but an 8-core Mac with lots o' RAM and a ton of HDD space RAIDed out a bit is likely to be way cheaper than what the likes of HP and Dell are gonna charge
Wake up, smell the reality. While Macs with Dual Dual-core Xeons are available recently at over a 10K pricetag, Dell had these puppies available (Precision 690 workstation with 5000X motherboard) available from last July for ~4K (w/4G memory, expandable to 64GB). That was with a top-of-line Nvidia FX4500 Commercial card.
The exact same system (with built in SAS, SATA, PATA and RAID controller) is compatible with demo'ed Intel system -- all I need to do is upgrade the Dual-Core to Quad-Core.
Not much can make use of it -- "Oblivion" pegs the CPU at almost 27%!!! (i.e. uses "1.12-1.16" CPU's out of the 4 available). Runs 32 or 64 bit Windows or Linux off the shelf.
That was last summer. By early this year, the price for one of those Workstations had dropped to slightly over 3K. And you think Mac's at 10K are going to come close to that in performance or price?
Hardly. Price-to-performance, Macs suck. They look "cool", which impresses alot of people, but performance to money? I'll go Dell. That Dual-CPUxDual-Core 690, BTW -- also came with a 3-year, on-site, N.B.D. replacement.
My previous Dell Precision 410? @6+years old, it's a disk-server, DNS-server, mail-server, IMAPs server, backup-server, proxy-server (running linux, of course) for the newer machines (combination of linux and windows machines).
If the owner -- no matter how misinformed as to it's practical value, puts a "lock" on their door, that has, historically, been a clear sign that the owner intended the the interior to be private.
In the case of house doors, simply having all doors closestd, means that they are not expecting walk-in traffic.
On the other hand, if they chain the key to the doorknob for anyone to use (in plain sight), or if they leave their door open, it usually means they are expecting visitors to help themselves in (they can't hear the knocking, or they have an apple grove and constantly put every apple that may not be "perfect" in a "bin" inside where people can let themselves in to use the left-over apples. In the case of leaving the door open, they own a swimming hole. It's the only one in 1000 yards. They are a kindly sort and leave the door unlocked and expect children (and/or parents) to drop by and use the pool that they provide for public use, they may even put the leftover apples next to the pool for sampling, taking when people are their to swim.
Apply this to OAP's. If the user has any sort of encryption or security blocking access then their intent is obviously to obviously keep intruders out and their interior "private". All the locks in their village come from 1 locksmith. In his base-level door model come set with one common, same lock. All the locks are the same from his workshop. He provides a simple way to change the lock and key, changing a tumbler position in the lock and a key tool that allows punching out a custom key. Anyone in the area would know if the lock is in "default", it's a tacit invitation that, at least those from the "neighborhood" can have access. If someone is outside the area then they may or may not have the same code as a default on their keychain and so they also are let in.
Along the same lines, it he leaves the front door key unlock (unencrypted), and/or his WiFi unit responds to anonymous requests for the "nodename",, he's again, tacitly allowing people to enter and use his resource (pool, or Wi-Fi). If he didn't want to have people use his WiFi, he would have at least changed his WiFi not to advertise its name or location point. Unauthorized people wouldn't see the code, and those that did had to do some level of "code cracking.l Again this would be 4a clear indication that he wasn't wanting the public to stop in and use his "pool" or eat his apples.
If a user leaves their lock set to the "publicly" available/documented key then it's an invitation for anyone using the same. If a user has kept their key unchanged then their WiFi set to the common 'key' value, he's left his key out for similar purposes then he is inviting those "in the know".
Using "traditional" logic, the farmer/land owner of "old" had certain well known access methods in place, it was an invitation to to access his resources. In the same way, if an owner has put up any security, be it encryption, or a hidden, non-default password, they it is obvious the user was attempting to restrict access.
In the case of showing any attempt at protection, intrusion would be trespassing. However, it might be assumed that they user was leaving their access point open for public usage.
Summary
I think it is the owner's responsibility to add any security to send a message -- even if the security is "lame".
A recent, real-life court case was decided on the above logic (and might act a precedence (at least in the US). An employee took his private computer to work to use for work in an educational setting. One day he was sick and another employee needed lesson plan info. The employee knew the absent employee left his compute unlocked and took the initiative to fetch the lesson plans. In doing so, he found child porn pictures.
The compute owner was prosecuted, but protested that it was his private computer. The judge ruled that he had not taken any steps to protect his
Something I've always thought about with MS -- because of their "creative" bug classification system, was that an "external" bug database was needed. It doesn't need to have all the doublespeak of the MS database, and could have shorter entries with detailed entries on how-to-reproduce, products affected, etc...
MS refuses to classify anything as a "bug" -- they are become 'knowledge base articles", it seems. Or, as in this case, "features".
I have a strong feeling that their reported bug statistics are heavily "padded" (or unpadded as the case may be). The external database wouldn't have to have every single incident MS records, but at least it could contain every bug that MS refuses to publish on their website and everything that is really a "bug" - no matter what "newspeak" they use to classify it.
I have a strong feeling that their number of bugs reported in products and security flaws would grow alot larger than the official MS stats.
I know some of this is done in external security-bug databases, bug, especially, exploitable-security related bugs don't end up there.
_Maybe_, the external bug database would only hold the bugs that MS "ignores" or refuses to acknowledge. Might be too much work - but would probably provide a good "black-eye" for MS when the number of REAL bugs accumulates beyond all their previous published figures.... Nice personal fantasy - as I've had some bugs that existed for, literally, _years_, that might have been solvable by reformatting and reinstalling, but I had alot of software and customizations that had accumulated over the years that I didn't want to reinstall or reproduce. The bug was brought on by installing a MS-critical security fix. It only went away when I got a new computer with a new OS. What a *pain*!
