In addition to the things I've seen other people write, there are two more important benefits of printed manuals over electronic:
1) The "Oh Shit!" factor. When things go really bad with the machine, it's important to have a source for information on how to recover that does not rely on using the machine that you are Oh Shitting about.
This doesn't even need to be a big Oh Shit. It could be something as simple as a modal dialog box you've never seen before that you don't understand the results of. Or it could be knowing that the program doesn't have too deep of an undo buffer, so you don't want to waste valuble undo slots scanning docs online, etc.
Printing out the relevant docs ahead of time might not work, because you might not -know- what docs are relevant.
2) Annotations. I've seen some manuals where the user has carefully noted in the manual details specific to their installation, or corrections or clarifications of the material in the manual, or loaded with bookmarks to help them find things, etc. This can't be done with some types of online docs (CD-ROM is notorious for being write-resistant), and is hard or confusing to do for others (I know there are ways to annotate web documents, but it isn't foolproof).
Bad indexing and organisation is a problem with both printed and on-line manuals. Online manuals typically allow you to include a lot more information, but indexing and cataloging issues may make it hard to find anything in the mess.
Only 30 people are admitted each year--and each of them must hae SAT scores over 1400, and recommandations from their bachelor college. I bet that the people who get into this ArsDigita University could just as well get a full scolarship on one of the other great computer science universities(MIT, CMU, CIT, etc).
Not necessarily. While I love the idea of ArsDigita University, and while I will be looking at their materials once posted, I wouldn't consider going there. Why? I already have an undergraduate education in CS. It's what my BS is in already.
On the otherhand, I know someone who is making -very- good money as a programmer, yet told me when he started at his current job that he could see large differences in the way he and his co-workers programmed. His degree wasn't in CS, theirs was. His code was good, theirs was better, because the theory and techniques they learned that he didn't payed off. He learned a lot from reading their code.
The ArsDigita program would be perfect for him, if he wanted to take a year off to do it. It would give him the undergraduate theoretical underpinning that he currently lacks. He can't get into a MIT/CMU/Stanford-class undergraduate program because he already has a bachelors. And a masters program at this point would also be difficult to manage -- because of the lack of the theory learned as an undergrad. That's the type of people that ArsDigita is targetting.
Since this information could be gotten by simply reading the ArsDigita website, please don't moderate me up for being "informative" or "insightful". I'm not a karma-junkie.
Wired isn't a technical magazine, so it didn't go into a tremendous amount of detail about the tech involved. But I'm curious as to how it works.
The article mentioned that the guy featured has a few patents on the basic technology, including the magnetic cell itself and the archtechture of the MRAM memory system as a whole.
Anyone got the patent numbers? I'd love to read them.
I am not a lawyer either, but I do know enough about US copyright law to know that copyright rights are based on controlling distribution, not use. That means...
>1) The copyright holder is allowed to specify >where you can view their copyrighted material.
This is not true. When you buy a book, the law holds that you own the book, and therefore can do anything with the book itself. Copyright only comes into play when you try to distribute copies of the copyrighted contents of the book.
The same is true of recording, plays, film, etc.
Libraries rely on this to allow them to lend books to anyone -- since no one is making a copy, no copyright violation is occurring.
Distribution, BTW, includes public performance. So renting a tape from the library is OK. Projecting the tape onto a wall for your local block party is not.
# 2) The copyright holder is not obligated by # law to allow you to make backup copies of # thier copyrighted material.
This is not the case. The copyright holder has no right to -prevent- you from making backup copies of their copyrighted material that you own. They can prevent you from giving your backups to others, but not from making the backups in the first place.
Many audiophiles in the days of vinyl records would copy their most precious records from vinyl to tape, so that the original would not get damaged from repeated play. This was considered "Personal use". The courts have upheld the right of individuals to make "mix tapes" for their own personal use. The courts have similarly upheld the right of individuals to tape shows off of broadcast TV signals for viewing at thier convenience. All of this is personal use.
And finally...
# 3) You do not have the right to change # someone elses copyrighted material without # their permission.
You actually do have that right. There is no prohibition against -making- what are known as "derivative works", just a prohibition against -distributing- derivative works without permission. Doing what you want with the work you own without distributing it is known as "personal use", and is very much recognised in copyright legislation and case law.
The RIAA and MPAA are both scared of digital media because they see it as allowing easy copying. Unfortunately, their technological remedies are too broad, infringing on the right of "personal use" on my part to try to defend their right of distribution control. And they can get away with it in part because people don't know what their rights are. Your enumeration of the rights you "don't" have plays right into the interests of the RIAA and MPAA. By believing that they have the right to restrict what their technological methods actually restrict, you allow them to restrict your own rights.
Worse, their technological methods don't even protect their rights. As an example, MacroVision prevents me from making an "Indiana Jones Trilogy" VHS tape from my DVD copies of those three films. That violates my rights to personal use. It does not, however, prevent me from popping those three DVDs into my DVD player and showing the movies at a local SF convention (a violation of their "public performance" rights).
The Librarian of Congress is currently accepting comments on which classes of "works" should be excempt from DMCA protection. This will either work in favor or against the RIAA and MPAA, because the only two anwers are "all works" or "no works", because "works" is the -wrong- -domain- of protection. Various "rights" are protected, not "works". I'm interested in seeing what the Librarian says.
>>2. Watts are already a measure of energy (or >>work) per unit time.
>Go read your electric bill. They charge you by >Kwh. That's Kilo-watt-hours. For the rest of #2, >I agree. I was feeling generally pessemistic >yesterday.:-)
You are right, I do pay for electricity by the KWh, which is a measure of energy (3.6 MJ to be exact). But Watts are a measure of power, or energy per unit time. "Watts per hour" would measure the rate of increased energy usage over time (Joules/sec/sec, sort of like accelleration being meters/sec/sec).
BTW, the solar energy flux at Earth orbit is about 1360W/m^2.
There have been a lot of good books mentioned. But you said "books and movies", and no one has mentioned movies yet.
Movies are hard. Hollywood has not had a lot of luck translating SF themes into film. Films tend to rely on F/X rather than good story when trying to do SF.
