I haven't counted the Google-provided list. In theory some of those sites/pages have already been cleaned up, and they are reported 'cuz that was the last time Google spidered them.
The proven level of quality of Wikipedia.org suggests this is an interesting, but not inherently good, idea. Rather than "peer review", a Wiki would be better suited for a "Public Comment" area. It's a matter of setting the proper expectations: public comment is what is really happening here in the general case, and hopefully it's "informed public comment". Formal peer review tends to be picky; public comment can be icky.
It's a a neat experiment, but having only quickly skimmed some of the wiki at jot.com, I wonder if the proponents have looked carefully at the prior art, e.g.: en.wikipedia.org. And the jot.com site seems to be holding up so far.
... bees do it. Even educated fleas do it. Let's do it.
Let's learn to fly!
But what I really want is to fill in the "gaps" that most "intelligent" ID folk also point out as a flaw to evolution and a boon to ID. While I don't have any bone to pick with some one who wants to believe in an ultimate engineer - and sometimes I waver that way myself - it's just not science. Martin Gardiner's essays - I'm thinking of those in The Night is Large, but there are other examples - show that an intelligent individual can think both scientifically and still believe in something more than "just" evolution.
It's the difference between science and philosophy.
I don't see much new here. We even have the traditional misspellings.
The speed of innovation in any software can be both a boon and a bomb.
It's easy to drop in the word "framework": with a well-designed framework, you can extend and reuse existing tech. This is why the underlying pipe mechanism in Unix derivatives is so powerful. It's also why it's hard for many to master.
There's also a point when the framework - which should be strong-yet-supple - can instead ossify, like so much old glue that's set up and cracks easily.
Ultimately it is real work to take the time to design something that meets both current *and* future needs. While many working in the kernel and the distributions realize this, there remain the folk who just want to sling code and do the sexy, fun stuff first and fast and loose.
This is where "Open Source" meets "Free Software" and the two don't agree, not in the least.
And this is where the debian folk try to tread when they decide which packages are "free" and which are not.
Unfortunately, from an end-user perspective, it can be quite tedious. Sometimes a package goes from "free" to "non-free" and unless you have your ducks in a row, you lose it.
So: how do you want to get paid? If you only want to be paid in the satisfaction of a job well done and/or helping others, Free Software and Open Software are probably close enough for you on the pragmatic level, so long as nobody comes after you claiming their own rights. But if you want to make money (barter, whatever) so that you can eat and have a roof and a 'net connection, Bray does hit the nail: others out there can easily eat your lunch.
I don't see a perfect solution here. I knew the fellow who claimed to have "the" patent for color TV, which, as an employee, he had to assign to RCA. AFAIK, he wasn't a millionaire, but he had a secure job for the rest of his life. RCA evidently recognized his contribution and treated him "fairly". Unfortunately, the world tends more to Scar of The Lion King, as he says to the mouse, "Life isn't fair..."
Most "decent" and frequent software questions from most "smart" users have to do with bugs of ambiguity or other problems that come from either poor documentation, poor software, or both.
I expect the same can be said of the FAQs of many products and interest areas. So the real problem facing an FAQ maintainer is - when they have such control at least - the correction of the problems the FAQ(s) bring to light. In this case, a database makes sense when it links in to the database of acknolwledged bugs or defects with the product or area of interest.
In the case of interest-area FAQs, like rec.woodworking or rec.scuba or rec.your.car, a traditional database makes more sense; you often have no way of fixing something that isn't yours to fix, so you offer advice. But even here, the "current" top-rated FAQ may not always be the most helpful. So one needs to allow a knob or two to keep some FAQs at the top of the list, or otherwise locate them in an obvious place where they are easy to find.
Ultimately I find Google to be my current search-for-the-FAQ-of-the-moment tool, and I sift through the results for what will help me get what I need done.
Just shows that in-house solutions never get the "go". All because of insiders who say, "Hey, I know that clown Kernigan", or, "Are you kidding? Mission critical tools by the likes of Ritchie?" Then there's the fact that the documentation is hardly PC, with all those "man" pages.
Naturally, it makes sense to outsource whenever possible. Perhaps that's the angle that could get OS/X or Linux back into AT&T, since there would be no need to show an in-house cost center in the form of a Unix development team.
With Moore's "law" as accurate as it has been, I am reminded of Vernor Vinge's universe wherein things that are really complex technologically - to the point of being magical - depend on local-area changes in the structure of the universe (or at least the galaxy).
