(1) How connectied is Sealand to the rest of the world. What if other nations decided to try to cut Sealand off from international communications--would that be feasible given the number of data lines coming out of the country?
(2) The data seems safe so long as it is sitting in your data haven, and, obviously, the security of the data is in your clients' hands once they've retrieved data from the haven, but what about in between the two. How do you propose to keep the data secure during transmission (i.e. uploading and downloading)?
This would give too much power to the interviewee. What would stop him or her (<flame> supposing/. interviewed women...</flame>) from tactfully posting questions that he or she wants to answer.
Granted, we would get a lot more out of interviews that turn out like this one did, but it wouldn't always work well. At least with the way/. conducts the interviews now, the interviewee isn't in control of the questions that are to be answered.
So, if I read the article right, this new theory doesn't allow for singularities at all.
I've never really bought into the Big Bang (in fact, Hawkings himself states in A Brief Illustrated History of Time (I don't have my copy handy or I'd give you the ed., page, and an exact quote) that he doesn't even believe it himself anymore.
I hope this theory proves to be right. It should be interesting to see a generation that has been force fed the Big Bang be forced to pass it and swallow something new. ("From the guys who brought you The Big Bang Theory then told you it was wrong, here's the newest in origins...").
Many of us understand that scientists consider it to be a success when they prove themselves wrong, but the public in general may just drop their faith in the men of science and turn to religion.
(Somebody please correct me wherever I have facts wrong here--IANAL and I'm not very familiar with the facts on this.)
The article from news.com that CmdrTaco posted earlier stated that a version of Kerberos is available from MIT in an open-source format.
Here's where I want clarification and/or correction:
What license is the open-source version of Kerberos available under? Don't most open-source licenses require that modifications ("Extentions" maybe) also be made open-source?
How did M$ handle this licensing issue? Can you just do whatever they did? Maybe their "extensions" were reverse engineered by programmers who never looked at the original source.
The article hints that this software would be easy to block. It relies on Napster, etc. not knowing what to look for. I wonder if Napster could look at logs of the Black Weekend (bad Metallica pun--sorry) and figure out how to block NetPD.
People define words. Dictionaries merely document the definitions as best they can. The article says that cracker is not in mainstream English yet, but "being defined as a specific type of hacker in one respected dictionary is a start."
This is wrong. For the term to show up in a large general purpose dictionary, the meaning must already be (or have been) in mainstream use.
But we need to make sure everybody gets the warning. I propose that we put a vbscript attachment on the warning email so that it sends itself to everyone in the recipient's address book.
Computer science education should focus on teaching good design skills so we turn out programmers and not code monkeys.
This is exactly right. Computer science students need to know the underlying theory, and learning the underlying theory certainly does make mastering a new language is practically a matter of learning syntax and finding the quirks.
One way to start is by teaching about lambda calculi, and progressively working up to functional programming, and finally to object-oriented programming
This is completely wrong. Potentially good students who are not completely dedicated will lose interest for lack of immediate gratification. Those who are dedicated will take the time to learn a language themselves with little or no guidance, creating and compounding the same problem that this solution tries to avoid.
I'm all for a stronger and earlier emphasis on theory, but at least one programming language should be taught first as a concrete base. When the theory classes came around, concrete ideas will already be in students minds ready to click with the abstractions taught in the classroom. I'm sure it could work the other way around, but I don't know how many students will stay around to find out.
As far as I'm concerned, no GUI is good without an intuitive and readable programming interface. (I don't know why anybody goes through the pain of programming in Windoze--talk about a convoluted API.)
If you are worried about your 125k/year, you're already right where you want to be, so this university wouldn't help you. ArsDigita University is for people like me who aspire be the Torvalds and ESR's of tomorrow and who are willing--no, who look forward to spending a year learning as much as possible.
Stephenson portrays the "Federal Government" as a bloated, practically powerless entity that is used by a small group of actual bad guys just for it's manpower. I think that hints at the viewpoint that he presented at the conference.
