Not the same as cryptonomicon.
on
Optical Cryptography
·
· Score: 4, Informative
The encryption in cryptonomicon was a one time pad. The pad was implemented as a record, but the concept was the same. The fact that the conversation could only last as long as the record and each record was only used once is indicative.
But then, perhaps the lasers could be considered an infinite one-time pad? Of course, if anyone else is listening to the synchronisation codes, couldn't they themselves end up with a synched laser too?
As a form of encryption, this doesn't appear (to me) to be incredibly useful to the average person. It doesn't secure the communication, only the physical connection between the two points. However, it would work for keeping snooping foreign governments from listening in on international traffic on submarine cables. Or nasty pirates from splicing themselves into the cable TV network...
Wasn't Al Stevens (of Dr. Dobbs fame) working on just this? I don't remember right now, but I seem to remember it fitting the bill. Here's a reference link I found in google:
I personally don't have a problem with compile-time options, especially when it can optimize
the hell outta the code it produces. Not to flame either, but what's the big problem with
compiling the program anyways? Isn't that something you're used to by now?
Compile time optimisation is good, however, you should be able to select which function to use at runtime. Function pointers don't cost anything, and it is easy enough to select which array of pointers to use at program startup.
As for not compiling it, I shouldn't have to compile code for my linux box. I do enough compiling of my own code, I shouldn't have to compile anyone elses. That's what package management systems are all about.
I have no doubt that MPlayer is a capable player (once you get it compiled). But that doesn't mean that it is an inaccessible product, and until such time as they provide binary releases, won't be used by anyone except a niche. If they don't want to provide binaries, they should release the code and let someone else do it.
Don't bitch about it either, write your own player.
Aah, the familiar "open source" developer's refrain. As soon as they indicate which files are covered by which license, and provide a written copy of the license, then I might just make a fork. Until then, I've got better code to write.
Except that they aren't open. Their code isn't open, it is simply published. They say that you can't distribute compiled copies. That's patently stupid. You can either distribute or you can't. They don't have to support it, so what's the beef?
MPlayer:
1) contains GPL'ed code.
2) Says they have a license that doesn't allow binary distribution. At no point is that license documented anywhere, nor is it listed on which files it applies to.
3) MPlayer has beefs with _anyone_ distributing binary packages, including distributions, such as Mandrake and Debian. No wonder I didn't know they existed.
Primarily it seems that their beef is with having to support other people's compiles. Of course, they are perfectly allowed to selectively apply support, and to even put restrictions on re-distribution of the code that they wrote. Of course, that does mean that they will need to specifically _list_ the restricted code, which they haven't done.
Personally, I think MPlayer is just bitching because they are getting newbie questions on the mailing list. I think they've got a crap architecture (since it requires compile-time selection of platform). I also think that it would be very nice for someone to take the code, replace the non-GPL bits, and allow people to get on with their lives.
LDAP/X.500 heirarchical databases are all well and good, until you want to run a query that asks which customers have what services, especially when everything is keyed on phone number. You know what we ended up doing? Pulling the entire database out of LDAP every night, and putting it into Oracle to run the reports. Nothing sucks more than a full table scan in an X.500 database.
I do agree that heirarchical databases are great where you are only going to access the data from a single key, like passwords and email addresses... But, they should probably be provisioned from an external RDBMS if you are looking to do reporting.
Anyone out there managed to get the latest CVS drop to compile? I'm having a couple of problems. There seems to be a cyclical dependency between emacs and the elisp files. You need the elisp to be compiled in order to compile emacs, and you can't compile the elisp with anything other than the new copy of emacs.
I have emacs version 20.7.1, and it reports the following error when I try to use it to compile the elisp:
Compiling/home/jpollock/emacs21/emacs/lisp/emacs-lisp/byte- opt.el
Wrong number of arguments: #[(fn new) ÃN?xÄ=ÅN
!Å
B#ÃÄ#" [fn handler new byte-compile byte-compile-obsolete byte-obsolete-info put] 6 410024 "aMake function obsolete:
xObsoletion replacement: "], 3
make: *** [compile-files] Error 1
Make on its own generates the following errors:
make[1]: *** No rule to make target `/home/jpollock/emacs21/emacs/src/../lisp/abbrev.e lc', needed by `../etc/DOC'. Stop.
