OK, nobody likes to pay more for the same goods. Nobody likes the idea that their hard-earned cash is going to the government.
But where is the money really going? If we assume for a moment that you have a government who spends their collected taxes wisely (not always true, I'll admit), then that money gets put to good use.
Such taxes will be used to pay for health care (here in the UK we have a nationalised health service, paid for by taxes), transport infrastructure (roads, rail, air etc.), education (again, here in the UK, schooling is paid for by taxes, and university education is mostly paid for by taxes), police, ambulance, fire services etc. etc.
If EU citizens were shopping in the US via the web, because it is cheaper, those taxes wouldn't be being paid, and the services that rely on them would be underfunded.
I can only speak from a UK perspective on this, but while our education, health etc. services are free from many US-citizen's perspectives, they are terribly underfunded. General elections are usually fought on the basis of taxation, and the population votes for the party offering the lowest taxation (a simplification, but it's almost this simple) -- so there is little growth in the amount of money that can be spent on public services.
To put this in perspective, a few months ago I saw a news item announcing good news: NHS patients with a specific serious heart problem had their operation waiting times cut by 6 months: the waiting time for the surgery was now just 18 months. I ask those Americans reading this: would you buy health insurance that had an 18 month waiting list for major heart surgery?
If I was faced with the choice of being able to buy a DVD for £15 rather than £20, or having a health service that actually worked, guess which I'd opt for.
There are two novels I can think of that have a tech aspect (I'm sure there are many in the sci-fi/fantasy genre, but I don't read that).
The first, Dog Days, by Daniel Lyons (sometimes Dan Lyons) is a very entertaining tech/crime caper. It's well worth a read.
The second, Microserfs, by Douglas Coupland, is pretty high on the geeky stuff, but also a very human novel; it's closer to 'high literature' than Dog Days or most of the novels that slashdotters tend to read. It's also my favourite book.
You could do worse than to find out who originally editted and published the above books and contack them.
I'll reiterate what others have expressed: Your novel should stand up on its own and make sense to a non-technical reader! I develop software, but the last thing I want to read in a novel is a bunch of technobabble or bash commands.
Publishers are often looking for the next Michael Crichton or the next drug rehab book -- i.e. they tend to look for new versions of winning formulas. If you can describe yourself or your book as 'the next X' or 'X meets Y', you might be able to help a publisher decide if you are something they are interested in
I won free tickets to a preview screening of "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" for myself and several friends at a new cinema in Salford, near Manchester, UK. The screening took place in their "first-class" screen.
It had Lazy-Boy type seats, "steward/stewardess" call button, alcoholic drinks etc.
But, I wouldn't actually *pay* the premium to see a film in such a screen. I like the atmosphere of a larger screen, I like having a large screen. I like it when you can feel the audience rooting for the hero, or laughing like crazy to a great comedy, or groaning at the shitty script and dodgy CGI in the Star Wars prequels.
Increasingly, though, the etiquette of other cinema-goers is poor: chatting on their mobile phones, to each other, smoking etc. etc. I can see that before long, I'll be willing to pay a premium to see films in a nicer atmosphere.
Companies spend millions choosing names for their products so that they can be used internationally without causing offence or laughter (see below*). But I think that the name IMFree will be mocked for a different reason.
IMFree reads like "I'm free", which just happens to be the catchphrase of a character in a British sitcom from the '70s called 'Are you being served?'. The character, played by John Inman, was extremely camp (1970s British shorthand for gay).
Even today, you occasionally hear people calling out "I'm free" in an Inman-ish voice. I think calling the device IMFree is just asking to be ridiculed. That said, Motorola might be able to use John Inman in their adverts or something...
* For example, many years ago in Spain I saw a billboard advertising a carbonated drink called "Pizz" or something similar.
I admit you have a point which is valid for people logging into home computers.
However, in an organisation with sys admins, it would be trivial to go to a sys admin and tell them you have an injury which means you can't log in; they can then just reset your keyprint timings -- you just re-train the system and off you go again.
A useful modificationto the system would be to have it do online learning: i.e. the keyprint timings are not learned from a batch of N sample logins, but the classifier is trained on the *last* N *successful* logins. This means that the system would adapt as your typing changes.
I do have one concern, though. Computer users who are not particularly IT literate usually type with just one or two fingers in a regular STAB-STAB-STAB rhythm. They are also less likely to use secure passwords and more likely to share them with friends/colleagues. In such a situation, I think the keyprint system would not improve security appreciably.
