While I know XML is a favored silver bullet by the popular press and developers, I still haven't decided if the infatuation with a complicated packaging scheme is really worthwhile. It's nice in a sense that there are off the shelf readers that can interpret the data for you, sure, but ultimately it's still up to your code to pull out the data in a meaningful way. A good XML reader will do two things for you: 1) provide a regular format for all data, and 2) handle string conversions to and from various encoding schemes.
It seems to me quite silly to bother dealing with all sorts of encoding schemes if you can control the data from the get-go. Convert from whatever your input data is to UTF8 as early as possible. With that, you immediately have support as if you wrote everything as wide characters, but don't have to change much, if any of your code. UTF8 is narrow, with reserved codes for multi-byte encoding. UTF8 doesn't require changing your string functions* that depend on a single terminating null, and you never really have to think about the encoding again. We've migrated from ASCII to UTF8 and now support whatever languages come in as an XML input format, but we immediately convert to UTF8 and forget the XML once we hit our database.
* Caveat: Poorly encoded UTF8 can represent the same wide character in many ways. For this reason, a straight byte comparison of UTF8 strings is sometimes incorrect. Either you should test all strings at conversion time to see if they are minimally encoded, or convert to UCS2 and back again, just so all strings go through the same manipulative process, and give you the same byte stream. I learned this the hard way. With that out of the way, it's just like using normal ASCII.
Not being religious myself, I am bemused at the hypocritical, fair-weather religious people too. They seem to be the object of your objection, not so much the census reporting. Ever notice how many people show up to mass on Christmas and Easter that you don't know?
While it's our right to be judgemental and hold moral opinions, it's also their right to practice in any way they see fit without interference. We aren't required to approve, nor should anyone care for our approval. Religion fills various holes in peoples lives, and for them it's functional. I can accept that as long as I'm not expected to need it as well.
And if someone wants to invent a religion tomorrow and call it Jedi, fine. I won't be one, but I support their right to. That is, unless I can get a lightsaber.:-)
Let me first start off by saying, I thought this was a good idea once, too. Here's why it's a dumb one:
Ram is so expensive that having it sit idle is a waste of money and time.
Operating systems do an excellent job of keeping most recently used (and hence most likely to be used again) data in memory
Keeping files on a ram disk prevents the operating system from using it
To learn this initially, I took a machine with 512mb of ram and made a 100mb ram disk partition on Win2k. I needed to speed up my compile times (>45 minutes) when using a bad cross compiler to the Nintendo Game Cube and a lot of templated C++ code (I didn't write it). After moving all the source code and object output files and executables to the ram disk volume, it turned out that it went even slower than before. This is because less ram was available, so it swapped out more frequently. Same principle applies when just adding more ram. The less you hit the hard drive, the faster your machine runs.
The only reasonable purpose I can think of for a fast ram disk is if you can get some relatively slow ram on that device, which is cheap, but won't fit on your motherboard due to it requiring faster/more expensive ram, such as RDRAM or other exotica like ECC Registered SDRAM. But it's still cheaper to get a few hard drives.
Please don't consider this a flame, because it isn't... that said:
My point is, although this is humorous, it's a bit unnerving for people who may take religion a bit more seriously than those in this case and then have those people (again, trying not to judge...) run to religion as a comfort zone after Sept. 11. I'm happy that people find comfort with turning to religion, but am a bit disappointed that it seems to be a "fair-weather" religion.
Whatever people take solace in, regardless of the global circumstances or recent happenings, and whatever people practice in their homes, be it Presbyterianism, Wicca, or Atheism, it's none of the government's business. If someone wanted to write in whatever they feel like writing in, there's no shame in that--it's an humorous way to tell the gov't to piss off and go tax someone. Accordingly, just because you or other people might take religion very, very seriously implies no need for others to respect that by doing the same. Hypersensitivity to other people's free speech has fueled the wrath of censors and both wings of politics in the 'free world' for decades, to the point where some subjects cannot even be discussed. Religion in the USA is one of them. It should not be.
To confrom to a 'religion', which I contend is neither Atheist nor None, one must practice it. To practice None, you do nothing at all (Agnosticism). To practice Atheism, you're actively telling all the other religions how wrong they are, as they do to everyone else.:-)
Umm, my hard drives here get 30MB/sec on the 5400rpm drives and 40MB/sec on the 7200rpm drives. Even my older 10gig 5400rpm drive can get 20MB/sec. That's 160Mbit/sec. He is also talking about using UDMA66 citing that as bits per second (it's BYTES folks), and talking about using a fasttrak66 controller with a new 7200rpm drive, you'll easily get at LEAST 20MB/sec off it, if not 30-35MB/sec. Strange that...
I recently have done benchmarks on my drives here and got those numbers. Bandwidth off your drive of 40Mbit/sec (5MByte/sec??) hasn't been seen since the days of the pentium class computers.