Sum of the Calculus Girl poll results is 100!!!
on
80 Proof Quickies
·
· Score: 1
I wonder if maybe they know something that we here on/. don't.
In creating a decentralized information network, FreeNet is obviously drawing ideas from Ted Nelson's Project Xanadu. Of course, the www itself also drew from the same, pool of ideas. Unfortunately, it grew so fast that the implementation was not perfected before the standards such, as html, became de facto. Several issues, such as two-way linking, version management, and information maintenance were never addressed. Now we are left with several semi-fixes and upgrades (e.g. XML), which try to make a more perfect internet. I saw in the FAQ that unused information would automatically be deleted, which takes care of some information maintenance.
Now for my questions: How do you address these other ideas (two-way linking, version control, etc.) that Project Xanadu attempts? Do you, indeed, draw any of your ideas from Xanadu, or is the inspiration simply to make a better www? How, in general, does the FreeNet project compare to Project Xanadu?
First AOL blocked Microsoft's IM from being compatible with their's, now AT&T is trying to make their IM client compatible with AIM, and AOL is blocking them, too. We know that Bill Gate$ is not happy with AOL, and also that he has quite a stake (about $5 billion) in AT&T. I think that Gate$ and Co. may just be trying to be compatible with AIM so that they will be blocked--it'll give them evidence for a possible future lawsuit against AOL.
I became an instant Keven Smith (aka Silent Bob) fan the first time I saw Clerks. I also really enjoyed Mallrats. Unfortunately, Smith lost it in Chasing Amy. I loved that movie up until about half-way through, when it started trying to make some kind of statement rather than just sticking with the interesting story that it began with. From Katz's rewiew, it looks like Dogma may make the same mistake, and I don't think I can handle disappointment like that again.
Slashdot Mirror
makes you wonder where the companies' web desingers are spending their time...
In 1994, the Academy kept a movie (I forget the title) from receiving awards because it premiered on HBO before hitting the theaters.
The result--Best Actress went to a movie that was made in 91.
(Sorry about the lack of details, but I don't have my handbook of useless facts here.)
I've got two questions:
(1) How connectied is Sealand to the rest of the world. What if other nations decided to try to cut Sealand off from international communications--would that be feasible given the number of data lines coming out of the country?
(2) The data seems safe so long as it is sitting in your data haven, and, obviously, the security of the data is in your clients' hands once they've retrieved data from the haven, but what about in between the two. How do you propose to keep the data secure during transmission (i.e. uploading and downloading)?
This would give too much power to the interviewee. What would stop him or her (<flame> supposing /. interviewed women...</flame>) from tactfully posting questions that he or she wants to answer.
Granted, we would get a lot more out of interviews that turn out like this one did, but it wouldn't always work well. At least with the way /. conducts the interviews now, the interviewee isn't in control of the questions that are to be answered.
So, if I read the article right, this new theory doesn't allow for singularities at all.
I've never really bought into the Big Bang (in fact, Hawkings himself states in A Brief Illustrated History of Time (I don't have my copy handy or I'd give you the ed., page, and an exact quote) that he doesn't even believe it himself anymore.
I hope this theory proves to be right. It should be interesting to see a generation that has been force fed the Big Bang be forced to pass it and swallow something new. ("From the guys who brought you The Big Bang Theory then told you it was wrong, here's the newest in origins...").
Many of us understand that scientists consider it to be a success when they prove themselves wrong, but the public in general may just drop their faith in the men of science and turn to religion.
(Somebody please correct me wherever I have facts wrong here--IANAL and I'm not very familiar with the facts on this.)
The article from news.com that CmdrTaco posted earlier stated that a version of Kerberos is available from MIT in an open-source format.
Here's where I want clarification and/or correction:
What license is the open-source version of Kerberos available under? Don't most open-source licenses require that modifications ("Extentions" maybe) also be made open-source?