But here's my off-the-cuff list of reasonable SF movies, in no particular order:
SF-stories: 2001: A Space Odyssey Destination Moon Brazil Alien Twelve Monkeys The Truman Show The Terminator
SF-Setting, but not so much SF stories: Aliens Star Wars: A New Hope The Empire Strikes Back Return of the Jedi The Phantom Menace Forbidden Planet Terminator II
Fantasy: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen The Dark Crystal Labyrinth The Last Unicorn
One major difference between the typical EULA and the "I am not a lawyer" disclaimer is that the EULA seeks to remove rights you have always had, and the IANAL seeks to remind you that you never had the rights to begin with.
Another major difference is that the IANAL disclaimer is made by someone who, by law, cannot dispense legal advice -- and is stressing that fact. A software company, on the otherhand, openly advertises it's services and products, and makes boldprint claims of what they do -- that the EULA tries to take away.
If you were to take your Porche to the local Ford mechanic for repairs, and they said "We don't know Porche's all that well, our expertise is in Fords. I'd recommend going to the Porche dealership instead.", but agreed to try when you insisted, I don't think you'd have any recourse if they broke your car.
But if the Porche dealership broke your car, then pointed to the fine print on the back of their invoice disclaiming all responsibility and all warrantees... A good lawyer would have a field-day with that.
Terry Pratchett is a perennial best-seller in the United Kingdom and spends much of his time travelling the world doing book signings and other engagements. He has had at least two of his books adapted for the small screen (in animated form), and several of his books adapted for the stage. He has been awarded an OBE (Order of the British Empire) because of his writing. He already is a success.
Neil Gaiman isn't as successful as Pratchett, but he is well-known and well-regarded in his field. He is best known for the graphic literature he has written (Sandman, etc), but has also written many novels and shortstories which have met with critical acclaim. Unlike Pratchett, Neil has had experience with Hollywood, having been involved with 4 movies or TV series since 1996, including an adaptation of his novel NeverWhere to the small screen. Most recently, he wrote the English screenplay for the Japanese animated film Princess Mononoke. I would also say he is a success.
Both Gaiman and Pratchett have refused to bring their work to the big screen in the past when they thought that it wasn't going to be done right (and they have been asked) -- including a previous attempt to do Good Omens.
Terry Gilliam is probably one of the few directors around these days that has as keen a grasp on both British and American humor. As the only American member of Monty Python, he immersed himself in British comedy and comedic writing for several years. His movie "The Fisher King" was nominated for 5 academy awards (winning Best Supporting Actress) and 5 golden globes (winning two). He is a perfectionist, well-known for fighting with the studios to maintain artistic control over his work.
I think Gilliam was one of the better choises for "Good Omens". He can understand the book, and he can get what he wants onto film. His vision seems to me to more closely match that of Gaiman and Pratchett than most other directors. I think it will work.
As far as trying to cram Good Omens onto the big screen -- remember that it is (loosely) based on a movie already (The Omen).
They were discussing this new bus architechture as an alternative to PCI, Sbus, MCA, etc. I get the impression that they were discussing something -different- to firewire/usb or the memory bus.
The architechture they described for a SMP system looked something like this:
(See Figure 3 from the article. I tried to do it as ASCII art, but preview says "that doesn't work")
The difference between this and the current layout for a PCI system is that the memory/channel controller is replaced by the PCI controller, and the switch is replaced by the PCI bus.
Personally, I see USB as a controller hanging off the switch, converting between the (high speed) I/O bus serial protocol and the (lower speed) USB protocol. The same would be true with most existing protocols: IDE, SCSI, Firewire, etc, if for no other reason than to take advantage of existing storage media.
Slink, then potato (no e), then woody (not released yet).
Of course, if you said "Debian 2.1, Debian 2.2, or Debian 2.3", you would have been referring to the same releases.
There are reasons why Debian uses a code-name based -internal- versioning system instead of numbers. But Debian doesn't expect people to memorise the code names. They give numeric versions to the releases when they make them.
The same thing is true of MacOS's code names, or Red Hat's.
Yeah, XEmacs is in the 21.x series... but it didn't -start- at 1 (it split off from GNU Emacs, and retained the version number of the split when released).
I also think they might have skipped a number somewhere to re-sync with GNU Emacs when they regained a certain degree of compatability and interoperability.
Novice (5wpm, test 2, very few HF priviledges) Technician (5WPM, tests 2&3A, Novice+VHF) General (13WPM, tests 2,3A/B, VHF+HF) Advanced (13WPM, tests 2,3A/B&4A, VHF+more HF) Amateur Extra (20WPM, tests 2,3A/B,&4A/B, all privs)
(Test 1, not mentioned, is the Morse Code portion, divided up into 1A (5wpm), 1B (13wpm) and 1C (20WPM))
The reason for the odd numbering of the tests is that technician was originally "General with a lower code requirement" and Advanced was "Extra with a lower code requirement". So the original element 3 was split, as well as the origional element 4.
Then the FCC decided to change the regulations, allowing Techs to get their licence w/o the Morse code test -- but without HF priviledges. After some settlement, we ended up with Tech split into "Technician" (no morse code, no HF privs) and "Technician Plus" (5wpm, Novice HF privs).
Since then, the number of people enterring ham radio through Technician class has skyrocketed, and the number of people enterring through Novice has plummetted.
One major problem with this system: Techs, because of history, were required to learn the rules associated with HF operation on the Novice bands, but did not have access to the Novice bands!
The new rules eliminate Tech Plus entirely (with the rule that -any- Tech who can prove they have passed a 5wpm code test get old-style Novice HF priviledges), and closed Novice and Advanced to new hams. Existing Novice and Advanced class hams can continue to renew as Novice or Advanced with no loss of priviledges. It also (as many people have already noted) eliminated the 13 adn 20wpm code tests.
This simplifies things -immensely-. Instead of having to deal with elements 1A, 1B, 1C, 2, 3A, 3B, 4A and 4B, the FCC and the amateurs that give the exams only have to deal with elements 1 (5WPM), 2(Tech Written), 3(General Written) and 4(Extra Written).
Tech now requires element 2, General requires 1,2,3, and Extra requires all four. Techs have all VHF priviledges, General has most of the HF privileges as well, and Extra has all ham privileges.
In addition, it is now streamlined in that Volunteer Examiners can prepare exams for any license class below their own (Extras can also prepare Extra exams).
The goal was streamlining and simplification. It succeeded in this goal.
