Or at least this is how I hear it works: 1) Print out a sheet of unique barcodes on sticky paper 2) Stick one to each book shelf in your house 3) Use MS Access, Fox Pro, MySQL/PHP, Postgres/Perl, whatever database and scripting languge you choose so that you can go around your house, scan each bar code and input a tag that describes its location 4) When you place each book on a shelf, scan its ISBN barcode and the shelf's location barcode 5) Anytime you want to find a book, just look it up in your database and you'll see what shelf it is on For extra credit write a script that, given a list of books you want to read, will calculate the optimal path through your house to pick them up.
It should be noted that almost all universities LOSE money on each student they accept. Tuition generally doesn't cover the costs of the education and the difference is made up either by funds from an edowment or state grants. Since they're gonna kick this guy out anyways, its in their best interest to do so as quickly as possible so that they can stop wasting their money.
Well, what I hope to do is maintain an environment where we can all surf wherever the hell we want, without censorship, bandwidth shaping, but that we pay for our extravagant usages. I have no other choice for an ISP (I'm on campus), and I don't want my ISP telling me what I can and can't access. Therefore, I'd rather just pay for usage.
I don't know what I fear more, the fact that you say such things in public or the fact that you might actually believe them.
But since you seem unwilling to stake your name to your claims, you are discounted in my impressionable, leftist dominated mind. But that porn site I stumbled across earlier, that is etched in my mind forever...
Very good point, here is a hypothetical example. Some ISP (or local network provider) not wanting to deal with the legal headache of a Big Company suing them (or under some mandate) decides to install software that blocks all 'illicit' web sites. But this blocking software is also made by a Big Company that, say, uses it to block web sites it doesn't like (not like this ever happens). So rather than let someone at the top of a big corportion whose actions have massive personal financial (and other) incenives decide what you can use the internet for. By allowing others to restrict the information you can access (or broadcast) you trusting that they won't use that to thier own advantage.
Now tell me, do you trust Big Company X to do what is best for you? Do you trust that the government is benevolent? The old adage, "Knowledge is power," is likely even more true now. If we don't set up a system guaranteeing our ability to communicate without hinderance or control, we will end up intellectually bound by others. I personally am not willing to quietly allow someone else control what I know, what I can know, and what I can say.
A brief look at history will show that when someone is given power over others without some kind of accountability, it is only a matter of time before they abuse that power. It may be premature, but at this point I am willing to put my foot down now and say, "No, you will not get that power over me."
I have no doubt that GNUtella, FreeNet, and Antioch will be used to carry some of the most disgusting and heinous media known to man, and there is nothing I'd like more than to find the person responsible for such data and break every bone in his body, but I am not willing to sacrifice my own freedoms for that cause.
Look at the way that governments and corporations have raped the populus when given the chance. From the monarchies and churches of the middle ages to the massive industrial giants today, they have all had power over the commoners, and abused it countless times. I believe it is better for a few individuals to abuse their rights rather than have thousands of individuals be abused by their lack of.
You can make the choice for yourself, but I've made mine.
Well, it is cool since everything is distributed, but there are a few problems with it. Both are bandwidth hogs, and if I understand the GNUtella protocol correctly, it is still hogs bandwidth like napster since you have no way of limiting your search to local hosts, it only protects against centralized servers. The ISP community is naturally going to hate both if for no other reason that it will hog the WAN connection.
As a project for my unix systems programming class, my partner and I are developing a system like GNUtella, but a litte more complicated and much more powerful. It is very difficult to block (eventually client/sever firewalling will not be enough) and promotes local sharing over remote sharing. It makes extensive use of local network broadcasts and rather than connecting hosts, it connects networks. The only real problem is that it can't do automatic network discovery (because that will open a can of spoofing worms WAY more than already exists). The specs (as much as I have written) are available on my website.
