solution is O(b^n), where n is the size of the input and b is a constant
More specifically, b is the base of the number. (so it would be 2 for binary, 10 for decimal, etc.)
You have correctly explained that complexity of factoring a number is exponential in the the length of the number. That's because the magnitude of a number is exponential in its length for all bases other than one. Fjord used this little fact to claim that factoring a number is linear in the magnitude of the number. Well -- duh! Lame Fjord, really lame.
Thus factoring a 128-bit RSA key would not take c*128 time, for some constant c, as Fjord's post would seem to imply. It would take c*2^64 time, for some constant c. Why 64 and not 128? Theorem: any non-prime integer has a factor less than or equal to its square root. Proof: exercise to the reader (or take a first year algebra course).
Now NP is a general class of problems that don't have a O(n^k) solution, but that's different than NP-complete.
false.
Definitions:
P is a class of problems that can be decided by a deterministic turing machine in polynomial time.
NP s a class of problems that can be decided by a non-deterministic turing machine in polynomial time. It means (literally) non-deterministic polynomial.
A problem is NP-Complete if:
1. It is in NP.
2. Any other problem in NP can be reduced (read: "converted") to it in polynomial time.
So, if a polynomial-time solution to an NP-complete problem is ever found, any other problem in NP will automatically have a polynomial-time solution. That includes most of the known algorighms.
Oh, and just to preempt stupid replies saying "it depends on which NP-complete problem is solved" or "perhaps the problem is misclassified": read the definition again. Any problem in NP can be reduced to an NP-complete problem in polynomial time; including another NP-complete problem.
Finally, a description of what P ?= NP question is:
P is a subset of NP (obviously). The question is whether it is a proper subset (i.e. P is strictly smaller than NP) or P and NP are actually coincident (i.e. P = NP). The answer so far is "probably not". There is a large number of NP-complete problems and so far no one has been able to come up with an efficient (i.e. poly-time) algorithm to solve any of them. However, P = NP implies that such algorithm exists (and vice versa).
Factoring primes is not a difficult problem... the fastest known solution is already O(n)
Oh, it's certainly not difficult. I can factor primes in O(1) time. Give me any prime and I'll tell you all its factors. However, the only known algorigthm to factor non-primes runs in exponential time. You got to love it when a clueless post gets marked "insightful" by even more clueless moderators.
Please take an algorithms course. It's taught in any university with a decent CS faculty. And if you think the course is too hard for you, feel free to come back and ask slashdot again. (Other questions may include: "what's a Turing Machine?" and "can you run Linux on it?")
As an aside, when did slashdot become a meta-search engine? Oh wait... never mind!
Well, leaving the windowsupdate sillyness aside for the moment, this post does raise an important question: why does Debian not sign debs? That would protect not only from magic lantern but also from a Debian mirror being rooted and corrupt debs intentionally uploaded?
The Pentium 4 has a built-in thermal sensor and protection mechanism that will automatically throttle down the speed of the processor when it reaches a certain temperature.
The thermal sensor isn't worth squat if the heatsink and fan are not present at all (err... I mean "fall off"), so Pentium 4 would have suffered the same fate. The sensor is useful if the fan stops or malfunctions somehow (but the heat sink is still there!) -- then the CPU temperature will gradually increase, and the thermal sensors on the CPU and board will do their magic. This can happen, BTW -- after years of work a fan can fail, just like any other mechanical device. However, a situation when the heat sink "falls off" has absolutely nothing to do with the real world. It's about as likely as the wheels of your car falling off.
(*) DDR and Rambus transfer data at both the rising and falling edge of the clock cycle, thus doubling the effective bandwidth. Bacause of that they are often reffered to as 200MHz, 266MHz, and 800MHz respectively.
Anyway, the point is that DDR has greater bandwidth than Rambus. On top of that, Rambus has a pathetically high latency. Because of that Pentium 3 systems with PC133 SDRAM outperformed their Rambus counterparts most of the time.
As an aside, Intel decided to "fix" this flaw by making Pentium 4 waste four times as much memory bandwidth as Pentium 3 -- that makes P4 highly sensitive to memory bandwidth./. linked to a very interesting article discussing the P4 architecture a while ago.