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/jpollock/emacs21/emacs/src'
make: *** [src] Error 2
Turning off DOC doesn't help, emacs itself has dependencies on the elisp. Then there's the joy of the "doit" dependency in the lisp tree being empty.:) Anyone out there have a solution?
I have the creative soundworks 5.1 speakers with the dolby digital input, and they work amazingly well. Great for movies, games and music. In fact, I've got them plugged into my DVD player in the living room right now (until I fork over the cash for a stereo).
No other country determines case outcomes based on
precedent as strongly as the U.S.
How about the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and any other common law based country? Their entire system of law is based around the body of prior court decisions.
Precedent is powerful. It demonstrates what the higher courts decided was meant by the law, because they let the decisions stand...
Sure, he used language to convey all sorts of information. That's what linguistic specialists do when they write. It's sort of a programmer writing a programming language. You can't resist it.
But, I have yet to see anyone hide subtexts like that in normal speech. Maybe I haven't met enough of the right class of people.
Basically, it sounds to me like we disagree on the benefit of the use of language. I treat it as a barrier between me and the characters, you see it as a benefit, and a demonstration of the genius of Tolkien. It is, I'm not disputing that he was a man of great linguistic skill, or large vision in terms of the history of Middle Earth. Just that he didn't come up with characters that I enjoyed reading about.
I found LOTR difficult to read and unenjoyable. It's characters were flat. While they are original because they were the first in the genre, they didn't feel "real" to me. The complete lack of strong female characters - Eowyn appeared strong, but was unimportant, Arwen was irrelevent and Galadriel was fluff. You can say that they were important in the Simarillion, but I saw no reason to read that because I didn't enjoy LOTR enough to continue.
Also, the writing was done by someone who was obviously a linguist. In other words, he used fancy language because they knew how, not because it made sense that the characters spoke that way.
I much prefer Guy Gavriel Kay. "The Fionavar Tapestry" is some of the best fantasy I've ever read. Although it too has some issues; I didn't think the whole King Arthur piece to the story flowed from the rest.
You are right. However, while they are run in duplex mode (and simplexed for upgrades), it still involves a reboot of each individual board to do the upgrade. Reducing the amount of time spent in simplex is something that manufacturers spend a _lot_ of time (and money) doing.
I've got similar problems. I've got a RH7.0 box, and when I try to install KDE, it starts complaining about needing libXft, and libXrender. Of course, there is no mention of either in the README (such as what version of XF86 is required), nor is there a version of X in the non-kde directory. This is also ignoring the collisions on libcrypto, libssl, python, liblber, libldap, librpm and librpmio. Just a little frustrating.
Luckily, I haven't done a --nodeps like the README suggests.
The acrobat distiller will convert postscript files to pdf files. Additionally, you might already have psview (I think it's called that). Adobe ships it as a postscript viewer.
GAIM was started out as an instant messaging client for Linux that allowed access to AIM. In other words, the whole intent of the name is to link it to AIM. Now, it may have changed it's goal to include other IM protocols, but that doesn't change the infringement. GAIM is still linked to AIM. It is also still easy to confuse the two. When I see GAIM, and I know we're talking about IM, I think "GNU AOL Instant Messanger". I see AOL. I am likely to be inclined (if I wasn't reading this) to believe that GAIM was from AOL.
Also, note that the trademark doesn't have to be registered to be enforceable either. Now AIM is a descriptive mark (IMO), so it is really only protected if the pulic associates AIM with AOL. I think that this relation is obvious (AIM=AOL IM).
Clue.com doesn't have that confusion because it operates in an entirely different market. Different market, no confusion.