Even if it were a significant amount of energy, this energy is entirely absorbed by the atmosphere at altitudes above 60km. You would need to come up with a plausible mechanism for transporting this radiation down into the lower atmosphere without increasing the temperature of the stratosphere.
Um...to be clear, radiation includes "light", IR and UV components as well.
There has been some large concern over an increasing ozone-size and the fact that it may be decades before pollutants (CFC's and such), released decades ago, decline enough to reverse the lowering ozone density.
That lowered ozone and growing lack of ozone (ozone holes, mainly over south, but with some effects noticed over north pole (!side question, why are most pollution heavy cultures (western) in northern hemisphere and ozone hole is largest in southern hemisphere?!)) is allowing significantly larger amounts of high energy radiation (UV light is higher energy/photon than visible or Infrared spectrum) through to the surface. It isn't being filtered out in the upper atmosphere. There is some concern, beside growing skin cancer cases (especially in southern hemisphere areas of Australia and New Zealand), of it causing damage to animal and plant life, planet-wide.
Second, related to the magnetic field decline, the earth would gradually lose its current level of shielding from the solar wind. This, in turn would appear to cause an increase of nitrogen oxide in the upper atmosphere, especially during proton-heavy coronal mass ejections. This leads to the same effect as is theorized for CRC's -- ozone depletion.
Problem example: Outside on sunny day, clouds move over your location -- it is virtually guaranteed, that the temperature will go down. On the other hand -- on a fully overcast day, we are warned that UV radiation is nearly as intense as on a sunny day. Supposedly UV radiation is much better at penetrating cloud cover.
Seems like decrease of magnetic field --> leads to decrease ozone layer protection --> leads to increase of higher energy photons (that tends to stunt plant growth and thereby slow down the CO2->O2 cycle) hitting the earth's surface.
I don't know the full effects of increased higher-energy photon radiation hitting earth's surface would be, but it seems like most would be converted to lower-energy IR upon hitting the ground. I.e. -- it should, cause some rise in temperature. Whether or not it is significant, I can't say, but I don't believe it to be inconsequential.
I'm sure that CO2 has some effect on global warming, but there are other factors in play here that may be as much as or of greater effect than man's CO2 output. I sometimes wonder -- with just all the *heat* output produced by "mankind" (even in summer we are running our heat pumps, to make our inside spaces cooler). Might that not have some added effect?
Compsci degree going; IT-tech degree replacing
on
Is Computer Science Dead?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
How many computer science graduates are actually doing computer science.
Working as a programmer in an IT department doesn't usually have much to do with science -- it's about trying to create more standardized cogs from a growing number of previously coded cogs.
How much research is being done today on individual users benefitting from 32-128core machines?
Assuming some magic doesn't happen and GHz start climbing / doubling without frying, it seems like they are just raising GHz/chip by adding more cores at similar clock rates. How can this benefit the average PC user? If it can't be exploited for "individual persons", it sounds like the PC may be a thing of the past.
Is that what people want? Right now, the only ways of using multi-cores is usually running separate programs at the same time -- if you can use that -- but a home system doesn't usually need to serve web pages to 1000's of users. OR, divide your machine into "VM"s Nice for test/develop/production/redundancy, but again -- not too helpful for the average joe wanting programs to run faster/smoother, more user friendliness.
What will it take to use Parallel computing in the Personal Computer industry? doesn't that sorta imply, if not the death, a serious problem in the Personal Computer industry.
Do we have enough cores to start building some practical AI's? Can we develop special compilers and light-weight threads (i.e. - not separate processes) to allow use of multi cores dynamically in an individual program (for loops not needing previous loop result could all be parallelized if parallelizing cost to create helper threads for a few to several loops could have low enough overhead to make it worth it.
Seems like AI and parallelizing are at least two areas that need computer science, but that doesn't seem to be what most people are doing these days. Might use it in voie and face recognition, but again -- not very general tasks.
What companies are doing Computer Science these days? Seems like most employers just need development of applications to run curent "paradigms. No "computer science" needed.
Most high level developers at companies -- even in Open Source (or at least the Linux Kernel) are awfully conservative when it comes to doing computer science. They want the tried and true, step-wise development vs. large scale "disruptive technologies" that could enable whole new ways of doing things. People at the top of most large projects (commercial and O.S.) are too conservative to be doing real computer science.
Maybe research grants? Seems like the Bush idea of research grants are things that are guaranteed to provide benefits in the near future (soon enough to be used in the theater of battle, for example).
Is there any place for computer science research outside of getting your doctoral?
Monitor everyone, to get dirt on everyone (is anyone really "clean" of all laws these days?
Government mafia: look, we got the goods on you -- you displosed of rechargable batteries in the trash. Under Section 9.1.u.R.screwed, subsection batteries, all batteries have been classified as dangerous chemical waste that you might take to an authorized disposal center. Throwing one in the garbage is a Class 2 Felony, minimum two years imprisonment and forfeiture/confiscation of all electronic products containing any regulated waste content. Now, if you cooperate and spy for us, we might get the charges reduced to misdemeanor littering. The choice is yours...
Seems to be the current cop tactic -- arrest any and everyone connected, charge me with little known violations and blackmail them into bring down their acquaintances.
Someone please establish a connection between NASA getting someone to the Moon and MySpace verifying users' authenticy*. I'm really curious.
1. Putting someone on the moon is something I know nothing about. It is hard. "We" solved it. 2. Verifying age and identity on the internet is something I know nothing about. It is hard. Therefore: "someone" can solve it.