Back to the point, Pentium 4 chipset uses two channels of Rambus memory that work in parallel. That gives it 2 * 1600 = 3200MB/s of bandwidth, which is greater than a single channel of PC2100 DDR (though it still has high latency). Problem is that you need to install memory in pairs (on RIMM for each channel), and each RDRAM channel can have only two memory slots. That means you are only one upgrade away from maxing out your memory. On the contrast, each DDR channel can have up to 4 memory slots and you can upgrade one slot at a time.
Also note that NVidia Nforce does the same thing for Athlons & DDR as the P4 chipset. Of course two channels of DDR have the bandwidth of 4256MB/s).
Ahh well, I'm just grumpy b/c I convinced my mom to buy a P4T/Rambus-based P4 1.7Ghz, and now I have to ditch the Ram/Mobo/CPU to upgrade it.
I'm so tempted to say "I told you so" -- which I would have if we ever spoke.
(I'd have given her an Athlon but the dustbunnies at her place are such that I'd be afraid of her burning the place down... remember that THG vid of the flaming Athlons?)
This is about the stupidest thing I ever heard. It's like claiming that Ford makes unsafe cars because their engines fry when you drain all the oil from them. Try this: remove the heatsink and fan from your P4 and see how long it takes for it to catch fire.
Well gee, according to the spec, Tiger MP supports 3GB of RAM. If you are trying to cram 4GB of RAM in it you are going above the spec, so do it at your own risk. But anyway, I don't even see it as a problem. Since RDRAM is so expensive, I doubt anyone would use 4GB of it (or anywhere near). Oh, and the largest memory module I've seen is 512MB. 4 of them give you only 2GB (the boards have only 4 slots).
And if you're looking for a career in 3D animation/design, are you going to use some x86 toy, or would experience with what the rest of the industry uses be a bit more helpful in your career?
The "industry" is moving towards Linux. There was an article about it a few weeks a go, btw.
A vanishingly small amount of 3D work requires a fast CPU - it's about shoving large amounts of data around. It doesn't matter how many mhz your bus does - it's still a data bus, and it's inherently unsuited to this type of work.
Bull shit. Ray tracing, for example, is purely CPU limited. On the other hand real-time animation is mostly limited by the graphics card.
Never mind that 4 year old Octane can be bought for a fraction of the price of the systems under discussion.
There is a reason for that. They are pathetically slow. Easily outperformed by a celeron with GeForce 2 MX. I know. I just took a graphics course at my university. Guess what? They will be replacing Octanes with Linux boxes soon.
That this article ever showed up on/. is a pretty sad statement about what has become of this once useful and interesting site.
That this post showed up on/. (and even got moderated up by clueless moderators) is a pretty sad statement about what has becom of this once useful and interesting site. I guess people are really gullible when they swallow any post that has words "crossbar" and "UMA" inserted out of context, but contains no information.
I'm running Linux on my 486 which I bought in 95. It serves just fine as a firewall, proxy server and a small scale mail/web/ftp server.
I have not noticed *any* kernel bloat (and I've been running Linux for a loooong time). All the bloat is in the apps (especially the GUI gizmos). I'm surprised this question was even asked (but then again this is slashdot...)
Uhhm, XP and MP are exactly the same chip! Romour has it that in the future AMD will cripple XPs so that they no longer work in dual-CPU configuration. So far it's just a rumour.
Well, we all know that most organizations' security is so pathetic that any teenager can write a worm to penetrate it. Once again, we have the living proof of that. Once again, everyone blames "evil hackers" instead of addressing the real problem or even so much as hinting that sysadmins, or beter yet, PHBs should take part of the blame. So, what else is new?
BTW, I've read that in Israel white-collar crimes are punished more harshly than normal crimes. For example, if you commit copyright infringment you stand to spend more time in jail than a rapist. Can somebody confirm/deny this? (But then again, it looks like this is the way things are going in the US too with "hackers" being declared terrorists and all...).
