This reminds me of an Asimov short story: "It's Such A Beautiful Day". A summary gracelessly snatched from the web:
"Twelve-year-old Richard Hanshaw is forced one day to walk to school when the teleportation device in his home, the Door, breaks down. He enjoys it so much he starts doing it every day, driving his teacher and mother to distraction. Eventually, his mother calls in a psychiatrist who goes on a walk with Richard to find out why the boy likes walking to school so much, and the answer ends up being a surprising one."
I don't know why the original post was modded 'insightful', did anyone actually look at that code? I did, and it was easy to determine what the program was supposed to do. I suspect it was understandable to most readers of Slashdot.
Perl is the very definition of obfuscated. If you code in Perl while drinking, even you can't understand what the program does the next morning. It's powerful, but people don't refer to it as a write-only language for nothing.
A.
Part of your lives, maybe
on
Retro Vision
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
...but I stopped watching television regularly at the ripe old age of 18.
I got a summer job in the woods. When I came back home after three months and sat down in front of a television I simply could not believe that people could watch such inane drivel. I lasted 15 minutes.
It was nearly ten years later that I actually bought a television set, and that so I could watch movies on HBO. I no longer even have cable. Once in a while at a friends house I will see what is on the tube today and as far as I can tell, it hasn't improved.
I know, I know... How will I ever function in society without having seen a single episode of 'St. Elsewhere', 'E.R', or 'Survivor'?
"Climate change is not a theory, it's a reality, and more evidence is showing up every day."
True, climate change is demontrable fact. That humans have any significant impact on climate change (or even could if they tried) is 100% theory, unsupported by experimental evidence.
"The iTunes MP3 encoder was written pretty much from scratch, based on the ISO reference source in distribution 10, as LAME was. I know, I was the principal author (it was originally shipped in SoundJam, for anyone who remembers that far back).
It has been heavily tweaked over the years and doesn't bear much resemblance to dist 10 anymore...
When he talks about interface design, it's clear that TOG is in his element. When he starts talking about what applications should do, he seems more like he's just ranting.
I think this comments about the new Finder are right on target. When he complains about needing export from iPhoto, It makes me wonder if he's ever bothered to select a bunch of pictures and just drag them somewhere.
Ok, we have similar ideas about what seriously listening means. Good.
"Um, actually, you used the words "little computer speakers" in your statement."
You might want to check my post. I said 'computer speakers'. My computer speakers are a pair of old Advent Powered Partners. They are two-ways, powered direct from house current, and can push about 75 watts of audio into my face. They weigh about ten pounds each. While they *are* smaller than your normal stereo speakers, you wouldn't want to drop one on your foot. They are great as computer speakers, but they still aren't sufficient for what we call serious listening.
I'm sympathetic to your current state of affairs. I moved from an isolated 3br house into a small apartment with noisy neighbors. I don't think I'll ever have that peace again.
"When I do serious listening, it's usually in the car."
I suspect you and I have very diffferent ideas about what 'serious listening' means - those two things are mutually exclusive to me. Maybe if parked by a nice lake.
"The thing you have to get over is the mindset that a computer "requires" those stupid little computer speakers."
You have no basis for this statement. You have no idea what I listen with. While I wouldn't tolerate the sound of my computer in the room where I listen to music, my MP3 decoder does send music as a digital stream to my receiver. This makes it easy to compare MP3 vs CD.
I was talking about enocoding/decoding, not equipment. I have music (specifically vocals) that seem to be particularly challenging to the process. CDs that sound perfect become shredded on my iPod when encoded in MP3 (the iPod decoder appears to be junk). AAC does better, but neither can compare to the CD.
In the end, we basically agree. We wouldn't pay money for compressed music.
"CDs just aren't preferred storage mediums any more."
Whoa there! That statement just isn't universally true.
When I buy music for any kind of serious listening (ie: something other than background music), I buy the CD. I want the best data that I can get.
Sure, I rip it and play it on my computer speakers, but when I'm serious about listening to something it's in the CD player with digital output to the receiver and then to my headphones.
The MP3/AAC processes do a really good job, but the encoders and the decoders aren't perfect. Certainly extremely high bitrates help, but you start eating into the whole reason for compression in the first place.