Typical lawmaker mentality. Right up there with managers who think employees are substitutable/exchangeable parts: I know nothing about programming. Employee A claims to be able to do it in 1 month, therefore, employee B should be able to do it in 1 month.
The proofs are very logical when you know nothing.
The belief in a supernatural being might be preferable to coming to grips with "this is it".
For most people, that could be an incredibly depressing thought. Most of humanity is not "well off". Religion is "a way" to ingrain morality and (when the government controls the religion) control the people. Any threat you can come up with is far worse if the people imagine they will have to endure it for eternity -- and conversely, the suffering that people endure now is often tolerable, only because they believe there will be an afterlife that will be better.
Aren't songs purchased from iTunes still limited to 128Kpbs? Doesn't the >11x compression suck when put on a CD and compared to another CD?
That Apple "allows burning to CD" is ridiculously useless. Who would want to waste time and materials burning a.128Mbps stream onto a 1.4112Mbps media? It's certainly not going to allow inter-player portability -- first adding 91% "white space" to convert to CD, then recompressing that to some other format? YUCK.
Unless Apple allows burning a "lossless" format to CD, their burn to CD option is essentially worthless other than to protect against catastrophic loss -- but even then -- to put it back on your iPod, you'll have to recompress it and never having even the "medium" quality that the original iTune download had.
It is amazing what Apple has done if you think about it. They've taken music that came at 1.4Mbps, reduce the quality to some minor fraction of the original, then resell the songs at a dollar a piece, maybe doubling the price/song then giving the user a non-tangible "right" to play this low-quality format. With a CD, at least you can sell the CD if you don't want it anymore. I doubt there is a resale value for iTune songs even if the license and software permitted.
Essentially, they did what the music distributors wanted to do -- selling you a low-quality copy that is too low to have any intrinsic value that may not even be worth backing up or trying to save. Basically a low-quality, "rental" copy. And the market loves them!
Amazon is doing the same with movies -- a rental download -- that doesn't appear to be near the same quality as a DVD and cannot be saved -- all for about the same price as a DVD.
Seems like such a waste of time and money, but unfortunately, the market is not only accepting this "hyper inflation", but "eating it up".
This doesn't bode well for media being moved into the public domain for the public good. I know others have whined about this before, but copyrights were supposed to be a reward for contributing to the public good. Where's the balance?:-/
It's software -- they can insist the software be patched. Provide a several month window -- problem solved.
Keys from software players should be (unfortunately) a "no-brainer" to update. You want MS updates? They validate licenses via continuous internet access. Why not with software players?
Original spec I saw for hardware players had them requiring an internet connection -- like Tivo - so they could reprogram the hardware at will, update keys, and detect newer methods of getting around the encryption.
On of the reasons for not allowing MS-Vista in virtual machines -- in a virtual machine, you are back to the original problem had with unknown hardware -- you have no reliable "TPM".
Maybe they'll soon require virtual machines have direct access to the host TPM to allow key storage for HD video and such...
But how long in the future will it be before discs are "quaint" -- and content is downloaded "online" (including, possibly from library or other no-charge sources), but with that will also come requirements of access to your machine from the internet (or your machine accessing the internet every time you want to play something).
Frankly I'm surprised this isn't in the first generation of players -- from what I remember reading in the first Blue-Ray write-ups, an internet connection was to be required from day one to verify licenses, online. I didn't think it would sell from a practical standpoint -- and maybe that's related to why they've temporarily backed off.
But how long before people will consider it "normal" to have DVD players (already true with Tivo like devices) require an internet connection?
Have you considered, we already have a lack of "Net Neutrality". It just depends on what you call what. If you are rich enough, you can most likely buy a research position and get access to INTERNET2. How much that costs, dunno. But I'm sure it's available for the right price. You just don't like the current rate structure.
Problem is American Capitalists. They wouldn't use net-coloring (non-neutral) to give better service, they would use it to force more money out of current customers who are using their alloted bandwidth.
The market seemed to shift -- primarily with the advent of electronics and computers. Price to consumer is no longer based on "cost" -- it becomes a function of consumer desire. It becomes about extracting the most money out of a consumer that they are willing to pay. Unfortunately too often, that doesn't translate into better service until the government gets involved -- especially in the form of government spending.
Meanwhile the cable companies get richer and consumers pay more for the same or lesser goods.
I have some vague memory of reading about bad effects associated with something to do with potatoes in their natural state.
They are good as "part" of a diet, but I'm guessing that you concentrate the potatoes and only eat potatoes as your diet, bad things would be likely to happen.
Vague recollection badness related to damage in potato skin -- also the vitamin and mineral rich part -- makes sense -- the skin would have concentrations of stuff.
Now maybe it's a screwy idea, but if you had some "special" potatoes that you wanted to be in "impressive" shape for a study against "regular" potatoes -- if there were millions -- maybe billions of $$$ at stake...do you think someone might be adding some questionable "grow" juice to the special potato environment?
Cancer -- in humans related to cells forgetting how to die and crowding healthy -- can be "stimulated", it seems, by getting human cells to grow faster -- damage them, overfeed them...things like we do all the time. Couldn't potatoes concentrate the "grow" juice -- either causing more potato deformations (possibly unhealthy), or -- just concentrate the "grow juice" that gets fed into mice in the form of who knows what type of imbalances?
Dunno...I think our food is much more affected by how the food is fed (raised, grown), than a simple gene change. Not that all gene changes are good -- but there is A-L-O-T of gene variation in nature. If a few genes being off one way or the other would cause us tons of problems -- but then "maybe" if you fed us _nothing_ besides the altered plants.