Hmm... What I don't understand is all the people who claim to get such great numbers with such low end hardware. I'm not saying anyone's fibbing, I'm just saying I haven't been blessed with that experience. I wish I knew what to do to get that kind of rates.
For example, I had several IDE 5400 rpm drives (ranging from 4gb to 12gb) all of which were driven on Celeron 300a OC to 450 on a 100mhz fsb, attached to a UDMA33 controller. Not one of them would transfer sustained over 4MB/s. Not one. I even enabled DMA for the chipset and tried benchmarking all sorts of aspects of each drive. Even using some of my smaller, narrow SCSI-2 drives, I never got close to the 10MB/s speed my scsi cable could handle. No luck in meeting the "Pentium class" minimum.
I recently put together a 240gb RAID 1 volume of four 60gb 5400rpm drives. With that configuration, attached to UDMA100 controllers, and on a different machine (dual 533mhz Celerons, but on a 66mhz fsb, won't OC dang it!), I can get up to 40MB/s read, and 25-30MB/s write. That's saturating my bus about 65% on best case scenarios, which is pretty good. 7200rpm drives would do better, of course, but I doubt substantially.
Do hard drive manufacturers matter much when it comes to throughput? Does anyone have actual comparison data for that?
I've been mulling the concept of graphical pipes for a while now (not knowing it had a name and papers published about it until today--darn!). The primary limiting factor isn't the input device. Input devices are invented to make software work better, not the other way around.
Operating systems are built around preconceived notions of how people need to work and how software needs to be written. In the early days of X and MacOS, lots of designs were thrown at the wall, and those that stuck were most compatible with the mentality of the users at the time. Not to say that they were incorrect in any particular way, but they had limited computation and memory, as well as a pretty high grasp of technical aspects of computers. Contrast that with today, where several hundred million computers are hooked up to each other and most people know very little about their microscopic magic hamsters that make their computers work right.
Some meaningful, elemental mapping of one program's outputs onto another's inputs is the next major technological step that might bridge the gap between functionality and perpetual re-engineering. How much would you love to have a web browser whose UI was defined by you, customizable trivially, and could be extended or constrained with minimal programming effort and by changing around the order certain data flowed through pipes to reach your window? Almost every piece of software I've ever ran was flawed in one way or another, all of which I knew what changes I'd make if given the opportunity, even if it was simple presentation changes. Graphical pipes makes such things possible and even trivial in many ways.
Ultimately, there's only two functions: content generation, and content filtering. Once you have those bases covered, it's all a matter of presentation.
Actually, I was among the many people who could out-type the Apple//e's keyboard, which effectively limited my throughput to about 15cps or ~150bps, regardless. Anyone remember typing 'yeah' and getting a tab after the 'a'? Hardware hackers and keyboard design don't mix. The best keyboard ever created is the IBM XT 88-key steel monstrosity.. you could hold any number of keys down and it would know exactly which ones were down, simultaneously.
Anyway, typing back then was at least 50% programmable macros. Nothing quite as satisfying as writing your own terminal in 6502 assembly with X and Y modem and 'infinite' (read: 64k) macros.
Pixels?! What are you talking about? The only portable bitmap type was ascii art and had print them out on perf-page dot matrix printers to view them. Even softcore porn surfing was an endeavor back then...
Actually, this is exactly a project I've been working towards this last 6 months. Granted, I'm not an expert in the arena of parallel algorithms, but I've done some reading and have some legitimate exposure to load balancing complex jobs across workstations in my current employment environment.
That being said, my approach has been to design a C/C++ like language that intrinsically understands multithreading and remote processing, but has a minimal standard library, and is by default intrinsically secure by design. People running the client software can allow default security privileges for anyone to run under, or can set up specific execution profiles for certain people or programs, controlling cpu load and even restricting the hours they share out their machine, etc. Basically, think SETI@Home, except with any program that might be written in the language automatically taking advantage of all available clients.
Trust me, there's a _lot_ of technological wrinkles to iron out in the language to make it safe to run on another person's machine without authorization, as this is the heart and soul of the project. Rather than reinvent the distributed processing technology for many different purposes and try to get many people to run several clients, it's better to get a single client that works for all sorts of problems. I think the time is now to prepare to capitalize on spare processing power. As we plunge further into the information age of cheap hardware and don't seem to require much more power to do the same tasks (unless you run Windows XP), the ratio of spare cycles to used ones will only increase over time.
The topology of a network of distributed clients over (potentially) slow connections makes it undesirable for solving some kinds of problems, though. What it's _not_ good for are things like converting video files from one format to another, like the HP I-Cluster is. Making it good at such tasks means slackening the security aspect a bit... And even then, slow transfers can invalidate even a fast remote CPU.