Microsoft's monopoly is propped up by incompatible file formats and protocols. Take away their ability to make incompatible files/protocols, and suddenly their monopoly power vanishes. *That* is what will stimulate competition as everyone would be able to compete on a level playing field. There are two problems with this approach though: first, what are the odds that government officials have any clue? OK, that was a rhetorical question. Next, how do you ensure that Microsoft released all the specs and that they don't make suble incompatible changes in the future? That's a tricky one, and Microsoft can always plead ignorance (they attempted to pull that off at the trial).
Now what effects will the release of MS Office for Linux have? It seems like a good idea: since most businesses are standardized on MS Office, it will speed the adoption of Linux on the desktop. (This, BTW, seems to be the only major obstacle). So, in the short run it's a good thing... except for one little problem: does anyone doubt that the Linux version of MS Office, if it is ever released, would be so crippled as to make it virtually useless? Or that Microsoft would find some other way to tie their customers to Windows? Microsoft could easily say "we coplied with the ruling" while blaming everything on Linux. So much for that.
Now what are the long term effects of this? If the scenario I described above plays out, then none whatsoever: MS Office for Linux will die a horrible death and we are back to square one. But now suppose MS Office for Linux is a success. Then corporations accelerate the adoption of Linux on the desktop; sooner or later, Linux becomes a viable choice for home PCs too and OEMs start bundling it, etc. Great! The windows monopoly is broken... but the office monopoly is perpetuated. And who know what other effects this may have. I suppose one monopoly is better than two, but it is nowhere near the ideal state.
Remember network computers? More than an X Station, but slightly less than a PC? Ha.. also discredited. A network computer was a glorified diskless workstation. You don't see too many of those being deployed, except in tightly controller environments.
Not so fast. NCs died because Microsoft dissed them and did their best to kill them. It worked. But guess what they are doing now? What's the whole idea behing.NET and software as a service? That's right, it's a network computer! I guess that once again goes to show that nothing is invented until Microsoft invents it.
BTW, I do agree with your comment that network computer is nothing mode than a glodified diskless workstation. Except that now it's got Java in it and everyone knows Java is cool. Or something.
"Software does not follow the old laws of physics, new definitions have to be created. This is a conceptually difficult problem and many choose the easy way out. Piracy is stealing. If you steal a car, then the rightful owner will not be able to utilize it, the owner suffers from obvious damage/harm. What has been "stolen" by piracy is however a hypothetical revenue for the software company.
This is a very misleading statement that both music and software industry like to spout. It ignores the simple facts of economics. Allow me to elaborate.
By definition, a sale occurs when the potential buyer is both willing and able to purchase a good or service. If either of these requirements is not satisfied, the sale does not occur. For example, I am willing to buy a Mersedes but I am not able to do so, therefore the sale does not occur. I am able to buy a big mac but I am not willing to do so, therefore the sale does not occur.
Now how does it apply to music? Well, suppose you download a song from Napster or whatever, you listen to it and decide that you don't like it. You made a copy of the song, therefore by your argument, you "stole" revenue from the record label. Problem is... you don't like the song. In the absense of Napster et al, you would not have bought it. Therefore, this sale is not lost: this sale never existed in the first place.
There are thousands of people who trade songs that they have no interest in ever listening to. It's the "my mp3 collection is bigger than yours" syndrome.
Now suppose a teenager who gets $20/month allowance downloads an album of Nsync/Britney Spears/whatever. In the absence of file sharing, would she buy the album instead? No because she has no disposable income. Therefore, this sale is not lost: this sale never existed in the first place.
These examples illustrate that the number of copies made is by no means equal to the number of sales lost. A sale is lost if a person 1) likes the song, and 2) has enough disposable income to buy it but chooses not to. This number is much much lower than the number of copies made. Just look at the demographics of the Napster users. I bet over 90% of them are teenagers.
So, the parent post was right on target: these copy-"protected" CDs will do nothing to increase the CD sales. Then of course the RIAA & friends will blame it on "hackers" who broke the "encryption" with a "digital crowbar", and purchase a few more laws even more draconian than DMCA...
OK, so is app-server load balancing a substitute for IP-level load balancing or is it supposed to be used in conjunction? (i.e. something like balancing the web servers with a IP-level load balancer and replicating the application state with app server load balancing?)
