Now that BitTorrent has grown into something that's completely out of your control, do you have any fears that the powers that be will come after you seeking damages for things other people have done with your software?
Well then Tarzan353, educate us. Obviously your in the know and we're not.
So, how was this funded? Was type of research are they doing on this cluster? Was this an academic endeavor? How is this pushing forward understanding of vector based HPC? Are they going to give their findings back to Sony?
The reason I voiced my "opinion" of the situation was because of the experiences I've had dealing with companies.
Most of my friends (and several of my co-workers) cut their teeth writing drivers for hardware that was donated to them by the manufactuers. They'd call up the company and expain they were a student and that they wanted to write a driver for [x] device. Voila, 5 would show up in the mail including all kinds of developer documentation and pin out diagrams.
Hence why I thought that they probably gave Sony a call and said "We want to build a cluster of these and we'll share any knowledge we get while doing it" and Sony said "That sounds like a great investment and sent them all the stuff". To me it seemed logical. Everybody wins. Since Sony's next generation playstation is supposed todo all kinds of clustering it only makes sense that they have some understanding of any short comings that might be found in the current generation of hardware so they don't carry those mistake over to the PS3. So, if some entity with shitloads of experience in clustering is willing to just come along and do it for free (as in no cost to Sony) I would think they'd get the cost of 65 PS2's back in R&D savings X fold.
I Highly doubt they paid a dime for any of it... I'm sure they told Sony what they wanted todo and Sony said "Hmm, 65 PS2's and you'll make a cluster out of them and we'll get good press? Sure, where would you like the pallet delivered..."
As a 70+ wpm QWERTY typer, I tried to make the switch to Dvorak in the hopes that it would reduce my wrist strain, however here's a few problems I ran into...
Firstly... Since I started playing around with a keyboard when I was about 8, my brain got wired for QWERTY at a young age.
Secondly... Take a look at the keys that you use to save in your favorite editor ("jed" in my case) to save it's "ctrl-x-w" which conviently you can do with your left hand in one fluid motion. Now you could go and remap everyting and come up with some system that worked...
Thirdly... I'm a hands on unix sysadmin. One of my responsibilites is day to day maintanance, tapes, troubleshooting, etc... So having to switch back and forth wouldn't really give me the practice I would need to be proficent...
Well, here in Massachusetts, the law guns are very strict.
We've also lots of other interesting laws. No fireworks, no mace (I think you need permit for pepper spray) no double edged knives, no knives over 5 inches (I think)
I think alot of people get this wild west idea about the U.S. That everybody goes around with a 9mm hanging off their hips.
Here's a side question... I don't own any firearms, however I do own a paintball gun. Does Norway have any laws against such weapons? I call it weapon because if you were shot in the face at close range, and weren't wearing any face protection, there's a very good chance you'd sustain a nasty injury (broken bones, loss of vision, etc.)
If the rich countries populace contributes 95% of the CPU time to find the cure, who then is truely deserving of getting the cure?
The "rich" countries who've invested trillions in infrastructure (of all kinds) including the money spent on the millions of PCs, plus the power necessary to run them.
Or the poor as they say "Third World" who've sqandered their resources, have no infrastructure and demand huge ammounts of foreign aid (so it also can be squandered as well) Even if the cure was given to them wouldn't distribure it to the general populace. Instead they'd let their people die and blame the "rich" countries...
I put the blame squarely on China's shoulders for SARS. If they had been initally honest about how many had been infected/killed by SARS, people who have taken it more seriously sooner.
Now, with that all said, I asked that inital question as a devil's advocate stance.
Personally, even though I live in one of those "rich" countries, a cure is a cure. Once found the information on how to synthesize it should be made freely available.
In the same realm... it's the same logic that holds gun makers liable for deaths that are caused by their products. Even though they have no control over the use of their product.
I hope the investors in Kitchen-Aid are shaking in their boots fearing for the day waffle makers start getting used as deadly weapons...
All hail encryption. All the more reason to encrypt everything.
Time to setup white list mail servers that only accept email from other white list mail servers where the keys have been shared via offline media.
These servers will interconnect via PPP over SSH connections (the keys will also be shared offline)
The filesystems on these machines will be encrypted also using keys stored on easy (and quickly) destroyable media (such as meltable USB memory sticks)
Forest managers may also want to consider which species to focus on during planting and harvesting. "When planting, they may want to introduce less susceptible trees--such as western larch, western white pine, and ponderosa pine--and harvest the more susceptible trees during thinning."
I'm not a forest manager by any stretch of the imagination, but doesn't this seem wrong? So you come into forest that's been living in ecolibrium for thousands of years and decide... "Well, since were gonna be cutting lots of trees down, lets replace them with trees that are less susceptible to this fungus..."
Now granted, you are changing the ecolibrium by cutting down the trees, but I think introducing trees that aren't native to that part of the country or replacing a whole section of forest with one type of tree is just a bad idea...