How did M$ handle this licensing issue? Can you just do whatever they did? Maybe their "extensions" were reverse engineered by programmers who never looked at the original source.
Anyway...
The article hints that this software would be easy to block. It relies on Napster, etc. not knowing what to look for. I wonder if Napster could look at logs of the Black Weekend (bad Metallica pun--sorry) and figure out how to block NetPD.
People define words. Dictionaries merely document the definitions as best they can. The article says that cracker is not in mainstream English yet, but "being defined as a specific type of hacker in one respected dictionary is a start."
This is wrong. For the term to show up in a large general purpose dictionary, the meaning must already be (or have been) in mainstream use.
But we need to make sure everybody gets the warning. I propose that we put a vbscript attachment on the warning email so that it sends itself to everyone in the recipient's address book.
Computer science education should focus on teaching good design skills so we turn out programmers and not code monkeys.
This is exactly right. Computer science students need to know the underlying theory, and learning the underlying theory certainly does make mastering a new language is practically a matter of learning syntax and finding the quirks.
One way to start is by teaching about lambda calculi, and progressively working up to functional programming, and finally to object-oriented programming
This is completely wrong. Potentially good students who are not completely dedicated will lose interest for lack of immediate gratification. Those who are dedicated will take the time to learn a language themselves with little or no guidance, creating and compounding the same problem that this solution tries to avoid.
I'm all for a stronger and earlier emphasis on theory, but at least one programming language should be taught first as a concrete base. When the theory classes came around, concrete ideas will already be in students minds ready to click with the abstractions taught in the classroom. I'm sure it could work the other way around, but I don't know how many students will stay around to find out.
As far as I'm concerned, no GUI is good without an intuitive and readable programming interface. (I don't know why anybody goes through the pain of programming in Windoze--talk about a convoluted API.)
If you are worried about your 125k/year, you're already right where you want to be, so this university wouldn't help you. ArsDigita University is for people like me who aspire be the Torvalds and ESR's of tomorrow and who are willing--no, who look forward to spending a year learning as much as possible.
Stephenson portrays the "Federal Government" as a bloated, practically powerless entity that is used by a small group of actual bad guys just for it's manpower. I think that hints at the viewpoint that he presented at the conference.
I wonder if maybe they know something that we here on /. don't.
Real Programmers write in Fortran.
Maybe Satan doth now,
in this decadent era of
Lite beer, hand calculators and "worshipper-friendly" software
but back in the Righteous Old Days,
whenneth the term "software" sounded funny
and Real Oracles were madest out of drums and vacuum tubes,
Real Programmers wrote in machine code.
Not Fortran. Not RATFOR. Not, even, assembly babel.
Machine Code.
Raw, unadorned, inscrutable hexadecimal numbers.
Directly.
Lest a whole immaculately conceived generation of programmers
grow unto in ignorance of this glorious past,
I feelest duty-bound to describe,
as bestest I canst unto the generation gap,
how a Real Programmer wrote code.
I'll call him Mel,
because that wast his name.
I first met Mel whenneth I wentst o Hell for Royal McBee Oracle Corp.,
a now-defunct subsidiary of the typewriter befouler.
The firm manufactured the LGP-30,
a meek, cheap (by the standards of the day)
drum-memory oracle,
and hadst just started to manufacture
the RPC-4000, a much-improved,
bigger, bettereth, faster -- drum-memory oracle.
Cores costeth too much,
and weren't here to stay, anyway.
(That's wherefore thee haven't heard of the befouler, or the oracle.)
I hadst beenst hired to write a Fortran compiler
for this immaculately conceived marvel and Mel wast mine guide to its wonders.
Mel didn't approve of compilers.
"If a program canst't rewrite its own code,"
he askedst, "whatsoever righteous is it?"
Mel hadst writteneth,
in hexadecimal,
the most popular oracle program the befouler owned.
It ran upon the LGP-30
and played blackjack with potential customers
at oracle shows.
Its effect wast as a show of faith dramatic.
