Good point, but that is still isn't like using this as a pointing device.
The central difference between this and a pointing device as I originally envisioned it is that all of the examples given are for use when moving your point of view in three dimensions instead of moving an object in your view in three dimensions.
However I think this raises a valid question. In a three dimensional window manager(for example) should we use a pointing device to bring an object to ourselves, point to something, or should we move ourselves the the object? I hope this is clear.
Newtonian Physics (for the most part) is "right" in a certain domain (large stuff) to a particular level of accuracy.
It is much like the way that pi is 3.14. This isn't wrong, it's just only right on a particular domain of problems.
All scientific theories/laws are limited to a domain of some type because we are unable to observe the effects they explain in all situations. It may be that they do apply to all things everywhere, but we will never be able to say this for sure because we can't test them ( negelecting the possibility of intervention by some omniscient being ).
Everything 'just works'. I'm a CS major and I've done my share of configuration/reconfiguration on the machines at school that all the dumbasses can use (read break).
I don't want to have to do that at home. I have a system that runs apache, sendmail. bind, ssh, and firewalls w/nat+port forwarding and it took me all of a day to get things set up just the way I want them.
The couple of debian installs I've done have taken nearly as long just to get the nic and X to work. I know RTFA and Google, but it's hard to Google without a network connection and even when I went across the hall, there was no help.
On the same box I threw in the Fedora DVD (I know it's not Red Hat, but the advantages are the same) and installation was done in about an hour. Network up, X running, playing music, etc.
Just a hint to help the next time a kernel update happens, I'm running fc1 and have had no trouble using just the kernel-module-prism54 rpm from the dag repository.
They don't have versions for every kernel, but it should make the upgrade process easier when you need it.
Plus fc will be using the 2.6 kernel soon, which includes prism54 drivers.
The problem with this particular message is that most users will read "regular text" and say, well, I'll type it in Word and save it. That's just text in some people's world.
One of the big shortcomings in the computer education of Joe Average has no idea that there is a difference between what they see on the screen and what is actually in the corresponding file.
For instance, JA says "I click on this file and up pops a picture. The file is a picture." However we all know there are huge difference even among picture formats, but most folks don't know that the picture is really just a bunch of 0s and 1s.
As a CS student, I am always amazed at even grad students who don't understand files/data/characters. A lot of them ask questions such as "Is that file stored in hex or binary?", not realizing that hex and binary are just ways we look at the data. Another common question seems to be "So is a character a letter or a number?" or "I typed 1234 into vi, but when I used read() to get the first integer from the file, it came out 808530483. What happened?"
I agree with one of the other replies that the analogy is flawed, but crackers are not kicking down the door.
What the crackers are doing is more akin to using a key someone has lost to let themselves into their home (possibly one shared by several people) and taking what they want. They then change the locks and hope no one notices.
While it is naive to expect that someone isn't going to break into your home if you leave copies of your keys lying around, it isn't any less criminal when it happens.
putty doesn't need cygwin, but you need putty even if you have cygwin.
cygwin's ssh client has some annoying problems, expecially when using curses programs. They are just annoyances, but why put up with them when you can get putty that works nearly flawlessly.
However for glibc or other common libraries you gain much more than if you hacked sendmail or any other service.
If you have a backdoor in glibc, nearly ANY program will activate it. You just wait until a setuid root program accesses something in the library, and you have your exploit.
Or if you need something that stays aware, have this insert a kernel module that hides it's own existence and does whatever you need or launches and hides another process that does what you want.
In the end, putting a backdoor in a common library has many advantages to putting it in any program or service.
I have to admit that I didn't RTFA, but from the post it looks like it is being called an "Industrial-Strength... language," not an industrial strength interpreter or project.
Given, a language by itself is useless, but it is possible to design a language with certain attributes before having the tools to actually use it.
This is a decent comparison, except that it leaves out a very important fact. Most sounds are not generated through a midi-type process. On the other hand many images are produced by drawing vectors.
MIDI cannot rival the quality of sampled sound unless the sound being sampled was produced by a MIDI-like process.
SVG is good for many image applications because the sampled forms are produced through an SVG-like process.