What a good example of this... goto a place like Quabbin (in Massachusetts) and go into the parts of the forest where they planted row after row of white pine trees and nothing else. Turns out that water perculating through the pine needles on the ground changes the PH level drastically enough that the forests are barren. There's no underbrush, just short pine trees that won't make it to maturity since all the other pine trees have now crowned (only have branches with needles on the tops (which are 50-70 ft above the ground). If you throw down a blanket and sit for a while, you notice a couple of things. Firstly, dead silence. Because the pine trees have pushed out everything else, there's no habitat to support any animals. Secondly, it's cool and dark. Even on a hot summer day, the trees block out so much light it makes it impossible for undergrowth.
A positive note to this is that as these forests age, trees die and make openings and the ecology is starting to change. Also, this makes up a very small percentage of the managed land at a place like Quabbin. I've also come across a couple areas where they've cut down the trees (these are 600' x 500', ripped out the stumps and then used a bulldozer to score up the ground. They then put wires from the trees on either side of the clearing to encourage birds. I've seen a before and after of one of these and you end up with a nice field of wild flowers and a breaks in the forest to encourage diversity.
Duh... After the scientists made contact with aliens, they decided to standardize all measurements on the VolksWagen Bug, shorted as VWB.
Hence, when an alien vessel parks in earth orbit, it's size is referred to in cublic VWB's.
Hence, smaller objects are referred to in terms of they're size as a percentage of 1 VWB. Since a VWB was about 900 pounds (I think) then I'm 1/4.5ths of a VWB in terms of mass...
Slashdot Mirror
Now that BitTorrent has grown into something that's completely out of your control, do you have any fears that the powers that be will come after you seeking damages for things other people have done with your software?
From what it sounds like, they figured the protocol used to communicate between the client and server and just turned on the GOD flag.
Personally, I would have kept that little gem to myself and used it for special occasions. Like keep raids, etc...
Well then Tarzan353, educate us. Obviously your in the know and we're not.
So, how was this funded? Was type of research are they doing on this cluster? Was this an academic endeavor? How is this pushing forward understanding of vector based HPC? Are they going to give their findings back to Sony?
The reason I voiced my "opinion" of the situation was because of the experiences I've had dealing with companies.
Most of my friends (and several of my co-workers) cut their teeth writing drivers for hardware that was donated to them by the manufactuers. They'd call up the company and expain they were a student and that they wanted to write a driver for [x] device. Voila, 5 would show up in the mail including all kinds of developer documentation and pin out diagrams.
Hence why I thought that they probably gave Sony a call and said "We want to build a cluster of these and we'll share any knowledge we get while doing it" and Sony said "That sounds like a great investment and sent them all the stuff". To me it seemed logical. Everybody wins. Since Sony's next generation playstation is supposed todo all kinds of clustering it only makes sense that they have some understanding of any short comings that might be found in the current generation of hardware so they don't carry those mistake over to the PS3. So, if some entity with shitloads of experience in clustering is willing to just come along and do it for free (as in no cost to Sony) I would think they'd get the cost of 65 PS2's back in R&D savings X fold.
Seriously! Maybe if we had a foe that all of mankind could fight together, we'd spend less time fighting each other...
What this planet needs is a good old fashion "Independence day" alien invasion so that all of humanity can figure out that we're in this together...
no you forgot...
5) make a huge mistake and become the laughing stock of the whole community.
6) profit.
I Highly doubt they paid a dime for any of it... I'm sure they told Sony what they wanted todo and Sony said "Hmm, 65 PS2's and you'll make a cluster out of them and we'll get good press? Sure, where would you like the pallet delivered..."
[SALES PITCH VOICE]
This limited edition rubix zarconium triple winged eagle 18c coin is of legal tender in the U.S.
It can be yours for only 29.99 plus shipping and handling.
Limited 3.98 per customer, supplies limited, call now!
[/SALES PITCH VOICE]
Then your car breaks down and you die of dehydration out in the dessert...
Sounds like fun to me!
As a 70+ wpm QWERTY typer, I tried to make the switch to Dvorak in the hopes that it would reduce my wrist strain, however here's a few problems I ran into...
Firstly... Since I started playing around with a keyboard when I was about 8, my brain got wired for QWERTY at a young age.
Secondly... Take a look at the keys that you use to save in your favorite editor ("jed" in my case) to save it's "ctrl-x-w" which conviently you can do with your left hand in one fluid motion. Now you could go and remap everyting and come up with some system that worked...
Thirdly... I'm a hands on unix sysadmin. One of my responsibilites is day to day maintanance, tapes, troubleshooting, etc... So having to switch back and forth wouldn't really give me the practice I would need to be proficent...
Well, here in Massachusetts, the law guns are very strict.
We've also lots of other interesting laws. No fireworks, no mace (I think you need permit for pepper spray) no double edged knives, no knives over 5 inches (I think)
I think alot of people get this wild west idea about the U.S. That everybody goes around with a 9mm hanging off their hips.
Here's a side question... I don't own any firearms, however I do own a paintball gun. Does Norway have any laws against such weapons? I call it weapon because if you were shot in the face at close range, and weren't wearing any face protection, there's a very good chance you'd sustain a nasty injury (broken bones, loss of vision, etc.)