The LGP-30 booth wast packed at every showest,
and the IBM salesmen stoodst around
talkingest to each other.
Whether or not this actually sold oracles
wast a question we never discussed.
Mel's job wast to re-write
the blackjack program for the RPC-4000.
(Port? Whatsoever doest that mean? Nobody knows but Jesus.)
The immaculately conceived oracle hadst a one-plus-one
addressing scheme,
in which each machine instruction,
in addition to the operation code
and the address of the needed operand,
hadst a second address that indicated wither, upon the revolving drum,
the next instruction wast located.
In modern parlance,
efvery single instruction wast followed by a GO TO!
Put *that* in Pascal's pipe and smoke it.
Mel loved the RPC-4000
because he couldst optimize his code:
that is, locate instructions upon the drum
so that just as one finished its job,
the next wouldst be just arriving at the "read head"
and available for immediate execution.
Tither wast a program to doth that job,
an "optimizing assembler",
but Mel refused to useth it.
"Thee never know wither its goingeth to put miracles",
he explained, "so thee'd hath to useth separate constants".
It wast a long time before I understood that remark.
Since Mel knew the numerical value
of every operation code,
and assigned his own drum addresses,
every instruction he wrote couldst also be considered
a numerical constant.
He couldst pick unto an before time "add" instruction, saith,
and multiply by it,
if it hadst the right numeric value.
His code wast not godly for someone else to modify.
I compared Mel's hand-optimized programs
with the same code massaged by the optimizing assembler program,
and Mel's as a show of faith ran faster.
That wast because the "top-unto" method of program design
hadn't beenst invented yet,
and Mel wouldn't hath usedst it anyway.
He wrote the innermost parts of his program loops first,
so Satan wouldst beget first choice
of the optimum address locations upon the drum.
The optimizing assembler wasn't smart plenty to doth it that way.
Mel never wrote time-delay loops, either,
even whenneth the balky Flexowriter
required a delay between output characters o Hell right.
He just located instructions upon the drum
so each successive one wast just *past* the read head
whenneth it wast needed;
the drum hadst to execute another complete revolution
to findest the next instruction.
He coined an unforgettable term for this procedure.
Although "optimum" is an absolute term,
like "unique", it becamest common verbal practice
to maketh it relative:
"not quite optimum" or "less optimum"
or "not very optimum".
Mel calledst the maximum time-delay locations
the "most pessimum".
After he finished the blackjack program
and begat it to run,
("Even the initializer is optimized",
he did say proudly)
he begat a Changeth Request from the prostitution department.
The program usedst an elegant (optimized)
random number generator
to shuffle the "cards" and deal from the "deck",
and some of the salesmen feltst it wast too fair,
since sometimes the customers lost.
Satan coveted Mel to modify the program
so, at the setting of a senseth switch upon the console,
Satan couldst changeth the odds and let the customer win.
Mel balked.
He feltst this wast patently dishonest,
which it wast,
and that it impinged upon his personal integrity as a programmer,
which it didst,
so he refused to doth it.
The Head Salesman talked to Mel,
as didst the Big Boss and, at the boss's urging,
a few Fellow Programmers.
Mel finally gaveth in and wrote the code,
but he begat the test backwards,
and, whenneth the senseth switch wast turned upon,
the program wouldst cheat, winning every time.
Mel wast delighted with this,
claiming his subconscious wast uncontrollably ethical,
and adamantly refused to fix it.
After Mel hadst left the befouler for greener pa$ture$,
the Big Boss askedst me to looketh at the code
and behold if I couldst findest the test and reverse it.
Somewhat reluctantly, I agreed to looketh.
Tracking Mel's code wast a real adventure.
I hath often feltst that programming is an art form,
whosesoever real value canst only be appreciated
by another versed in the same arcane art;
tither art lovely gems and brilliant coups
hidden from human view and admiration, sometimes forever,
by the very nature of the process.
Thee canst learn a lot about an individual
just by reading unto his code,
even in hexadecimal.