Of course, I'm always looking for funding. I'd love to make this a full time job in the future. Know anybody with loose purse strings? Didn't think so.:-/
Real hackers write their own. Why let someone else reinvent the wheel when you can do it for yourself?
Anyone who thinks I'm kidding, I'll (probably) have my editor available open source sometime in the next few months.:-)
Seriously, my biggest gripe with editors these days is not configurability or scriptability or any of the other myriad kitchen sinks that have been bolted together to form whatever package you prefer. It's unnecessary complexity. I know exactly what features I use, exactly what I don't, and I haven't found the editor that works 100% for me. So I'm doing it myself. And if it suits no-one else in the world, that's just fine. It's not really that hard to write an editor, anyway. The hard part is making a nice UI that's portable between Win/Linux/Solaris/AIX.:-(
The problem with computing security in general is that it is more often exploited than flaws in physical security.
It's been said before, of course, but bears repeating. Physical security requires you to be physically present to defeat it. Network security does not. Therefore, your potential intruders are considerably greater, and are less visible to unauthorized personnel.
Imagine driving down the street and you see 300 people trying to get close enough to a door to knock it down. You'd call the cops. It's a riot. Now, consider there may be 300 people hacking/. right now, and the only person who *might* notice would be the sysadmin looking over the daily logs.
Physical security is good security. Electronic security is self-contradictory.
I have two comments regarding this article, and the situation in general.
First, a quote from the article: But people have the right to go to work without buildings falling on them, too. There is no provision of such a right anywhere in the Constitution. Inventing "rights" so that people can argue a case is an abuse, and pollutes the discussion. What people have a right to is life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Their right to life was infringed; nothing stated about buildings. This sort of tactic was frequently used in the late 80's and early 90's when everybody thought rights grew on trees... right to fresh water, right to be paid the same as a more qualified person doing a similar job, etc. If you're going to argue law, be a lawyer first. FWIF, IANAL either, just annoyed.
Second and more importantly, technology is a tool. If you were to replace all the details of the terrorists using computers, using Zip disks, and so forth with them knowing how to drive cars, calling people on the telephone, and similar commonplace tools that are familiar to everyone (today), the analogy holds that people unfamiliar with those tools would wish to restrict them!!! This happened at the turn of the century when horse and buggy was common and cars were not. Legislation was introduced to keep cars from scaring horses, people, and upsetting towns. The fear is less that of terrorists using technology against us, but rather of technology itself. By reducing the tool's utility, our government can only accomplish a reduction of the users of those tools. Terrorists will find other ways.
What concerns me most is that people somehow think we've become insecure physically through use of intellectual technology. I'm sorry, but the attacks were purely physical. The communication leading up to it was what they are attacking. Rather, focus on preventing the physical attacks and leave communication alone.
If he ever refused to hire somebody based on their inability to see color, I bet he'd lose in Court, lose bad too.
I applied for a job at Motorola back in '93. They had two open positions, one in the wafer fab and another in the test department. The fab meant wearing bunny suits and dealing with etch chemicals; the test department meant endless boredom and $2/hr less. I wanted the money, but I could not get the job because I am severely color blind (11/13 color plates failed) and it requires acid green scale reading to determine chemical grades.
The morale of the story? Yes, you can "discriminate" between your employees based on their aptitudes, skills, and physical abilities if they come in direct conflict with their ability to perform the specified job. There's nothing illegal about it, and in most cases, is completely sensible.
I was still miffed about the pay differential, though, and my inability to do the job that paid more. Such is life.
I'd love to have a building like that in TX. The uncertain "cooling effect" could save millions over the life of the structure in air conditioning costs, which is arguably more than 75% of electrical costs in TX during the summer months, and our summer is about 7 months long.
I'd like to see a triangular design, because rather than just one bank of turbines, you could have 3, by only adding one more building. Of course, only two faces could run at a time without creating a stalemate pressure system in the center, but even that should be more than just one face produces, and would get the benefits of turbines that spin to face the wind direction.
We must stop our government from acting like the 800-pound gorilla of the world that
stifles all peaceful attempts at change
So which part of today was the peaceful attempts at change? The first plane in the north tower, the second plane in the south tower, the third plane in the Pentagon, or the fourth bound for the White House lawn and crashed in PA?
Pompous prick. And why is it that you think it's the USA's responsibility to act differently than the people that did this? Your call for tolerance to the innocent is well received, but your We-Are-The-World new age political theory is trash.
The appropriate response will be made when the responsible party is determined. Until then, shut up and enjoy the media circus.
It is also not difficult to understand that the constant claims of the Jews of superiority over everyone else (including people of European descent like me) is mentally de-centering to Arabs who happen to be psychologically conflicted. Mentally de-centered people engage in violence. It's that simple.