Whilst the Report and Order was released yesterday, it doesn't go into effect until April 15th.
So, is this "day that many consider to be apocalyptic and/or provoking major crisis" supposed to be Y2K, or Tax Day?
(Note to non-US Slashdotters: In the US, April 15th is the deadline for filing US Federal Income Tax Returns -- as well as paying any unpayed income taxes.)
To me, the issue isn't that MS is the bad guy and OSS is the good guy, but rather the response to safety and security "issues".
I think that due diligence for software faults lies in a) acknowledging problems when they occur, b) fixing them rapidly, or if not possible, at least suggesting a workaround, and c) releasing the fixes or workarounds to the customer as quickly and publically as possible.
Open Source Software has a tendancy to do all of these reasonably well. More and more, OSS projects are having publically accessible bug tracking databases, reasonably fast turnaround for security bugs, and a fast enough release cycle (esp. for patches) to fix most security bugs rapidly.
With things like BUGTRAQ, CERT, and other mailinglists and security-advisory sources, most Unix-based systems (Linux, *BSD, Solaris, HP-UX, etc) are fairly good at reacting quickly to a known problem -- the RTM Worm woke them up to the foibles of ignoring security issues -- and they do do a decent job of alerting their customers.
Microsoft isn't entirely negligent -- a quick scan of BUGTRAQ showed a lot of MS-related security bugs, and many of them had MS patches. I think where MS fails is making those patches known to the public.
Another possible pitfall for liability is negligent design -- designing something that should be obvious is a problem. From a "real world" security standpoint, this would be like putting a dimestore lock on a bank vault.
This is where I think that fundamental differences between OSS and MS come to the foreground. A very large percentage of OSS software is designed to run on Unix-like systems, where underlying OS security issues have been considered, studied, and beaten on for nearly 30 years. It's very hard to accidentally code a general system exploit for a program designed to be run as a user. And if an exploit is discovered on purpose, it's a bug in the OS, and is treated as such. Among other things, this creates -some- inherent resistance to viruses. Unix security is generally good, but not perfect. Unix has a reasonably high-quality lock on the bank vault.
On the otherhand, MS Win95/98 isn't really designed with security in mind. At a fundamental level, the OS is open to any meddling that any program wants to do. On top of that, MS has added "features" that become reasonably trivial to exploit to creat security issues -- MS Word macros, ActiveX controls, etc.
For years, security experts have been telling people that the "Good Times" virus is a hoax -- that you can't get a virus from just reading an email, you have to run a program to do it. MS managed through their "features" and "enhancements" to make "Good Times" possible.
It's like MS, not content with putting a dimestore lock on the bank-vault, decided to put a plate-glass window on the vault so people could see their money from the sidewalk!
I don't think I have a double standard with regard to negligence, but I think that, in general, OSS software tends to meet my standards more than MS does.
Except that's not how moves are counted in chess. A "move" in chess counts both white and black, so a mate in the fifth move could end with either white or black moving:
1. White Black 2. White Black 3. White Black 4. White Black 5. White
or
1. White Black 2. White Black 3. White Black 4. White Black 5. White Black
Over 600 comments, and no one seems to have remembered this one...
Picture this: Edison was a world famous inventor. But his style of inventing was very organised: Get an idea for a -profitable- invention, something with obvious market potential, then keep trying things until he found something that worked. His famous claim about "1% inspiration and 99% persperation" was right on the money as far as he was concerned. It was known that he had spend years searching for the right filiment for his lightbulb.
But profit was his driving force. He never invented -anything- unless he knew before he started how to make money from it. Except once...
Edison was sitting in his lab, working on improvements to a stock ticker repeater, when he noticed that a stylus on the repeater was making recognisable sounds as the repeating disc spun around.
So he picked up some paper, sketched a simple mechanism, and gave it to his chief machinist to build. Then continued work on the repeater.
The machine comes back, Edison adds a sheet of tinfoil, turns a crank, and shouts into it. On the second sheet of tinfoil (the first ripped before it could be played back), he had recorded the first recording of a human voice.
The phonograph qualifies as a great hack, IMHO, because:
1. It is simple. 2. It has had a great impact, well remembered after the incident. 3. It was the result of clever, innovative thinking, on the spur of the moment, rather than a long planned research project. 4. It was done for the pleasure of doing it, rather than for a profit motive.
3 and 4 are especially significant because it was done by someone who was known for exactly the opposite.
>Again...I wonder why you people support something >that you are going to have to pay for. Isn't/.'s >mantra "if itisn't free it must suck"???
If it is, and you read slashdot enough to reply to a message, it must be -your- motto too!
Of course, I don't think it is, and it definately isn't mine...
I've seen commercial software that doesn't suck, and I've seen commercial software that sucks. Likewise, I've seen free software that doesn't suck, and free software that does suck. I feel that Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crap) holds in both free and commercial software.
Given a choice, I prefer free to commercial, and non-suck to suck. Given a choice between free that sucks and non-free that doesn't suck, I'll take the non-free.
With q3, I don't know of any comparable free program, so I don't have a free choice. And from what I've heard, q3 doesn't suck.
Before I spend the time and diskspace to download this sucker (50MB is a lot, esp since the license terms don't allow me to grab it at work and bring it home on a ZIP disk)...
What video hardware does it support? I got burned in an earlier Q3 test because of an unsupported video card. To be fair, at the time, they were supporting -one- video card.
Or more generally -- I wasn't able to find any hardware requirements listed on the Q3Test pages. Anyone know what they are?
I don't think he needs to look up the difference between "rights" and "priviledges"... I think the point he is making is different.
The point is that he does -not- hold as self-evident that all men are endowed by their creator with certain rights. That instead, those so-called "rights" are societal conventions, not inherent.
Jefferson lifted the concepts for those rights from Locke, using "pursuit of happiness" as a code-word for property rights (at least, according to some of the libertarian literature I've read). Arguably, they are descended from an English legal tradition as well ("A man's home is his castle" has a long tradition).
But governments and society have been alienating man from those rights for a -very- long time. Even while those words were written, Japan had a reasonably stable societal system set up where there were severe restrictions on property ownership, travel, speech, etc, with harsh penalties for violations. The society did not value individual life, liberty, and property in the same way as England, so those "rights" did not exist.
