountability that you pay for - hire a company to support your stuff just like you would now.
I mean, lots of people want the product, the law of demand/offer states that the prices should go DOWN not up!
No, if demand goes up, so do prices. If supply goes up, prices go down. If they both go up, prices pay go up or down
If you ever see AOL add on TV, you will see they are selling you two key things: email and chat. Do I need a broadband for that?!
No, you don't need broadband speed for that. The thing that you will want is the always-on nature. I personally would be fine with a 256k line that had 30ms latency and always worked for $30-40/month
Seriously, if I ran a server that needed any kind of reliability, I'd build a 1U box and ship it off to a hosting facility.
Jesus christ, they aren't sending Federal Marshalls storming into a business for no reason. That could not happen without some sort of precident. I don't believe that the BSA has ever done this and not uncovered mountains of software license violations.
Actually, they are. The last time this ran, someone recounted how the BSA raided their company (with federal marshalls), shut it down for 3 days, destroyed several Sun workstations while trying to run their software on them and then tried to walk away. Oh, and they didn't actually find anything.
Now I don't feel so bad. At least when I get buzzed, I dance with women
As an added bonus, it repels vampires and other creatures of the night.
OK, not to be subversive here, but isn't kicking someone out of the dorms for 'netting too much kind of like kicking someone out of college for drinking too much?
That's perfectly understandable when their bar tab exceeds their tuition.
Don't be so dramatic. The same technology used to irradiate your Compact Flash at the post office is the same technology used to heat your damn burrito at CIrcle K. Take your tinfoil hat off and relax.
Yeah, but you don't see me putting CF cards in the microwave, do you?
Prices would drop even further if a cheezy 1 IDE channel Make Stuff Work style Motherboard was made
The exist - you can get basic mobos with 2 PCI slots and some IDE for cheap. There's not much point in doing less - it saves you little and limits your target market too much
I can almost guarantee that a significant proportion of your people are wearing headphones and using CD or MP3 players.
I worked in that environment and I had headphones - decent Sony 'studio' headphones, but they weren't attached to anything. I just needed to block the ambient noise.