One thing that's interesting about the Matrix movies is that they've become a LOT of different things to a lot of different people.
No, it's mostly become one thing... crap.
Unfortunately they made the same mistake that Highlander did (besides the crapulent US edit). The initial movies neatly walked the line between the mundane and mythical world and as a result made the mythic tangible. The sequals are pedestrian C grade fantasy pieces that rely on SFX and "action". The sequels are not only bad, they manage to detract from the original film. Matrix is the Highlander all over again.
Open Source is just one part. The rules on deployment are equally important. There are very clear rules on how the hardware was handled, not too disimilar to ordinary ballot boxes. Networked voting was deliberately not considered so that *physical* security could be used to secure the votes.
So what do you do when someone rigs the voting receipts and demands a recount? Unless carefully integrated, the prescence of duplicate data can increase your exposure. Putting that duplicate data on paper doesn't neccesarily improve security either.
Our Electoral Commission's only task is to ensure that elections are conducted securely and accurately. That independence is also why I had no qualms in using electronic voting at that election.
They said that they were half-way into a 2 year security project. Do people expect that to only be more patching? I fully expect for MS to emphasise pervasive DRM as a selling point to consumers *and* content providers. When that ball lands, they stand to create an enclave of users and content.
People are more likely to pay to live in your gated community if you can show how bad the real world is.
So many of MS's directions are responses to the market. Internet wasn't on the roadmap until Netscape became a threat. Secure computing wasn't on the roadmap until it became painfully obvious that they couldn't keep the riff-raff out. I recall roadmap presentations for NT that assured me that investments in Alpha and PPC hardware was a good idea. If the "roadmap" serves a purpose, it is to show you how far things have deviated from where you thought you were going. This is not a bad thing, markets are suppose to evolve businesses and products, but a roadmap doesn't offer that much more insight than you can make yourself. I think understanding the market terrain is going to be more productive than drawing lines on blank maps.
And even if people are able to circumvent it, they are not going to be able to plead "oops" if they get busted. In fact, wouldn't circumventing it contravene the DMCA?
First, what do you mean by "best"? The best map data, or the best (most suitable for your purposes) interface?
Second, data providers should be publishing their data using OpenGIS standards such as Web Map Services and Web Feature Services, so I can use any OGC compliant interface (or implement my own).
My favourite online mapping software is Mapserver because it's open source, and compares really well with any of the commercial offerings.
Of course, good software counts for squat unless you have good data behind it. Good geocoded address/driving data takes time and money to compile.
You do know *why* they stop at 5 PM each night? It gets dark.
Also, the manufacture of solar cells is rather like that for other chips in terms of energy and (nasty) chemicals. Then there's the task of collecting that power and distributing it to where people live (or storing it in batteries made of heavy metals and other funky crap).
Yes, we should strive for better energy soucres. But just now, I don't see any alternative energy sources that are capable of meeting our appetite.
A long time ago, Microsoft acquired Blue Ribbon Soundworks, but I haven't heard of any similar MS products. Did they ever do anything with it, or just bury it somewhere?
Here's a excerpt from a newspaper article I read this morning that suggests that whacky system design and a patch mentality contributed to the problems:
Sources close to Telstra and its suppliers, Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard, said both vendors would come in for a grilling about the software bug, although it was mainly due to a flawed configuration strategy of installing Sun's Netscape mail software on HP hardware.
"Telstra is always bullying behind the scenes and making life very difficult for Sun and HP and Sun-owned Netscape," one source said. "The method has been not to actually fix things but to patch them, and not think about the long term."
And as nice as it is to shut down individual services, somethimes it's easier to just reboot than muck around figuring out what to stop/start. Besides, how do you account for complexity? My firewall routinely gets XXX days, but then it doesn't even do much disk IO once it boots. Compare that with something like a heavily used RDBMs that hammers disk.
I guarded uptime for a while, but then it got in the way of getting stuff done quickly, and some moron electrician always screwed it up anyway.
Frequently and routinely shutting machines down allows one to deal with these failures much more smoothly.
Or in other words, rebooting individual servers inside work (and hardware support contract) hours means that you can conveniently replace one dead disk at a civilised hour, rather than trying to find several disks at 2 Am on a Saturday night after weekend electrical work accidentally shuts power to the entire machine room.
Mike Hunt, a spokesperson for the Book Industry Assocoiation of America (BIAA) blames the decline in sales of e-books on rampant piracy. In a media conference, he said that "on average, twelve people read every book sold, that's eleven people *stealing* the content and depriving artists like Geoffrey Chaucer of their intellectual property". He also lambasted local governments and schools for supporting organised book sharing systems called "libraries", "who the hell is going to *buy* books when they are being handed out for free?". In closing, he outlined a plan where the BIAA would impose a sliding scale of royalties on anyone teaching how to read their products, "we acknowledge that some people read as a hobby, so 'Run Spot Run' will be quite inexpensive, but all technical literature will be written in Swahili so that a higher rate can be charged for specialist knowledge, kind of like how the bible used only be available in Latin".