Another way of showing that they aren't unalienable is to look at an ocean undertow: does it care that you have an unalienable right to life as it sucks you out to sea?
Crudely put: functional programming is based on the idea that any computation can be represented as a function, according to the standard definition of a "general recursive function" from algebra.
Mathematically, a function takes an input and maps it to an output -- given the same input, it will always give the same output. There is no hidden state: the black box always works the same way. Things like random number generators (which produce a different result each time called) aren't true functions.
Functional programming takes that idea and uses it to program. Usually, there is no "state" at all, enforced by the lack of assignment. Variable binding usually takes place through "let" constructs (as in "let x=... in (expression)") or through function calls.
Since iteration tends to be though of as inherently stateful, functional programming tends to lack it -- everything is done using recursion.
So if you use C without using assignment or loops, you can write C in a functional style. An example might be:
int strcmp(char *a, char *b) /* returns 0 if string a is lexigraphically greater * than b */ { if ((*a == 0) && (*b == 0)) return 0; else return *a - *b || strcmp(a+1,b+1); }
Since this is unnatural for C, functional programming languages have been written to support the programming paradigm. Examples include ML, Haskel, and Lisp. Purists can argue about how functional they are, but compared to C, they are.
Functional programming languages tend to be rich in the ability to arbitrarily construct complex types as needed, and treat functions as first-class objects (you can create them on the fly, pass them as arguments, put them in lists, tuples, records, or other structured types).
This freedom to use functions leads to some very different programming techniques. For instance, one common construct is called a "curry" (after the mathematician who described it), which converts a function of N variables into a function of N-1 variables. For instance, if f(x,y) is a function, and g=curry(f,Y), then g(x)=g(x,Y)). One way of thinking of this is that if you think of f as a two-dimensional array, then curry(f,Y) is a one-dimensional slice of the array.
These examples of currying are simple, but it can be a powerful technique.
"Laws" and "Bills" are NOT the same thing!
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Can't the Slashdot posters get the difference between laws and bills straight?
Neither of these two bills are laws yet. The anti-paraphernalia one is even described as just a "proposed bill" (which is incorrect, it is a bill). Calling one a "law passed by the US Senate (but not yet the House)" is incorrect at best, and inherently contradictory at worst! Calling the other a "new law being pushed" when it was merely introduced 16 days ago is also overstating the case.
Prohibiting discussion of drugs?
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It was odd...
I read the Wired article, followed their link to the bill's page at the Library of Congress, tried to find -anything- dealing with the web, checked the portions of the US Code being amended (at law.cornell.edu), and am at a loss.
What are they/you talking about? Banning discussion of drugs? Where does it say that?
As near as I could tell, only two sections of the bill relate directly to the web (and one that indirectly relates):
1. In section 5 (Advertisements for drug paraphernalia and schedule I controlled substances), there is a rather broad definition of "directly or indirectly advertise for sale", including "to post, publicize, transmit, publish, link to, broadcast, or otherwise advertise any matter (including a telephone number or electronic or mail address) knowing that such matter has the purpose of seeking or offering, or is designed to be used, to receive, buy, distribute, or otherwise facilitate a transation in."
The syntax is horrible ("in."? in what?), but it seems that the two words "link to" is what is upsetting the cyberpundits out there.
It also seems rather narrowly tailored. Under this bill, I couldn't link to someone who was actually selling drug paraphernalia or drugs, but that is about all that is limited.
There is a head shop in Buffalo, NY, which has been openly selling bongs and other drug paraphernalia for a while without too much legal problems. I could link to them without violating this law. (In case you were wondering, they have a large sign in the store that says "If you mention illegal drugs, we can't sell to you" which is enforced, and they claim that their materials are for smoking tobacco). If the laws are that easily circumvented...
2. Section 9 (Criminal Prohibition on Distribution of Certain Information Relating to the Manufacture of Controlled Substances) seeks to make it illegal for you to learn how to make illegal drugs if you intend to do so, or if your instructor intends for you to do so (or thinks you are going to). It's only illegal to tell someone how to make an illegal drug if doing so furthers another Federal crime.
So it would be illegal for me to make a page giving instruction on how to best grow pot -- if I intended for you to follow it, or thought that you would. But it wouldn't be illegal for you to link to it.
3. And finally... Section 15 (Antidrug messages on Federal Government Internet Websites). Need I say more?
He has not backed it up. He may have valid points, but he made statements of opinion (that SETI@Home would be more valuable under a BSD/MIT/X style license than GPL, and that under GPL it would be worthless for general use), but he has given no explanation of these opinions.
I don't agree with the idea that it would be worthless under GPL for general use. The major difference between the GPL and BSD licenses is that the BSD license makes it easier to make proprietary derivatives, and to incorporate the code into proprietary applications.
To me, making proprietary derivatives stretches the definition of "general use". It seems a rather specific use. It certainly isn't the intended use (note: making non-proprietary derivatives isn't the intended use either).
Given their stated concerns about hacked clients, they may not find -either- license acceptable, but would want a modified version with something similar to a "change name if modified" clause -- they could specify a particular value that gets configured at compile time and sent to the server that must not contain a particular value by user-compiled/modified clients.
1. ALSA copied the OSS API and added a couple of things to it.
2. ALSA is for experimenters, not people who need commercial support
3. ALSA's use of the GPL will taint every product that uses it.
4. ALSA is spreading FUD about OSS, calling OSS "obsolete".
5. OSS hasn't challenged the claims in 4 publically, because polite people don't dis others hard work.
6. ALSA has managed to come up with a decent MIDI interface, which OSS will take and credit the ALSA team for.
Item 5 confuses me. I mean, except for the MIDI stuff, all the 4Front rep did was dis ALSA. He acted as if the unreleased ALSA as is now in development was a reasonable thing to compare to a released, commercial product -- ALSA doesn't have software mixing, but OSS does (yet software mixing is a major things ALSA will have that OSS/lite lacks); ALSA is for adventurous developers only, without any commercial support (true, but it's a system in development, not released yet), etc.
Slashdot Mirror
In addition to the things I've seen other people write, there are two more important benefits of printed manuals over electronic:
1) The "Oh Shit!" factor. When things go really bad with the machine, it's important to have a source for information on how to recover that does not rely on using the machine that you are Oh Shitting about.