For batteries to get better at a Moore's law rate, we need some different physical laws. But we can, as other posters mention, improve on efficiency of other parts. Cooler-running processors and low-power wireless - a la BlueTooth or 802.11[whatever-letter-means-low-power] will help.
To build a better battery has been a goal for longer than computers have been in around.
This is cool. A great toy that will let everyone put up 3D models of their houses so they can offer virtual tours on the web. Or put out for bids on landscaping or renovations.
DRM doesn't (completely) solve the simple problem of the time and date. Every time I take my digital camera's batteries out and don't put a fresh set back within about 5 minutes, all my settings are lost. And cameras always allow you to reset the time.
Of course film cameras (on the low end) don't have clocks in the first place, so this is not a new problem. But when folk blindly trust it "because it's in the computer", the simple process of tracking time becomes a bigger issue in credibility.
The cost of making the cameras (and media they write to) "secure" is high, whether you do it with technology or with process. Someone will find a way to question either.
Yes, 2.6 should be sufficiently stable to support its own weight long enough for 2.7 to metamophosis into 2.8 and become sufficiently stable to support its own weight...
In the meantime, there are some bugfixes that look like new features; that's the way software works. There are some new features that look like bugs; ditto. We know that security bugs are considered vital no matter how old the kernel (well, to a point). And so someone often will fix that.
All that to say that it's called "software" because it's squishy and can change (or be changed). And there's nothing besides lack of time that keeps you from including a new feature in 2.0, 2.2, or 2.4 and putting up a patch archive to support your favorite feature/fix that "someone" really should have put in long ago. To paraphrase my Subject line, "one man's trash is another man's treasure".
With minimal sys admin resources I would go with apple les patches and updates and virus protection needed. (Not none just less)
I live in Maine, so my 7th grader has an iBook. My 9th grader - irked because he "missed" the opportunity last year, and who is a Linux bigot already (I'm a proud papa) - and I know our grade school admin, and he's pretty frantic running around handling all the K-8 teachers needs and the addition of about 100 roaming laptops has been a challenge for him. But he's coping.
The kids are doing OK with their iBooks. The systems are pretty rugged, and evidently there was little loss in last year's class. Now that both 7th and 8th graders have them, though, I'm waiting to hear the cry of "uncle" from the admin.
On the theft/damage side, the school has insured each iBook. Parents must sign a waiver that puts the deductible of $100 on our bill if the laptop is damaged, lost, or stolen when it's not on school property.
I'm bummed that the folk at Apple and MLTI have disabled non-school airport access. Last year there was a hole, which we discovered when a couple of 7th graders dropped by the house. They had similarly disabled the modem access last year. I haven't tried plugging directly into the the wired LAN at the house yet.
It's an interesting experiment, in the home of the way life should be.
Face it: computers may be a tool, but we also know that they are - for adult geeks - adult toys. So this is our version of a Transformer. See how it folds and unfolds? There's a huge sensory win when you work with a well-engineered tool, whether it's a pocket knife, computer, or some clever toy. All the big computer folk should be taking a more serious look at "kid" toys and vice versa.
I still remember seeing my first PCMCIA modem card; it had a great little spring-loaded port for the phone cable. So it wasn't terribly robust, but it was a great hack. Which made it more interesting - as a toy - to play with.
When the laptops come with a built in green laser and the software to seemlessly - and wirelessly - make use of front and rear projection TV is ready for the masses, then these toys can be even more useful. In fact, when your car has a BlueTooth transmitter for the engine computer, you'll be able to bond it to your laptop or PDA. It really will be a transformer, as your computer melds in and out of your vehicle!
Key management - and paranoia management - remain the problems with all PGP/GPG solutions. If it's too easy to use, it's usually not secure enough and vice versa.
It seems that a device - like the keyfob-sized USB "memory drives" should be nearly enough for any personal use. Ideally there would be some sort of fingerprint or biometric reader in it too, though the existing passphrase mechanism could suffice. Just put your secret key on it and you can take it with you. I guess the problem is keeping randome machines from snagging a copy, though, since the same machine you plug the fob in to can also snag your keystrokes and thus your passphrase.
Every day we separate people transport needs from cargo moving needs. The major people movers may also have a cargo arm (or vice versa), but they usually do them in frames that are perhaps similar but implemented for their specific tasks. Sure, some stuff doubtless travels with people in the cargo/luggage hold (though 9/11 may have stopped some of that), and we saw in CastAway that Tom Hanks was one of a handful of crew/passengers on the FedEx plane. But we have been sending unmanned rockets up for a long time.