Oh bullshit. If you want to defend a culture for being violent, fine.. but don't masquerade your excusal as some offensive dismissalism as they might be 'mentally de-centered'. You should have your head examined.
Here's your recommendation, assuming that these two groups are even involved:
Jews attack the Arabs
Arabs attack the Jews
We give money to the Jews
Arabs attack us
We sit on our thumbs?
All through your message you're screaming that violence isn't the answer, but it's excusable because the former two groups have been doing it for 3300 years. But when they attack us, we aren't supposed to get involved. Sorry, bro, but that isn't the way it works. This is an act of war. If and when the responsible party is located, they will be extradited. If their government does not aid that extradition, we take them with all necessary force. There's nothing morally wrong with that scenario.
If it offends your delicate sensibilities to be at war with a country, move your pansy-ass somewhere else. The borders are always open for you to leave.
But the overall tone and message of my prior post remains the same. The motivation to aid one country over another has some direct benefit to the USA. Several of the superpowers do/have done so. It has made us enemies, and some short term friends (Iraq).
Were it up to the average Joe, I'm certain we'd be out of other people's hair as much as possible. It's not, and such is the pickle we're in today. And it can only get worse from this day forward.
For the US as for the rest of the democracies of the world, the only solution to this problem is not to be hated that much. And the only way to not be hated that much is to not act unreasonably. Which means - among other things - that the response to today's event must be strictly limited to individuals who are provably in the direct chain of command to today's event - and not thousands of civilians who just happen to live in the same town.
Thus spake the mantra of the weak and foolish. I agree that in a closed society which lives by the same mores and can agree amiably on how punishment works, this approach may work. However, we are talking about a diverse set of peoples who have vastly differing world perceptions than our own--there can be no meeting of minds, no consolidation of belief, and no amicable parting. The world cannot expect a country to be attacked and lay silent just because it's inconvenient for the grass when elephants fight. If you want to do something to make the world sitation better, help us extinguish the threat, don't mock us for doing something about it.
The US chooses its allies, aids the countries which stand for the same causes and beliefs that are harmonious with ours, and that's final. Every country with enough money to do so, does. Communist Russia did so for ages. China still does. It's common sense that it serves a country's purposes to forward its idealism wherever it can. This conflicts with countries who are opposed to our allies, and indirectly the USA.
As far as this day's atrocities are concerned, they are an act of war. They were committed on an unsuspecting civilian populace in times of outward peace, on our nation's soil. It should not, and will not be, tolerated. The peacemongers in the world might roll over and be marched to their deaths like so many cattle--fine, let them--but in this world the meek inherit the scraps.
I have one too! I originally bought two: a 6' table and an 8' table, but have scaled back to just the 8-footer.
The great thing about these folding tables? LEG ROOM! I hate constricted spaces, especially for 7 to 12 hours at a time. Besides that, you can easily fit two large monitors, two mid-towers, and two keyboards without compromising on ergonomics. Also, the price is right. $35 for my long table, $30 for the shorty. They may be higher now.
The down side? I bought my table several years ago, and back then they didn't have the fancy new plastic table tops... they're cheap plywood or particle board with a thin laminate. The sweat from my hands against my keyboard on the edge of the table eventually peels up the laminate. Also, the steel hardware support beams underneath the table are not dulled, so I am careful not to bump it--though it's pretty high up. Duct tape could fix either issue pretty easily, but it's pretty minor annoyance. I'd try the new plastic topped ones instead, though, as water will puddle on them better, and they may have better durability.
I've been eyeballing a new desk for my 6 computers, 2 keyboards and monitors, and the closest thing I can find retail is about $900 for a typical business office executive desk with the large return and single pedestal leg. I've had those at work before, and know that a monitor and keyboard do _not_ fit on a return, so it's pointless to try... I may wind up doing as others here have suggested and just build my own. Since almost all my machines are in rack cases, it'll likely have a rack built on the back somewhere... Rack cabinets are ridiculous, even more than desks.
Is there any legal requirement stating a person must be unmasked when entering a business establishment?
Individuals typically have the right to wear anything they like--to cover whatever body parts might offend, or to uncover them as they please. Can we assume a person may choose to not be videotaped when entering a business which has cameras? While I've seen signs stating video taping is in progress, I have never seen anything stating you waive your right to remain unidentified. I mean, sure, they're alerting you to the fact that there's cameras, but you never signed anything and they never stated you could not enter unless you were identifiable by video.
Perhaps the next Big Thing(tm) could be long, face-obstructing hats...
If nothing else, it might be fun for a weekend dodge to visit a store with a mask on in protest of video cameras. Should someone actually *do* this, let/. know how it goes, but I never suggested it!
