But we have a very good understanding of how human recognition fails. People, and importantly the legal system, are very aware that human face recognition is imperfect. While computer recognition is also imperfect, the tendency of people to treat technology as an infallible authority makes failures here much more dangerous.
I've always felt that, rather than the patents granted, the willful infringement ruling is the most broken part about the US patent system. Actively discouraging the people who should be using the patent office as a research resource (and thus incidently providing additional oversight into the process), from ever looking at patents seems so far removed from the original concept of awarding patents that I absolutely cannot fathom how this ever made it into the US legal system.
It has always puzzled me that the US, being a oil-dependant economy, has not been pushing alternative fuel technologies at the developing world. I would have thought reducing the competition for oil would have been extremely beneficial to the US economy.
Simply to be nitpicky: if he's not a better man, how can he be better than Bush? Is "Not because I think he a good candidate" is the sentiment you're trying to express?
You need to consider a) the GPL statements about derived code and b) the FSF statements about linking and the GPL.
Regarding point a), Linux has a hisotry of allowing binary modules, provided that there is reasonable evidence that they are not derived from the kernel code. This allows things like the andrew filesystem modules and various other binary modules to exist. The tainted flag is to mark them as non-debuggable.
The primary module in this case is licensed as GPL, so that's not the issue. It debateable (as we don't have the source), whether the bianry module qualifies as being derived from the kernel or not. If a strong case can be made that it is derived, distributing under a non-GPL license is illegal. Non-one seems to have made this claim, so it is probable that this is not an issue.
b) on the other hand, is very much an issue. The GPL code provides a specialised hook for the binary-only module. It would be pretty difficult to argue that this does not consitute linking under the FSF's definition, and as such, the combined work must be distributable under the GPL. Since this is not the case, there is a licensing problem.
Now, if the binary only module communicated with the GPL'd code via standard interfaces (run as a userspace program, or whatever), the linking issue would not apply. This is not the case.
This is not zealotry. The Linux kernel is GPL. With that, come certain limitations. Especially with accusations (SCO) flying about, being very careful the kernel follows the legal requirements of the GPL is important.
Yes, it will. However, you have take relative volumes into account. If the project is pulling more than a very small percentage (and I do mean very small) of the total water out of the lake, you have worse problems than the heat exchange effects (and your population density has exceeded the ability of your local water supply to support it, which leads to a whole lot of additional headaches).
In practice, one will see a small tempretaure increase in the vicinity of the pipelines, but they're probably ecologically stuffed areas anyway, with various additional current effects, etc. The overall volume affected will be very small in relation to the lake itself and thus the total impact is not significant. The natural seasonal cooling cycle should ensure that there is always cold water available (until global warming destroys the seasonal cycle, anyway:) ).
As the report is focussed on ways of saving cost, the free as in beer aspects of software is pushed quite strongly. Thus I would not be surprised if, given the option, they would settle for cheaper options on there existing software. From the prespective of saving money, mission accomplished if that occurs.
Looking at the rest of the IT proposals, I'd be surprised if this heralds a huge shift to FOSS in the near future. Given the mention of VNC in section 10, and the intention to create a state-wide help desk in section 30, though, there are obvious areas where FOSS could start appearing.
It is, however, interesting to note the the report does mention both the flexibility and security aspects of software. Quoting the report "In summary, open source is not just about cost savings. Since the code is open, it offers the flexibility for organizations to modify the code as needed for specific uses. Many also feel that open source is more reliable and secure than closed source". I wonder how much the various worm-of-day security incidents cost?
As an aside, is anyone else concerned by the way section 32 seems to be setting things up for later suggesting using digital cameras for crime scenes?
The answers to your questions vary greatly from institution to institution and from department to department within a given institution. Tradionally, the humanities and the pure sciences are the least like the "real world", and engineering departments the most bussinesslike, although this is by no means universal.
At some universities, administration bureaucracy is a major problem. Usually, larger and/or older institutions are worse, smaller and/or newer institutions are better, but there are exceptions in both directions.