I hope somebody can answer this. I am wondering how the application-level clustering (i.e. what JBoss, Weblogic, et al have) compares to the IP-level clustering (i.e. something like the Linux virtual server, or the embedded hardware equivalent from Cisco et al). There would be less overhead at the IP level, so, it seems the load balancing would be more efficient. Also, by doing load balancing at this level you can cluster just about any application -- be it a web/ftp/file or, as in this case, application server. What's the advantage of having clustering built in to the app server? How about Apache mod_backhand?
The problem is contract law - if the software vendor (Microsoft for example) can point out that you DID click "I Agree" to their EULA then the game is basically over. That EULA will be upheld as a contract between you and the vendor - and in a contract you can surrender any (almost) rights you want to. Including agreeing to "license" the software instead of "buying" it, surrendering the right to resell it, reverse engineer it, etc.
Only if both parties agree to the contract prior to the transaction taking place. In the case of the shrink-wrap "licenses", the consumer does not see the contract until he/she buys and installs the software. In effect, this "license" is a unilateral contract, and thus not legally binding. UCITA makes it legally binding, but UCITA is on a very shaky legal foundation, and so far only two states passed it. Now, here is what I find interesting:
The case in question is Adobe vs Softman, and in its ruling, the District of California seems to vacate Adobe's claims of "irrepairable damage" caused by the resale of Adobe products without forcing the use of Adobe's registration process.
This means that Microsoft cannot force the XP registration upon its users. I sure hope this case makes it to the Supreme Court.
Not anymore you can't. If you live in US, there is this law called DMCA that is designed to prevent you from doing just that. I'm just waiting for the DMCA virus to spread to other countries. Looks like it will happen soon...
I've used xconfig (and to a lesser extent menuconfig) and I found them more than adequate. My only gripe is that the help text is not defined for all the options (though all the major options have excellent documentation that you can display by pressing the help button). So, I don't mean to knock CML2 but what's in it for me? And are there screenshots anywhere?
No. You send read command; you wait for data; while you are waiting the other drive is doing absolutely nothing. With SCSI you send read command; you wait for data; while you are waiting another process can send read command to another SCSI device on the same channel. How the interleaving is accomplished -- that's an implementation detail I am not aware of. But it could easily be done with time slices (i.e. exactly what you mentioned).
So yes, they don't talk concurrently on the bus, but they are concurrently reading off the disk. The end result is that you have the bus more saturated than before.
No they are not. You can send read commands to only one device at a time. While one device is reading the other one is doing absolutely nothing. If what you are saying was possible then the drives would in fact be working concurrently.
Slashdot Mirror
More specifically, b is the base of the number. (so it would be 2 for binary, 10 for decimal, etc.)
You have correctly explained that complexity of factoring a number is exponential in the the length of the number. That's because the magnitude of a number is exponential in its length for all bases other than one. Fjord used this little fact to claim that factoring a number is linear in the magnitude of the number. Well -- duh! Lame Fjord, really lame.
Thus factoring a 128-bit RSA key would not take c*128 time, for some constant c, as Fjord's post would seem to imply. It would take c*2^64 time, for some constant c. Why 64 and not 128? Theorem: any non-prime integer has a factor less than or equal to its square root. Proof: exercise to the reader (or take a first year algebra course).
false.
Definitions:
P is a class of problems that can be decided by a deterministic turing machine in polynomial time.
NP s a class of problems that can be decided by a non-deterministic turing machine in polynomial time. It means (literally) non-deterministic polynomial.
A problem is NP-Complete if:
1. It is in NP.
2. Any other problem in NP can be reduced (read: "converted") to it in polynomial time.
So, if a polynomial-time solution to an NP-complete problem is ever found, any other problem in NP will automatically have a polynomial-time solution. That includes most of the known algorighms.
Oh, and just to preempt stupid replies saying "it depends on which NP-complete problem is solved" or "perhaps the problem is misclassified": read the definition again. Any problem in NP can be reduced to an NP-complete problem in polynomial time; including another NP-complete problem.