I'm so you responded in a reactionary way... well execpt for that last clause...
I was merely asking a question for the sake of an argument... and I stated that at the bottom of the previous post...
Here's a counter question...
If the rich countries populace contributes 95% of the CPU time to find the cure, who then is truely deserving of getting the cure?
The "rich" countries who've invested trillions in infrastructure (of all kinds) including the money spent on the millions of PCs, plus the power necessary to run them.
Or the poor as they say "Third World" who've sqandered their resources, have no infrastructure and demand huge ammounts of foreign aid (so it also can be squandered as well) Even if the cure was given to them wouldn't distribure it to the general populace. Instead they'd let their people die and blame the "rich" countries...
I put the blame squarely on China's shoulders for SARS. If they had been initally honest about how many had been infected/killed by SARS, people who have taken it more seriously sooner.
Now, with that all said, I asked that inital question as a devil's advocate stance.
Personally, even though I live in one of those "rich" countries, a cure is a cure. Once found the information on how to synthesize it should be made freely available.
The guy who built the ion engine that was on Deep Space 1 got the idea from Star Trek... so anything is possible.
Personally, I think we need to sort out Fusion. We've got TDP technology, so at least that's a step in the right direction...
In the same realm... it's the same logic that holds gun makers liable for deaths that are caused by their products. Even though they have no control over the use of their product.
I hope the investors in Kitchen-Aid are shaking in their boots fearing for the day waffle makers start getting used as deadly weapons...
I thought terrorist states were caused by my countries short sighted foriegn policy decisions...
Not to mention the giving of Weapons of Mass Destruction to know killers and tyrants because it suits our purposes in the region.
All along, it was OpenBSD's fault. Man, now I feel like a putz for actually thinking OpenBSD was good.
Geez, next I'll find out "Peanuts" is anti-semetic!
All hail encryption. All the more reason to encrypt everything.
Time to setup white list mail servers that only accept email from other white list mail servers where the keys have been shared via offline media.
These servers will interconnect via PPP over SSH connections (the keys will also be shared offline)
The filesystems on these machines will be encrypted also using keys stored on easy (and quickly) destroyable media (such as meltable USB memory sticks)
Just ideas...
Considering who's building this, Burt Rutan is an aeronautical genius.
<a href="http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=
http://www.mythtv.org
Stratus Technologies has invented all kinds of super fault tolernate technologies that it puts in it servers.
Nobody else that I know of even comes close.
You mean slashdot isn't just a dribble of stupid jokes on a regular basis?
Your gonna have to send me that address, I think I've been stuck on a development server or something!
Principles are the big deal, that's what's the big deal...
The moment the photographer feels that it's okay to make little "alternations" it's stops being a photograph and it starts being a piece of art...
I'm glad this dumb shit got fired, hopefully it'd discourage others...
it was supposed to be "chock"... I was having a bad spelling day... oh well... At least I'm not spineless and posting AC...
Forest managers may also want to consider which species to focus on during planting and harvesting. "When planting, they may want to introduce less susceptible trees--such as western larch, western white pine, and ponderosa pine--and harvest the more susceptible trees during thinning."
I'm not a forest manager by any stretch of the imagination, but doesn't this seem wrong? So you come into forest that's been living in ecolibrium for thousands of years and decide... "Well, since were gonna be cutting lots of trees down, lets replace them with trees that are less susceptible to this fungus..."
Now granted, you are changing the ecolibrium by cutting down the trees, but I think introducing trees that aren't native to that part of the country or replacing a whole section of forest with one type of tree is just a bad idea...
What a good example of this... goto a place like Quabbin (in Massachusetts) and go into the parts of the forest where they planted row after row of white pine trees and nothing else. Turns out that water perculating through the pine needles on the ground changes the PH level drastically enough that the forests are barren. There's no underbrush, just short pine trees that won't make it to maturity since all the other pine trees have now crowned (only have branches with needles on the tops (which are 50-70 ft above the ground). If you throw down a blanket and sit for a while, you notice a couple of things. Firstly, dead silence. Because the pine trees have pushed out everything else, there's no habitat to support any animals. Secondly, it's cool and dark. Even on a hot summer day, the trees block out so much light it makes it impossible for undergrowth.
A positive note to this is that as these forests age, trees die and make openings and the ecology is starting to change. Also, this makes up a very small percentage of the managed land at a place like Quabbin. I've also come across a couple areas where they've cut down the trees (these are 600' x 500', ripped out the stumps and then used a bulldozer to score up the ground. They then put wires from the trees on either side of the clearing to encourage birds. I've seen a before and after of one of these and you end up with a nice field of wild flowers and a breaks in the forest to encourage diversity.
Duh... After the scientists made contact with aliens, they decided to standardize all measurements on the VolksWagen Bug, shorted as VWB.
Hence, when an alien vessel parks in earth orbit, it's size is referred to in cublic VWB's.
Hence, smaller objects are referred to in terms of they're size as a percentage of 1 VWB. Since a VWB was about 900 pounds (I think) then I'm 1/4.5ths of a VWB in terms of mass...