So it does make sense for both viable manned and unmanned space flight. I just don't want to see all space exploration done by wire because, ultimately, it just doesn't feel right.
Reusability is orthogonal to this, I think, though once again it Just Makes Sense to reuse what you can. There are extremes that we don't need to go to, though. There aren't too many times I've really wanted a reusable cable tie, for instance.
AFAIK, you can always rematriculate to finish. Just pay full tuition (there's a song about tuition) and talk to the current-day equivalent of Ann Chick and the DoSA; perhaps the Office of Career Services? Oh, you want to earn a degree by going part time? Bzzzt. I don't think they are there yet.
It's not unlike a lot of schools and their doctoral programs, though. They want you and your attention full time. It may well help you focus better (though most folk going to school later in life are far more motivated than I, and I daresay you, were at 17-21) and, more cynically, it gives them (particularly the administration, not the faculty) a chance to work on your give-to-MIT brain on a daily basis.
Yeah, I did graduate. In nine semesters. At least they were contiguous. They were hardly smooth, and only sometimes discrete.
Remembrance agents have been around for a while. They learn, and they can be intrusive, er, obsequious, or come only when called.
Q: Do you anticipate a lot of privacy concerns over this? A: Absolutely. We're O.K. with the idea that other people sitting in our office know most of what we do. But people are much less comfortable that there's a record of this on their computer. There's also the issue of security. But [monitoring of employee activities] already [goes] on.
Actually, I'm not "really O.K." with the idea that others in my office know most of what "we" do; that's why I work from home. I don't mind my family knowing, though, which is why I work from home. What my employer should want to know is that a) I'm getting the desired task accomplished and b) not doing something that can directly and negatively impact the company. But "b" shouldn't be a problem if the employer has vetted me to their satisfaction, which is a completely different problem.
"Intellectual Property" is forever(?)
on
Diamonds & the RIAA
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Last I knew, you couldn't copyright a diamond. But you could hold on to it, and, if you didn't let it get stolen, damaged, or lost, you could sell it to someone else. So it could be a one time inheritance boon if your estate is otherwise meager and your heirs aren't sentimental. Which is why the Diamond Folk work in sentiment, too, so you don't see every dead woman's engagement ring on the aution block. And even if she and her son wouldn't mind, how many women want to wear Mommy-in-law's rocks? Instead, folk go out and buy a new diamond.
CDs aren't forever, but the force of copyright means that if you cut a Big Hit(tm), you and your heirs can have a recurring revenue stream for a long time, along with all the fat, balding, over-40 WASPs who are the bulk of the middlemen pushing your work. So RIAA wants to hawk as many "legit" jewels as they can without someone undercutting them. That you can buy some DRM'd songs and can't transfer them to a new system. Hard to find anyone against the concept of playing a "used" MP3 on their system, right?
The second speaker, who was charged with reviewing the history of how the accident could have come about, observes that it's dangerous to use beta tools for a long time as if they are production ready.
The shuttle is and was an experiment. It's effectively a very functional prototype, but the completion - or at least the ongoing refinement - of the shuttle program has been in stasis for too long. We're not driving Model-T's anymore for a reason.
What's really messed up though, is how ONLY people who read slashdot seem to know anything about it. I'm serious - I've tried to bring up SCO's situation a couple of times and no one knows what the hell I'm talking about. Even other programmers where I work have no clue that anything has happened at all.
Bzzzt. I read The Register more "deeply" than I do/.; I'm just here because I get to see lot's of amusing flamage about SCO. And trans-Atlantic model airplanes...
Slashdot Mirror
The Register offered one way to see the list:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/13/trend_micro_website_infected/
The list is over 23,000 pages:
http://www.l.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22script+src%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.2117966.net%2Ffuckjp.js%22&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f
I haven't counted the Google-provided list. In theory some of those sites/pages have already been cleaned up, and they are reported 'cuz that was the last time Google spidered them.
This little PC goes to market, this little PS3 gets none, and this little one goes "Wii wii wii" all the way home.
The proven level of quality of Wikipedia.org suggests this is an interesting, but not inherently good, idea. Rather than "peer review", a Wiki would be better suited for a "Public Comment" area. It's a matter of setting the proper expectations: public comment is what is really happening here in the general case, and hopefully it's "informed public comment". Formal peer review tends to be picky; public comment can be icky.