Ironically -- if the potatoes were genetically better because they had 20% more nutrition (including calories), they could cause a higher death rate via an increase in obesity related causes (at least over the long term).
Heck...what are they adding to their potato diet? Sour Cream? Butter?... One report doesn't particularly prove anything one way or the other.
The supposed "cover-up" -- that's just fear-based politics -- same as ever.
Ah....well drat. Thanks for the tip....Sounds like I need to go back to the chalk board.... Geez...1.5km?
Getting alot closer -- does the Greenland ice shelf cover the complete area of Greenland? If it did, then I wouldn't be seeing the top of Greenland's highest mountains, would I?
I'm not one to say Global Warming is unreal -- but sometimes the stated effects look a bit overstated at times. I can't think warming will go "unchallenged" for 1-2 centuries. As things get warmer, won't more moisture evaporate into the air? Isn't, for example, there a way to increase the cloud cover/formation? There have been volcanoes in the past that have affected global climate, but at best for a few years -- might not be practical to try to start a volcanic explosion ever few years:-).
"Off the record" payments of this sort would likely expose MS and the company doing the paying to various legal actions like: "monopolistic practices", "extortion", "bribery", and violations of the Sarbanes Oxley rules.
Something doesn't smell right with this "story"...it doesn't pass the "critical thinking" test (not that such a test is important for most people).
What's the misrepresentation? The patent provides for repossession or other sanctions...oh, I get it, you're just following the slashdot custom of not reading the original article...and shooting off a comment...genius, sheer genius...;-/
"Steve Jobs" is an Apple marketing "gimmick". He's just out their to make Apple look "good" and "friendly", while their legal team tightens their DRM and sues the pants of anyone remotely "infringing" on Apple's culture, ideas, interfaces, "looks"... Does anyone really believe Apple doesn't want to lock user's into their platform and hardware as much as possible? Puleeze....
Seems like the link in the main article is already invalid. Somehow the parallel of attempting to point to a specific grain of sand on a desert sand dune comes to mind... -o-
at as long as you're trying to do something that has already been done, then you have an adequate frame of reference to estimate how long it will take/cost.
Corollary: if it has already been done then there is no reason to redo it.
This is exactly why Computer Science is an experimental science and not an engineering discipline like building cars or bridges.
Problem is, that most managers are under the illusion that writing software is as predictable as baking a cake and can be scheduled thusly. Programmers often buy into this and trap themselves into schedules that are completely unrealistic. Programmers who don't buy-in are labeled troublemakers. The result is programmers who over-promise and under-deliver -- thus the software of today.
Competition may happen. We may not "pay" more -- users in other countries have more than an order of magnitude faster speeds than I have, yet I'm being charged probably 2-3 times as much as what some of them pay.
The Capitalistic system is charging the highest price that you can for each level -- don't provide faster or cheaper service unless your competition demands it. It's not that they _couldn't_ provide faster speeds at cheaper costs -- it's just not AS profitable. It's more important to extract the maximum profit from each incremental improvement than it is to provide a significantly better improvement.
If you have a "CPU" that runs at "1GHz", then say you have the option to provide a new CPU at 2GHz, do you offer it -- even at a 2x price? Of course not. You sell the same part labeled as a 1.2GHz, 1.4, 1.6, 1.8, and a 2.0. The idea is you entice as many customers as possible to buy the lower spec'ed parts at the highest price possible -- because they will eventually need an upgrade, and the lower-spec'ed part you sold them, the sooner they'll need an upgrade.
Same w/electronics. Often you'll see 4-5 models that are identical on the inside. They put a different box on the outside and program the lower models to have fewer features or don't provide the "buttons" to access the features. The sick part -- all the models cost the producer virtually the same. They *could* give all the customers the high-end system for the cheap price -- but they cripple the lower end systems to make the higher end systems appear more valuable (even though on the inside, they aren't).
The same goes for telecoms and such. Around 10 years back a major telecom provided local unlimited calling for a fixed price. They found out that even though they made money on the deal, it was too much less than the established players -- they could make more money by giving less service for the same price. Now, 10 years later, multiple companies provide such plans (for about 40-50% more than what they were first offered for 10 years ago). It's not that it wasn't technically feasible. It's not that it wasn't profitable -- it just wasn't the most efficient way to extract money from the masses. Better to provide tiny incremental steps so the eventual price for the 10 year old technology is 50% more (and 10 years late). So now, we _could_ have had phone service that would be from 10-15 years in the future, but our standard of living has been artificially held back to enable the profiteers to better extract value out of smaller, incremental, and less advanced changes.
This is yet another sign of the growing failure of a pure capitalistic system. It beat out a heavily communist system, but it is also flawed, in that what is good for society as a whole -- what benefits the whole society (not just makes them "richer", though they would be because of an increased standard of living), is not the best way to incrementally extract the most money from the masses.
That you believe that "WE" MUST PAY for these tiny improvements, only underscores the success of the corporate spin doctors.
FWIW, in regards to "Intellectual Property" laws -- why bother to create new things that are real when you can create non-tangible property that must be purchased again and again and has no implicit worth. The latest example of this: the creation and selling of "virtual" properties in an online "game". It's great! Production costs are near 0 for creating tons of "virtual" property. Selling people "nothing"...
Sad to see how much of the world's resources are wasted on tiny, incremental "improvements" rather than "real progress" to forward the society.:-(
I've seen "open source" developer ego's get in the way more than anything else.
The fact that some O.S. people are put on a pedestal is probably one of the worst influences on quality, features, meeting 'customer' needs, documentation and supportability/maintainability.
Greed? I see that almost exclusively in closed-source projects.