They are free to attempt to defend themselves against the suit, but I feel it is pretty clear that AOL is correct.
I'm thinking in terms of conservation of energy here. If you have a system in a steady state, you can't have any change in the system without adding energy (natural resources) to it. Now, basically what I am asking is, "Is economic growth attributeable to natural resources". While we are shifting away from them, do we still need to dig stuff out of the ground in order to grow?
Since growth is less than the percentage of GDP due to natural resources, it is still possible. The fact that the percentage of GDP due to resources is dropping could simply mean we are becoming more efficient in their use.
Economic growth happens when more efficient means of production and distribution are developed. We already
can produce enough food to feed the world, with plenty to spare. Distributing it to everybody is the problem.
Economic growth reflects barriers breaking down, friction dropping, and a growing network of suppliers and
consumers getting things to people who want them.
Wouldn't that just mean that you can achieve the same amount of growth with a smaller component of the GDP being due to natural resources? In other words, historically we used to waste 50% of the resource in production. Now, we waste say 25%. So, to say have 6% growth in both areas, we would have needed 12% of GDP due to resources historically but only 8% now. Same growth, all due to resources, and allows natural resources to end up being a smaller piece of the pie. Of course, it ends up depending on whether or not you can eventually use resources to produce other resourses (philosopher's stone anyone?).
No they don't, since the value of the growth is the value of the resources. Only when the value of the growth exceeds the value of the resource portion of GDP am I proven incorrect.
Natural resources weighs in at a paltry 6% [...of GDP]
But growth has been under 6% for the past 15 years. So, can't all growth be attributed to resources added to the system, minus some friction? There may be shifts in where the money is placed in the system, but it seems a reasonable leap that the amount of wealth is finite, only the addition of resources to the system results in it's growth. I'm probably missing something. In fact, I'm sure of it.
Slashdot Mirror
The encryption in cryptonomicon was a one time pad. The pad was implemented as a record, but the concept was the same. The fact that the conversation could only last as long as the record and each record was only used once is indicative.
But then, perhaps the lasers could be considered an infinite one-time pad? Of course, if anyone else is listening to the synchronisation codes, couldn't they themselves end up with a synched laser too?
As a form of encryption, this doesn't appear (to me) to be incredibly useful to the average person. It doesn't secure the communication, only the physical connection between the two points. However, it would work for keeping snooping foreign governments from listening in on international traffic on submarine cables. Or nasty pirates from splicing themselves into the cable TV network...
Wasn't Al Stevens (of Dr. Dobbs fame) working on just this? I don't remember right now, but I seem to remember it fitting the bill. Here's a reference link I found in google:
http://ai.kaist.ac.kr/~ymkim/Program/c++.html
Search for "d-flat Al.Stevens" and you'll find a bunch of stuff.
So, this covers all of us geeks, right? Better yet, it's up to us to say if we are disabled or not. I'm up for that.
Jason PollockCompile time optimisation is good, however, you should be able to select which function to use at runtime. Function pointers don't cost anything, and it is easy enough to select which array of pointers to use at program startup.
As for not compiling it, I shouldn't have to compile code for my linux box. I do enough compiling of my own code, I shouldn't have to compile anyone elses. That's what package management systems are all about.
I have no doubt that MPlayer is a capable player (once you get it compiled). But that doesn't mean that it is an inaccessible product, and until such time as they provide binary releases, won't be used by anyone except a niche. If they don't want to provide binaries, they should release the code and let someone else do it.
Aah, the familiar "open source" developer's refrain. As soon as they indicate which files are covered by which license, and provide a written copy of the license, then I might just make a fork. Until then, I've got better code to write.
Except that they aren't open. Their code isn't open, it is simply published. They say that you can't distribute compiled copies. That's patently stupid. You can either distribute or you can't. They don't have to support it, so what's the beef?
MPlayer:
1) contains GPL'ed code.
2) Says they have a license that doesn't allow binary distribution. At no point is that license documented anywhere, nor is it listed on which files it applies to.