It's a a neat experiment, but having only quickly skimmed some of the wiki at jot.com, I wonder if the proponents have looked carefully at the prior art, e.g.: en.wikipedia.org. And the jot.com site seems to be holding up so far.
Gee. Don't you just plug it on top of your ZipZap remote and wait for the LED to turn green?
Let's learn to fly!
But what I really want is to fill in the "gaps" that most "intelligent" ID folk also point out as a flaw to evolution and a boon to ID. While I don't have any bone to pick with some one who wants to believe in an ultimate engineer - and sometimes I waver that way myself - it's just not science. Martin Gardiner's essays - I'm thinking of those in The Night is Large, but there are other examples - show that an intelligent individual can think both scientifically and still believe in something more than "just" evolution.
It's the difference between science and philosophy.
I don't see much new here. We even have the traditional misspellings.
The speed of innovation in any software can be both a boon and a bomb.
It's easy to drop in the word "framework": with a well-designed framework, you can extend and reuse existing tech. This is why the underlying pipe mechanism in Unix derivatives is so powerful. It's also why it's hard for many to master.
There's also a point when the framework - which should be strong-yet-supple - can instead ossify, like so much old glue that's set up and cracks easily.
Ultimately it is real work to take the time to design something that meets both current *and* future needs. While many working in the kernel and the distributions realize this, there remain the folk who just want to sling code and do the sexy, fun stuff first and fast and loose.
I wonder if the the DND rules in the US would apply to ads on the phone? Perhaps not if you had a choice in selecting your Telco.
Good thing I kicked that habit.
And this is where the debian folk try to tread when they decide which packages are "free" and which are not.
Unfortunately, from an end-user perspective, it can be quite tedious. Sometimes a package goes from "free" to "non-free" and unless you have your ducks in a row, you lose it.
So: how do you want to get paid? If you only want to be paid in the satisfaction of a job well done and/or helping others, Free Software and Open Software are probably close enough for you on the pragmatic level, so long as nobody comes after you claiming their own rights. But if you want to make money (barter, whatever) so that you can eat and have a roof and a 'net connection, Bray does hit the nail: others out there can easily eat your lunch.
I don't see a perfect solution here. I knew the fellow who claimed to have "the" patent for color TV, which, as an employee, he had to assign to RCA. AFAIK, he wasn't a millionaire, but he had a secure job for the rest of his life. RCA evidently recognized his contribution and treated him "fairly". Unfortunately, the world tends more to Scar of The Lion King, as he says to the mouse, "Life isn't fair..."
Most "decent" and frequent software questions from most "smart" users have to do with bugs of ambiguity or other problems that come from either poor documentation, poor software, or both.
I expect the same can be said of the FAQs of many products and interest areas. So the real problem facing an FAQ maintainer is - when they have such control at least - the correction of the problems the FAQ(s) bring to light. In this case, a database makes sense when it links in to the database of acknolwledged bugs or defects with the product or area of interest.
In the case of interest-area FAQs, like rec.woodworking or rec.scuba or rec.your.car, a traditional database makes more sense; you often have no way of fixing something that isn't yours to fix, so you offer advice. But even here, the "current" top-rated FAQ may not always be the most helpful. So one needs to allow a knob or two to keep some FAQs at the top of the list, or otherwise locate them in an obvious place where they are easy to find.
Ultimately I find Google to be my current search-for-the-FAQ-of-the-moment tool, and I sift through the results for what will help me get what I need done.
Just shows that in-house solutions never get the "go". All because of insiders who say, "Hey, I know that clown Kernigan", or, "Are you kidding? Mission critical tools by the likes of Ritchie?" Then there's the fact that the documentation is hardly PC, with all those "man" pages.
Naturally, it makes sense to outsource whenever possible. Perhaps that's the angle that could get OS/X or Linux back into AT&T, since there would be no need to show an in-house cost center in the form of a Unix development team.
Geesh.
For batteries to get better at a Moore's law rate, we need some different physical laws. But we can, as other posters mention, improve on efficiency of other parts. Cooler-running processors and low-power wireless - a la BlueTooth or 802.11[whatever-letter-means-low-power] will help.
To build a better battery has been a goal for longer than computers have been in around.
I love toys...
Of course film cameras (on the low end) don't have clocks in the first place, so this is not a new problem. But when folk blindly trust it "because it's in the computer", the simple process of tracking time becomes a bigger issue in credibility.
The cost of making the cameras (and media they write to) "secure" is high, whether you do it with technology or with process. Someone will find a way to question either.