You definitely want to use udp for video streaming, even on a fast lan. You might also want to look at RTP (real-time protocol). It is used for voip and some video applications.
The three NICs in one box are all on seperate networks. One directly to a cable modem, another directly to a WAP, the other to an ethernet. (I live with techie roommates, so we have lot's of boxen).
If all four of these streams are the same, you should definitely look into multicasting. It really sucks over the real internet (read: doesn't work), but on a lan it can be done effectively.
Disclaimer: Original experiment is not scientific!! I am not legally responsible if someone dies because you cited my post that 97 Mbps is possible over the PCI bus.
It would probably have been a better idea to use netcat to dump packets to/dev/null on one end and have it send an endless stream of them on the other, but I didn't have the time or interest. My method was quick.
Actual response
Using bargain basement NIC's, I can't remember manufacturer or model.
Netgear 8 port switch.
800 MB file
I copied part of the nfs mounted file from the remote box to the local disk in 3 terminals. The multiple terminals are required because only 1 does not produce peak usage (I'm pretty sure nfs uses RPC, which blocks waiting for the data, so you don't get peak usage).
Used iptraf to measure throughput.
One box has 3 NIC's and an IDE controller(not the one accessing the file) on the PCI bus. The other has a single NIC and the video card on the PCI bus.
I would think that the remainder of the bandwidth (about 3Mbps) is probably lost due to packet collisions and ethernet layer overhead (iptraf measures IP traffic after the physical layer stuff has been stripped.)
Admittedly, the pci bus will probably be the first absolute roadblock with a good machine, but I think you are all underestimating it's ability.
I did a quick test on my home network to make sure. I easily got 97 Mbps using NFS to transfer (multiple simultaneous) files between 2 machines on 100 Mb ethernet. I think that is pretty conclusive evidence that the PCI bus will not be a limit even on a DS3(T3), which only goes 51 Mbps. One of these machines even has the video card on the pci bus.
Anecdotally, why would we even bother building Gigabit ethernet if unable to read the data (given, the bandwidth is shared, but anyway).
For stabilities sake, you should probably not try to do the routing among internal subnets with this box. However, if most of the internal traffic is accessing external hosts, this would also be possible, since most of the traffic will be crossing this box anyway.
I hope we all pray to whatever god we might or might not pray to that these administrators aren't letting them play Counterstrike, but have a problem with The Sims.
It almost makes me sick to think that school officials would have a problem with The Sims for those reasons.
I have never played, but the fact that they are concerned that characters 'may' do some things that aren't PC (that's politically correct, not personal computer) doesn't seem like such a big deal. The characters follow the players lead. If they are led to get in bed together, the player obviously had some idea what was going on before. It's not too likely that they would suddenly discover the existence of males and females who get into the same bed by playing the game.
Saying the Sims is harmful to the students is like saying that they are harmful to themselves. If they don't have dirty little minds, they won't run into these things. If they do have dirty little minds how does this affect them?
Children who grow up in a sheltered environment are often unable to properly adapt to the real world when they are forced into it.
Things that cannot be controlled. I am not an expert in the field, but I imagine one of the big things is the quality of the raw materials. In something as complex and tiny as a processors, small variations in purity of raw materials could have a huge affect.
If you want to charge a fee for the use of your copying machine, fine - but do not try to argue that the cost of performing the copy should be in anyway related to the cost of producing the orginal.
That isn't the situation intended by the parent. If you are making a copy of something that you produced, then the copying facilities are all you should have to pay for. And you should have to pay whatever the owner can get out of you.
However, if the only place you enter into the production of the final copy is as a consumer (ie someone else produced the original and made the copy) you should pay for part of the cost of producing the original and the cost of copying.
<Philosophical Rant> The idea of fairness is a wonderful goal, but how do we decide what is fair in any case? Is equality fair? I don't think so. If I work 60 hours a week and you do nothing, is it fair that our salaries are equal? </Philosophical Rant>
It may be impossible to fairly decide what portion of the cost of copying is assigned to each copy, but it all comes down to how much you are willing to pay for the copy(not just the copying service). Once you buy the copy, the proceeds should be divided among the producer and the distributor(or copier).