What we really need is a way to keep data secure without relying on people following security practices which they are usually ill-informed about. Although the keyprint idea is good, I think more robust methods could be used.
Re: What use is AI without an operating platform
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AI Going Nowhere?
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I think you are confusing math and reality.
I agree (to some extent) that nature doesn't use math to solve problems. But we use math to describe our solutions to many problems, and by using math, we have a massive body of proven knowledge that we can draw from in developing those solutions and proving them to be correct (or incorrect!). Math is one of the main languages science uses.
I'm not saying that all of AI will boil down to some equation like y=x+Pb or something, but that, for a particular type of problem, the solution will be made of many parts, arranged in some sort of algorithm, and each part will be able to be expressed using mathematics. That's all.
GA, GP etc. *are* used in the AI community, very freqently, but they are only one of the tools of the AI trade, and I don't think you'll ever "solve" AI by just using one tool.
As an aside, if you think about it, you can consider that nature does use maths: our genes just encode information (as numbers do in math) and breeding applies a set of operators to the data; you can think of the genetic operators of recombination, mutation etc. to be analogous to the numerical operators such as +,-,x etc. Maths does not depend upon any particular number system or set of operators -- so, in a way, nature does use maths.
I don't think that good AI *has* to be computationally expensive (usually, the problem is one of reducing the computational complexity!). But I would argue with you on one point: in doing AI research, we should be trying to develop general solutions to problems; solving problems by exploiting specific properties of the hardware does not necessarily lead to general solutions (i.e. ones that are equally applicable to different hardware platforms and situations).
I am an AI researcher and the parent poster is speaking truthfully.
The main challenges in AI at the moment do not concern building the physical robots -- e.g. a piece of kit on wheels with IR sensors or such things.
The main challenges in AI concern applying some very complicated math to solve problems like pattern recognition, density estimation and other forms of machine learning.
It seems to me that a large number of AI PhD students spend their lives tinkering with the mechanics and electronics of the robots that will ultimately be used to test their algorithms. This is wasted time; a good electronics graduate should be able to do the tinkering, it shouldn't require a prospective AI PhD student to do it.
I can see the point in the PhD student learning a little about the hardware that they want to run their algorithms on (so that they know the limitations and common problems with real hardware), but they should not spend all their time doing that and wasting the opportunity to spend their time contributing to their field (i.e. AI, not mechanics or electronics).
That said, many AI labs do not have the funding to be able to pay full time hardware technicians, so in many cases the PhD student *has* to do the tinkering:-(
I agree. I'm a computer vision researcher, and even the very best methods will only perform well under some quite limited circumstances.
Vision systems need to be composed of many modules (e.g. face detector, lip segmentation, lip shape modelling, model interpretation...), and each module will many many assumptions made about the data it works with, some of which the researcher will make accidentally. The whole will only work if the sets of assuptions are compatible, and the assumptions will limit the situations in which the vision system can be used.
Usually, this kind of research is assessed by using what we would consider very 'easy' movies, just containing the lips and no other confounding features.
As far as using computer vision to interpret American Sign Language, I doubt this is any easier. Hands are much more complex than facess -- they have very many degrees of freedom -- and when signing, occlusion will occur than will make the computer vision task very difficult. I would imagine that there is significant variation in how people sign, how fast they do it, how explicitly they do it and they may well use other means of communication to add 'intonation' to what they are saying (for example using facial expressions or making non-standard gestures).
Although there is some research going on to do automatic interpretation of sign language, I'm not sure that it is any easier than lip reading.
Whoa! Does this mean that in a few months, all forms of cancer, Alzheimer's disease, CJD, SARS, AIDS and the common cold will be a thing of the past? Those things were giving me the heeby-geebies, but now I guess it's OK to have unprotected sex with a feverish Hong Kong hooker and then chain smoke afterwards.
I can already get wireless broadband in my back yard -- I didn't need a task force to help me -- RTFM!
I think you must have been hanging around a certain crowd. It's my opinion that you get a very special sort of wanker in London, and it doesn't suprise me that you found this kind of behavior there. But I wouldn't paint all Londoners or Brits with the same brush.
Imagine that your de-stabilised browser submits a 'random' but 'valid' (under the rules of the bank's error checking code) -- for example you say 'pay the cable co. $40' but your browser transmits 'pay the cable co. $400'.