3) MPlayer has beefs with _anyone_ distributing binary packages, including distributions, such as Mandrake and Debian. No wonder I didn't know they existed.
Primarily it seems that their beef is with having to support other people's compiles. Of course, they are perfectly allowed to selectively apply support, and to even put restrictions on re-distribution of the code that they wrote. Of course, that does mean that they will need to specifically _list_ the restricted code, which they haven't done.
Personally, I think MPlayer is just bitching because they are getting newbie questions on the mailing list. I think they've got a crap architecture (since it requires compile-time selection of platform). I also think that it would be very nice for someone to take the code, replace the non-GPL bits, and allow people to get on with their lives.
Jason Pollock
LDAP/X.500 heirarchical databases are all well and good, until you want to run a query that asks which customers have what services, especially when everything is keyed on phone number. You know what we ended up doing? Pulling the entire database out of LDAP every night, and putting it into Oracle to run the reports. Nothing sucks more than a full table scan in an X.500 database.
I do agree that heirarchical databases are great where you are only going to access the data from a single key, like passwords and email addresses... But, they should probably be provisioned from an external RDBMS if you are looking to do reporting.
Jason PollockSo, I have yet to read the article (yeah, yeah, slashdot no-no), but how is this different from MS saying that open source is un-American?
As someone else mentioned in the tree, try
"make bootstrap"
Seems to be working better for me now.
Jason Pollock
The "make bootstrap" appears to be working. At least it is going further than it used to. :)
:)
Excuse me while I check to see if I should be sheepish... Nope "make bootstrap" isn't in the INSTALL or the PROBLEMS documentation.
Thanks a lot for the help!
Jason Pollock
Anyone out there managed to get the latest CVS drop to compile? I'm having a couple of problems. There seems to be a cyclical dependency between emacs and the elisp files. You need the elisp to be compiled in order to compile emacs, and you can't compile the elisp with anything other than the new copy of emacs.
I have emacs version 20.7.1, and it reports the following error when I try to use it to compile the elisp:
/home/jpollock/emacs21/emacs/lisp/emacs-lisp/byte- opt.el
Compiling
Wrong number of arguments: #[(fn new) ÃN?xÄ=ÅN
!Å
B#ÃÄ#" [fn handler new byte-compile byte-compile-obsolete byte-obsolete-info put] 6 410024 "aMake function obsolete:
xObsoletion replacement: "], 3
make: *** [compile-files] Error 1
Make on its own generates the following errors:
make[1]: *** No rule to make target `/home/jpollock/emacs21/emacs/src/../lisp/abbrev.
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/jpollock/emacs21/emacs/src'
make: *** [src] Error 2
Turning off DOC doesn't help, emacs itself has dependencies on the elisp. Then there's the joy of the "doit" dependency in the lisp tree being empty.
Jason Pollock
I have the creative soundworks 5.1 speakers with the dolby digital input, and they work amazingly well. Great for movies, games and music. In fact, I've got them plugged into my DVD player in the living room right now (until I fork over the cash for a stereo).
How about the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and any other common law based country? Their entire system of law is based around the body of prior court decisions.
Precedent is powerful. It demonstrates what the higher courts decided was meant by the law, because they let the decisions stand...
Jason PollockSure, he used language to convey all sorts of information. That's what linguistic specialists do when they write. It's sort of a programmer writing a programming language. You can't resist it.
But, I have yet to see anyone hide subtexts like that in normal speech. Maybe I haven't met enough of the right class of people.
Basically, it sounds to me like we disagree on the benefit of the use of language. I treat it as a barrier between me and the characters, you see it as a benefit, and a demonstration of the genius of Tolkien. It is, I'm not disputing that he was a man of great linguistic skill, or large vision in terms of the history of Middle Earth. Just that he didn't come up with characters that I enjoyed reading about.