Of course if the copying company does not own original sugar, it should have to share the profits with the owner of the sugar used to make the copy. That is the whole purpose of copyright law. To make the copier treat the owner of the original "fairly".
Some people may argue that the cost of research and development should be born by the user. They may be correct, who am I to say, however the only version of the software that has those costs directly associated it is the original.
Getting back to copying a pound of sugar. Just say we had a machine capable of copying the pound of sugar, given some carbon, hydrogen and whatever other raw materials it needed and electricity. Put the original pound of sugar (the one grown/ harvested/ processed/ researched/ transported/ etc) in the machine and "copy" it. Should the user of the copy have to pay for transporting the orginal to the shop where it was sold? Or just for the raw materials and electricity used in the copying process?
The point that is being missed is that the original pound of sugar is a resource just like the carbon, hydrogen, etc. Without the original pound of sugar the copying machine would have nothing to copy. So why shouldn't the costs of producing the original poind be amortized to the price of the copy.
Saying cost to produce the original shouldn't go into the cost of the copy is equivalent to saying that the cost of the machinery to produce the copy shouldn't be included. Just because something is a one time cost does not mean that the consumers shouldn't pay for it.
The only difference with intellectual property (ie software) is that unlike a car or a pound of sugar, the majority of the cost of production is in up-front, one time, fixed costs, instead of variable costs that are paid to produce one extra copy of the product.
I have had a TI-85 since high school. It has survived being immersed in water, several soft drink spills, and being run over by a car. Batteries and some screws fixed everything. Unfortunately, the display is missing several columns of pixels, but what can you expect.
Slashdot Mirror
Good point, but that is still isn't like using this as a pointing device.
The central difference between this and a pointing device as I originally envisioned it is that all of the examples given are for use when moving your point of view in three dimensions instead of moving an object in your view in three dimensions.
However I think this raises a valid question. In a three dimensional window manager(for example) should we use a pointing device to bring an object to ourselves, point to something, or should we move ourselves the the object? I hope this is clear.
Agreed, technically, but how do these translate into motion in three dimensions in an intuitive way?
controlling a pointer like the position of your (plane, character) in a (flight sim, FPS) would be a huge pain in the ass.
It all depends on your definition of wrong.
Newtonian Physics (for the most part) is "right" in a certain domain (large stuff) to a particular level of accuracy.
It is much like the way that pi is 3.14. This isn't wrong, it's just only right on a particular domain of problems.
All scientific theories/laws are limited to a domain of some type because we are unable to observe the effects they explain in all situations. It may be that they do apply to all things everywhere, but we will never be able to say this for sure because we can't test them ( negelecting the possibility of intervention by some omniscient being ).
Everything 'just works'. I'm a CS major and I've done my share of configuration/reconfiguration on the machines at school that all the dumbasses can use (read break).
I don't want to have to do that at home. I have a system that runs apache, sendmail. bind, ssh, and firewalls w/nat+port forwarding and it took me all of a day to get things set up just the way I want them.
The couple of debian installs I've done have taken nearly as long just to get the nic and X to work. I know RTFA and Google, but it's hard to Google without a network connection and even when I went across the hall, there was no help.
On the same box I threw in the Fedora DVD (I know it's not Red Hat, but the advantages are the same) and installation was done in about an hour. Network up, X running, playing music, etc.
Just a hint to help the next time a kernel update happens, I'm running fc1 and have had no trouble using just the kernel-module-prism54 rpm from the dag repository.
They don't have versions for every kernel, but it should make the upgrade process easier when you need it.
Plus fc will be using the 2.6 kernel soon, which includes prism54 drivers.
The problem with this particular message is that most users will read "regular text" and say, well, I'll type it in Word and save it. That's just text in some people's world.
One of the big shortcomings in the computer education of Joe Average has no idea that there is a difference between what they see on the screen and what is actually in the corresponding file.
For instance, JA says "I click on this file and up pops a picture. The file is a picture." However we all know there are huge difference even among picture formats, but most folks don't know that the picture is really just a bunch of 0s and 1s.
As a CS student, I am always amazed at even grad students who don't understand files/data/characters. A lot of them ask questions such as "Is that file stored in hex or binary?", not realizing that hex and binary are just ways we look at the data. Another common question seems to be "So is a character a letter or a number?" or "I typed 1234 into vi, but when I used read() to get the first integer from the file, it came out 808530483. What happened?"
go to a library and get any decent high school or college text book.