I don't know which side of the autopsy/physician debugging argument I'd sit on. I quite like Matlab's approach (which I believe is similar to Lisp's), in that you can choose to enter debug mode when an error occurs, and you can then interactively probe you code to find out why it ended up in that state. This is particularly useful when you have (as I do) numerically-intensive code that might take several days to complete running -- you don't want to get to 3.9 days into a 4 day job and find out there was a bug in the very last command your code was to run without being able to figure out exactly why the error occurred -- the write-run-debug cycle would be very long indeed!
So, I can see the benefits of both approaches. I guess having a choice is important, and knowing when to opt for which flavour of error handling.
OK, so terrorists may well be using OSS, but given their disregard for the law, they're probably using Windows too, and without paying for it.
Yes, OpenSSH might pose a problem for the military code breakers, but let's not forget: terrorists are not automatically stupid people. Osama bin Laden is university educated. Non US citizens are perfectly capable of developing encryption algorithms.
If you want to find out who really help terrorists, look to your governments. The US government supported Osama bin Laden in the 70s. The US government supported Iraqi factions in both the recent, and early 90's, wars with Iraq -- let's see if, in 20 or 30 years time, these groups are considered terrorists when they become disillusioned with US influence in their lives.
The forthcoming Stevens report in the UK indicates that key figures in the British police, army, and possibly higher-ranking organisations, backed loyalist terrorists in the 80's and early 90's in Northern Ireland, in the murder of suspected IRA terrorists.
The US, British (and many other) governments contribute far more to terrorism than software will ever do. The assertion that terrorism is the reason for pulling out of supporting OpenBSD and OpenSSH is ridiculous and misses the point entirely.
I have used Perforce (as a developer, rather than as a respository admin).
I found Perforce to be an excellent VCS; it integrated very well with our workflow -- once your developers know the basics, the system works very well. As far as I know, it has many advantages over MS's SourceSafe -- try and stay away from the MS stuff if you can.
There is a Windows GUI for Perforce, and it works well under all UNICES, Windows and others.
I strongly recommend Perforce. Simple as that.
Having said that, Perforce isn't free, and CVS is. I currently use CVS and am reasonably happy with it. The TortoiseCVS Windows client makes integrating the use of the VCS into workflow easy. However, CVS does have some problems, and the Subversion project is trying to solve these. I think most people find learning CVS a steeper learning curve than learning Perforce.
Bottom line: If you can afford Perforce, go with that. If you are prepared to live with CVS's steeper learning curve and problems (these are minor -- CVS is the de facto standard for VCS among the Open Source software movement), or want cost free version control, go with CVS.
I am typing this on a 12" iBook, and I'd say that it the best computer I've ever used.
OK, let me qualify that: It isn't the fastest computer I've used, but then I do computationally demanding numerical research and use a beefy PC for that. But in terms of the iBook being a nice computer to use, it is unbeaten in my experience.
Here's what I like about it:
+ It's small -- but not too small. OK, the screen is 12", and a 12" screen on a PC looks shit, but Apple make it look great. The reolution is 1024x768 (the same as on most 14/15" PCs), but because each pixel is smaller, the screen looks better. The superiour anti-aliasing makes fonts look really smooth, almost like a printed page.
+ The integration between the hardware and the OS means that everything just works. The OS comes into its own with the location manager: you can define different locations which have associated network settings, and flip between them as you travel about. WiFi just works. In fact, I'd use the phrase 'It just works' to describe Apple computers in general.
There's so much more I could say, but let me put it this way: While Apple keep up this fantastic work, I'm never going to buy a PC again. All my friends who have seen the iBook and compared it to their PC have told me that they will buy an Apple when they buy their next computer.
As far as which model to buy, I would go for the 12" PowerBook. This has a better processor, it's thinner, and has a slot-loading CD-R/W/DVD drive. Go for as much RAM as you can afford (256MB minimum). This is an ideal laptop for travelling with, and an ideal computer in general. If you think that you need a bigger screen, go for the 15" PowerBook, but the 15"-er will be harder to travel with.
I had a go to make Unison work for me, but I'm afraid it didn't go too well. This was due to me being too lazy to persevere with the system than any fault with Unison.
As the MOBILE $HOME topic crops up on/. on a regular basis, and you seem happy with your solution, is there any chance you would put together a step-by-step guide on setting up the solution you described, suitable for newbies as well as the more advanced user?