This doesn't even need to be a big Oh Shit. It could be something as simple as a modal dialog box you've never seen before that you don't understand the results of. Or it could be knowing that the program doesn't have too deep of an undo buffer, so you don't want to waste valuble undo slots scanning docs online, etc.
Printing out the relevant docs ahead of time might not work, because you might not -know- what docs are relevant.
2) Annotations. I've seen some manuals where the user has carefully noted in the manual details specific to their installation, or corrections or clarifications of the material in the manual, or loaded with bookmarks to help them find things, etc. This can't be done with some types of online docs (CD-ROM is notorious for being write-resistant), and is hard or confusing to do for others (I know there are ways to annotate web documents, but it isn't foolproof).
Bad indexing and organisation is a problem with both printed and on-line manuals. Online manuals typically allow you to include a lot more information, but indexing and cataloging issues may make it hard to find anything in the mess.
Not necessarily. While I love the idea of ArsDigita University, and while I will be looking at their materials once posted, I wouldn't consider going there. Why? I already have an undergraduate education in CS. It's what my BS is in already.
On the otherhand, I know someone who is making -very- good money as a programmer, yet told me when he started at his current job that he could see large differences in the way he and his co-workers programmed. His degree wasn't in CS, theirs was. His code was good, theirs was better, because the theory and techniques they learned that he didn't payed off. He learned a lot from reading their code.
The ArsDigita program would be perfect for him, if he wanted to take a year off to do it. It would give him the undergraduate theoretical underpinning that he currently lacks. He can't get into a MIT/CMU/Stanford-class undergraduate program because he already has a bachelors. And a masters program at this point would also be difficult to manage -- because of the lack of the theory learned as an undergrad. That's the type of people that ArsDigita is targetting.
Since this information could be gotten by simply reading the ArsDigita website, please don't moderate me up for being "informative" or "insightful". I'm not a karma-junkie.
Wired isn't a technical magazine, so it didn't go into a tremendous amount of detail about the tech involved. But I'm curious as to how it works.
The article mentioned that the guy featured has a few patents on the basic technology, including the magnetic cell itself and the archtechture of the MRAM memory system as a whole.
Anyone got the patent numbers? I'd love to read them.
I am not a lawyer either, but I do know enough about US copyright law to know that copyright rights are based on controlling distribution, not use. That means...
>1) The copyright holder is allowed to specify
>where you can view their copyrighted material.
This is not true. When you buy a book, the law holds that you own the book, and therefore can do anything with the book itself. Copyright only comes into play when you try to distribute copies of the copyrighted contents of the book.
The same is true of recording, plays, film, etc.
Libraries rely on this to allow them to lend books to anyone -- since no one is making a copy, no copyright violation is occurring.
Distribution, BTW, includes public performance. So renting a tape from the library is OK. Projecting the tape onto a wall for your local block party is not.
# 2) The copyright holder is not obligated by
# law to allow you to make backup copies of
# thier copyrighted material.
This is not the case. The copyright holder has no right to -prevent- you from making backup copies of their copyrighted material that you own. They can prevent you from giving your backups to others, but not from making the backups in the first place.
Many audiophiles in the days of vinyl records would copy their most precious records from vinyl to tape, so that the original would not get damaged from repeated play. This was considered "Personal use". The courts have upheld the right of individuals to make "mix tapes" for their own personal use. The courts have similarly upheld the right of individuals to tape shows off of broadcast TV signals for viewing at thier convenience. All of this is personal use.
And finally...
# 3) You do not have the right to change
# someone elses copyrighted material without
# their permission.
You actually do have that right. There is no prohibition against -making- what are known as "derivative works", just a prohibition against -distributing- derivative works without permission. Doing what you want with the work you own without distributing it is known as "personal use", and is very much recognised in copyright legislation and case law.
The RIAA and MPAA are both scared of digital media because they see it as allowing easy copying. Unfortunately, their technological remedies are too broad, infringing on the right of "personal use" on my part to try to defend their right of distribution control. And they can get away with it in part because people don't know what their rights are. Your enumeration of the rights you "don't" have plays right into the interests of the RIAA and MPAA. By believing that they have the right to restrict what their technological methods actually restrict, you allow them to restrict your own rights.
Worse, their technological methods don't even protect their rights. As an example, MacroVision prevents me from making an "Indiana Jones Trilogy" VHS tape from my DVD copies of those three films. That violates my rights to personal use. It does not, however, prevent me from popping those three DVDs into my DVD player and showing the movies at a local SF convention (a violation of their "public performance" rights).
The Librarian of Congress is currently accepting comments on which classes of "works" should be excempt from DMCA protection. This will either work in favor or against the RIAA and MPAA, because the only two anwers are "all works" or "no works", because "works" is the -wrong- -domain- of protection. Various "rights" are protected, not "works". I'm interested in seeing what the Librarian says.
>>2. Watts are already a measure of energy (or
:-)
>>work) per unit time.
>Go read your electric bill. They charge you by
>Kwh. That's Kilo-watt-hours. For the rest of #2,
>I agree. I was feeling generally pessemistic
>yesterday.
You are right, I do pay for electricity by the KWh, which is a measure of energy (3.6 MJ to be exact). But Watts are a measure of power, or energy per unit time. "Watts per hour" would measure the rate of increased energy usage over time (Joules/sec/sec, sort of like accelleration being meters/sec/sec).
BTW, the solar energy flux at Earth orbit is about 1360W/m^2.
There have been a lot of good books mentioned. But you said "books and movies", and no one has mentioned movies yet.
Movies are hard. Hollywood has not had a lot of luck translating SF themes into film. Films tend to rely on F/X rather than good story when trying to do SF.
But here's my off-the-cuff list of reasonable SF movies, in no particular order:
SF-stories:
2001: A Space Odyssey
Destination Moon
Brazil
Alien
Twelve Monkeys
The Truman Show
The Terminator
SF-Setting, but not so much SF stories:
Aliens
Star Wars:
A New Hope
The Empire Strikes Back
Return of the Jedi
The Phantom Menace
Forbidden Planet
Terminator II
Fantasy:
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
The Dark Crystal
Labyrinth
The Last Unicorn
I'm sure others can come up with more.