As a few of you very astute/.'ers might have noticed, I posted this a few times before, I'm hoping that someone slightly more knowledgable than I will come along and offer me some feedback!:)
I've independently and completely orginally been developing protocol similar to GNUtella's. It is far more complicated, but the pay-off is much better. Instead of linking hosts, it links networks. It uses a combination of UDP and TCP, and offers complete anonimity.
While in it's infancy, I hope to get it moving soon. I'm hoping that I some of you can take a look at what I have thus far and hopefully send me some input on how I can better the protocol. It is online at: http://logan.datacurrent.com/dftp.html
I'm his partner in this endeavor, you can check out the basics of the protocol at my web site: http://logan.datacurrent.com/dftp.html. It isn't very clean at the moment, but I hope to finish it this week over break...
Laptops can be much more useful than you think. We, (at Rose) use them in lecture usually only in Math where it is nice to have Maple do the algebra of a large DiffyQ system. We also use them in all our physics labs to collect data using exteral sampling devices. Also, for introductory CS classes (especially CS100 which ALL students must take) the students bring their laptops to a lab session where they can code with the assistance of the professors as well as lab assistants. I can tell you now that if we did have this setup, many of the non-CS people would be absolutely lost in that course.
Some (students) think it is a bad idea to let us use our laptops in class (particularly in Math classes) because we won't learn the concepts. But most of the students here are of sufficient caliber that they understand the necessity of learning the concepts and it isn't much of a problem. And those that don't get burned on the tests because they are usually divided into two parts, one by hand and one with a computer.
Ok, I have to wonder, when are people going to realize the USB sucks? Sure, it is nice for some applications (hey, I don't have to open my box!), but who wants to have a bunch of little doilies hanging off their box and monitor and hub?
It doesn't make sense from a technical standpoint either. PCI 1.x offers around 1Gbit of bandwidth, 100 times more than USB. Granted, most applications don't need that much throughput, but if you put in sound, ethernet, modem, and possible a TV Tuner (I still wonder about this one), you're easily maxing out USB but PCI still has room to spare.
Additionally, (assuming USB is like other bus systems) efficiency goes down as utilization goes up, so you'll never get 10Mbit with that many devices on the bus anyways.
What is really necessary is two busses. We could use a low speed bus for interfacing with input devices (ie keyboard and mouse) like on those old IBM PS/2s. And then we'd make a high speed bus that the CPU can easily interface with, and since we don't want all of our devices hanging outside the computer, we could put it on the motherboard. Since this highspeed bus would connect all of our peripherals, we could call it Peripheral Component Interconnect. Oh wait.
It is difficult to say whether or not it really is good for the giants of the computer industry combining to form titans. The computer industry right now is screaming Standard Oil, Carnegie Steel, and Pulman Rail. When those conglomerates formed, they didn't work for the good of the industry, but rather increased their profits since they had a monopoly. Granted, some say (not me) the M$ doesn't have a monopoly, and that AOL doesn't either, but they technically don't have to.
Once things settle, they'll all have their own territory. MS and Sun will still make servers and Motorola and Intel will still make processors, but Windows NT could, say, own the small business market while Sun controlls the high-end server/workstation market. Likewise, all PCs might have Intel CPUs while all cars have PowerPCs. So they technically compete, but are stil able to gouge the consumer.
I prefer to see many (ie 5) companies working in the same industry. If Intel, AMD, Cyrix, WinChip, and (maybe) Transmeta were all making compatible chips with each adding features here and there, I think we'd see a much more consumer friendly market.
Non-loosy audio compression?!? I believe that is an oxymoron. I've used l3enc, Fraunhoffer windows CODEC, and Blade. I prefer blade for it's speed, and high bitrate that I can't get out of the other two. As for quality, I can't tell a difference between a CD and a 160kbps MP3 from Blade on my Aureal Vortex with a $30 set of head phones. Only on live recordings would I be worried...