Like most people here, I think that you did steal bandwidth: you didn't pay for it or ask to useit, hell, you don't even know whose bandwidth it was. But...
It is true that some people leave their WAPs open as an invitation to anyone to use the bandwidth. Some would consider using the bandwidth of an open WAP to be a cultural norm.
The problem is that most WAP's factory settings are insecure -- so it is impossible to tell if the open WAP is an invitation, or an indication of a novice.
As several others have suggested, find the person whose bandwidth you 'stole' and ask them. If they are a novice who doesn't want their WAP open to the public, show them how to secure it, and tell them about warchalking.
It would be nice to see products shipping secured, rather than wide open, with well-written, prominant documentation about how to open up the services required.
On my engineering degree programme we designed a "fake" processor using VHDL -- i.e. we learned the theory of CPUs using a relevant technology. I found that after class I was left with the interest and desire to invent my own processor. So I was learning both theory AND practical skills, at the same time as developing an interest in the subject.
I think that learning about simple technologies is a great way to encourage students to think for themselves, to try to invent their own improvements. As others have said, University is about learning concepts, and learning how to learn. Once in a job, a graduate from a university that strikes the right balance in its teaching will be able to apply the concepts they learned to understand the more complex modern technologies, and they will find learning the newer technologies easier because they have learned how to learn. At the same time they will be able to think for themselves to give their company significant advantages in developing new technology.
At the time I was studying, however, I remember wanting to learn all the bang-up-to-date technologies. I guess only in hindsight can one appreciate that the lecturers knew what they were doing.
I would, however, be sceptical about a university course that taught using old technologies because they are cheap or because the lecturing staff don't have the desire to retrain etc.; there must be that balance between pedagogy and practicability.
I used to work at a company that designed drinks vending machines -- those machines you get in offices that will vend you a chemical coffee at about 120degC.
The more sophisticated machines had a few microcontrollers on them, and the user interface was through push buttons on the front of the machine.
One of the engineering problems we faced was to deliver the machines at absolute minimum cost but with maximum functionality. So there was little room for extra buttons, switches or RS-232 interfaces on the inside of the machine where field service technicians would be able to get access.
Therefore, all diagnostic modes were accessed through a 'back-door', which was usually a certain sequence of button pushes on the front of the machine. This enabled the technicians to put the machine through its paces, turn on free vending etc.
Before you dismiss this as small-fry, let me remind you that these machines often contain cash (read: "company profit"), and also had the ability to use electronic token-based payment methods (I wouldn't be surprised if today's machines could do debit/credit card transactions). So, potentially, there was a huge risk with these 'back-doors'.
And, once development code had gone through testing and had been green-lit for use in production machines, the code was HARD-CODED into the microcontroller (this keeps the cost of the microcontrollers down). So if anyone was to discover the back-door, and could get drinks or money out of the machine, the cost of replacing all the hard-coded microcontrollers would be very high.
I once asked one of the other developers who worked on the customer interface electronics if, in addition to the field technician back-door, he had added any other back-doors, for example so that he could put the machine into free vend for only one drink, and thus get free drinks wherever he saw such a machine, and he replied that he had never thought about it.
I guess that means I've a devious mind. Or that he was a good liar.
I had a couple of wonderful days of Safari with tabs; then Safari started doing a weird thing:
Clicking on some hyperlinks now downloads the file, rather than displaying it in the browser window (I'm talking.html files here), same with typing in some URLs.
I've restarted Safari a few times (didn't do a system restart, as I think that's weird, but...).
The location of the beta is indeed as almost specified above.
I now have tabs in Safari -- thanks.
I was using Chimera, but it would crash after running for about a week (OK, so pretty reliable compared to some browsers...); although Chimera has tabs, it doesn't have many other features one expects from a browser (being all minimalist and stuff...). The Chimera team haven't released in a while due to legal issue with the Chimera name, but they say that version 0.7 is just around the corner, and I guess we can expect some significant changes. I'll certainly keep a copy of Chimera on my iBook (taking the total to... 4 browsers now):
* Safari v62 * Chimera * Opera * IE (yeugh!)
It'll be nice when Apple have completed Safari (it certainly won't be complete without tabs!), as 4 browsers is ridiculous!
So, here's wishing luck to the Chimera and Safari projects!
Slashdot Mirror
But where is the money really going? If we assume for a moment that you have a government who spends their collected taxes wisely (not always true, I'll admit), then that money gets put to good use.