"Store security are on the lookout for a shop-lifter wearing nothing but underpants and carrying several fridges... The lobby elevator has detained a suspect carrying matching RFIDs...."
But the possibilities are boundless:
"I'm sorry, you are not permitted to use Adidas Frequent Buyer points whilst wearing Nike shoes..."
"Hey Sir! did you know you can get lingerie to match the suspender set you are wearing in this Victoria's Secret store!"
"Dear customer, the price of the VCR you just shoplifted has been deducted from your credit card"
"I'm sorry, you are not wearing exclusive enough clothing to enter this store"
They must have stopped selling them because Everyone was pirating copies of Light in August, Huck Finn, and Robinson Carusoe. Poor BN couldn't make enough money:(
This Melville Dewey guy has invented a system that lets you find and read books without paying for them! Apparently the Library of Congress has used tax mony to create a competing system that does the same thing.
While building an ISiteZ39.50 server, I noticed that there is a document template for Unix email. That is, you can index all your mail folders as individual collections and do a distributed search across any/all of them using Z39.50. The other cool thing about Z39.50 is that the nodes can exist anywhere on the Internet and that you can query them using any Z39.50 compliant client.
Using a highly-political 'outsider pundit' like Nader as your example weakens your arguement.
Quite probably. But regulatory standards still ended up playing a big part in car design. My car has seat-belts, and meets crash & fuel consumption standards. Cars are much safer than they were. While safety is marketable now, would that design imperative arisen without that initial political interference?
I am sure that the engineers employed by Detroit were and are extremely competent and professional. They did wonders taking the motor car and turing it from an expensive luxury to a commodity transportation device. Yet despite all that professionalism, Nader found their cars to be gas-guzzling death traps.
On a similar note, I am sure Anderson only employed the most highly regarded auditors who belonged to the most rigorous professional bodies.
I think there may be a role for regultion, but like motor vehicles, such regulations would be more concerned with performance than dictating design.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it's mostly become one thing... crap.
Unfortunately they made the same mistake that Highlander did (besides the crapulent US edit). The initial movies neatly walked the line between the mundane and mythical world and as a result made the mythic tangible. The sequals are pedestrian C grade fantasy pieces that rely on SFX and "action". The sequels are not only bad, they manage to detract from the original film. Matrix is the Highlander all over again.
Xix.
Open Source is just one part. The rules on deployment are equally important. There are very clear rules on how the hardware was handled, not too disimilar to ordinary ballot boxes. Networked voting was deliberately not considered so that *physical* security could be used to secure the votes.
So what do you do when someone rigs the voting receipts and demands a recount? Unless carefully integrated, the prescence of duplicate data can increase your exposure. Putting that duplicate data on paper doesn't neccesarily improve security either.
Our Electoral Commission's only task is to ensure that elections are conducted securely and accurately. That independence is also why I had no qualms in using electronic voting at that election.
Xix.
Because I am not going to use the "World Wide Web" (HTTP?), but rsync, CVS, Jabber, IRC, FTP or some other protocol.
It's also rather like how our Win2K user profiles work.
Or I don't remove it from my local PC after I upload it, I'm also OK with that.
If the abstract is accurate, it iooks like they wasted their money...
Xix.
They said that they were half-way into a 2 year security project. Do people expect that to only be more patching? I fully expect for MS to emphasise pervasive DRM as a selling point to consumers *and* content providers. When that ball lands, they stand to create an enclave of users and content.
People are more likely to pay to live in your gated community if you can show how bad the real world is.
Xix.
So many of MS's directions are responses to the market. Internet wasn't on the roadmap until Netscape became a threat. Secure computing wasn't on the roadmap until it became painfully obvious that they couldn't keep the riff-raff out. I recall roadmap presentations for NT that assured me that investments in Alpha and PPC hardware was a good idea. If the "roadmap" serves a purpose, it is to show you how far things have deviated from where you thought you were going. This is not a bad thing, markets are suppose to evolve businesses and products, but a roadmap doesn't offer that much more insight than you can make yourself. I think understanding the market terrain is going to be more productive than drawing lines on blank maps.
Xix.
And even if people are able to circumvent it, they are not going to be able to plead "oops" if they get busted. In fact, wouldn't circumventing it contravene the DMCA?
Xix.
I hear that some foreign biology text books talk about a concept called "evolution" that is considered to be immoral in many US states.
Xix.
Second, data providers should be publishing their data using OpenGIS standards such as Web Map Services and Web Feature Services, so I can use any OGC compliant interface (or implement my own).