Slashdot Mirror
While I know XML is a favored silver bullet by the popular press and developers, I still haven't decided if the infatuation with a complicated packaging scheme is really worthwhile. It's nice in a sense that there are off the shelf readers that can interpret the data for you, sure, but ultimately it's still up to your code to pull out the data in a meaningful way. A good XML reader will do two things for you: 1) provide a regular format for all data, and 2) handle string conversions to and from various encoding schemes.
It seems to me quite silly to bother dealing with all sorts of encoding schemes if you can control the data from the get-go. Convert from whatever your input data is to UTF8 as early as possible. With that, you immediately have support as if you wrote everything as wide characters, but don't have to change much, if any of your code. UTF8 is narrow, with reserved codes for multi-byte encoding. UTF8 doesn't require changing your string functions* that depend on a single terminating null, and you never really have to think about the encoding again. We've migrated from ASCII to UTF8 and now support whatever languages come in as an XML input format, but we immediately convert to UTF8 and forget the XML once we hit our database.
* Caveat: Poorly encoded UTF8 can represent the same wide character in many ways. For this reason, a straight byte comparison of UTF8 strings is sometimes incorrect. Either you should test all strings at conversion time to see if they are minimally encoded, or convert to UCS2 and back again, just so all strings go through the same manipulative process, and give you the same byte stream. I learned this the hard way. With that out of the way, it's just like using normal ASCII.
Not being religious myself, I am bemused at the hypocritical, fair-weather religious people too. They seem to be the object of your objection, not so much the census reporting. Ever notice how many people show up to mass on Christmas and Easter that you don't know?
:-)
While it's our right to be judgemental and hold moral opinions, it's also their right to practice in any way they see fit without interference. We aren't required to approve, nor should anyone care for our approval. Religion fills various holes in peoples lives, and for them it's functional. I can accept that as long as I'm not expected to need it as well.
And if someone wants to invent a religion tomorrow and call it Jedi, fine. I won't be one, but I support their right to. That is, unless I can get a lightsaber.
- Ram is so expensive that having it sit idle is a waste of money and time.
- Operating systems do an excellent job of keeping most recently used (and hence most likely to be used again) data in memory
- Keeping files on a ram disk prevents the operating system from using it
To learn this initially, I took a machine with 512mb of ram and made a 100mb ram disk partition on Win2k. I needed to speed up my compile times (>45 minutes) when using a bad cross compiler to the Nintendo Game Cube and a lot of templated C++ code (I didn't write it). After moving all the source code and object output files and executables to the ram disk volume, it turned out that it went even slower than before. This is because less ram was available, so it swapped out more frequently. Same principle applies when just adding more ram. The less you hit the hard drive, the faster your machine runs.The only reasonable purpose I can think of for a fast ram disk is if you can get some relatively slow ram on that device, which is cheap, but won't fit on your motherboard due to it requiring faster/more expensive ram, such as RDRAM or other exotica like ECC Registered SDRAM. But it's still cheaper to get a few hard drives.
Their 512mb card is $2000. And they only have up to 4gb configurations available. No thanks.
I'd rather put together a RAID of a dozen 250mb disks that I got for a case of Coke and a smile and enjoy the benefits of techno-glut that way.
Please don't consider this a flame, because it isn't... that said:
My point is, although this is humorous, it's a bit unnerving for people who may take religion a bit more seriously than those in this case and then have those people (again, trying not to judge...) run to religion as a comfort zone after Sept. 11. I'm happy that people find comfort with turning to religion, but am a bit disappointed that it seems to be a "fair-weather" religion.
Whatever people take solace in, regardless of the global circumstances or recent happenings, and whatever people practice in their homes, be it Presbyterianism, Wicca, or Atheism, it's none of the government's business. If someone wanted to write in whatever they feel like writing in, there's no shame in that--it's an humorous way to tell the gov't to piss off and go tax someone. Accordingly, just because you or other people might take religion very, very seriously implies no need for others to respect that by doing the same. Hypersensitivity to other people's free speech has fueled the wrath of censors and both wings of politics in the 'free world' for decades, to the point where some subjects cannot even be discussed. Religion in the USA is one of them. It should not be.
Hmm.. In 46 words or less, lessee.
:-)
To confrom to a 'religion', which I contend is neither Atheist nor None, one must practice it. To practice None, you do nothing at all (Agnosticism). To practice Atheism, you're actively telling all the other religions how wrong they are, as they do to everyone else.
Umm, my hard drives here get 30MB/sec on the 5400rpm drives and 40MB/sec on the 7200rpm drives. Even my older 10gig 5400rpm drive can get 20MB/sec. That's 160Mbit/sec. He is also talking about using UDMA66 citing that as bits per second (it's BYTES folks), and talking about using a fasttrak66 controller with a new 7200rpm drive, you'll easily get at LEAST 20MB/sec off it, if not 30-35MB/sec. Strange that...