Finally, a description of what P ?= NP question is:
P is a subset of NP (obviously). The question is whether it is a proper subset (i.e. P is strictly smaller than NP) or P and NP are actually coincident (i.e. P = NP). The answer so far is "probably not". There is a large number of NP-complete problems and so far no one has been able to come up with an efficient (i.e. poly-time) algorithm to solve any of them. However, P = NP implies that such algorithm exists (and vice versa).
(Stupid slashdot filter deletes less then signs)
Oh, it's certainly not difficult. I can factor primes in O(1) time. Give me any prime and I'll tell you all its factors. However, the only known algorigthm to factor non-primes runs in exponential time. You got to love it when a clueless post gets marked "insightful" by even more clueless moderators.
Please take an algorithms course. It's taught in any university with a decent CS faculty. And if you think the course is too hard for you, feel free to come back and ask slashdot again. (Other questions may include: "what's a Turing Machine?" and "can you run Linux on it?")
As an aside, when did slashdot become a meta-search engine? Oh wait... never mind!
Well, leaving the windowsupdate sillyness aside for the moment, this post does raise an important question: why does Debian not sign debs? That would protect not only from magic lantern but also from a Debian mirror being rooted and corrupt debs intentionally uploaded?
The thermal sensor isn't worth squat if the heatsink and fan are not present at all (err... I mean "fall off"), so Pentium 4 would have suffered the same fate. The sensor is useful if the fan stops or malfunctions somehow (but the heat sink is still there!) -- then the CPU temperature will gradually increase, and the thermal sensors on the CPU and board will do their magic. This can happen, BTW -- after years of work a fan can fail, just like any other mechanical device. However, a situation when the heat sink "falls off" has absolutely nothing to do with the real world. It's about as likely as the wheels of your car falling off.
False. Comparing just bandwidth:
100MHz SDRAM -> 800MB/s
133MHz SDRAM -> 1064MB/s
100MHz DDR -> 1600MB/s (*)
133MHz DDR -> 2128MB/s (*)
400MHz RDRAM -> 1600MB/s (*)
(*) DDR and Rambus transfer data at both the rising and falling edge of the clock cycle, thus doubling the effective bandwidth. Bacause of that they are often reffered to as 200MHz, 266MHz, and 800MHz respectively.
Anyway, the point is that DDR has greater bandwidth than Rambus. On top of that, Rambus has a pathetically high latency. Because of that Pentium 3 systems with PC133 SDRAM outperformed their Rambus counterparts most of the time. /. linked to a very interesting article discussing the P4 architecture a while ago.
As an aside, Intel decided to "fix" this flaw by making Pentium 4 waste four times as much memory bandwidth as Pentium 3 -- that makes P4 highly sensitive to memory bandwidth.
Back to the point, Pentium 4 chipset uses two channels of Rambus memory that work in parallel. That gives it 2 * 1600 = 3200MB/s of bandwidth, which is greater than a single channel of PC2100 DDR (though it still has high latency). Problem is that you need to install memory in pairs (on RIMM for each channel), and each RDRAM channel can have only two memory slots. That means you are only one upgrade away from maxing out your memory. On the contrast, each DDR channel can have up to 4 memory slots and you can upgrade one slot at a time.
Also note that NVidia Nforce does the same thing for Athlons & DDR as the P4 chipset. Of course two channels of DDR have the bandwidth of 4256MB/s).
Ahh well, I'm just grumpy b/c I convinced my mom to buy a P4T/Rambus-based P4 1.7Ghz, and now I have to ditch the Ram/Mobo/CPU to upgrade it.
I'm so tempted to say "I told you so" -- which I would have if we ever spoke.
(I'd have given her an Athlon but the dustbunnies at her place are such that I'd be afraid of her burning the place down... remember that THG vid of the flaming Athlons?)
This is about the stupidest thing I ever heard. It's like claiming that Ford makes unsafe cars because their engines fry when you drain all the oil from them. Try this: remove the heatsink and fan from your P4 and see how long it takes for it to catch fire.
Well gee, according to the spec, Tiger MP supports 3GB of RAM. If you are trying to cram 4GB of RAM in it you are going above the spec, so do it at your own risk. But anyway, I don't even see it as a problem. Since RDRAM is so expensive, I doubt anyone would use 4GB of it (or anywhere near). Oh, and the largest memory module I've seen is 512MB. 4 of them give you only 2GB (the boards have only 4 slots).