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Wake up, smell the reality. While Macs with Dual Dual-core Xeons are available recently at over a 10K pricetag, Dell had these puppies available (Precision 690 workstation with 5000X motherboard) available from last July for ~4K (w/4G memory, expandable to 64GB). That was with a top-of-line
Nvidia FX4500 Commercial card.
The exact same system (with built in SAS, SATA, PATA and RAID controller) is compatible with demo'ed Intel system -- all I need to do is upgrade the Dual-Core to Quad-Core.
Not much can make use of it -- "Oblivion" pegs the CPU at almost 27%!!! (i.e. uses "1.12-1.16" CPU's out of the 4 available). Runs 32 or 64 bit Windows or Linux off the shelf.
That was last summer. By early this year, the price for one of those Workstations had dropped to slightly over 3K. And you think Mac's at 10K are going to come close to that in performance or price?
Hardly. Price-to-performance, Macs suck. They look "cool", which impresses alot of people, but performance to money? I'll go Dell. That Dual-CPUxDual-Core 690, BTW -- also came with a 3-year, on-site, N.B.D. replacement.
My previous Dell Precision 410? @6+years old, it's a disk-server, DNS-server, mail-server, IMAPs server, backup-server, proxy-server (running linux, of course) for the newer machines (combination of linux and windows machines).
Doesn't this imply that those who are most successful at illusion (deceit) will prosper?
If the owner -- no matter how misinformed as to it's practical value, puts a "lock" on their door, that has, historically, been a clear sign that the owner intended the the interior to be private.
In the case of house doors, simply having all doors closestd, means that they are not expecting walk-in traffic.
On the other hand, if they chain the key to the doorknob for anyone to use (in plain sight), or if
they leave their door open, it usually means they are expecting visitors to help themselves in (they can't hear the knocking, or they have an apple grove and constantly put every apple that may not be "perfect" in a "bin" inside where people can let themselves in to use the left-over apples. In the case of leaving the door open, they own a swimming hole. It's the only one in 1000 yards. They are a kindly sort and leave the door unlocked and expect children (and/or parents) to drop by and use the pool that they provide for public use, they may even put the leftover apples next to the pool for sampling, taking when people are their to swim.
Apply this to OAP's. If the user has any sort of encryption or security blocking access then their intent is obviously to obviously keep intruders out and their interior "private". All the locks in their village come from 1 locksmith. In his base-level door model come set with one common, same lock. All the locks are the same from his workshop. He provides a simple way to change the lock and key, changing a tumbler position in the lock and a key tool that allows punching out a custom key. Anyone in the area would know if the lock is in "default", it's a tacit invitation that, at least those from the "neighborhood" can have access. If someone is outside the area then they may or may not have the same
code as a default on their keychain and so they also are let in.
Along the same lines, it he leaves the front door key unlock (unencrypted), and/or his WiFi unit responds to anonymous requests for the "nodename",, he's again, tacitly allowing people to enter and use his resource (pool, or Wi-Fi). If he didn't want to have people use his WiFi, he would have at least
changed his WiFi not to advertise its name or location point. Unauthorized people wouldn't see
the code, and those that did had to do some level of "code cracking.l Again this would be 4a clear indication that he wasn't wanting the public to stop in and use his "pool" or eat his apples.
If a user leaves their lock set to the "publicly" available/documented key then it's an invitation for anyone using the same. If a user has kept their key unchanged then their WiFi set to the common 'key'
value, he's left his key out for similar purposes then he is inviting those "in the know".
Using "traditional" logic, the farmer/land owner of "old" had certain well known access methods in place, it was an invitation to to access his resources. In the same way, if an owner has put up any security, be it encryption, or a hidden, non-default password, they it is obvious the user was attempting to restrict access.
In the case of showing any attempt at protection, intrusion would be trespassing. However, it might be assumed that they user was leaving their access point open for public usage.
Summary
I think it is the owner's responsibility to add any security to send a message -- even if the security is "lame".
A recent, real-life court case was decided on the above logic (and might act a precedence (at least in the US). An employee took his private computer to work to use for work in an educational setting.
One day he was sick and another employee needed lesson plan info. The employee knew the absent employee left his compute unlocked and took the initiative to fetch the lesson plans. In doing so, he found child porn pictures.
The compute owner was prosecuted, but protested that it was his private computer. The judge ruled that he had not taken any steps to protect his
Something I've always thought about with MS -- because of their "creative" bug classification system, was that an "external" bug database was needed. It doesn't need to have all the doublespeak of the MS database, and could have shorter entries with detailed entries on how-to-reproduce, products affected, etc...
MS refuses to classify anything as a "bug" -- they are become 'knowledge base articles", it seems. Or, as in this case, "features".
I have a strong feeling that their reported bug statistics are heavily "padded" (or unpadded as the case may be). The external database wouldn't have to have every single incident MS records, but at least it could contain every bug that MS refuses to publish on their website and everything that is really a "bug" - no matter what "newspeak" they use to classify it.
I have a strong feeling that their number of bugs reported in products and security flaws would grow alot larger than the official MS stats.
I know some of this is done in external security-bug databases, bug, especially, exploitable-security related bugs don't end up there.
_Maybe_, the external bug database would only hold the bugs that MS "ignores" or refuses to acknowledge. Might be too much work - but would probably provide a good "black-eye" for MS when the number of REAL bugs accumulates beyond all their previous published figures.... Nice personal fantasy - as I've had some bugs that existed for, literally, _years_, that might have been solvable by reformatting and reinstalling, but I had alot of software and customizations that had accumulated over the years that I didn't want to reinstall or reproduce. The bug was brought on by installing a MS-critical security fix. It only went away when I got a new computer with a new OS. What a *pain*!