/. questions that could be posted.
Or if you are too lazy, pay some college physics student a couple bucks and they'll get you the info you need in no time.
I hate to make the same point that many have made before, but aren't there any better ask
not only safety, but you need line of sight for lasers and microwaves.
I agree with one of the other replies that the analogy is flawed, but crackers are not kicking down the door.
What the crackers are doing is more akin to using a key someone has lost to let themselves into their home (possibly one shared by several people) and taking what they want. They then change the locks and hope no one notices.
While it is naive to expect that someone isn't going to break into your home if you leave copies of your keys lying around, it isn't any less criminal when it happens.
putty doesn't need cygwin, but you need putty even if you have cygwin.
cygwin's ssh client has some annoying problems, expecially when using curses programs. They are just annoyances, but why put up with them when you can get putty that works nearly flawlessly.
I agree completely for vi, grep, etc.
However for glibc or other common libraries you gain much more than if you hacked sendmail or any other service.
If you have a backdoor in glibc, nearly ANY program will activate it. You just wait until a setuid root program accesses something in the library, and you have your exploit.
Or if you need something that stays aware, have this insert a kernel module that hides it's own existence and does whatever you need or launches and hides another process that does what you want.
In the end, putting a backdoor in a common library has many advantages to putting it in any program or service.
I have to admit that I didn't RTFA, but from the post it looks like it is being called an "Industrial-Strength ... language," not an industrial strength interpreter or project.
Given, a language by itself is useless, but it is possible to design a language with certain attributes before having the tools to actually use it.
This is a decent comparison, except that it leaves out a very important fact. Most sounds are not generated through a midi-type process. On the other hand many images are produced by drawing vectors.
MIDI cannot rival the quality of sampled sound unless the sound being sampled was produced by a MIDI-like process.
SVG is good for many image applications because the sampled forms are produced through an SVG-like process.
You definitely want to use udp for video streaming, even on a fast lan. You might also want to look at RTP (real-time protocol). It is used for voip and some video applications.
The three NICs in one box are all on seperate networks. One directly to a cable modem, another directly to a WAP, the other to an ethernet. (I live with techie roommates, so we have lot's of boxen).
If all four of these streams are the same, you should definitely look into multicasting. It really sucks over the real internet (read: doesn't work), but on a lan it can be done effectively.
Disclaimer:
/dev/null on one end and have it send an endless stream of them on the other, but I didn't have the time or interest. My method was quick.
Original experiment is not scientific!! I am not legally responsible if someone dies because you cited my post that 97 Mbps is possible over the PCI bus.
It would probably have been a better idea to use netcat to dump packets to
Actual response
Using bargain basement NIC's, I can't remember manufacturer or model.
Netgear 8 port switch.
800 MB file
I copied part of the nfs mounted file from the remote box to the local disk in 3 terminals. The multiple terminals are required because only 1 does not produce peak usage (I'm pretty sure nfs uses RPC, which blocks waiting for the data, so you don't get peak usage).
Used iptraf to measure throughput.
One box has 3 NIC's and an IDE controller(not the one accessing the file) on the PCI bus. The other has a single NIC and the video card on the PCI bus.
I would think that the remainder of the bandwidth (about 3Mbps) is probably lost due to packet collisions and ethernet layer overhead (iptraf measures IP traffic after the physical layer stuff has been stripped.)
Admittedly, the pci bus will probably be the first absolute roadblock with a good machine, but I think you are all underestimating it's ability.
I did a quick test on my home network to make sure. I easily got 97 Mbps using NFS to transfer (multiple simultaneous) files between 2 machines on 100 Mb ethernet. I think that is pretty conclusive evidence that the PCI bus will not be a limit even on a DS3(T3), which only goes 51 Mbps. One of these machines even has the video card on the pci bus.
Anecdotally, why would we even bother building Gigabit ethernet if unable to read the data (given, the bandwidth is shared, but anyway).
For stabilities sake, you should probably not try to do the routing among internal subnets with this box. However, if most of the internal traffic is accessing external hosts, this would also be possible, since most of the traffic will be crossing this box anyway.