A. (who buys most of his CDs from non-RIAA labels in other countries now)
"I think it's both hilarious and sad that we're still focusing on terrorists wrt airplanes. They had their chance, and they used it to their great advantage. They'll come at us from a different angle now, knowing that they'll never again surprise us in that particular way."
First sane thought I've seen in this thread.
Over many years we had trained ourselves to cooperate with airplane hijackers and wait to see what they wanted. The 9/11 terrorists knew this and used it against us.
They won't do it again, because they know that every person on the plane will try and rip their throats out.
They'll watch, see what we aren't paying attention to, and use that next time. Bad news for us - we cannot pay attention to everything.
(not only do you have to read my posts, you have to read me replying to my own post).
I realized that I over-simplified the re-addressing problem.
From the UCLA paper:
"Active Attack from Both Ends
The previous attack can be extended further to decrypt arbitrary traffic. In this case, the attacker makes a guess about not the contents, but rather the headers of a packet. This information is usually quite easy to obtain or guess; in particular, all that is necessary to guess is the destination IP address. Armed with this knowledge, the attacker can flip appropriate bits to transform the destination IP address to send the packet to a machine he controls, somewhere in the Internet, and transmit it using a rogue mobile station. Most wireless installations have Internet connectivity; the packet will be successfully decrypted by the access point and forwarded unencrypted through appropriate gateways and routers to the attacker's machine, revealing the plaintext. If a guess can be made about the TCP headers of the packet, it may even be possible to change the destination port on the packet to be port 80, which will allow it to be forwarded through most firewalls."
This subject deserves mod points. I don't have any today, so you have to suffer through one of my posts.
If you are running a business with wireless, and you care at all about security, and you allow anything to go over that link unencrypted, you're insane.
The only IP address that should be reachable over your wireless network is the IP address of your IPSec VPN gateway.
Most APs will accept re-addressed packets. This means the perp doesn't have to even crack the keys. All he needs to do is readdress packets to himself over the net and send them back to your AP. Your AP will dutifully decrypt them and send them out over the internet. Port blocked? Use a different one - you're re-addressing the packets anyway.
"I file all of my bills in a circular metallic file..."
Although funny, this is not far from what I do. I have an 8 1/2 by 11 computer paper box under my desk. Paid bills go into this box in chronological order. When the box is full, I throw it into the closet and get a new box.
The only exceptions are tax-related items. There are so few of those, they don't even get their own box.
A. (who used to keep things meticulously in folders, until he realized that no-one cared, including himself)
I think this is a good question - do you really need internal maps?
Many years ago, I bought a Garmin GPS 12XL. Excellent receiver performance, built in LCD shows breadcrumb trail, waypoints, etc. No road maps, etc. When I want those I connect it to my PC.
When it came time to replace it, I looked around at all the fancy new features, maps, and all. What did I buy? Another Garmin 12XL. Fits in my shirt pocket, now has US city database.
Slashdot Mirror
"and there is a small delay before the head returns for a seek to see if the process requests another read."
It's early, but did read/write heads suddenly develop intelligence while I was napping?
A.
This reminds me of an Asimov short story: "It's Such A Beautiful Day". A summary gracelessly snatched from the web:
"Twelve-year-old Richard Hanshaw is forced one day to walk to school when the teleportation device in his home, the Door, breaks down. He enjoys it so much he starts doing it every day, driving his teacher and mother to distraction. Eventually, his mother calls in a psychiatrist who goes on a walk with Richard to find out why the boy likes walking to school so much, and the answer ends up being a surprising one."
It's an interesting and perhaps prophetic story.
A.
I don't know why the original post was modded 'insightful', did anyone actually look at that code? I did, and it was easy to determine what the program was supposed to do. I suspect it was understandable to most readers of Slashdot.
Perl is the very definition of obfuscated. If you code in Perl while drinking, even you can't understand what the program does the next morning. It's powerful, but people don't refer to it as a write-only language for nothing.
A.
...but I stopped watching television regularly at the ripe old age of 18.
I got a summer job in the woods. When I came back home after three months and sat down in front of a television I simply could not believe that people could watch such inane drivel. I lasted 15 minutes.