The "industry" is moving towards Linux. There was an article about it a few weeks a go, btw.
A vanishingly small amount of 3D work requires a fast CPU - it's about shoving large amounts of data around. It doesn't matter how many mhz your bus does - it's still a data bus, and it's inherently unsuited to this type of work.
Bull shit. Ray tracing, for example, is purely CPU limited. On the other hand real-time animation is mostly limited by the graphics card.
Never mind that 4 year old Octane can be bought for a fraction of the price of the systems under discussion.
There is a reason for that. They are pathetically slow. Easily outperformed by a celeron with GeForce 2 MX. I know. I just took a graphics course at my university. Guess what? They will be replacing Octanes with Linux boxes soon.
That this article ever showed up on /. is a pretty sad statement about what has become of this once useful and interesting site.
That this post showed up on /. (and even got moderated up by clueless moderators) is a pretty sad statement about what has becom of this once useful and interesting site. I guess people are really gullible when they swallow any post that has words "crossbar" and "UMA" inserted out of context, but contains no information.
I'm running Linux on my 486 which I bought in 95. It serves just fine as a firewall, proxy server and a small scale mail/web/ftp server.
I have not noticed *any* kernel bloat (and I've been running Linux for a loooong time). All the bloat is in the apps (especially the GUI gizmos). I'm surprised this question was even asked (but then again this is slashdot...)
Uhhm, XP and MP are exactly the same chip! Romour has it that in the future AMD will cripple XPs so that they no longer work in dual-CPU configuration. So far it's just a rumour.
Well, we all know that most organizations' security is so pathetic that any teenager can write a worm to penetrate it. Once again, we have the living proof of that. Once again, everyone blames "evil hackers" instead of addressing the real problem or even so much as hinting that sysadmins, or beter yet, PHBs should take part of the blame. So, what else is new?
BTW, I've read that in Israel white-collar crimes are punished more harshly than normal crimes. For example, if you commit copyright infringment you stand to spend more time in jail than a rapist. Can somebody confirm/deny this? (But then again, it looks like this is the way things are going in the US too with "hackers" being declared terrorists and all...).
Microsoft's monopoly is propped up by incompatible file formats and protocols. Take away their ability to make incompatible files/protocols, and suddenly their monopoly power vanishes. *That* is what will stimulate competition as everyone would be able to compete on a level playing field. There are two problems with this approach though: first, what are the odds that government officials have any clue? OK, that was a rhetorical question. Next, how do you ensure that Microsoft released all the specs and that they don't make suble incompatible changes in the future? That's a tricky one, and Microsoft can always plead ignorance (they attempted to pull that off at the trial).
Now what effects will the release of MS Office for Linux have? It seems like a good idea: since most businesses are standardized on MS Office, it will speed the adoption of Linux on the desktop. (This, BTW, seems to be the only major obstacle). So, in the short run it's a good thing... except for one little problem: does anyone doubt that the Linux version of MS Office, if it is ever released, would be so crippled as to make it virtually useless? Or that Microsoft would find some other way to tie their customers to Windows? Microsoft could easily say "we coplied with the ruling" while blaming everything on Linux. So much for that.
Now what are the long term effects of this? If the scenario I described above plays out, then none whatsoever: MS Office for Linux will die a horrible death and we are back to square one. But now suppose MS Office for Linux is a success. Then corporations accelerate the adoption of Linux on the desktop; sooner or later, Linux becomes a viable choice for home PCs too and OEMs start bundling it, etc. Great! The windows monopoly is broken... but the office monopoly is perpetuated. And who know what other effects this may have. I suppose one monopoly is better than two, but it is nowhere near the ideal state.
Though of course Intel can easily use the Sony case as a precident.
Not so fast. NCs died because Microsoft dissed them and did their best to kill them. It worked. But guess what they are doing now? What's the whole idea behing .NET and software as a service? That's right, it's a network computer! I guess that once again goes to show that nothing is invented until Microsoft invents it.
