"...and was required to give ICANN 10 days notice of release of any information marked "confidential" to give them the opportunity to seek a court order stopping him."
Right. So if he decides to secretly leak the documents, he has to tell them a week and a half in advance?
A good example of how cruft can occur quickly (at least in Windows) is to simply see how many minimised windows you have running - when you first boot up the machine, there are 0 windows up, but the longer you use the machine the more windows (browser, interpreter, word processor, dialling program) you tend to have running. Thankfully, this kind of cruft is much easier to deal with. Alt-F4, Alt-F4, Alt-F4...
It's not that rocks are unerodable. It's that we can predict approximately how rocks will erode on a microscopic scale (friction and abrasion) and on a macroscopic scale (erosion, longshore drift and deposition). This allows us to take action against the erosion of rocks, whereas with computers, this isn't possible. This is because computers tend to decay in a highly erratic way.
"Did the author acknowledge that a computer is made up of different parts that you can replace when they actually short or die?"
The author was talking about software decay, not hardware decay. Reinstalling your sound card/modem/keyboard isn't going to solve the fact that your hard disk drive has leftovers scattered all over it.
Cruft is a fact of life. It exists within everything, even real life. The only reason people notice it with computers is because computers demand 100% accuracy and require perfect install/uninstall techniques. Cruft/bit rot/software rot/deprecation is guaranteed to occur eventually despite the best efforts of coders and users because the physical conditions under which computers work are imperfect. Remember the last time you spilled a sugary drink on your keyboard? Or accidentally ripped the power cord out of the back of the machine whilst it was busy defragging?
The only way to eliminate cruft (or whatever you want to call it) is to make computers into machines which can function just as well under imperfect physical conditions. A book is still functional, even if you partially break the spine and remove the cover. Fitting lots of failsafes and/or restricting the freedom of installation programs should help reduce cruft. When was the last time satellite control modules suffered from cruft? Or the machines which work our nuclear power stations?
Uninstallers tend to not bother removing everything because some of the old program components may be being used by some other program. The obvious solution would be to stop all programs using each other, but there are two problems with this:
You can't force all programmers to not rely upon other components which may or may not exist
All programs will have to come bundled with EVERYTHING they need.
So this policy would be unenforceable, and would require much, much bigger hard disk drives. The only obvious solution to his problem would be to stop making the programs integrate themselves into the system so well, so they can be removed with a simple 'rmdir'.
Someone has already mentioned entropy and decay as a cause of cruft, but if it plays such a big part in it, why will a computer still function fine if you leave it in a cupboard for a decade, blow the dust off it, and plug it back in? The reason is that entropy is caused by crappy coding, crappy operating systems, crappy users, crappy physics and crappy integration. Until these three things cease to exist (not likely), then cruft will continue to occur. I don't think anyone could be expected to keep track of the things a 6-year-old PC has to keep track of:
Uninstaller: Duh! I think I'll randomly leave behind 7 files, due to the 0.02% chance they might be used by some other shite program!
OS: Duh! I think I'll randomly fragment the hard disk drive, and fuck up the file system!
User: Duh! I think I'll randomly install the first software I happen to catch my eye on, and install it wherever it's most convenient!
Physical environment: Duh! I think I'll randomly deposit dust on the surface of the motherboard and the hard disks!
Integration: Duh! I think I'll randomly use DLLs from other programs, but not say which!
At the end of the day, it comes down to a balance between convenience and simplicity. Convenience occurs when everything promises to install itself, and to latch onto everything else. This goes wrong because a program simply can't know where and how to install itself to avoid cruft. Simplicity occurs when everything on a PC is in its own self-contained bundle, interacting as little as possible with everything else. This goes wrong because a program has no way of efficiently obtaining data from other hardware or software.
And in case you were wondering, my computer's at cruft force 3 - Lived-in. Surprising, considering it's a 2 year old Windows machine.
If you're worried about your 1024-bit keys being broken, switch to using 4096-bit keys. Until quantum computers are developed, factorisation will still remain a near-exponential/superpolynomial time activity, and 4096-bit keys will be safe until the military discovers how to harness quantum computing.