Such taxes will be used to pay for health care (here in the UK we have a nationalised health service, paid for by taxes), transport infrastructure (roads, rail, air etc.), education (again, here in the UK, schooling is paid for by taxes, and university education is mostly paid for by taxes), police, ambulance, fire services etc. etc.
If EU citizens were shopping in the US via the web, because it is cheaper, those taxes wouldn't be being paid, and the services that rely on them would be underfunded.
I can only speak from a UK perspective on this, but while our education, health etc. services are free from many US-citizen's perspectives, they are terribly underfunded. General elections are usually fought on the basis of taxation, and the population votes for the party offering the lowest taxation (a simplification, but it's almost this simple) -- so there is little growth in the amount of money that can be spent on public services.
To put this in perspective, a few months ago I saw a news item announcing good news: NHS patients with a specific serious heart problem had their operation waiting times cut by 6 months: the waiting time for the surgery was now just 18 months. I ask those Americans reading this: would you buy health insurance that had an 18 month waiting list for major heart surgery?
If I was faced with the choice of being able to buy a DVD for £15 rather than £20, or having a health service that actually worked, guess which I'd opt for.
There are two novels I can think of that have a tech aspect (I'm sure there are many in the sci-fi/fantasy genre, but I don't read that).
The first, Dog Days, by Daniel Lyons (sometimes Dan Lyons) is a very entertaining tech/crime caper. It's well worth a read.
The second, Microserfs, by Douglas Coupland, is pretty high on the geeky stuff, but also a very human novel; it's closer to 'high literature' than Dog Days or most of the novels that slashdotters tend to read. It's also my favourite book.
You could do worse than to find out who originally editted and published the above books and contack them.
I'll reiterate what others have expressed: Your novel should stand up on its own and make sense to a non-technical reader! I develop software, but the last thing I want to read in a novel is a bunch of technobabble or bash commands.
Publishers are often looking for the next Michael Crichton or the next drug rehab book -- i.e. they tend to look for new versions of winning formulas. If you can describe yourself or your book as 'the next X' or 'X meets Y', you might be able to help a publisher decide if you are something they are interested in
I won free tickets to a preview screening of "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" for myself and several friends at a new cinema in Salford, near Manchester, UK. The screening took place in their "first-class" screen.
It had Lazy-Boy type seats, "steward/stewardess" call button, alcoholic drinks etc.
But, I wouldn't actually *pay* the premium to see a film in such a screen. I like the atmosphere of a larger screen, I like having a large screen. I like it when you can feel the audience rooting for the hero, or laughing like crazy to a great comedy, or groaning at the shitty script and dodgy CGI in the Star Wars prequels.
Increasingly, though, the etiquette of other cinema-goers is poor: chatting on their mobile phones, to each other, smoking etc. etc. I can see that before long, I'll be willing to pay a premium to see films in a nicer atmosphere.
I hope they keep the trailers, though.
That's scary. Care to elaborate?
IMFree reads like "I'm free", which just happens to be the catchphrase of a character in a British sitcom from the '70s called 'Are you being served?'. The character, played by John Inman, was extremely camp (1970s British shorthand for gay).
Even today, you occasionally hear people calling out "I'm free" in an Inman-ish voice. I think calling the device IMFree is just asking to be ridiculed. That said, Motorola might be able to use John Inman in their adverts or something...
* For example, many years ago in Spain I saw a billboard advertising a carbonated drink called "Pizz" or something similar.
I admit you have a point which is valid for people logging into home computers.
However, in an organisation with sys admins, it would be trivial to go to a sys admin and tell them you have an injury which means you can't log in; they can then just reset your keyprint timings -- you just re-train the system and off you go again.
A useful modificationto the system would be to have it do online learning: i.e. the keyprint timings are not learned from a batch of N sample logins, but the classifier is trained on the *last* N *successful* logins. This means that the system would adapt as your typing changes.
I do have one concern, though. Computer users who are not particularly IT literate usually type with just one or two fingers in a regular STAB-STAB-STAB rhythm. They are also less likely to use secure passwords and more likely to share them with friends/colleagues. In such a situation, I think the keyprint system would not improve security appreciably.
What we really need is a way to keep data secure without relying on people following security practices which they are usually ill-informed about. Although the keyprint idea is good, I think more robust methods could be used.