Academic politics is always bloody. Kissinger's "University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small" is apparantly universal. Fortunately, the tradition of lying low and avoiding getting involved is also well established. If you can avoid getting seriosuly involved, that is probably a good thing. If you actively want to get involved, then there is no hope for you:).
Best course of action is almost certainly to talk to few people working there, especially people in the department you hope to be appointed to, and see how they feel about these things.
An HTTP URL takes the form: http://<host>:<port>/<path>?
<searchpart>
where <host> and <port> are as described in Section 3.1. If:<port> is omitted, the port defaults to 80. No user name or password is allowed.
The allowing of username, password in http urls is a convention, but is certainly not the standard. If Microsoft does this, they'll actually be able to claim that IE is more standards-compliant than other browsers that allow the syntax.
Whether allowing this syntax is a good or bad idea is a completely different debate (and slashdot is arguably the wrong forum to discuss it:) ).
A vastly over-simplified view of the game rendering engine is
while (true)
update_player_position()
render_frame()
done
This calculates the details and spits out the frames as fast as the graphics-card can draw them. The problem is in update_player_positions() - Computers are of course finite precision.
Consequently round-off errors occur as soon as you approximate real world physics.
Since numerical errors are cumlative, updating the position every frame can produce different results depending on frame-rate when you are close to a round-off boundary. To clarify this a bit - consider the following example - a player starts falling from rest at 300 units/s^2. We use the following formulaes (assuming accelaration constant):
(classical newtonian physics, etc).
We use integers to store v and d and round rather than truncate.
If we calulcate his speed five times over the first second, we get the following list of speeds and distances moved:
time (s): 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
speed (units/s): 0 60 120 180 240 300
distance (units): 0 6 24 54 96 150
and at 6Hz
time: 0 0.167 0.333 0.5 0.667 0.833 1
speed: 0 50 100 150 200 250 300
dist: 0 4 17 38 67 105 151
The cumulative round-off error creates a difference of 1 unit in the final position.
This is because, even though we use the real clock, when we sample it and thus the fractions in the calculationa re influenced by the frame rate.
One possible solution is to do the calculation at a constant. This ensures consistent if not nessecarily correct results (150 is the correct distance in the above example, but lokcing the caluclation to 6 HZ would give and incorrect result). Note that to do this properly you need to completely seperate calucaltion from display, i.e. regardless of frame-rate, calculate position 60 times a second, i.e.
Thread 1:
while (true)
update_player_position()
wait (1/60 s)
done
Thread 2:
while (true)
get_data()
render_frame()
done
Exercise 1: Add suitable locking to deal with race consdition between get_data and update_player_position
Exercise 2: Rewrite as non-threaded.
Exercises to submitted in Logo
The decision to limit display rate to at most 60 fps is to prevent jerky display artifiacts. Since they are only calculating stuff at 60Hz, displaying at some higher number involves duplicating a percentage of the frames - which is not visually smooth. Other solutions to the display problem are possible, but not all are suitable for games. In simulations, for instance, it is possible to lag the display cycle a few steps behind the calculation loop and use interpolation techniques to approximate the inter-frame motion.
Re:If you don't read anything else, read this...
on
OSI vs SCO
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
But SCO did not merely mirror the kernel, they actively distributed it - buy selling distrubitions, by posting security patches on their ftp-server and by sending security advisories to their clients advising them to download the code.
Nobody claims that the University of Manchester is the distibuter of the gnu tools they mirror, they claim that the FSF is. SCO's case is very different and not helped by the fact that they only pulled their distributions some time after filing suit against IBM.
Furthermore, the fact that they were making threatening noises towards other distributions, while still actively distributing their own, makes it very hard for them to argue that they had not previously been aware of the possibility that they were distriuting the claimed infringing code under GPL. Especially as this point has been trotted out in every slashdot discussion on the subject.
But we already have easy to use (if not easy to use well) tools for that. What they're taking about is easy to use creation of "Buy my cute pet" sites.
Of course, it debatable whether that's actually any better.
Please submit your email logs along with your tax return.