One major difference between the typical EULA and the "I am not a lawyer" disclaimer is that the EULA seeks to remove rights you have always had, and the IANAL seeks to remind you that you never had the rights to begin with.
Another major difference is that the IANAL disclaimer is made by someone who, by law, cannot dispense legal advice -- and is stressing that fact. A software company, on the otherhand, openly advertises it's services and products, and makes boldprint claims of what they do -- that the EULA tries to take away.
If you were to take your Porche to the local Ford mechanic for repairs, and they said "We don't know Porche's all that well, our expertise is in Fords. I'd recommend going to the Porche dealership instead.", but agreed to try when you insisted, I don't think you'd have any recourse if they broke your car.
But if the Porche dealership broke your car, then pointed to the fine print on the back of their invoice disclaiming all responsibility and all warrantees... A good lawyer would have a field-day with that.
Terry Pratchett is a perennial best-seller in the United Kingdom and spends much of his time travelling the world doing book signings and other engagements. He has had at least two of his books adapted for the small screen (in animated form), and several of his books adapted for the stage. He has been awarded an OBE (Order of the British Empire) because of his writing. He already is a success.
Neil Gaiman isn't as successful as Pratchett, but he is well-known and well-regarded in his field. He is best known for the graphic literature he has written (Sandman, etc), but has also written many novels and shortstories which have met with critical acclaim. Unlike Pratchett, Neil has had experience with Hollywood, having been involved with 4 movies or TV series since 1996, including an adaptation of his novel NeverWhere to the small screen. Most recently, he wrote the English screenplay for the Japanese animated film Princess Mononoke. I would also say he is a success.
Both Gaiman and Pratchett have refused to bring their work to the big screen in the past when they thought that it wasn't going to be done right (and they have been asked) -- including a previous attempt to do Good Omens.
Terry Gilliam is probably one of the few directors around these days that has as keen a grasp on both British and American humor. As the only American member of Monty Python, he immersed himself in British comedy and comedic writing for several years. His movie "The Fisher King" was nominated for 5 academy awards (winning Best Supporting Actress) and 5 golden globes (winning two). He is a perfectionist, well-known for fighting with the studios to maintain artistic control over his work.
I think Gilliam was one of the better choises for "Good Omens". He can understand the book, and he can get what he wants onto film. His vision seems to me to more closely match that of Gaiman and Pratchett than most other directors. I think it will work.
As far as trying to cram Good Omens onto the big screen -- remember that it is (loosely) based on a movie already (The Omen).
I am assuming from your comments that you did not recognise who Niemoller was, nor are you familiar with his famous comment that was paraphrased...
The complaint about inappropriate parallels to Nazi-ism was legitimate, in that there -were- parallels to (anti)Nazi-ism in the original message.
One version of his comments can be found here
But this is really offtopic
They were discussing this new bus architechture as an alternative to PCI, Sbus, MCA, etc. I get the impression that they were discussing something -different- to firewire/usb or the memory bus.
The architechture they described for a SMP system looked something like this:
(See Figure 3 from the article. I tried to do it as ASCII art, but preview says "that doesn't work")
The difference between this and the current layout for a PCI system is that the memory/channel controller is replaced by the PCI controller, and the switch is replaced by the PCI bus.
Personally, I see USB as a controller hanging off the switch, converting between the (high speed) I/O bus serial protocol and the (lower speed) USB protocol. The same would be true with most existing protocols: IDE, SCSI, Firewire, etc, if for no other reason than to take advantage of existing storage media.
Slink, then potato (no e), then woody (not released yet).
Of course, if you said "Debian 2.1, Debian 2.2, or Debian 2.3", you would have been referring to the same releases.
There are reasons why Debian uses a code-name based -internal- versioning system instead of numbers. But Debian doesn't expect people to memorise the code names. They give numeric versions to the releases when they make them.
The same thing is true of MacOS's code names, or Red Hat's.
Yeah, XEmacs is in the 21.x series... but it didn't -start- at 1 (it split off from GNU Emacs, and retained the version number of the split when released).
I also think they might have skipped a number somewhere to re-sync with GNU Emacs when they regained a certain degree of compatability and interoperability.
You don't -quite- have it right...
10 years ago, there were 5 license classes:
Novice (5wpm, test 2, very few HF priviledges)
Technician (5WPM, tests 2&3A, Novice+VHF)
General (13WPM, tests 2,3A/B, VHF+HF)
Advanced (13WPM, tests 2,3A/B&4A, VHF+more HF)
Amateur Extra (20WPM, tests 2,3A/B,&4A/B, all privs)
(Test 1, not mentioned, is the Morse Code portion, divided up into 1A (5wpm), 1B (13wpm) and 1C (20WPM))
The reason for the odd numbering of the tests is that technician was originally "General with a lower code requirement" and Advanced was "Extra with a lower code requirement". So the original element 3 was split, as well as the origional element 4.
Then the FCC decided to change the regulations, allowing Techs to get their licence w/o the Morse code test -- but without HF priviledges. After some settlement, we ended up with Tech split into "Technician" (no morse code, no HF privs) and "Technician Plus" (5wpm, Novice HF privs).
Since then, the number of people enterring ham radio through Technician class has skyrocketed, and the number of people enterring through Novice has plummetted.
One major problem with this system: Techs, because of history, were required to learn the rules associated with HF operation on the Novice bands, but did not have access to the Novice bands!
The new rules eliminate Tech Plus entirely (with the rule that -any- Tech who can prove they have passed a 5wpm code test get old-style Novice HF priviledges), and closed Novice and Advanced to new hams. Existing Novice and Advanced class hams can continue to renew as Novice or Advanced with no loss of priviledges. It also (as many people have already noted) eliminated the 13 adn 20wpm code tests.
This simplifies things -immensely-. Instead of having to deal with elements 1A, 1B, 1C, 2, 3A, 3B, 4A and 4B, the FCC and the amateurs that give the exams only have to deal with elements 1 (5WPM), 2(Tech Written), 3(General Written) and 4(Extra Written).
Tech now requires element 2, General requires 1,2,3, and Extra requires all four. Techs have all VHF priviledges, General has most of the HF privileges as well, and Extra has all ham privileges.
In addition, it is now streamlined in that Volunteer Examiners can prepare exams for any license class below their own (Extras can also prepare Extra exams).
The goal was streamlining and simplification. It succeeded in this goal.