So you are saying you don't know the difference between "for" and "against"?
No wonder people have problems getting along with, and understanding others -- they can't even tell the difference between "for" and "against"....
Sigh...
-l
She also had access to the town library computers most likely -- she might have visited any of her friends houses as well.
How much of your downloading do you do at someone else's house on their private computer?
Um...to be clear, radiation includes "light", IR and UV components as well.
There has been some large concern over an increasing ozone-size and the fact that it may be decades before pollutants (CFC's and such), released decades ago, decline enough to reverse the lowering ozone density.
That lowered ozone and growing lack of ozone (ozone holes, mainly over south, but with some effects noticed over north pole (!side question, why are most pollution heavy cultures (western) in northern hemisphere and ozone hole is largest in southern hemisphere?!)) is allowing significantly larger amounts of high energy radiation (UV light is higher energy/photon than visible or Infrared spectrum) through to the surface. It isn't being filtered out in the upper atmosphere. There is some concern, beside growing skin cancer cases (especially in southern hemisphere areas of Australia and New Zealand), of it causing damage to animal and plant life, planet-wide.
Second, related to the magnetic field decline, the earth would gradually lose its current level of shielding from the solar wind. This, in turn would appear to cause an increase of nitrogen oxide in the upper atmosphere, especially during proton-heavy coronal mass ejections. This leads to the same effect as is theorized for CRC's -- ozone depletion.
Problem example: Outside on sunny day, clouds move over your location -- it is virtually guaranteed, that the temperature will go down. On the other hand -- on a fully overcast day, we are warned that UV radiation is nearly as intense as on a sunny day. Supposedly UV radiation is much better at penetrating cloud cover.
Seems like decrease of magnetic field --> leads to decrease ozone layer protection --> leads to increase of higher energy photons (that tends to stunt plant growth and thereby slow down the CO2->O2 cycle) hitting the earth's surface.
I don't know the full effects of increased higher-energy photon radiation hitting earth's surface would be, but it seems like most would be converted to lower-energy IR upon hitting the ground. I.e. -- it should, cause some rise in temperature. Whether or not it is significant, I can't say, but I don't believe it to be inconsequential.
I'm sure that CO2 has some effect on global warming, but there are other factors in play here that may be as much as or of greater effect than man's CO2 output. I sometimes wonder -- with just all the *heat* output produced by "mankind" (even in summer we are running our heat pumps, to make our inside spaces cooler). Might that not have some added effect?
How many computer science graduates are actually doing computer science.
Working as a programmer in an IT department doesn't usually have much to do with science -- it's about trying to create more standardized cogs from a growing number of previously coded cogs.
How much research is being done today on individual users benefitting from 32-128core machines?
Assuming some magic doesn't happen and GHz start climbing / doubling without frying, it seems like they are just raising GHz/chip by adding more cores at similar
clock rates. How can this benefit the average PC user? If it can't be exploited for "individual persons", it sounds like the PC may be a thing of the past.
Is that what people want? Right now, the only ways of using multi-cores is usually running separate programs at the same time -- if you can use that -- but a home system doesn't usually need to serve web pages to 1000's of users. OR, divide your machine into "VM"s Nice for test/develop/production/redundancy, but again -- not too helpful for the average joe wanting programs to run faster/smoother, more user friendliness.
What will it take to use Parallel computing in the Personal Computer industry? doesn't that sorta imply, if not the death, a serious problem in the Personal Computer industry.
Do we have enough cores to start building some practical AI's? Can we develop
special compilers and light-weight threads (i.e. - not separate processes) to allow use of multi cores dynamically in an individual program (for loops not needing previous loop result could all be parallelized if parallelizing cost to create helper threads for a few to several loops could have low enough overhead to make it worth it.
Seems like AI and parallelizing are at least two areas that need computer science, but that doesn't seem to be what most people are doing these days. Might use it in voie and face recognition, but again -- not very general tasks.
What companies are doing Computer Science these days? Seems like most employers just need development of applications to run curent "paradigms. No "computer science" needed.
Most high level developers at companies -- even in Open Source (or at least the Linux Kernel) are awfully conservative when it comes to doing computer science. They want the tried and true, step-wise development vs. large scale "disruptive technologies" that could enable whole new ways of doing things. People at the top of most large projects (commercial and O.S.) are too conservative to be doing real computer science.
Maybe research grants? Seems like the Bush idea of research grants are things that are guaranteed to provide benefits in the near future (soon enough to be used in the theater of battle, for example).
Is there any place for computer science research outside of getting your doctoral?
Sorta intertwined, no?
Monitor everyone, to get dirt on everyone (is anyone really "clean" of all laws these days?
Government mafia: look, we got the goods on you -- you displosed of rechargable batteries in the trash. Under Section 9.1.u.R.screwed, subsection batteries, all batteries have been classified as dangerous chemical waste that you might take to an authorized disposal center. Throwing one in the garbage is a Class 2 Felony, minimum two years imprisonment and forfeiture/confiscation of all electronic products containing any regulated waste content. Now, if you cooperate and spy for us, we might get the charges reduced to misdemeanor littering. The choice is yours...
Seems to be the current cop tactic -- arrest any and everyone connected, charge me with little known violations and blackmail them into bring down their acquaintances.
Sigh
It's for the VRML HD programs...
Interactive cable -- virtual immersive worlds.
1. Putting someone on the moon is something I know nothing about. It is hard. "We" solved it.
2. Verifying age and identity on the internet is something I know nothing about. It is hard. Therefore: "someone" can solve it.