It was nearly ten years later that I actually bought a television set, and that so I could watch movies on HBO. I no longer even have cable. Once in a while at a friends house I will see what is on the tube today and as far as I can tell, it hasn't improved.
I know, I know... How will I ever function in society without having seen a single episode of 'St. Elsewhere', 'E.R', or 'Survivor'?
A.
"The Andromeda Strain", by Michael Crichton, (c) 1969
A.
"Just think about it - the Slashdot crowd is largely the cream (or atleast a significant part) of the intellectual populace."
Clearly, you haven't really thought about it...
A.
"any legal action against opensource projects by microsoft relating to these leaks will still have to demonstrate that:
1. the opensource code was copied from the leaked nt code
2. the nt code wasn't boosted from opensource projects first"
The defendant will have to prove that the code was boosted. Microsoft is under no obligation to try to prove a negative.
A.
"Climate change is not a theory, it's a reality, and more evidence is showing up every day."
True, climate change is demontrable fact. That humans have any significant impact on climate change (or even could if they tried) is 100% theory, unsupported by experimental evidence.
A.
I prefer his comments here:
"The iTunes MP3 encoder was written pretty much from scratch, based on the ISO reference source in distribution 10, as LAME was. I know, I was the principal author (it was originally shipped in SoundJam, for anyone who remembers that far back).
It has been heavily tweaked over the years and doesn't bear much resemblance to dist 10 anymore...
-Bill Kincaid
iTunes"
"The original iTunes MP3 encoder was written about five years ago by a one-man team."
True but not relevant. It could still be the best encoder on the planet (I don't think it is, but...)
"you want to know my authority for saying it sounds worse? Listening tests I conducted myself."
Ok, a purely subjective observation. That's fine, but one person's opinion isn't going to make me 'Avoid iTunes'.
What I would like to see is more independant data like this:
http://www.sonarnerd.net/projects/wavcomp/
Which states, in part:
"Apple iTunes MP3 encoder is preserving even more high frequencies than blade with higher cost at low frequencies."
A.
(who prefers to listen to his CDs with headphones)
I've never touched VB, and if I had I would have washed my hands afterwards. Really.
A.
(who programs in Rexx)
"1) Old bad"
Thank you, Slashdot, for throwing away my brackets.
That should be read as 'Old not equal bad'. Yes, I'll preview next time.
A.
"iTunes's MP3 encoder is quite old and does a bad job of encoding MP3s."
1) Old bad
2) Got any references for your claim?
The side-by-side tests that I have seen do not back up your assertion.
A.
When he talks about interface design, it's clear that TOG is in his element. When he starts talking about what applications should do, he seems more like he's just ranting.
I think this comments about the new Finder are right on target. When he complains about needing export from iPhoto, It makes me wonder if he's ever bothered to select a bunch of pictures and just drag them somewhere.
A.
Ok, we have similar ideas about what seriously listening means. Good.
"Um, actually, you used the words "little computer speakers" in your statement."
You might want to check my post. I said 'computer speakers'. My computer speakers are a pair of old Advent Powered Partners. They are two-ways, powered direct from house current, and can push about 75 watts of audio into my face. They weigh about ten pounds each. While they *are* smaller than your normal stereo speakers, you wouldn't want to drop one on your foot. They are great as computer speakers, but they still aren't sufficient for what we call serious listening.
I'm sympathetic to your current state of affairs. I moved from an isolated 3br house into a small apartment with noisy neighbors. I don't think I'll ever have that peace again.
A.
"When I do serious listening, it's usually in the car."
I suspect you and I have very diffferent ideas about what 'serious listening' means - those two things are mutually exclusive to me. Maybe if parked by a nice lake.
"The thing you have to get over is the mindset that a computer "requires" those stupid little computer speakers."
You have no basis for this statement. You have no idea what I listen with. While I wouldn't tolerate the sound of my computer in the room where I listen to music, my MP3 decoder does send music as a digital stream to my receiver. This makes it easy to compare MP3 vs CD.