Whilst the Report and Order was released yesterday, it doesn't go into effect until April 15th.
So, is this "day that many consider to be apocalyptic and/or provoking major crisis" supposed to be Y2K, or Tax Day?
(Note to non-US Slashdotters: In the US, April 15th is the deadline for filing US Federal Income Tax Returns -- as well as paying any unpayed income taxes.)
To me, the issue isn't that MS is the bad guy and OSS is the good guy, but rather the response to safety and security "issues".
I think that due diligence for software faults lies in a) acknowledging problems when they occur, b) fixing them rapidly, or if not possible, at least suggesting a workaround, and c) releasing the fixes or workarounds to the customer as quickly and publically as possible.
Open Source Software has a tendancy to do all of these reasonably well. More and more, OSS projects are having publically accessible bug tracking databases, reasonably fast turnaround for security bugs, and a fast enough release cycle (esp. for patches) to fix most security bugs rapidly.
With things like BUGTRAQ, CERT, and other mailinglists and security-advisory sources, most Unix-based systems (Linux, *BSD, Solaris, HP-UX, etc) are fairly good at reacting quickly to a known problem -- the RTM Worm woke them up to the foibles of ignoring security issues -- and they do do a decent job of alerting their customers.
Microsoft isn't entirely negligent -- a quick scan of BUGTRAQ showed a lot of MS-related security bugs, and many of them had MS patches. I think where MS fails is making those patches known to the public.
Another possible pitfall for liability is negligent design -- designing something that should be obvious is a problem. From a "real world" security standpoint, this would be like putting a dimestore lock on a bank vault.
This is where I think that fundamental differences between OSS and MS come to the foreground. A very large percentage of OSS software is designed to run on Unix-like systems, where underlying OS security issues have been considered, studied, and beaten on for nearly 30 years. It's very hard to accidentally code a general system exploit for a program designed to be run as a user. And if an exploit is discovered on purpose, it's a bug in the OS, and is treated as such. Among other things, this creates -some- inherent resistance to viruses. Unix security is generally good, but not perfect. Unix has a reasonably high-quality lock on the bank vault.
On the otherhand, MS Win95/98 isn't really designed with security in mind. At a fundamental level, the OS is open to any meddling that any program wants to do. On top of that, MS has added "features" that become reasonably trivial to exploit to creat security issues -- MS Word macros, ActiveX controls, etc.
For years, security experts have been telling people that the "Good Times" virus is a hoax -- that you can't get a virus from just reading an email, you have to run a program to do it. MS managed through their "features" and "enhancements" to make "Good Times" possible.
It's like MS, not content with putting a dimestore lock on the bank-vault, decided to put a plate-glass window on the vault so people could see their money from the sidewalk!
I don't think I have a double standard with regard to negligence, but I think that, in general, OSS software tends to meet my standards more than MS does.
Except that's not how moves are counted in chess. A "move" in chess counts both white and black, so a mate in the fifth move could end with either white or black moving:
1. White Black 2. White Black 3. White Black 4. White Black 5. White
or
1. White Black 2. White Black 3. White Black 4. White Black 5. White Black
Over 600 comments, and no one seems to have remembered this one...
Picture this: Edison was a world famous inventor. But his style of inventing was very organised: Get an idea for a -profitable- invention, something with obvious market potential, then keep trying things until he found something that worked. His famous claim about "1% inspiration and 99% persperation" was right on the money as far as he was concerned. It was known that he had spend years searching for the right filiment for his lightbulb.
But profit was his driving force. He never invented -anything- unless he knew before he started how to make money from it. Except once...
Edison was sitting in his lab, working on improvements to a stock ticker repeater, when he noticed that a stylus on the repeater was making recognisable sounds as the repeating disc spun around.
So he picked up some paper, sketched a simple mechanism, and gave it to his chief machinist to build. Then continued work on the repeater.
The machine comes back, Edison adds a sheet of tinfoil, turns a crank, and shouts into it. On the second sheet of tinfoil (the first ripped before it could be played back), he had recorded the first recording of a human voice.
The phonograph qualifies as a great hack, IMHO, because:
1. It is simple.
2. It has had a great impact, well remembered after the incident.
3. It was the result of clever, innovative thinking, on the spur of the moment, rather than a long planned research project.
4. It was done for the pleasure of doing it, rather than for a profit motive.
3 and 4 are especially significant because it was done by someone who was known for exactly the opposite.
Just myt thoughts.
>Again...I wonder why you people support something >that you are going to have to pay for. Isn't /.'s >mantra "if itisn't free it must suck"???
If it is, and you read slashdot enough to reply to a message, it must be -your- motto too!
Of course, I don't think it is, and it definately isn't mine...
I've seen commercial software that doesn't suck, and I've seen commercial software that sucks. Likewise, I've seen free software that doesn't suck, and free software that does suck. I feel that Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crap) holds in both free and commercial software.
Given a choice, I prefer free to commercial, and non-suck to suck. Given a choice between free that sucks and non-free that doesn't suck, I'll take the non-free.
With q3, I don't know of any comparable free program, so I don't have a free choice. And from what I've heard, q3 doesn't suck.
> a little consistencey please people!!
Before I spend the time and diskspace to download this sucker (50MB is a lot, esp since the license terms don't allow me to grab it at work and bring it home on a ZIP disk)...
What video hardware does it support? I got burned in an earlier Q3 test because of an unsupported video card. To be fair, at the time, they were supporting -one- video card.
Or more generally -- I wasn't able to find any hardware requirements listed on the Q3Test pages. Anyone know what they are?
I don't think he needs to look up the difference between "rights" and "priviledges"... I think the point he is making is different.
The point is that he does -not- hold as self-evident that all men are endowed by their creator with certain rights. That instead, those so-called "rights" are societal conventions, not inherent.
Jefferson lifted the concepts for those rights from Locke, using "pursuit of happiness" as a code-word for property rights (at least, according to some of the libertarian literature I've read). Arguably, they are descended from an English legal tradition as well ("A man's home is his castle" has a long tradition).
But governments and society have been alienating man from those rights for a -very- long time. Even while those words were written, Japan had a reasonably stable societal system set up where there were severe restrictions on property ownership, travel, speech, etc, with harsh penalties for violations. The society did not value individual life, liberty, and property in the same way as England, so those "rights" did not exist.