Typical lawmaker mentality. Right up there with managers who think employees are substitutable/exchangeable parts: I know nothing about programming. Employee A claims to be able to do it in 1 month, therefore, employee B should be able to do it in 1 month.
The proofs are very logical when you know nothing.
The belief in a supernatural being might be preferable to coming to grips with "this is it".
For most people, that could be an incredibly depressing thought. Most of humanity is not "well off". Religion is "a way" to ingrain morality and (when the government controls the religion) control the people. Any threat you can come up with is far worse if the people imagine they will have to endure it for eternity -- and conversely, the suffering that people endure now is often tolerable, only because they believe there will be an afterlife that will be better.
Ah--it's all proof of CO2 causing warming. The atmosphere is over 95% CO2!
Aren't songs purchased from iTunes still limited to 128Kpbs? Doesn't the >11x compression suck when put on a CD and compared to another CD?
.128Mbps stream onto a 1.4112Mbps media? It's certainly not going to allow inter-player portability -- first adding 91% "white space" to convert to CD, then recompressing that to some other format? YUCK.
:-/
That Apple "allows burning to CD" is ridiculously useless. Who would want to waste time and materials burning a
Unless Apple allows burning a "lossless" format to CD, their burn to CD option is essentially worthless other than to protect against catastrophic loss -- but even then -- to put it back on your iPod, you'll have to recompress it and never having even the "medium" quality that the original iTune download had.
It is amazing what Apple has done if you think about it. They've taken music that came at 1.4Mbps, reduce the quality to some minor fraction of the original, then resell the songs at a dollar a piece, maybe doubling the price/song then giving the user a non-tangible "right" to play this low-quality format. With a CD, at least you can sell the CD if you don't want it anymore. I doubt there is a resale value for iTune songs even if the license and software permitted.
Essentially, they did what the music distributors wanted to do -- selling you a low-quality copy that is too low to have any intrinsic value that may not even be worth backing up or trying to save. Basically a low-quality, "rental" copy. And the market loves them!
Amazon is doing the same with movies -- a rental download -- that doesn't appear to be near the same quality as a DVD and cannot be saved -- all for about the same price as a DVD.
Seems like such a waste of time and money, but unfortunately, the market is not only accepting this "hyper inflation", but "eating it up".
This doesn't bode well for media being moved into the public domain for the public good. I know others have whined about this before, but copyrights were supposed to be a reward for contributing to the public good. Where's the balance?
It's software -- they can insist the software be patched. Provide a several month window -- problem solved.
Keys from software players should be (unfortunately) a "no-brainer" to update. You want MS updates? They validate licenses via continuous internet access. Why not with software players?
Original spec I saw for hardware players had them requiring an internet connection -- like Tivo - so they could reprogram the hardware at will, update keys, and detect newer methods of getting around the encryption.
On of the reasons for not allowing MS-Vista in virtual machines -- in a virtual machine, you are back to the original problem had with unknown hardware -- you have no reliable "TPM".
Maybe they'll soon require virtual machines have direct access to the host TPM to allow key storage for HD video and such...
But how long in the future will it be before discs are "quaint" -- and content is downloaded "online" (including, possibly from library or other no-charge sources), but with that will also come requirements of access to your machine from the internet (or your machine accessing the internet every time you want to play something).
Frankly I'm surprised this isn't in the first generation of players -- from what I remember reading in the first Blue-Ray write-ups, an internet connection was to be required from day one to verify licenses, online. I didn't think it would sell from a practical standpoint -- and maybe that's related to why they've temporarily backed off.
But how long before people will consider it "normal" to have DVD players (already true with Tivo like devices) require an internet connection?
Have you considered, we already have a lack of "Net Neutrality". It just depends on what you call what. If you are rich enough, you can most likely buy a research position and get access to INTERNET2. How much that costs, dunno. But I'm sure it's available for the right price. You just don't like the current rate structure.
Problem is American Capitalists. They wouldn't use net-coloring (non-neutral) to give better service, they would use it to force more money out of current customers who are using their alloted bandwidth.
The market seemed to shift -- primarily with the advent of electronics and computers. Price to consumer is no longer based on "cost" -- it becomes a function of consumer desire. It becomes about extracting the most money out of a consumer that they are willing to pay. Unfortunately too often, that doesn't translate into better service until the government gets involved -- especially in the form of government spending.
Meanwhile the cable companies get richer and consumers pay more for the same or lesser goods.
I have some vague memory of reading about bad effects associated with something to do with potatoes in their natural state.
... One report doesn't particularly prove anything one way or the other.
They are good as "part" of a diet, but I'm guessing that you concentrate the potatoes and only eat potatoes as your diet, bad things would be likely to happen.
Vague recollection badness related to damage in potato skin -- also the vitamin and mineral rich part -- makes sense -- the skin would have concentrations of stuff.
Now maybe it's a screwy idea, but if you had some "special" potatoes that you wanted to be in "impressive" shape for a study against "regular" potatoes -- if there were millions -- maybe billions of $$$ at stake...do you think someone might be adding some questionable "grow" juice to the special potato environment?
Cancer -- in humans related to cells forgetting how to die and crowding healthy -- can be "stimulated", it seems, by getting human cells to grow faster -- damage them, overfeed them...things like we do all the time. Couldn't potatoes concentrate the "grow" juice -- either causing more potato deformations (possibly unhealthy), or -- just concentrate the "grow juice" that gets fed into mice in the form of who knows what type of imbalances?
Dunno...I think our food is much more affected by how the food is fed (raised, grown), than a simple gene change. Not that all gene changes are good -- but there is A-L-O-T of gene variation in nature. If a few genes being off one way or the other would cause us tons of problems -- but then "maybe" if you fed us _nothing_ besides the altered plants.