My favourite online mapping software is Mapserver because it's open source, and compares really well with any of the commercial offerings.
Of course, good software counts for squat unless you have good data behind it. Good geocoded address/driving data takes time and money to compile.
Xix.
Also, the manufacture of solar cells is rather like that for other chips in terms of energy and (nasty) chemicals. Then there's the task of collecting that power and distributing it to where people live (or storing it in batteries made of heavy metals and other funky crap).
Yes, we should strive for better energy soucres. But just now, I don't see any alternative energy sources that are capable of meeting our appetite.
Xix.
They can't even screw up properly...
Xix.
yeah, web surfing sucks, but it'd be nice if:
- My PDA stayed in sync with my desktop machine
(address books, appointments, blah, blah)
- My phone would use VoIP to route my calls over
nearby networks if it is cheaper than the telco
- Use my phone to carry my documents (MP3s) and
"squirt" them to people when I meet with them
- email meeting my Baysian filtr's urgency
threshold is routed to my phone
- My desktop recognises I am not nearby and
pause the music I was listening to
- Transmit my credit details to a vending
machine and get a drink
- Warn me that my boss's PDA is approaching
Xix.
We didn't hear about it until *after* he'd got back. What if something had gone wrong? "Astronaut? What astronaut? We haven't seen any astronaut..."
Xix.
So whatever happened to Bars and Pipes?
A long time ago, Microsoft acquired Blue Ribbon Soundworks, but I haven't heard of any similar MS products. Did they ever do anything with it, or just bury it somewhere?
Xix.
Yeah, my first thought when I saw the headline was, "Wow, they've invented Display Postscript!".
Xix.
I guarded uptime for a while, but then it got in the way of getting stuff done quickly, and some moron electrician always screwed it up anyway.
Or in other words, rebooting individual servers inside work (and hardware support contract) hours means that you can conveniently replace one dead disk at a civilised hour, rather than trying to find several disks at 2 Am on a Saturday night after weekend electrical work accidentally shuts power to the entire machine room.Xix.
Mike Hunt, a spokesperson for the Book Industry Assocoiation of America (BIAA) blames the decline in sales of e-books on rampant piracy. In a media conference, he said that "on average, twelve people read every book sold, that's eleven people *stealing* the content and depriving artists like Geoffrey Chaucer of their intellectual property". He also lambasted local governments and schools for supporting organised book sharing systems called "libraries", "who the hell is going to *buy* books when they are being handed out for free?". In closing, he outlined a plan where the BIAA would impose a sliding scale of royalties on anyone teaching how to read their products, "we acknowledge that some people read as a hobby, so 'Run Spot Run' will be quite inexpensive, but all technical literature will be written in Swahili so that a higher rate can be charged for specialist knowledge, kind of like how the bible used only be available in Latin".
Xix.
"Store security are on the lookout for a shop-lifter wearing nothing but underpants and carrying several fridges... The lobby elevator has detained a suspect carrying matching RFIDs...."
But the possibilities are boundless:
"I'm sorry, you are not permitted to use Adidas Frequent Buyer points whilst wearing Nike shoes..."
"Hey Sir! did you know you can get lingerie to match the suspender set you are wearing in this Victoria's Secret store!"
"Dear customer, the price of the VCR you just shoplifted has been deducted from your credit card"
"I'm sorry, you are not wearing exclusive enough clothing to enter this store"
my_plot(my_data)
Xix.
On my current filesrever is my home directory.
It was copied from my old fileserver, and the one before that.
In there is a home dir from my Pentium 90.
In that dir is my home dir from my 386.
Inside that is the one from my Amiga 4000.
Inside that is the one from my Amiga 1200.
All the stuff I kept as text is perefctly readable.
Xix.
This Melville Dewey guy has invented a system that lets you find and read books without paying for them! Apparently the Library of Congress has used tax mony to create a competing system that does the same thing.
Don't believe me? The see for yourself!
Xix.
(With credits to Tom the Dancing Bug)
Yes, any mall is full of 12 year old girls dressed like complete skanks. Music and music video set a lot of the "fashion".
And it's quite OK to make a living selling music that advises people to "smack da' biatch ho'".
The RIAA's moral high ground ignores its own efforts to peddle sludge.
Xix.
Xix.
Xix.
I am sure that the engineers employed by Detroit were and are extremely competent and professional. They did wonders taking the motor car and turing it from an expensive luxury to a commodity transportation device. Yet despite all that professionalism, Nader found their cars to be gas-guzzling death traps.
On a similar note, I am sure Anderson only employed the most highly regarded auditors who belonged to the most rigorous professional bodies.
I think there may be a role for regultion, but like motor vehicles, such regulations would be more concerned with performance than dictating design.
Xix.