I recently have done benchmarks on my drives here and got those numbers. Bandwidth off your drive of 40Mbit/sec (5MByte/sec??) hasn't been seen since the days of the pentium class computers.
Hmm... What I don't understand is all the people who claim to get such great numbers with such low end hardware. I'm not saying anyone's fibbing, I'm just saying I haven't been blessed with that experience. I wish I knew what to do to get that kind of rates.
For example, I had several IDE 5400 rpm drives (ranging from 4gb to 12gb) all of which were driven on Celeron 300a OC to 450 on a 100mhz fsb, attached to a UDMA33 controller. Not one of them would transfer sustained over 4MB/s. Not one. I even enabled DMA for the chipset and tried benchmarking all sorts of aspects of each drive. Even using some of my smaller, narrow SCSI-2 drives, I never got close to the 10MB/s speed my scsi cable could handle. No luck in meeting the "Pentium class" minimum.
I recently put together a 240gb RAID 1 volume of four 60gb 5400rpm drives. With that configuration, attached to UDMA100 controllers, and on a different machine (dual 533mhz Celerons, but on a 66mhz fsb, won't OC dang it!), I can get up to 40MB/s read, and 25-30MB/s write. That's saturating my bus about 65% on best case scenarios, which is pretty good. 7200rpm drives would do better, of course, but I doubt substantially.
Do hard drive manufacturers matter much when it comes to throughput? Does anyone have actual comparison data for that?
I've been mulling the concept of graphical pipes for a while now (not knowing it had a name and papers published about it until today--darn!). The primary limiting factor isn't the input device. Input devices are invented to make software work better, not the other way around.
Operating systems are built around preconceived notions of how people need to work and how software needs to be written. In the early days of X and MacOS, lots of designs were thrown at the wall, and those that stuck were most compatible with the mentality of the users at the time. Not to say that they were incorrect in any particular way, but they had limited computation and memory, as well as a pretty high grasp of technical aspects of computers. Contrast that with today, where several hundred million computers are hooked up to each other and most people know very little about their microscopic magic hamsters that make their computers work right.
Some meaningful, elemental mapping of one program's outputs onto another's inputs is the next major technological step that might bridge the gap between functionality and perpetual re-engineering. How much would you love to have a web browser whose UI was defined by you, customizable trivially, and could be extended or constrained with minimal programming effort and by changing around the order certain data flowed through pipes to reach your window? Almost every piece of software I've ever ran was flawed in one way or another, all of which I knew what changes I'd make if given the opportunity, even if it was simple presentation changes. Graphical pipes makes such things possible and even trivial in many ways.
Ultimately, there's only two functions: content generation, and content filtering. Once you have those bases covered, it's all a matter of presentation.
Actually, I was among the many people who could out-type the Apple //e's keyboard, which effectively limited my throughput to about 15cps or ~150bps, regardless. Anyone remember typing 'yeah' and getting a tab after the 'a'? Hardware hackers and keyboard design don't mix. The best keyboard ever created is the IBM XT 88-key steel monstrosity.. you could hold any number of keys down and it would know exactly which ones were down, simultaneously.
Anyway, typing back then was at least 50% programmable macros. Nothing quite as satisfying as writing your own terminal in 6502 assembly with X and Y modem and 'infinite' (read: 64k) macros.
Pixels?! What are you talking about? The only portable bitmap type was ascii art and had print them out on perf-page dot matrix printers to view them. Even softcore porn surfing was an endeavor back then...
Actually, a ram jet is worse....
Okay, not really. But I should have a gotten patent on that...
Actually, this is exactly a project I've been working towards this last 6 months. Granted, I'm not an expert in the arena of parallel algorithms, but I've done some reading and have some legitimate exposure to load balancing complex jobs across workstations in my current employment environment.
:-/
That being said, my approach has been to design a C/C++ like language that intrinsically understands multithreading and remote processing, but has a minimal standard library, and is by default intrinsically secure by design. People running the client software can allow default security privileges for anyone to run under, or can set up specific execution profiles for certain people or programs, controlling cpu load and even restricting the hours they share out their machine, etc. Basically, think SETI@Home, except with any program that might be written in the language automatically taking advantage of all available clients.
Trust me, there's a _lot_ of technological wrinkles to iron out in the language to make it safe to run on another person's machine without authorization, as this is the heart and soul of the project. Rather than reinvent the distributed processing technology for many different purposes and try to get many people to run several clients, it's better to get a single client that works for all sorts of problems. I think the time is now to prepare to capitalize on spare processing power. As we plunge further into the information age of cheap hardware and don't seem to require much more power to do the same tasks (unless you run Windows XP), the ratio of spare cycles to used ones will only increase over time.