Yo guys! Let's just keep it straight. There is Seattle, a kewl coffee goin' hip place to live (and, the skies really do like like those from Austin Powers;), and Redmond, an over priced yuppie-ville. Microsoft exists in Redmond (or the greater Eastside) where the housing market is equivalent to San Francisco (but everyone still has large houses) and everyone in the family drives their brand new BMW or Mercades. Seattle, is the happening city of all incomes and walks of life, lots of music and art, and general happy smiley culture.
Oh yea, and I'm not gonna generalize here at all, but the two are different.:)
Whether the stuff reporters put out is !@#$ or not, we must read it and check it, becuase if we start ignoring all anti-Linux/Unix/OSS/FSF/etc, we'll miss an article where they bring up an important issue worth addressing.
Slashdot Mirror
Or at least this is how I hear it works:
1) Print out a sheet of unique barcodes on sticky paper
2) Stick one to each book shelf in your house
3) Use MS Access, Fox Pro, MySQL/PHP, Postgres/Perl, whatever database and scripting languge you choose so that you can go around your house, scan each bar code and input a tag that describes its location
4) When you place each book on a shelf, scan its ISBN barcode and the shelf's location barcode
5) Anytime you want to find a book, just look it up in your database and you'll see what shelf it is on
For extra credit write a script that, given a list of books you want to read, will calculate the optimal path through your house to pick them up.
It should be noted that almost all universities LOSE money on each student they accept. Tuition generally doesn't cover the costs of the education and the difference is made up either by funds from an edowment or state grants. Since they're gonna kick this guy out anyways, its in their best interest to do so as quickly as possible so that they can stop wasting their money.
Well, what I hope to do is maintain an environment where we can all surf wherever the hell we want, without censorship, bandwidth shaping, but that we pay for our extravagant usages. I have no other choice for an ISP (I'm on campus), and I don't want my ISP telling me what I can and can't access. Therefore, I'd rather just pay for usage.
But since you seem unwilling to stake your name to your claims, you are discounted in my impressionable, leftist dominated mind. But that porn site I stumbled across earlier, that is etched in my mind forever...
Now tell me, do you trust Big Company X to do what is best for you? Do you trust that the government is benevolent? The old adage, "Knowledge is power," is likely even more true now. If we don't set up a system guaranteeing our ability to communicate without hinderance or control, we will end up intellectually bound by others. I personally am not willing to quietly allow someone else control what I know, what I can know, and what I can say.
A brief look at history will show that when someone is given power over others without some kind of accountability, it is only a matter of time before they abuse that power. It may be premature, but at this point I am willing to put my foot down now and say, "No, you will not get that power over me."
I have no doubt that GNUtella, FreeNet, and Antioch will be used to carry some of the most disgusting and heinous media known to man, and there is nothing I'd like more than to find the person responsible for such data and break every bone in his body, but I am not willing to sacrifice my own freedoms for that cause.
Look at the way that governments and corporations have raped the populus when given the chance. From the monarchies and churches of the middle ages to the massive industrial giants today, they have all had power over the commoners, and abused it countless times. I believe it is better for a few individuals to abuse their rights rather than have thousands of individuals be abused by their lack of.
You can make the choice for yourself, but I've made mine.
As a project for my unix systems programming class, my partner and I are developing a system like GNUtella, but a litte more complicated and much more powerful. It is very difficult to block (eventually client/sever firewalling will not be enough) and promotes local sharing over remote sharing. It makes extensive use of local network broadcasts and rather than connecting hosts, it connects networks. The only real problem is that it can't do automatic network discovery (because that will open a can of spoofing worms WAY more than already exists). The specs (as much as I have written) are available on my website.
As a few of you very astute /.'ers might have noticed, I posted this a few times before, I'm hoping that someone slightly more knowledgable than I will come along and offer me some feedback! :)
While in it's infancy, I hope to get it moving soon. I'm hoping that I some of you can take a look at what I have thus far and hopefully send me some input on how I can better the protocol. It is online at: http://logan.datacurrent.com/dftp.html
I'm his partner in this endeavor, you can check out the basics of the protocol at my web site: http://logan.datacurrent.com/dftp.html. It isn't very clean at the moment, but I hope to finish it this week over break...