Yesterday evening, John Fisher, a middle-aged, South London bachelor was led away from his house after he was found to have swatted a bionic fly-like creature which was buzzing around his kitchen. Neighbours looked on in surprise as Fisher shouted in confusion when a SWAT team broke down his front door and rushed into the house. The suspect was allegedly busy making popcorn and running a plastic fly swatter under the tap.
"Huh? What the hell are you arresting me for? Let me go!" he cried as he was bundled into a waiting police car. "All I did was swat a damn fly!" Curiously, the police failed to tell him that what he had destroyed was not actually a fly, but an electronic insect costing $40 million being tested by the US military. The electromechanical creature was spying on Fisher to test out its televisual capabilities, relaying images to the nerds controlling it over at DARPA.
Right, let's say that companies only have the resources to go after either "educational pirates" (people who pirate software so they can learn how to use it) or "vending pirates" (people who pirate software so they can sell it to others for cash). Which would it be better for them to go after?
Vending pirates take the software for free, and then sell it to others at a reduced price. Result? The company loses X potential customers, thus reducting its revenues.
Educational pirates take the software for free, but keep it to themselves just so they can learn how to use it. They wouldn't buy it anyway, but when they get a regular/greater source of income, they may purchase a legitimate copy of the software to make up for it. Result? The company will lose 1 potential customer in the short term but probably gain a customer in the long term, thus increasing its revenues a little.
"It's not just the function of the software that matters. A lot of schools would use Open Source software, if it weren't for a little thing called mind share. Most of the companies out there are going to use Windows/Office, and the role of the educational system is just that: to educate.
If Little Jimmy learns how to use Star Office or AbiWord in school, how is that going to help him when he goes to work for a company that requires him to use MS Office? They serve the same purpose, but the differences are very important conceptually."
It's not just the function of the software that matters. A lot of schools would use Microsoft software (instead of third party "RM Nimbus" shit), if it weren't for a little thing called market share. Most of the technical companies out there are going to use Linux, and the role of the educational system is just that: to educate.
If Little Jimmy learns how to use MS Office or MSWord in school, how is that going to help him when he goes to work for an ISP that requires him to use Linux, Open Office and/or vi? They serve the same purpose, but the differences are very important conceptually.
Is it even possible for a game to shunt data around at 2.2Gb a second? Even adding up all the different kinds of RAM in my computer, it wouldn't come to any more than perhaps 250Mb. Even for the newest machines, the sum total of the volatile memory is perhaps 700Mb at the most. So do we really need this kind of hardware yet? It may be backward compatible, but if it simply isn't possible for my computer to generate or store this amount of data then whether or not it can handle two gigabytes or a thousand terabytes a second is redundant.
"Mechanization puts more out of work...Does no one think of the poor astronauts who will lose their jobs to the machines?"
They'll probably still need astronauts to go up and fix these machines when they break down. Anyway, considering the number of qualifications an astronaut has, I don't think it'd be difficult for them to get a new job, anyhow:
INTERVIEWER: So, what was your previous job? EX-ASTRONAUT: I was an astronaut. I helped fix the Hubble Space telescope. INTERVIEWER: Really? Wow!
"This could have many far reaching consequences..."
Not really, other than that satellites and the like will have to be built more reliably (since no one will go up to fix them).
"The astronauts will unionize, and during strikes the American public will be denied much needed weightlessness footage!"
Actually, I doubt an astronaut union could have a great effect. There aren't more than a couple of hundred astronauts, and the industry they work in isn't considered terribly important by most of the public, so an astronaut union wouldn't have much effect. Anyway, it's not as if an astronaut union could stop NASA from using humanoid robots instead of people. Unless of course the robots turned out to be total failures.
"Stop these "ro-bot" workers before it is too late!"
Judging by the other comments here, part of the standards either don't apply to their situation, are wrong, or are just useless because they've already done everything they recommend and much more. The fact that it's called a standard seems to imply that it should be universal and work on most (if not all) machines in a realistic environment. The fact that it doesn't suggests that it's not actually a standard.
Why shouldn't gamers be able to enter "The Zone" if sportsmen and the religious can? It's not as if gamers are greatly different, and gaming often requires the same sort of concentration as any sport; gamers do often have the same sort of traits as the religious, such as devotion (must login to Everquest/Planetarion/whatever soon!) and rote memorisation of concepts important to their game/religion (ooh, hit points, defence points, attack points!).