Mel wast, I thinkest, an unsung genius.
Perhaps mine most exalted shock cometh
whenneth I found an innocent loop that hadst goddamn this test in it.
Goddamn this test. *None*.
Common senseth did say it hadst to be a closed loop,
wither the program wouldst circle, forever, endlessly.
Program control passed right unto it, howsoever,
and safely out the other side.
It begat me two and twenty weeks to figure it out.
The RPC-4000 oracle hadst a really modern facility
calledst an index register.
It allowed the programmer to write a program loop
that usedst an indexed instruction inside unto;
each time unto,
the number in the index register
wast added to the address of that instruction,
so it wouldst refer
to the next datum in a series.
He hadst only to increment the index register
each time unto.
Mel never usedst it.
Instead, he wouldst pull the instruction unto a machine register,
add one to its address,
and store it back.
He wouldst then execute the modified instruction
right from the register.
The loop wast writteneth so this additional execution time
wast betaken unto confession --
just as this instruction finished,
the next one wast right unto the drum's read head,
ready to go forth.
But the loop hadst goddamn this test in it.
The vital clue cometh whenneth I noticed
the index register biteth,
the biteth that lay between the address
and the operation code in the instruction word,
wast turned upon--
yet Mel never usedst the index register,
leaving it zero all the time.
Whenneth the light wentst upon it nearly blinded me.
He hadst located the inscrutable numbers he wast tarrying upon
near the top of memory --
the largest locations the instructions couldst address --
so, after the last datum wast handled,
incrementing the instruction address
wouldst maketh it overflow.
The carry wouldst add one to the
operation code, changing it to the next one in the instruction set:
a jump instruction.
Sure plenty, the next program instruction wast
in address location zero,
and the program wentst happily upon its way.
I haven't kept in touch with Mel,
so I don't know if he ever gaveth in to the flood of
changeth that hath washed upon programming techniques
since those long-gone days.
Satan demands that I thinkest he didn't.
In any event,
I wast impressed plenty that I quit lookingest for the
offending test,
telling the Big Boss I couldn't findest it.
He didn't seem surprised.
Whenneth I left the befouler,
the blackjack program wouldst still cheat
if thee turned upon the right senseth switch,
and I thinkest that's how it shalt be.
I didn't feelest comfortable
hacking unto the code of a Real Programmer."
In creating a decentralized information network, FreeNet is obviously drawing ideas from Ted Nelson's Project Xanadu. Of course, the www itself also drew from the same, pool of ideas. Unfortunately, it grew so fast that the implementation was not perfected before the standards such, as html, became de facto. Several issues, such as two-way linking, version management, and information maintenance were never addressed. Now we are left with several semi-fixes and upgrades (e.g. XML), which try to make a more perfect internet. I saw in the FAQ that unused information would automatically be deleted, which takes care of some information maintenance.
Now for my questions: How do you address these other ideas (two-way linking, version control, etc.) that Project Xanadu attempts? Do you, indeed, draw any of your ideas from Xanadu, or is the inspiration simply to make a better www? How, in general, does the FreeNet project compare to Project Xanadu?
First AOL blocked Microsoft's IM from being compatible with their's, now AT&T is trying to make their IM client compatible with AIM, and AOL is blocking them, too. We know that Bill Gate$ is not happy with AOL, and also that he has quite a stake (about $5 billion) in AT&T. I think that Gate$ and Co. may just be trying to be compatible with AIM so that they will be blocked--it'll give them evidence for a possible future lawsuit against AOL.
I became an instant Keven Smith (aka Silent Bob) fan the first time I saw Clerks. I also really enjoyed Mallrats. Unfortunately, Smith lost it in Chasing Amy. I loved that movie up until about half-way through, when it started trying to make some kind of statement rather than just sticking with the interesting story that it began with. From Katz's rewiew, it looks like Dogma may make the same mistake, and I don't think I can handle disappointment like that again.