BTW, I do agree with your comment that network computer is nothing mode than a glodified diskless workstation. Except that now it's got Java in it and everyone knows Java is cool. Or something.
This is a very misleading statement that both music and software industry like to spout. It ignores the simple facts of economics. Allow me to elaborate.
By definition, a sale occurs when the potential buyer is both willing and able to purchase a good or service. If either of these requirements is not satisfied, the sale does not occur. For example, I am willing to buy a Mersedes but I am not able to do so, therefore the sale does not occur. I am able to buy a big mac but I am not willing to do so, therefore the sale does not occur.
Now how does it apply to music? Well, suppose you download a song from Napster or whatever, you listen to it and decide that you don't like it. You made a copy of the song, therefore by your argument, you "stole" revenue from the record label. Problem is... you don't like the song. In the absense of Napster et al, you would not have bought it. Therefore, this sale is not lost: this sale never existed in the first place.
There are thousands of people who trade songs that they have no interest in ever listening to. It's the "my mp3 collection is bigger than yours" syndrome.
Now suppose a teenager who gets $20/month allowance downloads an album of Nsync/Britney Spears/whatever. In the absence of file sharing, would she buy the album instead? No because she has no disposable income. Therefore, this sale is not lost: this sale never existed in the first place.
These examples illustrate that the number of copies made is by no means equal to the number of sales lost. A sale is lost if a person 1) likes the song, and 2) has enough disposable income to buy it but chooses not to. This number is much much lower than the number of copies made. Just look at the demographics of the Napster users. I bet over 90% of them are teenagers.
So, the parent post was right on target: these copy-"protected" CDs will do nothing to increase the CD sales. Then of course the RIAA & friends will blame it on "hackers" who broke the "encryption" with a "digital crowbar", and purchase a few more laws even more draconian than DMCA...
OK, so is app-server load balancing a substitute for IP-level load balancing or is it supposed to be used in conjunction? (i.e. something like balancing the web servers with a IP-level load balancer and replicating the application state with app server load balancing?)
I hope somebody can answer this. I am wondering how the application-level clustering (i.e. what JBoss, Weblogic, et al have) compares to the IP-level clustering (i.e. something like the Linux virtual server, or the embedded hardware equivalent from Cisco et al). There would be less overhead at the IP level, so, it seems the load balancing would be more efficient. Also, by doing load balancing at this level you can cluster just about any application -- be it a web/ftp/file or, as in this case, application server. What's the advantage of having clustering built in to the app server? How about Apache mod_backhand?
Only if both parties agree to the contract prior to the transaction taking place. In the case of the shrink-wrap "licenses", the consumer does not see the contract until he/she buys and installs the software. In effect, this "license" is a unilateral contract, and thus not legally binding. UCITA makes it legally binding, but UCITA is on a very shaky legal foundation, and so far only two states passed it. Now, here is what I find interesting:
The case in question is Adobe vs Softman, and in its ruling, the District of California seems to vacate Adobe's claims of "irrepairable damage" caused by the resale of Adobe products without forcing the use of Adobe's registration process.
This means that Microsoft cannot force the XP registration upon its users. I sure hope this case makes it to the Supreme Court.
Not anymore you can't. If you live in US, there is this law called DMCA that is designed to prevent you from doing just that. I'm just waiting for the DMCA virus to spread to other countries. Looks like it will happen soon...
What did he do?
I've used xconfig (and to a lesser extent menuconfig) and I found them more than adequate. My only gripe is that the help text is not defined for all the options (though all the major options have excellent documentation that you can display by pressing the help button). So, I don't mean to knock CML2 but what's in it for me? And are there screenshots anywhere?
And what exactly would it read? Some random data off a platter?
No. You send read command; you wait for data; while you are waiting the other drive is doing absolutely nothing. With SCSI you send read command; you wait for data; while you are waiting another process can send read command to another SCSI device on the same channel. How the interleaving is accomplished -- that's an implementation detail I am not aware of. But it could easily be done with time slices (i.e. exactly what you mentioned).
No they are not. You can send read commands to only one device at a time. While one device is reading the other one is doing absolutely nothing. If what you are saying was possible then the drives would in fact be working concurrently.