Jason Pollock
I found LOTR difficult to read and unenjoyable. It's characters were flat. While they are original because they were the first in the genre, they didn't feel "real" to me. The complete lack of strong female characters - Eowyn appeared strong, but was unimportant, Arwen was irrelevent and Galadriel was fluff. You can say that they were important in the Simarillion, but I saw no reason to read that because I didn't enjoy LOTR enough to continue.
Also, the writing was done by someone who was obviously a linguist. In other words, he used fancy language because they knew how, not because it made sense that the characters spoke that way.
I much prefer Guy Gavriel Kay. "The Fionavar Tapestry" is some of the best fantasy I've ever read. Although it too has some issues; I didn't think the whole King Arthur piece to the story flowed from the rest.
Jason Pollock
You are right. However, while they are run in duplex mode (and simplexed for upgrades), it still involves a reboot of each individual board to do the upgrade. Reducing the amount of time spent in simplex is something that manufacturers spend a _lot_ of time (and money) doing.
Jason Pollock
I've got similar problems. I've got a RH7.0 box, and when I try to install KDE, it starts complaining about needing libXft, and libXrender. Of course, there is no mention of either in the README (such as what version of XF86 is required), nor is there a version of X in the non-kde directory. This is also ignoring the collisions on libcrypto, libssl, python, liblber, libldap, librpm and librpmio. Just a little frustrating.
Luckily, I haven't done a --nodeps like the README suggests.
So, anyone know what the magic versions are?
The acrobat distiller will convert postscript files to pdf files. Additionally, you might already have psview (I think it's called that). Adobe ships it as a postscript viewer.
From the GAIM 0.8.0 README file, first line... (the net is a wonderfull thing):
Sounds like the confusion is deliberate to me.
Jason PollockGAIM was started out as an instant messaging client for Linux that allowed access to AIM. In other words, the whole intent of the name is to link it to AIM. Now, it may have changed it's goal to include other IM protocols, but that doesn't change the infringement. GAIM is still linked to AIM. It is also still easy to confuse the two. When I see GAIM, and I know we're talking about IM, I think "GNU AOL Instant Messanger". I see AOL. I am likely to be inclined (if I wasn't reading this) to believe that GAIM was from AOL.
Also, note that the trademark doesn't have to be registered to be enforceable either. Now AIM is a descriptive mark (IMO), so it is really only protected if the pulic associates AIM with AOL. I think that this relation is obvious (AIM=AOL IM).
Clue.com doesn't have that confusion because it operates in an entirely different market. Different market, no confusion.
They are free to attempt to defend themselves against the suit, but I feel it is pretty clear that AOL is correct.
Jason PollockI'm thinking in terms of conservation of energy here. If you have a system in a steady state, you can't have any change in the system without adding energy (natural resources) to it. Now, basically what I am asking is, "Is economic growth attributeable to natural resources". While we are shifting away from them, do we still need to dig stuff out of the ground in order to grow?
Since growth is less than the percentage of GDP due to natural resources, it is still possible. The fact that the percentage of GDP due to resources is dropping could simply mean we are becoming more efficient in their use.
Jason PollockWouldn't that just mean that you can achieve the same amount of growth with a smaller component of the GDP being due to natural resources? In other words, historically we used to waste 50% of the resource in production. Now, we waste say 25%. So, to say have 6% growth in both areas, we would have needed 12% of GDP due to resources historically but only 8% now. Same growth, all due to resources, and allows natural resources to end up being a smaller piece of the pie. Of course, it ends up depending on whether or not you can eventually use resources to produce other resourses (philosopher's stone anyone?).
So, I'm still looking for a good argument. :)
Jason PollockNo they don't, since the value of the growth is the value of the resources. Only when the value of the growth exceeds the value of the resource portion of GDP am I proven incorrect.
But growth has been under 6% for the past 15 years. So, can't all growth be attributed to resources added to the system, minus some friction? There may be shifts in where the money is placed in the system, but it seems a reasonable leap that the amount of wealth is finite, only the addition of resources to the system results in it's growth. I'm probably missing something. In fact, I'm sure of it.