Ironically -- if the potatoes were genetically better because they had 20% more nutrition (including calories), they could cause a higher death rate via an increase in obesity related causes (at least over the long term).
Heck...what are they adding to their potato diet? Sour Cream? Butter?
The supposed "cover-up" -- that's just fear-based politics -- same as ever.
Ah....well drat. Thanks for the tip....Sounds like I need to go back to the chalk board....
:-).
Geez...1.5km?
Getting alot closer -- does the Greenland ice shelf cover the complete area of Greenland? If
it did, then I wouldn't be seeing the top of Greenland's highest mountains, would I?
I'm not one to say Global Warming is unreal -- but sometimes the stated effects look a bit overstated at times. I can't think warming will go "unchallenged" for 1-2 centuries. As things get warmer, won't more moisture evaporate into the air? Isn't, for example, there a way to increase the cloud cover/formation? There have been volcanoes in the past that have affected global climate, but at best for a few years -- might not be practical to try to start a volcanic explosion ever few years
Meanwhile, gotta go back to chalkboard....:-)
Right...and people believe this?
"Off the record" payments of this sort would likely expose MS and the company doing the paying to various legal actions like: "monopolistic practices", "extortion", "bribery", and violations of the Sarbanes Oxley rules.
Something doesn't smell right with this "story"...it doesn't pass the "critical thinking" test (not that such a test is important for most people).
What's the misrepresentation? The patent provides for repossession or other sanctions...oh, I get it, you're just following the slashdot custom of not reading the original article...and shooting off a comment...genius, sheer genius... ;-/
"Steve Jobs" is an Apple marketing "gimmick". He's just out their to make Apple look "good" and "friendly", while their legal team tightens their DRM and sues the pants of anyone remotely "infringing" on Apple's culture, ideas, interfaces, "looks"... Does anyone really believe Apple doesn't want to lock user's into their platform and hardware as much as possible? Puleeze....
Seems like the link in the main article is already invalid. Somehow the parallel of attempting to point to a specific grain of sand on a desert sand dune comes to mind...
-o-
This is exactly why Computer Science is an experimental science and not an engineering discipline like building cars or bridges.
Problem is, that most managers are under the illusion that writing software is as predictable as baking a cake and can be scheduled thusly. Programmers often buy into this and trap themselves into schedules that are completely unrealistic. Programmers who don't buy-in are labeled troublemakers. The result is programmers who over-promise and under-deliver -- thus the software of today.
Competition may happen. We may not "pay" more -- users in other countries have more than an order of magnitude faster speeds than I have, yet I'm being charged probably 2-3 times as much as what some of them pay.
:-(
The Capitalistic system is charging the highest price that you can for each level -- don't provide faster or cheaper service unless your competition demands it. It's not that they _couldn't_ provide faster speeds at cheaper costs -- it's just not AS profitable. It's more important to extract the maximum profit from each incremental improvement than it is to provide a significantly better improvement.
If you have a "CPU" that runs at "1GHz", then say you have the option to provide a new CPU at 2GHz, do you offer it -- even at a 2x price? Of course not. You sell the same part labeled as a 1.2GHz, 1.4, 1.6, 1.8, and a 2.0. The idea is you entice as many customers as possible to buy the lower spec'ed parts at the highest price possible -- because they will eventually need an upgrade, and the lower-spec'ed part you sold them, the sooner they'll need an upgrade.
Same w/electronics. Often you'll see 4-5 models that are identical on the inside. They put a different box on the outside and program the lower models to have fewer features or don't provide the "buttons" to access the features. The sick part -- all the models cost the producer virtually the same. They *could* give all the customers the high-end system for the cheap price -- but they cripple the lower end systems to make the higher end systems appear more valuable (even though on the inside, they aren't).
The same goes for telecoms and such. Around 10 years back a major telecom provided local unlimited calling for a fixed price. They found out that even though they made money on the deal, it was too much less than the established players -- they could make more money by giving less service for the same price. Now, 10 years later, multiple companies provide such plans (for about 40-50% more than what they were first offered for 10 years ago). It's not that it wasn't technically feasible. It's not that it wasn't profitable -- it just wasn't the most efficient way to extract money from the masses. Better to provide tiny incremental steps so the eventual price for the 10 year old technology is 50% more (and 10 years late). So now, we _could_ have had phone service that would be from 10-15 years in the future, but our standard of living has been artificially held back to enable the profiteers to better extract value out of smaller, incremental, and less advanced changes.
This is yet another sign of the growing failure of a pure capitalistic system. It beat out a heavily communist system, but it is also flawed, in that what is good for society as a whole -- what benefits the whole society (not just makes them "richer", though they would be because of an increased standard of living), is not the best way to incrementally extract the most money from the masses.
That you believe that "WE" MUST PAY for these tiny improvements, only underscores the success of the corporate spin doctors.
FWIW, in regards to "Intellectual Property" laws -- why bother to create new things that are real when you can create non-tangible property that must be purchased again and again and has no implicit worth. The latest example of this: the creation and selling of "virtual" properties in an online "game". It's great! Production costs are near 0 for creating tons of "virtual" property. Selling people "nothing"...
Sad to see how much of the world's resources are wasted on tiny, incremental "improvements" rather than "real progress" to forward the society.
I've seen "open source" developer ego's get in the way more than anything else.
The fact that some O.S. people are put on a pedestal is probably one of the worst influences on quality, features, meeting 'customer' needs, documentation and supportability/maintainability.
Greed? I see that almost exclusively in closed-source projects.