Another way of showing that they aren't unalienable is to look at an ocean undertow: does it care that you have an unalienable right to life as it sucks you out to sea?
Crudely put: functional programming is based on the idea that any computation can be represented as a function, according to the standard definition of a "general recursive function" from algebra.
Mathematically, a function takes an input and maps it to an output -- given the same input, it will always give the same output. There is no hidden state: the black box always works the same way. Things like random number generators (which produce a different result each time called) aren't true functions.
Functional programming takes that idea and uses it to program. Usually, there is no "state" at all, enforced by the lack of assignment. Variable binding usually takes place through "let" constructs (as in "let x=... in (expression)") or through function calls.
Since iteration tends to be though of as inherently stateful, functional programming tends to lack it -- everything is done using recursion.
So if you use C without using assignment or loops, you can write C in a functional style. An example might be:
int strcmp(char *a, char *b)
/* returns 0 if string a is lexigraphically greater
* than b
*/
{
if ((*a == 0) && (*b == 0)) return 0;
else return *a - *b || strcmp(a+1,b+1);
}
Since this is unnatural for C, functional programming languages have been written to support the programming paradigm. Examples include ML, Haskel, and Lisp. Purists can argue about how functional they are, but compared to C, they are.
Functional programming languages tend to be rich in the ability to arbitrarily construct complex types as needed, and treat functions as first-class objects (you can create them on the fly, pass them as arguments, put them in lists, tuples, records, or other structured types).
This freedom to use functions leads to some very different programming techniques. For instance, one common construct is called a "curry" (after the mathematician who described it), which converts a function of N variables into a function of N-1 variables. For instance, if f(x,y) is a function, and g=curry(f,Y), then g(x)=g(x,Y)). One way of thinking of this is that if you think of f as a two-dimensional array, then curry(f,Y) is a one-dimensional slice of the array.
Or, you could do something like this:
(define (addXto x) (curry add x)) ==> addXto
(define g (addXto 5)) ==> g
(g 4) ==> 9
(g 45) ==> 50
These examples of currying are simple, but it can be a powerful technique.
Can't the Slashdot posters get the difference between laws and bills straight?
Neither of these two bills are laws yet. The anti-paraphernalia one is even described as just a "proposed bill" (which is incorrect, it is a bill). Calling one a "law passed by the US Senate (but not yet the House)" is incorrect at best, and inherently contradictory at worst! Calling the other a "new law being pushed" when it was merely introduced 16 days ago is also overstating the case.
It was odd...
I read the Wired article, followed their link to the bill's page at the Library of Congress, tried to find -anything- dealing with the web, checked the portions of the US Code being amended (at law.cornell.edu), and am at a loss.
What are they/you talking about? Banning discussion of drugs? Where does it say that?
As near as I could tell, only two sections of the bill relate directly to the web (and one that indirectly relates):
1. In section 5 (Advertisements for drug paraphernalia and schedule I controlled substances), there is a rather broad definition of "directly or indirectly advertise for sale", including "to post, publicize, transmit, publish, link to, broadcast, or otherwise advertise any matter (including a telephone number or electronic or mail address) knowing that such matter has the purpose of seeking or offering, or is designed to be used, to receive, buy, distribute, or otherwise facilitate a transation in."
The syntax is horrible ("in."? in what?), but it seems that the two words "link to" is what is upsetting the cyberpundits out there.
It also seems rather narrowly tailored. Under this bill, I couldn't link to someone who was actually selling drug paraphernalia or drugs, but that is about all that is limited.
There is a head shop in Buffalo, NY, which has been openly selling bongs and other drug paraphernalia for a while without too much legal problems. I could link to them without violating this law. (In case you were wondering, they have a large sign in the store that says "If you mention illegal drugs, we can't sell to you" which is enforced, and they claim that their materials are for smoking tobacco). If the laws are that easily circumvented...
2. Section 9 (Criminal Prohibition on Distribution of Certain Information Relating to the Manufacture of Controlled Substances) seeks to make it illegal for you to learn how to make illegal drugs if you intend to do so, or if your instructor intends for you to do so (or thinks you are going to). It's only illegal to tell someone how to make an illegal drug if doing so furthers another Federal crime.
So it would be illegal for me to make a page giving instruction on how to best grow pot -- if I intended for you to follow it, or thought that you would. But it wouldn't be illegal for you to link to it.
3. And finally... Section 15 (Antidrug messages on Federal Government Internet Websites). Need I say more?
So, what did I miss? Why is this such a big deal?
He has not backed it up. He may have valid points, but he made statements of opinion (that SETI@Home would be more valuable under a BSD/MIT/X style license than GPL, and that under GPL it would be worthless for general use), but he has given no explanation of these opinions.
I don't agree with the idea that it would be worthless under GPL for general use. The major difference between the GPL and BSD licenses is that the BSD license makes it easier to make proprietary derivatives, and to incorporate the code into proprietary applications.
To me, making proprietary derivatives stretches the definition of "general use". It seems a rather specific use. It certainly isn't the intended use (note: making non-proprietary derivatives isn't the intended use either).
Given their stated concerns about hacked clients, they may not find -either- license acceptable, but would want a modified version with something similar to a "change name if modified" clause -- they could specify a particular value that gets configured at compile time and sent to the server that must not contain a particular value by user-compiled/modified clients.
4Front made the following claims wrt ALSA:
1. ALSA copied the OSS API and added a couple of things to it.
2. ALSA is for experimenters, not people who need commercial support
3. ALSA's use of the GPL will taint every product that uses it.
4. ALSA is spreading FUD about OSS, calling OSS "obsolete".
5. OSS hasn't challenged the claims in 4 publically, because polite people don't dis others hard work.
6. ALSA has managed to come up with a decent MIDI interface, which OSS will take and credit the ALSA team for.
Item 5 confuses me. I mean, except for the MIDI stuff, all the 4Front rep did was dis ALSA. He acted as if the unreleased ALSA as is now in development was a reasonable thing to compare to a released, commercial product -- ALSA doesn't have software mixing, but OSS does (yet software mixing is a major things ALSA will have that OSS/lite lacks); ALSA is for adventurous developers only, without any commercial support (true, but it's a system in development, not released yet), etc.
Who is spreading FUD?