I was talking about enocoding/decoding, not equipment. I have music (specifically vocals) that seem to be particularly challenging to the process. CDs that sound perfect become shredded on my iPod when encoded in MP3 (the iPod decoder appears to be junk). AAC does better, but neither can compare to the CD.
In the end, we basically agree. We wouldn't pay money for compressed music.
A.
"CDs just aren't preferred storage mediums any more."
Whoa there! That statement just isn't universally true.
When I buy music for any kind of serious listening (ie: something other than background music), I buy the CD. I want the best data that I can get.
Sure, I rip it and play it on my computer speakers, but when I'm serious about listening to something it's in the CD player with digital output to the receiver and then to my headphones.
The MP3/AAC processes do a really good job, but the encoders and the decoders aren't perfect. Certainly extremely high bitrates help, but you start eating into the whole reason for compression in the first place.
A.
(who buys most of his CDs from non-RIAA labels in other countries now)
"I think it's both hilarious and sad that we're still focusing on terrorists wrt airplanes. They had their chance, and they used it to their great advantage. They'll come at us from a different angle now, knowing that they'll never again surprise us in that particular way."
First sane thought I've seen in this thread.
Over many years we had trained ourselves to cooperate with airplane hijackers and wait to see what they wanted. The 9/11 terrorists knew this and used it against us.
They won't do it again, because they know that every person on the plane will try and rip their throats out.
They'll watch, see what we aren't paying attention to, and use that next time. Bad news for us - we cannot pay attention to everything.
A.
(not only do you have to read my posts, you have to read me replying to my own post).
I realized that I over-simplified the re-addressing problem.
From the UCLA paper:
"Active Attack from Both Ends
The previous attack can be extended further to decrypt arbitrary traffic. In this case, the attacker makes a guess about not the contents, but rather the headers of a packet. This information is usually quite easy to obtain or guess; in particular, all that is necessary to guess is the destination IP address. Armed with this knowledge, the attacker can flip appropriate bits to transform the destination IP address to send the packet to a machine he controls, somewhere in the Internet, and transmit it using a rogue mobile station. Most wireless installations have Internet connectivity; the packet will be successfully decrypted by the access point and forwarded unencrypted through appropriate gateways and routers to the attacker's machine, revealing the plaintext. If a guess can be made about the TCP headers of the packet, it may even be possible to change the destination port on the packet to be port 80, which will allow it to be forwarded through most firewalls."
A.
This subject deserves mod points. I don't have any today, so you have to suffer through one of my posts.
If you are running a business with wireless, and you care at all about security, and you allow anything to go over that link unencrypted, you're insane.
The only IP address that should be reachable over your wireless network is the IP address of your IPSec VPN gateway.
Most APs will accept re-addressed packets. This means the perp doesn't have to even crack the keys. All he needs to do is readdress packets to himself over the net and send them back to your AP. Your AP will dutifully decrypt them and send them out over the internet. Port blocked? Use a different one - you're re-addressing the packets anyway.
A.
"I file all of my bills in a circular metallic file..."
Although funny, this is not far from what I do. I have an 8 1/2 by 11 computer paper box under my desk. Paid bills go into this box in chronological order. When the box is full, I throw it into the closet and get a new box.
The only exceptions are tax-related items. There are so few of those, they don't even get their own box.
A.
(who used to keep things meticulously in folders, until he realized that no-one cared, including himself)
I think this is a good question - do you really need internal maps?
Many years ago, I bought a Garmin GPS 12XL. Excellent receiver performance, built in LCD shows breadcrumb trail, waypoints, etc. No road maps, etc. When I want those I connect it to my PC.
When it came time to replace it, I looked around at all the fancy new features, maps, and all. What did I buy? Another Garmin 12XL. Fits in my shirt pocket, now has US city database.
Can be had for less than $200.
A.
The only issue that I ever had with 10.2.8 was that it broke the Option-Eject function to eject the second DVD drive.
I have had no other problems. Dual monitors work fine, etc., etc.
A.
"Please, someone cut off my hand for typing 'combinating.' That last would have been so nice a note without it..."
Got bad news for you. You used *both* hands to type that...
A.
"Emulation seems completely the opposite direction I would want to take data storage"
In general, VMware isn't emulation.
A.