The topology of a network of distributed clients over (potentially) slow connections makes it undesirable for solving some kinds of problems, though. What it's _not_ good for are things like converting video files from one format to another, like the HP I-Cluster is. Making it good at such tasks means slackening the security aspect a bit... And even then, slow transfers can invalidate even a fast remote CPU.
Of course, I'm always looking for funding. I'd love to make this a full time job in the future. Know anybody with loose purse strings? Didn't think so.
I was going to post this, but you beat me to it, and in fewer words.
Real hackers write their own. Why let someone else reinvent the wheel when you can do it for yourself?
:-)
:-(
Anyone who thinks I'm kidding, I'll (probably) have my editor available open source sometime in the next few months.
Seriously, my biggest gripe with editors these days is not configurability or scriptability or any of the other myriad kitchen sinks that have been bolted together to form whatever package you prefer. It's unnecessary complexity. I know exactly what features I use, exactly what I don't, and I haven't found the editor that works 100% for me. So I'm doing it myself. And if it suits no-one else in the world, that's just fine. It's not really that hard to write an editor, anyway. The hard part is making a nice UI that's portable between Win/Linux/Solaris/AIX.
The problem with computing security in general is that it is more often exploited than flaws in physical security.
/. right now, and the only person who *might* notice would be the sysadmin looking over the daily logs.
It's been said before, of course, but bears repeating. Physical security requires you to be physically present to defeat it. Network security does not. Therefore, your potential intruders are considerably greater, and are less visible to unauthorized personnel.
Imagine driving down the street and you see 300 people trying to get close enough to a door to knock it down. You'd call the cops. It's a riot. Now, consider there may be 300 people hacking
Physical security is good security. Electronic security is self-contradictory.
I have two comments regarding this article, and the situation in general.
First, a quote from the article: But people have the right to go to work without buildings falling on them, too. There is no provision of such a right anywhere in the Constitution. Inventing "rights" so that people can argue a case is an abuse, and pollutes the discussion. What people have a right to is life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Their right to life was infringed; nothing stated about buildings. This sort of tactic was frequently used in the late 80's and early 90's when everybody thought rights grew on trees... right to fresh water, right to be paid the same as a more qualified person doing a similar job, etc. If you're going to argue law, be a lawyer first. FWIF, IANAL either, just annoyed.
Second and more importantly, technology is a tool. If you were to replace all the details of the terrorists using computers, using Zip disks, and so forth with them knowing how to drive cars, calling people on the telephone, and similar commonplace tools that are familiar to everyone (today), the analogy holds that people unfamiliar with those tools would wish to restrict them!!! This happened at the turn of the century when horse and buggy was common and cars were not. Legislation was introduced to keep cars from scaring horses, people, and upsetting towns. The fear is less that of terrorists using technology against us, but rather of technology itself. By reducing the tool's utility, our government can only accomplish a reduction of the users of those tools. Terrorists will find other ways.
What concerns me most is that people somehow think we've become insecure physically through use of intellectual technology. I'm sorry, but the attacks were purely physical. The communication leading up to it was what they are attacking. Rather, focus on preventing the physical attacks and leave communication alone.
If he ever refused to hire somebody based on their inability to see color, I bet he'd lose in Court, lose bad too.
I applied for a job at Motorola back in '93. They had two open positions, one in the wafer fab and another in the test department. The fab meant wearing bunny suits and dealing with etch chemicals; the test department meant endless boredom and $2/hr less. I wanted the money, but I could not get the job because I am severely color blind (11/13 color plates failed) and it requires acid green scale reading to determine chemical grades.
The morale of the story? Yes, you can "discriminate" between your employees based on their aptitudes, skills, and physical abilities if they come in direct conflict with their ability to perform the specified job. There's nothing illegal about it, and in most cases, is completely sensible.
I was still miffed about the pay differential, though, and my inability to do the job that paid more. Such is life.
I'd love to have a building like that in TX. The uncertain "cooling effect" could save millions over the life of the structure in air conditioning costs, which is arguably more than 75% of electrical costs in TX during the summer months, and our summer is about 7 months long.
I'd like to see a triangular design, because rather than just one bank of turbines, you could have 3, by only adding one more building. Of course, only two faces could run at a time without creating a stalemate pressure system in the center, but even that should be more than just one face produces, and would get the benefits of turbines that spin to face the wind direction.
We must stop our government from acting like the 800-pound gorilla of the world that stifles all peaceful attempts at change
So which part of today was the peaceful attempts at change? The first plane in the north tower, the second plane in the south tower, the third plane in the Pentagon, or the fourth bound for the White House lawn and crashed in PA?
Pompous prick. And why is it that you think it's the USA's responsibility to act differently than the people that did this? Your call for tolerance to the innocent is well received, but your We-Are-The-World new age political theory is trash.