And of course we expect that the people we claim to be most interested in stopping by this will be completely honest here. Otherwise somebody's going to have to try and reconcile all the logs and see if people recieved more email from joespam@spam.com than he has claimed sending. Imagine doing that for every hotmail address.
Not to mention all the logical inconsicencies such a system will introduce - If I send email to another person on the same network, I have used company provided hardware and cabling - no external resources, so why should I pay tax on that. In many cases, that email is just copying a message from one place on the server to another. Yet we will be expected to pay the government 1c for services rendered.
And then the fun that starts when everybody else starts taxing email. Messages to the UK bounce because their tax system is different from the US's, and so on and so forth.
Slashdot Mirror
But we have a very good understanding of how human recognition fails. People, and importantly the legal system, are very aware that human face recognition is imperfect. While computer recognition is also imperfect, the tendency of people to treat technology as an infallible authority makes failures here much more dangerous.
I've always felt that, rather than the patents granted, the willful infringement ruling is the most broken part about the US patent system. Actively discouraging the people who should be using the patent office as a research resource (and thus incidently providing additional oversight into the process), from ever looking at patents seems so far removed from the original concept of awarding patents that I absolutely cannot fathom how this ever made it into the US legal system.
It has always puzzled me that the US, being a oil-dependant economy, has not been pushing alternative fuel technologies at the developing world. I would have thought reducing the competition for oil would have been extremely beneficial to the US economy.
Simply to be nitpicky: if he's not a better man, how can he be better than Bush? Is "Not because I think he a good candidate" is the sentiment you're trying to express?
Regarding point a), Linux has a hisotry of allowing binary modules, provided that there is reasonable evidence that they are not derived from the kernel code. This allows things like the andrew filesystem modules and various other binary modules to exist. The tainted flag is to mark them as non-debuggable. The primary module in this case is licensed as GPL, so that's not the issue. It debateable (as we don't have the source), whether the bianry module qualifies as being derived from the kernel or not. If a strong case can be made that it is derived, distributing under a non-GPL license is illegal. Non-one seems to have made this claim, so it is probable that this is not an issue.
b) on the other hand, is very much an issue. The GPL code provides a specialised hook for the binary-only module. It would be pretty difficult to argue that this does not consitute linking under the FSF's definition, and as such, the combined work must be distributable under the GPL. Since this is not the case, there is a licensing problem.
Now, if the binary only module communicated with the GPL'd code via standard interfaces (run as a userspace program, or whatever), the linking issue would not apply. This is not the case.
This is not zealotry. The Linux kernel is GPL. With that, come certain limitations. Especially with accusations (SCO) flying about, being very careful the kernel follows the legal requirements of the GPL is important.
In practice, one will see a small tempretaure increase in the vicinity of the pipelines, but they're probably ecologically stuffed areas anyway, with various additional current effects, etc. The overall volume affected will be very small in relation to the lake itself and thus the total impact is not significant. The natural seasonal cooling cycle should ensure that there is always cold water available (until global warming destroys the seasonal cycle, anyway :) ).
Looking at the rest of the IT proposals, I'd be surprised if this heralds a huge shift to FOSS in the near future. Given the mention of VNC in section 10, and the intention to create a state-wide help desk in section 30, though, there are obvious areas where FOSS could start appearing.
It is, however, interesting to note the the report does mention both the flexibility and security aspects of software. Quoting the report "In summary, open source is not just about cost savings. Since the code is open, it offers the flexibility for organizations to modify the code as needed for specific uses. Many also feel that open source is more reliable and secure than closed source". I wonder how much the various worm-of-day security incidents cost?
As an aside, is anyone else concerned by the way section 32 seems to be setting things up for later suggesting using digital cameras for crime scenes?
At some universities, administration bureaucracy is a major problem. Usually, larger and/or older institutions are worse, smaller and/or newer institutions are better, but there are exceptions in both directions.
Academic politics is always bloody. Kissinger's "University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small" is apparantly universal. Fortunately, the tradition of lying low and avoiding getting involved is also well established. If you can avoid getting seriosuly involved, that is probably a good thing. If you actively want to get involved, then there is no hope for you :).