I don't think your donations will make a good deal of difference. If they're not making money in the long run, then no matter how much you donate they're eventually going to end up in the red again.
"Apparently, one overly exuberant combatant in a moment of pique jumped up to deliver the death-blow, and upon landing smashed the sword into one of the posts you see in this picture, leaving it in pieces, and the device's creators nearly in tears."
If they'd used Windows, then there could've been problems.
"Let's see...Start...Shut Down...OK...there we go. Hmmm, seems to be taking a while to shut down. Better keep pedalling in case we accidentally shut it off early."
Piss poor longevity, by the sound of it.
on
Fahrenheit
·
· Score: 1
"'Fahrenheit' is an original concept that sets out to create a video game in the format of a television series. The product will consist of 6 episodes of 6 to 8 hours."
Assuming that these 6-8 hours are the estimated playing time per episode, you're going to wind up getting only 40-50 hours of enjoyment out of this game. This isn't terribly brilliant in terms of longevity; I only purchase a game if I expect to be able to have fun with it for weeks on end. I'm not going to bother buying this if I'm just going to buy a disk every day for a week and have them all completed the same day I buy them.
This also explains why I haven't bought a new game for about five months now.
Why is the media so surprised that these websites have actually made money? It's really no big deal; any website with a decent business plan can do well, and this is a decent business plan.
Get people to read your websites
Put classified ads on your websites
This is how the cost for the telephone books can be (at least partly) covered, and if it works for them, why not websites?
"...the many risks to our information infrastructure (viruses, bugs, single points of failure, etc.)"
And these risks to the Internet have been around for HOW long now? About 30 years, from the very moment of its creation? And has it ever gone completely down the tube?
OK. Let's run through a quick scenario to demonstrate what is wrong with only allowing a few people to have a certain piece of dangerous knowledge.
If you withhold knowledge:
The discoverers keep the knowledge for themselves
They can use it with impunity
It has a devastating effect, since no one else has enough knowledge to develop a defence for it
If knowledge is in the public domain:
The discoverers distribute the knowledge to anyone who asks
Anyone can use it with impunity
However, the effects are greatly lessened, since everyone knows about the danger and knows what steps to take to reduce/eliminate it.
If you keep dangerous information secret, then it can be abused by a group of individuals much more readily. If everyone knows about something dangerous, then they can take precautions to prevent it (and those who are stupid enough not to will get hurt).
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the research arm of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is working on technology to improve bandwidth use in wireless communications systems by a factor of twenty.
Details on the XG Communications Program are still sketchy. However, a spokesperson for the agency said that it is looking at systems that can redistribute existing wireless capacity on the fly. This would enable more efficient use of currently available bandwidth as devices could "share" spectrum more efficiently.
"This is a program to develop a radio frequency system to dynamically assign existing spectrum," DARPA spokesperson Jan Walker told Unstrung.
The eventual aim, she says, is to create technology that will allow individual wireless devices to "listen" and grab chunks of existing bandwidth that weren't being used by other devices.
This approach is quite different from conventional third-generation (3G) cellular systems, which take what might be termed a 'scattergun' approach to delivering bandwidth to users. Conventional cellular systems transmit signals in all directions to all the users in the range of a particular cell. In other words, along with the right signals hitting the user, the system is also pumping lots of "noise" or "electro-smog" into the radio frequency environment.
The DARPA project, on the other hand, seems like it might have some commonality with systems like those developed by ArrayComm Inc. The ArrayComm system uses software and an array of antennas to continually map the RF environment, allowing it to create a "personal cell" link with each user (see ArrayComm Has Its Chips). The difference is that the DARPA technology would be mapping the environment from the device side rather than from the base station, seeking chunks of available spectrum to use.
Also, Arraycomm is interested in using time-division duplex (TDD) or "unpaired" spectrum, whereas the DARPA project is intended for use over standard "paired" spectrum, which is also called frequency-division duplex (FDD) spectrum.
Walker says that any technology resulting from the XG Communications program could have commercial as well as military applications. However, she stresses that DARPA is currently merely interested in developing technology.
"We want to look at the technology and see what's possible," Walker says. "That will allow the policy makers to decide what they want to do and commercial operators to see if they're interested."