The appropriate response will be made when the responsible party is determined. Until then, shut up and enjoy the media circus.
Oh bullshit. If you want to defend a culture for being violent, fine.. but don't masquerade your excusal as some offensive dismissalism as they might be 'mentally de-centered'. You should have your head examined.
Here's your recommendation, assuming that these two groups are even involved:
All through your message you're screaming that violence isn't the answer, but it's excusable because the former two groups have been doing it for 3300 years. But when they attack us, we aren't supposed to get involved. Sorry, bro, but that isn't the way it works. This is an act of war. If and when the responsible party is located, they will be extradited. If their government does not aid that extradition, we take them with all necessary force. There's nothing morally wrong with that scenario.
If it offends your delicate sensibilities to be at war with a country, move your pansy-ass somewhere else. The borders are always open for you to leave.
A worthwhile correction. Thank you.
But the overall tone and message of my prior post remains the same. The motivation to aid one country over another has some direct benefit to the USA. Several of the superpowers do/have done so. It has made us enemies, and some short term friends (Iraq).
Were it up to the average Joe, I'm certain we'd be out of other people's hair as much as possible. It's not, and such is the pickle we're in today. And it can only get worse from this day forward.
For the US as for the rest of the democracies of the world, the only solution to this problem is not to be hated that much. And the only way to not be hated that much is to not act unreasonably. Which means - among other things - that the response to today's event must be strictly limited to individuals who are provably in the direct chain of command to today's event - and not thousands of civilians who just happen to live in the same town.
Thus spake the mantra of the weak and foolish. I agree that in a closed society which lives by the same mores and can agree amiably on how punishment works, this approach may work. However, we are talking about a diverse set of peoples who have vastly differing world perceptions than our own--there can be no meeting of minds, no consolidation of belief, and no amicable parting. The world cannot expect a country to be attacked and lay silent just because it's inconvenient for the grass when elephants fight. If you want to do something to make the world sitation better, help us extinguish the threat, don't mock us for doing something about it.
The US chooses its allies, aids the countries which stand for the same causes and beliefs that are harmonious with ours, and that's final. Every country with enough money to do so, does. Communist Russia did so for ages. China still does. It's common sense that it serves a country's purposes to forward its idealism wherever it can. This conflicts with countries who are opposed to our allies, and indirectly the USA.
As far as this day's atrocities are concerned, they are an act of war. They were committed on an unsuspecting civilian populace in times of outward peace, on our nation's soil. It should not, and will not be, tolerated. The peacemongers in the world might roll over and be marched to their deaths like so many cattle--fine, let them--but in this world the meek inherit the scraps.
I have one too! I originally bought two: a 6' table and an 8' table, but have scaled back to just the 8-footer.
The great thing about these folding tables? LEG ROOM! I hate constricted spaces, especially for 7 to 12 hours at a time. Besides that, you can easily fit two large monitors, two mid-towers, and two keyboards without compromising on ergonomics. Also, the price is right. $35 for my long table, $30 for the shorty. They may be higher now.
The down side? I bought my table several years ago, and back then they didn't have the fancy new plastic table tops... they're cheap plywood or particle board with a thin laminate. The sweat from my hands against my keyboard on the edge of the table eventually peels up the laminate. Also, the steel hardware support beams underneath the table are not dulled, so I am careful not to bump it--though it's pretty high up. Duct tape could fix either issue pretty easily, but it's pretty minor annoyance. I'd try the new plastic topped ones instead, though, as water will puddle on them better, and they may have better durability.
I've been eyeballing a new desk for my 6 computers, 2 keyboards and monitors, and the closest thing I can find retail is about $900 for a typical business office executive desk with the large return and single pedestal leg. I've had those at work before, and know that a monitor and keyboard do _not_ fit on a return, so it's pointless to try... I may wind up doing as others here have suggested and just build my own. Since almost all my machines are in rack cases, it'll likely have a rack built on the back somewhere... Rack cabinets are ridiculous, even more than desks.
Is there any legal requirement stating a person must be unmasked when entering a business establishment?
/. know how it goes, but I never suggested it!
Individuals typically have the right to wear anything they like--to cover whatever body parts might offend, or to uncover them as they please. Can we assume a person may choose to not be videotaped when entering a business which has cameras? While I've seen signs stating video taping is in progress, I have never seen anything stating you waive your right to remain unidentified. I mean, sure, they're alerting you to the fact that there's cameras, but you never signed anything and they never stated you could not enter unless you were identifiable by video.
Perhaps the next Big Thing(tm) could be long, face-obstructing hats...
If nothing else, it might be fun for a weekend dodge to visit a store with a mask on in protest of video cameras. Should someone actually *do* this, let
Had to check my calendar, with a weirdo article like this, though.
Guess this is what the Brits do on Friday when they run out of real science to do.