Best course of action is almost certainly to talk to few people working there, especially people in the department you hope to be appointed to, and see how they feel about these things.
An HTTP URL takes the form: :<port> is omitted, the port defaults to 80. No user name or password is allowed.
http://<host>:<port>/<path>? <searchpart>
where <host> and <port> are as described in Section 3.1. If
The allowing of username, password in http urls is a convention, but is certainly not the standard. If Microsoft does this, they'll actually be able to claim that IE is more standards-compliant than other browsers that allow the syntax.
Whether allowing this syntax is a good or bad idea is a completely different debate (and slashdot is arguably the wrong forum to discuss it :) ).
while (true)
update_player_position()
render_frame()
done
This calculates the details and spits out the frames as fast as the graphics-card can draw them. The problem is in update_player_positions() - Computers are of course finite precision. Consequently round-off errors occur as soon as you approximate real world physics. Since numerical errors are cumlative, updating the position every frame can produce different results depending on frame-rate when you are close to a round-off boundary. To clarify this a bit - consider the following example - a player starts falling from rest at 300 units/s^2. We use the following formulaes (assuming accelaration constant):
- v_cur=v_prev+a*delta_t
- d_cur=d_prev + v_prev*delta_t+
(v_cur-v_prev)*delta_t/2
(classical newtonian physics, etc). We use integers to store v and d and round rather than truncate.If we calulcate his speed five times over the first second, we get the following list of speeds and distances moved:
time (s): 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
speed (units/s): 0 60 120 180 240 300
distance (units): 0 6 24 54 96 150
and at 6Hz
time: 0 0.167 0.333 0.5 0.667 0.833 1
speed: 0 50 100 150 200 250 300
dist: 0 4 17 38 67 105 151
The cumulative round-off error creates a difference of 1 unit in the final position. This is because, even though we use the real clock, when we sample it and thus the fractions in the calculationa re influenced by the frame rate.
One possible solution is to do the calculation at a constant. This ensures consistent if not nessecarily correct results (150 is the correct distance in the above example, but lokcing the caluclation to 6 HZ would give and incorrect result). Note that to do this properly you need to completely seperate calucaltion from display, i.e. regardless of frame-rate, calculate position 60 times a second, i.e.
Thread 1:
while (true)
update_player_position()
wait (1/60 s)
done
Thread 2:
while (true)
get_data()
render_frame()
done
Exercise 1: Add suitable locking to deal with race consdition between get_data and update_player_position
Exercise 2: Rewrite as non-threaded.
Exercises to submitted in Logo
The decision to limit display rate to at most 60 fps is to prevent jerky display artifiacts. Since they are only calculating stuff at 60Hz, displaying at some higher number involves duplicating a percentage of the frames - which is not visually smooth. Other solutions to the display problem are possible, but not all are suitable for games. In simulations, for instance, it is possible to lag the display cycle a few steps behind the calculation loop and use interpolation techniques to approximate the inter-frame motion.
Nobody claims that the University of Manchester is the distibuter of the gnu tools they mirror, they claim that the FSF is. SCO's case is very different and not helped by the fact that they only pulled their distributions some time after filing suit against IBM.
Furthermore, the fact that they were making threatening noises towards other distributions, while still actively distributing their own, makes it very hard for them to argue that they had not previously been aware of the possibility that they were distriuting the claimed infringing code under GPL. Especially as this point has been trotted out in every slashdot discussion on the subject.
Of course, it debatable whether that's actually any better.
And of course we expect that the people we claim to be most interested in stopping by this will be completely honest here. Otherwise somebody's going to have to try and reconcile all the logs and see if people recieved more email from joespam@spam.com than he has claimed sending. Imagine doing that for every hotmail address.
Not to mention all the logical inconsicencies such a system will introduce - If I send email to another person on the same network, I have used company provided hardware and cabling - no external resources, so why should I pay tax on that. In many cases, that email is just copying a message from one place on the server to another. Yet we will be expected to pay the government 1c for services rendered.
And then the fun that starts when everybody else starts taxing email. Messages to the UK bounce because their tax system is different from the US's, and so on and so forth.