We tried to link to the blurb about this program on the DARPA site, but the URL doesn't work, so we've excerpted it here:
The XG Communications Program is intended to demonstrate enabling technologies and system concepts to improve spectral utilization of military radio frequency emitters by a factor of 20. These demonstrations will include demonstrating a low power/wideband spectrum sensor, time/frequency agile waveforms, and dynamic spectrum access and control. At its completion, the Program will have developed and demonstrated an appliqu? [sic] for legacy and future emitter systems for joint service utility. The Program will develop enabling technologies and system concepts to provide assured military communications and sensors in support of worldwide, short notice deployments through the dynamic redistribution of allocated spectrum. This research will have significant impact on a wide variety of existing and future communications and sensors systems in DoD and commercial environments. This research is also expected to provide a common technical architecture that can meet the needs of both military and civilian future (beyond 3G) mobile communications systems. This Program will require the involvement of a variety of Government (Joint and Service Laboratories) and commercial technology development centers.
-- Dan Jones, Senior Editor, Unstrung
http://www.unstrung.com
"These demonstrations will include demonstrating a low power/wideband spectrum sensor, time/frequency agile waveforms, and dynamic spectrum access and control."
For all we know, this project description might actually MEAN something.
Slashdot Mirror
It's doomed.
Right. So if he decides to secretly leak the documents, he has to tell them a week and a half in advance?
A good example of how cruft can occur quickly (at least in Windows) is to simply see how many minimised windows you have running - when you first boot up the machine, there are 0 windows up, but the longer you use the machine the more windows (browser, interpreter, word processor, dialling program) you tend to have running. Thankfully, this kind of cruft is much easier to deal with. Alt-F4, Alt-F4, Alt-F4...
It's not that rocks are unerodable. It's that we can predict approximately how rocks will erode on a microscopic scale (friction and abrasion) and on a macroscopic scale (erosion, longshore drift and deposition). This allows us to take action against the erosion of rocks, whereas with computers, this isn't possible. This is because computers tend to decay in a highly erratic way.
The author was talking about software decay, not hardware decay. Reinstalling your sound card/modem/keyboard isn't going to solve the fact that your hard disk drive has leftovers scattered all over it.
The only way to eliminate cruft (or whatever you want to call it) is to make computers into machines which can function just as well under imperfect physical conditions. A book is still functional, even if you partially break the spine and remove the cover. Fitting lots of failsafes and/or restricting the freedom of installation programs should help reduce cruft. When was the last time satellite control modules suffered from cruft? Or the machines which work our nuclear power stations?
Uninstallers tend to not bother removing everything because some of the old program components may be being used by some other program. The obvious solution would be to stop all programs using each other, but there are two problems with this:
So this policy would be unenforceable, and would require much, much bigger hard disk drives. The only obvious solution to his problem would be to stop making the programs integrate themselves into the system so well, so they can be removed with a simple 'rmdir'.
Someone has already mentioned entropy and decay as a cause of cruft, but if it plays such a big part in it, why will a computer still function fine if you leave it in a cupboard for a decade, blow the dust off it, and plug it back in? The reason is that entropy is caused by crappy coding, crappy operating systems, crappy users, crappy physics and crappy integration. Until these three things cease to exist (not likely), then cruft will continue to occur. I don't think anyone could be expected to keep track of the things a 6-year-old PC has to keep track of:
Uninstaller: Duh! I think I'll randomly leave behind 7 files, due to the 0.02% chance they might be used by some other shite program!
OS: Duh! I think I'll randomly fragment the hard disk drive, and fuck up the file system!
User: Duh! I think I'll randomly install the first software I happen to catch my eye on, and install it wherever it's most convenient!
Physical environment: Duh! I think I'll randomly deposit dust on the surface of the motherboard and the hard disks!
Integration: Duh! I think I'll randomly use DLLs from other programs, but not say which!
At the end of the day, it comes down to a balance between convenience and simplicity. Convenience occurs when everything promises to install itself, and to latch onto everything else. This goes wrong because a program simply can't know where and how to install itself to avoid cruft. Simplicity occurs when everything on a PC is in its own self-contained bundle, interacting as little as possible with everything else. This goes wrong because a program has no way of efficiently obtaining data from other hardware or software.
And in case you were wondering, my computer's at cruft force 3 - Lived-in. Surprising, considering it's a 2 year old Windows machine.