You are probably correct, and I didn't mean to insult or attack the administrators themselves, but society as a whole is guilty of this action.
The administrators actions are just a reflection of the values/beliefs of the community.
I hope we all pray to whatever god we might or might not pray to that these administrators aren't letting them play Counterstrike, but have a problem with The Sims.
It almost makes me sick to think that school officials would have a problem with The Sims for those reasons.
I have never played, but the fact that they are concerned that characters 'may' do some things that aren't PC (that's politically correct, not personal computer) doesn't seem like such a big deal. The characters follow the players lead. If they are led to get in bed together, the player obviously had some idea what was going on before. It's not too likely that they would suddenly discover the existence of males and females who get into the same bed by playing the game.
Saying the Sims is harmful to the students is like saying that they are harmful to themselves. If they don't have dirty little minds, they won't run into these things. If they do have dirty little minds how does this affect them?
Children who grow up in a sheltered environment are often unable to properly adapt to the real world when they are forced into it.
Let the flames begin!
Things that cannot be controlled. I am not an expert in the field, but I imagine one of the big things is the quality of the raw materials. In something as complex and tiny as a processors, small variations in purity of raw materials could have a huge affect.
If you want to charge a fee for the use of your copying machine, fine - but do not try to argue that the cost of performing the copy should be in anyway related to the cost of producing the orginal.
That isn't the situation intended by the parent. If you are making a copy of something that you produced, then the copying facilities are all you should have to pay for. And you should have to pay whatever the owner can get out of you.
However, if the only place you enter into the production of the final copy is as a consumer (ie someone else produced the original and made the copy) you should pay for part of the cost of producing the original and the cost of copying.
<Philosophical Rant>
The idea of fairness is a wonderful goal, but how do we decide what is fair in any case? Is equality fair? I don't think so. If I work 60 hours a week and you do nothing, is it fair that our salaries are equal?
</Philosophical Rant>
It may be impossible to fairly decide what portion of the cost of copying is assigned to each copy, but it all comes down to how much you are willing to pay for the copy(not just the copying service). Once you buy the copy, the proceeds should be divided among the producer and the distributor(or copier).
Of course if the copying company does not own original sugar, it should have to share the profits with the owner of the sugar used to make the copy. That is the whole purpose of copyright law. To make the copier treat the owner of the original "fairly".
Some people may argue that the cost of research and development should be born by the user. They may be correct, who am I to say, however the only version of the software that has those costs directly associated it is the original.
Getting back to copying a pound of sugar. Just say we had a machine capable of copying the pound of sugar, given some carbon, hydrogen and whatever other raw materials it needed and electricity. Put the original pound of sugar (the one grown/ harvested/ processed/ researched/ transported/ etc) in the machine and "copy" it. Should the user of the copy have to pay for transporting the orginal to the shop where it was sold? Or just for the raw materials and electricity used in the copying process?
The point that is being missed is that the original pound of sugar is a resource just like the carbon, hydrogen, etc. Without the original pound of sugar the copying machine would have nothing to copy. So why shouldn't the costs of producing the original poind be amortized to the price of the copy.
Saying cost to produce the original shouldn't go into the cost of the copy is equivalent to saying that the cost of the machinery to produce the copy shouldn't be included. Just because something is a one time cost does not mean that the consumers shouldn't pay for it.
The only difference with intellectual property (ie software) is that unlike a car or a pound of sugar, the majority of the cost of production is in up-front, one time, fixed costs, instead of variable costs that are paid to produce one extra copy of the product.
Saying Xlib is a burden like saying accessing files by creating a hardware interrupt is a burden.
Accessing files is easier using the C library functions or even C++ streams. Likewise, other libraries are layered on top of Xlib in the same fashion.
It also seems that you can't decide whether X needs replacement or XF86 needs replacement. There is a difference.
Texas instruments calculators are indestructible.
I have had a TI-85 since high school. It has survived being immersed in water, several soft drink spills, and being run over by a car. Batteries and some screws fixed everything. Unfortunately, the display is missing several columns of pixels, but what can you expect.
Yes, but it leaves them in the same portion of the disk, causing fragmentation problems.