I agree (to some extent) that nature doesn't use math to solve problems. But we use math to describe our solutions to many problems, and by using math, we have a massive body of proven knowledge that we can draw from in developing those solutions and proving them to be correct (or incorrect!). Math is one of the main languages science uses.
I'm not saying that all of AI will boil down to some equation like y=x+Pb or something, but that, for a particular type of problem, the solution will be made of many parts, arranged in some sort of algorithm, and each part will be able to be expressed using mathematics. That's all.
GA, GP etc. *are* used in the AI community, very freqently, but they are only one of the tools of the AI trade, and I don't think you'll ever "solve" AI by just using one tool.
As an aside, if you think about it, you can consider that nature does use maths: our genes just encode information (as numbers do in math) and breeding applies a set of operators to the data; you can think of the genetic operators of recombination, mutation etc. to be analogous to the numerical operators such as +,-,x etc. Maths does not depend upon any particular number system or set of operators -- so, in a way, nature does use maths.
I agree with you.
I don't think that good AI *has* to be computationally expensive (usually, the problem is one of reducing the computational complexity!). But I would argue with you on one point: in doing AI research, we should be trying to develop general solutions to problems; solving problems by exploiting specific properties of the hardware does not necessarily lead to general solutions (i.e. ones that are equally applicable to different hardware platforms and situations).
Please mod the parent up.
:-(
I am an AI researcher and the parent poster is speaking truthfully.
The main challenges in AI at the moment do not concern building the physical robots -- e.g. a piece of kit on wheels with IR sensors or such things.
The main challenges in AI concern applying some very complicated math to solve problems like pattern recognition, density estimation and other forms of machine learning.
It seems to me that a large number of AI PhD students spend their lives tinkering with the mechanics and electronics of the robots that will ultimately be used to test their algorithms. This is wasted time; a good electronics graduate should be able to do the tinkering, it shouldn't require a prospective AI PhD student to do it.
I can see the point in the PhD student learning a little about the hardware that they want to run their algorithms on (so that they know the limitations and common problems with real hardware), but they should not spend all their time doing that and wasting the opportunity to spend their time contributing to their field (i.e. AI, not mechanics or electronics).
That said, many AI labs do not have the funding to be able to pay full time hardware technicians, so in many cases the PhD student *has* to do the tinkering
I agree. I'm a computer vision researcher, and even the very best methods will only perform well under some quite limited circumstances.
Vision systems need to be composed of many modules (e.g. face detector, lip segmentation, lip shape modelling, model interpretation...), and each module will many many assumptions made about the data it works with, some of which the researcher will make accidentally. The whole will only work if the sets of assuptions are compatible, and the assumptions will limit the situations in which the vision system can be used.
Usually, this kind of research is assessed by using what we would consider very 'easy' movies, just containing the lips and no other confounding features.
As far as using computer vision to interpret American Sign Language, I doubt this is any easier. Hands are much more complex than facess -- they have very many degrees of freedom -- and when signing, occlusion will occur than will make the computer vision task very difficult. I would imagine that there is significant variation in how people sign, how fast they do it, how explicitly they do it and they may well use other means of communication to add 'intonation' to what they are saying (for example using facial expressions or making non-standard gestures).
Although there is some research going on to do automatic interpretation of sign language, I'm not sure that it is any easier than lip reading.
Thanks.
That kinda sucks though.
Whoa! When did we send a man to Mars?
Whoa! Does this mean that in a few months, all forms of cancer, Alzheimer's disease, CJD, SARS, AIDS and the common cold will be a thing of the past? Those things were giving me the heeby-geebies, but now I guess it's OK to have unprotected sex with a feverish Hong Kong hooker and then chain smoke afterwards.
I can already get wireless broadband in my back yard -- I didn't need a task force to help me -- RTFM!
I think you must have been hanging around a certain crowd. It's my opinion that you get a very special sort of wanker in London, and it doesn't suprise me that you found this kind of behavior there. But I wouldn't paint all Londoners or Brits with the same brush.
Imagine that your de-stabilised browser submits a 'random' but 'valid' (under the rules of the bank's error checking code) -- for example you say 'pay the cable co. $40' but your browser transmits 'pay the cable co. $400'.
I don't know which side of the autopsy/physician debugging argument I'd sit on. I quite like Matlab's approach (which I believe is similar to Lisp's), in that you can choose to enter debug mode when an error occurs, and you can then interactively probe you code to find out why it ended up in that state. This is particularly useful when you have (as I do) numerically-intensive code that might take several days to complete running -- you don't want to get to 3.9 days into a 4 day job and find out there was a bug in the very last command your code was to run without being able to figure out exactly why the error occurred -- the write-run-debug cycle would be very long indeed!