If you're worried about your 1024-bit keys being broken, switch to using 4096-bit keys. Until quantum computers are developed, factorisation will still remain a near-exponential/superpolynomial time activity, and 4096-bit keys will be safe until the military discovers how to harness quantum computing.
Yesterday evening, John Fisher, a middle-aged, South London bachelor was led away from his house after he was found to have swatted a bionic fly-like creature which was buzzing around his kitchen. Neighbours looked on in surprise as Fisher shouted in confusion when a SWAT team broke down his front door and rushed into the house. The suspect was allegedly busy making popcorn and running a plastic fly swatter under the tap.
"Huh? What the hell are you arresting me for? Let me go!" he cried as he was bundled into a waiting police car. "All I did was swat a damn fly!" Curiously, the police failed to tell him that what he had destroyed was not actually a fly, but an electronic insect costing $40 million being tested by the US military. The electromechanical creature was spying on Fisher to test out its televisual capabilities, relaying images to the nerds controlling it over at DARPA.
Vending pirates take the software for free, and then sell it to others at a reduced price. Result? The company loses X potential customers, thus reducting its revenues.
Educational pirates take the software for free, but keep it to themselves just so they can learn how to use it. They wouldn't buy it anyway, but when they get a regular/greater source of income, they may purchase a legitimate copy of the software to make up for it. Result? The company will lose 1 potential customer in the short term but probably gain a customer in the long term, thus increasing its revenues a little.
Who would YOU go after?
If Little Jimmy learns how to use Star Office or AbiWord in school, how is that going to help him when he goes to work for a company that requires him to use MS Office? They serve the same purpose, but the differences are very important conceptually."
It's not just the function of the software that matters. A lot of schools would use Microsoft software (instead of third party "RM Nimbus" shit), if it weren't for a little thing called market share. Most of the technical companies out there are going to use Linux, and the role of the educational system is just that: to educate.
If Little Jimmy learns how to use MS Office or MSWord in school, how is that going to help him when he goes to work for an ISP that requires him to use Linux, Open Office and/or vi? They serve the same purpose, but the differences are very important conceptually.Is it even possible for a game to shunt data around at 2.2Gb a second? Even adding up all the different kinds of RAM in my computer, it wouldn't come to any more than perhaps 250Mb. Even for the newest machines, the sum total of the volatile memory is perhaps 700Mb at the most. So do we really need this kind of hardware yet? It may be backward compatible, but if it simply isn't possible for my computer to generate or store this amount of data then whether or not it can handle two gigabytes or a thousand terabytes a second is redundant.
They'll probably still need astronauts to go up and fix these machines when they break down. Anyway, considering the number of qualifications an astronaut has, I don't think it'd be difficult for them to get a new job, anyhow:
INTERVIEWER: So, what was your previous job?
EX-ASTRONAUT: I was an astronaut. I helped fix the Hubble Space telescope.
INTERVIEWER: Really? Wow!
"This could have many far reaching consequences..."
Not really, other than that satellites and the like will have to be built more reliably (since no one will go up to fix them).
"The astronauts will unionize, and during strikes the American public will be denied much needed weightlessness footage!"
Actually, I doubt an astronaut union could have a great effect. There aren't more than a couple of hundred astronauts, and the industry they work in isn't considered terribly important by most of the public, so an astronaut union wouldn't have much effect. Anyway, it's not as if an astronaut union could stop NASA from using humanoid robots instead of people. Unless of course the robots turned out to be total failures.
"Stop these "ro-bot" workers before it is too late!"
Bring 'em on, I say! Oh, wait, were you kidding?
Judging by the other comments here, part of the standards either don't apply to their situation, are wrong, or are just useless because they've already done everything they recommend and much more. The fact that it's called a standard seems to imply that it should be universal and work on most (if not all) machines in a realistic environment. The fact that it doesn't suggests that it's not actually a standard.
Are Slashdot stories allowed to be nothing more than 3-line advertisements? If I wanted shameless plugs, I'd watch TV.
Why shouldn't gamers be able to enter "The Zone" if sportsmen and the religious can? It's not as if gamers are greatly different, and gaming often requires the same sort of concentration as any sport; gamers do often have the same sort of traits as the religious, such as devotion (must login to Everquest/Planetarion/whatever soon!) and rote memorisation of concepts important to their game/religion (ooh, hit points, defence points, attack points!).