In the meantime, there are some bugfixes that look like new features; that's the way software works. There are some new features that look like bugs; ditto. We know that security bugs are considered vital no matter how old the kernel (well, to a point). And so someone often will fix that.
All that to say that it's called "software" because it's squishy and can change (or be changed). And there's nothing besides lack of time that keeps you from including a new feature in 2.0, 2.2, or 2.4 and putting up a patch archive to support your favorite feature/fix that "someone" really should have put in long ago. To paraphrase my Subject line, "one man's trash is another man's treasure".
I live in Maine, so my 7th grader has an iBook. My 9th grader - irked because he "missed" the opportunity last year, and who is a Linux bigot already (I'm a proud papa) - and I know our grade school admin, and he's pretty frantic running around handling all the K-8 teachers needs and the addition of about 100 roaming laptops has been a challenge for him. But he's coping.
The kids are doing OK with their iBooks. The systems are pretty rugged, and evidently there was little loss in last year's class. Now that both 7th and 8th graders have them, though, I'm waiting to hear the cry of "uncle" from the admin.
On the theft/damage side, the school has insured each iBook. Parents must sign a waiver that puts the deductible of $100 on our bill if the laptop is damaged, lost, or stolen when it's not on school property.
I'm bummed that the folk at Apple and MLTI have disabled non-school airport access. Last year there was a hole, which we discovered when a couple of 7th graders dropped by the house. They had similarly disabled the modem access last year. I haven't tried plugging directly into the the wired LAN at the house yet.
It's an interesting experiment, in the home of the way life should be.
I still remember seeing my first PCMCIA modem card; it had a great little spring-loaded port for the phone cable. So it wasn't terribly robust, but it was a great hack. Which made it more interesting - as a toy - to play with.
When the laptops come with a built in green laser and the software to seemlessly - and wirelessly - make use of front and rear projection TV is ready for the masses, then these toys can be even more useful. In fact, when your car has a BlueTooth transmitter for the engine computer, you'll be able to bond it to your laptop or PDA. It really will be a transformer, as your computer melds in and out of your vehicle!
It seems that a device - like the keyfob-sized USB "memory drives" should be nearly enough for any personal use. Ideally there would be some sort of fingerprint or biometric reader in it too, though the existing passphrase mechanism could suffice. Just put your secret key on it and you can take it with you. I guess the problem is keeping randome machines from snagging a copy, though, since the same machine you plug the fob in to can also snag your keystrokes and thus your passphrase.
If it's not one thing, it's another.
So it does make sense for both viable manned and unmanned space flight. I just don't want to see all space exploration done by wire because, ultimately, it just doesn't feel right.
Reusability is orthogonal to this, I think, though once again it Just Makes Sense to reuse what you can. There are extremes that we don't need to go to, though. There aren't too many times I've really wanted a reusable cable tie, for instance.
AFAIK, you can always rematriculate to finish. Just pay full tuition (there's a song about tuition) and talk to the current-day equivalent of Ann Chick and the DoSA; perhaps the Office of Career Services? Oh, you want to earn a degree by going part time? Bzzzt. I don't think they are there yet.
It's not unlike a lot of schools and their doctoral programs, though. They want you and your attention full time. It may well help you focus better (though most folk going to school later in life are far more motivated than I, and I daresay you, were at 17-21) and, more cynically, it gives them (particularly the administration, not the faculty) a chance to work on your give-to-MIT brain on a daily basis.
Yeah, I did graduate. In nine semesters. At least they were contiguous. They were hardly smooth, and only sometimes discrete.
CDs aren't forever, but the force of copyright means that if you cut a Big Hit(tm), you and your heirs can have a recurring revenue stream for a long time, along with all the fat, balding, over-40 WASPs who are the bulk of the middlemen pushing your work. So RIAA wants to hawk as many "legit" jewels as they can without someone undercutting them. That you can buy some DRM'd songs and can't transfer them to a new system. Hard to find anyone against the concept of playing a "used" MP3 on their system, right?
The shuttle is and was an experiment. It's effectively a very functional prototype, but the completion - or at least the ongoing refinement - of the shuttle program has been in stasis for too long. We're not driving Model-T's anymore for a reason.
Bzzzt. I read The Register more "deeply" than I do /.; I'm just here because I get to see lot's of amusing flamage about SCO. And trans-Atlantic model airplanes...
I alone am responsible for all 6000 orders
I presume you're male? It would be really scary if you're not...