So, I can see the benefits of both approaches. I guess having a choice is important, and knowing when to opt for which flavour of error handling.
It's probably been discussed here already, but there are loads of posts...
If I buy a song from an album for 0.99, and then decide to buy the album, do I still have to pay 9.99 for the album, or do I pay $9?
OK, so terrorists may well be using OSS, but given their disregard for the law, they're probably using Windows too, and without paying for it.
Yes, OpenSSH might pose a problem for the military code breakers, but let's not forget: terrorists are not automatically stupid people. Osama bin Laden is university educated. Non US citizens are perfectly capable of developing encryption algorithms.
If you want to find out who really help terrorists, look to your governments. The US government supported Osama bin Laden in the 70s. The US government supported Iraqi factions in both the recent, and early 90's, wars with Iraq -- let's see if, in 20 or 30 years time, these groups are considered terrorists when they become disillusioned with US influence in their lives.
The forthcoming Stevens report in the UK indicates that key figures in the British police, army, and possibly higher-ranking organisations, backed loyalist terrorists in the 80's and early 90's in Northern Ireland, in the murder of suspected IRA terrorists.
The US, British (and many other) governments contribute far more to terrorism than software will ever do. The assertion that terrorism is the reason for pulling out of supporting OpenBSD and OpenSSH is ridiculous and misses the point entirely.
I have used Perforce (as a developer, rather than as a respository admin).
I found Perforce to be an excellent VCS; it integrated very well with our workflow -- once your developers know the basics, the system works very well. As far as I know, it has many advantages over MS's SourceSafe -- try and stay away from the MS stuff if you can.
There is a Windows GUI for Perforce, and it works well under all UNICES, Windows and others.
I strongly recommend Perforce. Simple as that.
Having said that, Perforce isn't free, and CVS is. I currently use CVS and am reasonably happy with it. The TortoiseCVS Windows client makes integrating the use of the VCS into workflow easy. However, CVS does have some problems, and the Subversion project is trying to solve these. I think most people find learning CVS a steeper learning curve than learning Perforce.
Bottom line: If you can afford Perforce, go with that. If you are prepared to live with CVS's steeper learning curve and problems (these are minor -- CVS is the de facto standard for VCS among the Open Source software movement), or want cost free version control, go with CVS.
I am typing this on a 12" iBook, and I'd say that it the best computer I've ever used.
OK, let me qualify that: It isn't the fastest computer I've used, but then I do computationally demanding numerical research and use a beefy PC for that. But in terms of the iBook being a nice computer to use, it is unbeaten in my experience.
Here's what I like about it:
+ It's small -- but not too small. OK, the screen is 12", and a 12" screen on a PC looks shit, but Apple make it look great. The reolution is 1024x768 (the same as on most 14/15" PCs), but because each pixel is smaller, the screen looks better. The superiour anti-aliasing makes fonts look really smooth, almost like a printed page.
+ The integration between the hardware and the OS means that everything just works. The OS comes into its own with the location manager: you can define different locations which have associated network settings, and flip between them as you travel about. WiFi just works. In fact, I'd use the phrase 'It just works' to describe Apple computers in general.
There's so much more I could say, but let me put it this way: While Apple keep up this fantastic work, I'm never going to buy a PC again. All my friends who have seen the iBook and compared it to their PC have told me that they will buy an Apple when they buy their next computer.
As far as which model to buy, I would go for the 12" PowerBook. This has a better processor, it's thinner, and has a slot-loading CD-R/W/DVD drive. Go for as much RAM as you can afford (256MB minimum). This is an ideal laptop for travelling with, and an ideal computer in general. If you think that you need a bigger screen, go for the 15" PowerBook, but the 15"-er will be harder to travel with.
Have fun
Thanks for that. When I have some free time I'll try to finally sort out my 'mobile home'.
:-)
I'm on OS X, so I'll just do apt-get as well...
I had a go to make Unison work for me, but I'm afraid it didn't go too well. This was due to me being too lazy to persevere with the system than any fault with Unison.
/. on a regular basis, and you seem happy with your solution, is there any chance you would put together a step-by-step guide on setting up the solution you described, suitable for newbies as well as the more advanced user?