Laptops can be much more useful than you think. We, (at Rose) use them in lecture usually only in Math where it is nice to have Maple do the algebra of a large DiffyQ system. We also use them in all our physics labs to collect data using exteral sampling devices. Also, for introductory CS classes (especially CS100 which ALL students must take) the students bring their laptops to a lab session where they can code with the assistance of the professors as well as lab assistants. I can tell you now that if we did have this setup, many of the non-CS people would be absolutely lost in that course.
Some (students) think it is a bad idea to let us use our laptops in class (particularly in Math classes) because we won't learn the concepts. But most of the students here are of sufficient caliber that they understand the necessity of learning the concepts and it isn't much of a problem. And those that don't get burned on the tests because they are usually divided into two parts, one by hand and one with a computer.
Ok, I have to wonder, when are people going to realize the USB sucks? Sure, it is nice for some applications (hey, I don't have to open my box!), but who wants to have a bunch of little doilies hanging off their box and monitor and hub?
It doesn't make sense from a technical standpoint either. PCI 1.x offers around 1Gbit of bandwidth, 100 times more than USB. Granted, most applications don't need that much throughput, but if you put in sound, ethernet, modem, and possible a TV Tuner (I still wonder about this one), you're easily maxing out USB but PCI still has room to spare.
Additionally, (assuming USB is like other bus systems) efficiency goes down as utilization goes up, so you'll never get 10Mbit with that many devices on the bus anyways.
What is really necessary is two busses. We could use a low speed bus for interfacing with input devices (ie keyboard and mouse) like on those old IBM PS/2s. And then we'd make a high speed bus that the CPU can easily interface with, and since we don't want all of our devices hanging outside the computer, we could put it on the motherboard. Since this highspeed bus would connect all of our peripherals, we could call it Peripheral Component Interconnect. Oh wait.
It is difficult to say whether or not it really is good for the giants of the computer industry combining to form titans. The computer industry right now is screaming Standard Oil, Carnegie Steel, and Pulman Rail. When those conglomerates formed, they didn't work for the good of the industry, but rather increased their profits since they had a monopoly. Granted, some say (not me) the M$ doesn't have a monopoly, and that AOL doesn't either, but they technically don't have to.
Once things settle, they'll all have their own territory. MS and Sun will still make servers and Motorola and Intel will still make processors, but Windows NT could, say, own the small business market while Sun controlls the high-end server/workstation market. Likewise, all PCs might have Intel CPUs while all cars have PowerPCs. So they technically compete, but are stil able to gouge the consumer.
I prefer to see many (ie 5) companies working in the same industry. If Intel, AMD, Cyrix, WinChip, and (maybe) Transmeta were all making compatible chips with each adding features here and there, I think we'd see a much more consumer friendly market.
Non-loosy audio compression?!? I believe that is an oxymoron. I've used l3enc, Fraunhoffer windows CODEC, and Blade. I prefer blade for it's speed, and high bitrate that I can't get out of the other two. As for quality, I can't tell a difference between a CD and a 160kbps MP3 from Blade on my Aureal Vortex with a $30 set of head phones. Only on live recordings would I be worried...
Yo guys! Let's just keep it straight. There is Seattle, a kewl coffee goin' hip place to live (and, the skies really do like like those from Austin Powers ;), and Redmond, an over priced yuppie-ville. Microsoft exists in Redmond (or the greater Eastside) where the housing market is equivalent to San Francisco (but everyone still has large houses) and everyone in the family drives their brand new BMW or Mercades. Seattle, is the happening city of all incomes and walks of life, lots of music and art, and general happy smiley culture.
:)
Oh yea, and I'm not gonna generalize here at all, but the two are different.
Keepin' it real,
Lego
Whether the stuff reporters put out is !@#$ or not, we must read it and check it, becuase if we start ignoring all anti-Linux/Unix/OSS/FSF/etc, we'll miss an article where they bring up an important issue worth addressing.