I don't think your donations will make a good deal of difference. If they're not making money in the long run, then no matter how much you donate they're eventually going to end up in the red again.
Typical. Give a geek a stick and he think's he's Li friggin' Huahua.
"Let's see...Start...Shut Down...OK...there we go. Hmmm, seems to be taking a while to shut down. Better keep pedalling in case we accidentally shut it off early."
Assuming that these 6-8 hours are the estimated playing time per episode, you're going to wind up getting only 40-50 hours of enjoyment out of this game. This isn't terribly brilliant in terms of longevity; I only purchase a game if I expect to be able to have fun with it for weeks on end. I'm not going to bother buying this if I'm just going to buy a disk every day for a week and have them all completed the same day I buy them.
This also explains why I haven't bought a new game for about five months now.
I think we all know the answer to that question.
This is how the cost for the telephone books can be (at least partly) covered, and if it works for them, why not websites?
And these risks to the Internet have been around for HOW long now? About 30 years, from the very moment of its creation? And has it ever gone completely down the tube?
Didn't think so.
If you withhold knowledge:
If knowledge is in the public domain:
If you keep dangerous information secret, then it can be abused by a group of individuals much more readily. If everyone knows about something dangerous, then they can take precautions to prevent it (and those who are stupid enough not to will get hurt).
07.26.02
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the research arm of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is working on technology to improve bandwidth use in wireless communications systems by a factor of twenty.
Details on the XG Communications Program are still sketchy. However, a spokesperson for the agency said that it is looking at systems that can redistribute existing wireless capacity on the fly. This would enable more efficient use of currently available bandwidth as devices could "share" spectrum more efficiently.
"This is a program to develop a radio frequency system to dynamically assign existing spectrum," DARPA spokesperson Jan Walker told Unstrung.
The eventual aim, she says, is to create technology that will allow individual wireless devices to "listen" and grab chunks of existing bandwidth that weren't being used by other devices.
This approach is quite different from conventional third-generation (3G) cellular systems, which take what might be termed a 'scattergun' approach to delivering bandwidth to users. Conventional cellular systems transmit signals in all directions to all the users in the range of a particular cell. In other words, along with the right signals hitting the user, the system is also pumping lots of "noise" or "electro-smog" into the radio frequency environment.
The DARPA project, on the other hand, seems like it might have some commonality with systems like those developed by ArrayComm Inc. The ArrayComm system uses software and an array of antennas to continually map the RF environment, allowing it to create a "personal cell" link with each user (see ArrayComm Has Its Chips). The difference is that the DARPA technology would be mapping the environment from the device side rather than from the base station, seeking chunks of available spectrum to use.
Also, Arraycomm is interested in using time-division duplex (TDD) or "unpaired" spectrum, whereas the DARPA project is intended for use over standard "paired" spectrum, which is also called frequency-division duplex (FDD) spectrum.
Walker says that any technology resulting from the XG Communications program could have commercial as well as military applications. However, she stresses that DARPA is currently merely interested in developing technology.
"We want to look at the technology and see what's possible," Walker says. "That will allow the policy makers to decide what they want to do and commercial operators to see if they're interested."
We tried to link to the blurb about this program on the DARPA site, but the URL doesn't work, so we've excerpted it here:
The XG Communications Program is intended to demonstrate enabling technologies and system concepts to improve spectral utilization of military radio frequency emitters by a factor of 20. These demonstrations will include demonstrating a low power/wideband spectrum sensor, time/frequency agile waveforms, and dynamic spectrum access and control. At its completion, the Program will have developed and demonstrated an appliqu? [sic] for legacy and future emitter systems for joint service utility. The Program will develop enabling technologies and system concepts to provide assured military communications and sensors in support of worldwide, short notice deployments through the dynamic redistribution of allocated spectrum. This research will have significant impact on a wide variety of existing and future communications and sensors systems in DoD and commercial environments. This research is also expected to provide a common technical architecture that can meet the needs of both military and civilian future (beyond 3G) mobile communications systems. This Program will require the involvement of a variety of Government (Joint and Service Laboratories) and commercial technology development centers.
-- Dan Jones, Senior Editor, Unstrung http://www.unstrung.com
For all we know, this project description might actually MEAN something.