As the MOBILE $HOME topic crops up on
Like most people here, I think that you did steal bandwidth: you didn't pay for it or ask to useit, hell, you don't even know whose bandwidth it was. But...
It is true that some people leave their WAPs open as an invitation to anyone to use the bandwidth. Some would consider using the bandwidth of an open WAP to be a cultural norm.
The problem is that most WAP's factory settings are insecure -- so it is impossible to tell if the open WAP is an invitation, or an indication of a novice.
As several others have suggested, find the person whose bandwidth you 'stole' and ask them. If they are a novice who doesn't want their WAP open to the public, show them how to secure it, and tell them about warchalking.
It would be nice to see products shipping secured, rather than wide open, with well-written, prominant documentation about how to open up the services required.
On my engineering degree programme we designed a "fake" processor using VHDL -- i.e. we learned the theory of CPUs using a relevant technology. I found that after class I was left with the interest and desire to invent my own processor. So I was learning both theory AND practical skills, at the same time as developing an interest in the subject.
I think that learning about simple technologies is a great way to encourage students to think for themselves, to try to invent their own improvements. As others have said, University is about learning concepts, and learning how to learn. Once in a job, a graduate from a university that strikes the right balance in its teaching will be able to apply the concepts they learned to understand the more complex modern technologies, and they will find learning the newer technologies easier because they have learned how to learn. At the same time they will be able to think for themselves to give their company significant advantages in developing new technology.
At the time I was studying, however, I remember wanting to learn all the bang-up-to-date technologies. I guess only in hindsight can one appreciate that the lecturers knew what they were doing.
I would, however, be sceptical about a university course that taught using old technologies because they are cheap or because the lecturing staff don't have the desire to retrain etc.; there must be that balance between pedagogy and practicability.
I used to work at a company that designed drinks vending machines -- those machines you get in offices that will vend you a chemical coffee at about 120degC.
The more sophisticated machines had a few microcontrollers on them, and the user interface was through push buttons on the front of the machine.
One of the engineering problems we faced was to deliver the machines at absolute minimum cost but with maximum functionality. So there was little room for extra buttons, switches or RS-232 interfaces on the inside of the machine where field service technicians would be able to get access.
Therefore, all diagnostic modes were accessed through a 'back-door', which was usually a certain sequence of button pushes on the front of the machine. This enabled the technicians to put the machine through its paces, turn on free vending etc.
Before you dismiss this as small-fry, let me remind you that these machines often contain cash (read: "company profit"), and also had the ability to use electronic token-based payment methods (I wouldn't be surprised if today's machines could do debit/credit card transactions). So, potentially, there was a huge risk with these 'back-doors'.
And, once development code had gone through testing and had been green-lit for use in production machines, the code was HARD-CODED into the microcontroller (this keeps the cost of the microcontrollers down). So if anyone was to discover the back-door, and could get drinks or money out of the machine, the cost of replacing all the hard-coded microcontrollers would be very high.
I once asked one of the other developers who worked on the customer interface electronics if, in addition to the field technician back-door, he had added any other back-doors, for example so that he could put the machine into free vend for only one drink, and thus get free drinks wherever he saw such a machine, and he replied that he had never thought about it.
I guess that means I've a devious mind. Or that he was a good liar.
I had a couple of wonderful days of Safari with tabs; then Safari started doing a weird thing:
.html files here), same with typing in some URLs.
Clicking on some hyperlinks now downloads the file, rather than displaying it in the browser window (I'm talking
I've restarted Safari a few times (didn't do a system restart, as I think that's weird, but...).
Anyone seen this? Solution?
Thanks for the "link".
... 4 browsers now):
The location of the beta is indeed as almost specified above.
I now have tabs in Safari -- thanks.
I was using Chimera, but it would crash after running for about a week (OK, so pretty reliable compared to some browsers...); although Chimera has tabs, it doesn't have many other features one expects from a browser (being all minimalist and stuff...). The Chimera team haven't released in a while due to legal issue with the Chimera name, but they say that version 0.7 is just around the corner, and I guess we can expect some significant changes. I'll certainly keep a copy of Chimera on my iBook (taking the total to
* Safari v62
* Chimera
* Opera
* IE (yeugh!)
It'll be nice when Apple have completed Safari (it certainly won't be complete without tabs!), as 4 browsers is ridiculous!
So, here's wishing luck to the Chimera and Safari projects!