>While it's great to suspect some extortion/conspiracy theory, the signed driver >requirement is in place so that it'll be much harder for Hacker McPhee to install that >driver rootkit on your machine.
Actually the real reason is to close the equivalent of the 'analog loophole' in software.
The easiest way to bypass DRM, for let's say, copyrighted music, in a highly DRMed system, is to write 'fake' soundcard driver. The driver would capture the unencripted audio in digital form.
You could even write a video card driver to capture video.
You are right. I'm from Argentina, and we were taught about Toxoplasmosis in 6th grade biology class (that's when we were 11 years old).
It usually is not dangerous, and the body gets rid of it quite easily (it takes a month or so, with flu-like symptoms), the biggest problem with it is getting the infection during a pregnancy, which can cause malformations in the fetus.
Typically you catch it from contact with cats (thats why woman who hadn't had toxoplasmosis shouldn't be in contact with cats during the pregnancy).
I'll probably burn some karma with this, but what caught my attention is that I assumed that the knowledge about it would be vox-populi, since it was taught to me in primary school.
I kind of agree with you in that aspect, but what I think is mor important is that in business talks (and all other high-stakes talks) non-verbal forms of communication play a huge role.
Tone of voice, posture, the way the eyes move and all sort of tiny little details about the way a person talks, that you unconsciously recognize are missing in WoW (and in most types of electronic communication).
It's already difficult to assess the state of mind of other people in meat-space, in an on-line game where your 'perceptions' are diminished or can be fooled by other means, it might as well become impossible.
I like your explanation, and I don't really think that it should be modded as flamebait.
Just thought some support would be nice.
PS: I'm not a native english speaker and there is a very good chance that I'm making some sort of mistake in this post. Be gentle!
Re:Not appropriate for all types of workloads
on
New Server Chip Niagara
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Not necessarily, at the time of this writting, my desktop machine has 510 threads belonging to 48 processes (I'll grant you that is not a typical setting, it is a development workstation).
Single threaded applications are pretty rare, most modern applications have more than one path of execution (you cannot afford to freeze the screen while saving for example). Network I/O is much easier to program with threading, in oposition from asynchronous I/O (think a browser with several tabs/windows open).
I wouldn't so lightly assume that multi-threading support is only desirable for server systems.
Anyway, this has been designed mostlly for servers, consider that a typical Java server will have around 50-100 threads (maybe more than 300). This is where this technology makes more sense.
Another (somewhat naive) technique consist on never deleting anything physically, only logically.
Basically you have: - a version number added to each primary key - a sequence to generate a new version number for each transaction - and a status for deletable objects.
When you want to delete, you insert a new row with status deleted.
All your queries find the max version number, and filter out deleted records (unless you are searching for old information).
A process may periodically move old records to an archiving database.
This works well for systems that have somewhat simple queries.
But game development requires more bizarre skills than most common types of development (enterpise applications, web applications, etc.)
It usually involves quite complex math skills, knowledge of physics and many obscure algorithmic techniques that most programmers are not familiarized with.
I'm not saying that one type of programmers is necessary better than the other, just that good game prgrammers are even harder to find than (for lack of a better word) 'regular' programmers. That might justify the higher salary.
Lucene in a nutshell (over-simplified)
on
Lucene in Action
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Lucene is not like google (it's not a full application), it's a library focused on searching text based documents (you could use it to build a mini-google).
The basic idea is that you want to build an index, and then search it, to find some document.
A document has several fields (e.g. text, title, lastModificationDate, author, categories, summary, url, etc.) which may be indexed, stored, or both.
You usually build your lucene documents, based on some real documents (e.g. web pages, PDF, records in a database, etc.), and then add them to the index.
Once you have an index, you build a query to search one or more fields (lucene provides a QueryParser class, which handles the most common cases), and you get a Hits collection containing the documents matching your query in some order (this can be customized).
Before a document is added to the index, it is passed through an Analyzer which converts the text in the fields to terms, which are the basic internal concept that is indexed.
Another interesting feature of lucene indexes is that they can be searched while they are being built without noticeable loss of search performance, and that they are process-safe (many processes can access them for reading, only one for writing), this has the drawback that the indexes are append-only (actually a separate index is created if you modify an index), but periodical optimization of the indexes removes unnecessary entries and inefficiencies.
Actually, robot itself comes from Czech robota, "servitude, forced labor."
So the questions are, in a way, worth asking (although they might not be useful).
I agree with you (albeit partially) that for robots to be really useful, they should be closer to tools (I don't want/need a neurotic blender), but a ceratin level of advanced AI can be necessary since some problems are inherently fuzzy.
The size is because it needs a Java VM to run. But Clevercactus will run under any operating system that supports Java (including linux).
I know the main developer (we went to college toghether), and he is an incredibly bright person and developer. I've been using CC since it was named spaces and it was in beta, it doesn't have spyware nor ads, and I refuse to believe that Diego (thats the main developer's name) will ever allow spyware in one of his programs.
Those technologies may be 'cleaner' (in some sense), but each have many problems for mass deployment, lets choose three problems for example:
1- Power density is low 2- Dependent on climate 3- Some are not so 'green'
Wind and Solar require huge ammounts of terrain to produce a usable ammount of energy. The Power density is not very good (in the same surface area, a nuclear power plant can produce much more energy and provide storage and processing facilities for the residue)
Hidro requires dams (which tend to destroy the envirnment by the way), and most importantly, they require huge ammounts of water.
Geo-thermal also requires much water and produces some residue that might be toxic.
Hidro, Wind and Solar all tend to destroy the environment when deployed in large scale, and all depend on the weather for production (hidro uses dams as buffers to compensate water flow).
You say that "The only thing standing in solar's way is the large up-front cost"
I almost agree with you, that's one of the reasons, but solar systems tend to deteriorate very fast (5-10 years on the average) and need replacement.
If you take in consideration that you usually need more energy to manufacture solar cells than the energy they provide in their lifetime, they are not so 'green', although that may change in the future with organic solar cells.
It's not just that, the thing about knobs and any rotational interface is that the human hand is much better at performing rotational movements than discrete linear ones.
Think about doorknobs, the steering-wheel (although not a hand movement, but the principle applies also).
Another example is the trayectory a mouse cursor follows on the screen, you'll see that the trayectory is always a curve, and linear trayectories are very hard to mantain.
But the soundcard driver would provide the best quality for transcoding.
Re:Addresses are chosen with routing in mind
on
IPv6 is Here
·
· Score: 1
I completely agree with you. I just couldn't find the right words to express it at the time I made the post (since I'm not a native english speaker, sometimes words elude me;).
Addresses are chosen with routing in mind
on
IPv6 is Here
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
You may have more addresses, but addresses are chosen based on how efficient you can route packets to those addresses (more local information, less global knowledge about routes).
IPv6 (as IPv4) is also designed with the idea that addresses are somewhat related to physical location, you cannot choose arbitrary addresses, there isn't an easy way to provide the IP equivalent of "number portability" among providers.
Spam is a side-effect of the origins of the internet, when it was a network of peers, where everyone was the same (universities, mostly).
Trust was the primary asset, and email was designed without concerns about anonymity nor security (in the beggining, they all knew each other)
Now the network has become global, millions of people use it everyday, and we lost the trust, we have firewalls, spam checkers, complex authentication mechanisms, etc.
We have to find a way to re-establish the trust (maybe through better protocolos and infrastructure), but until then, all sorts of abuse will continue to be commonplace.
In Argentinian law, the law has no meaning until a Judge makes an "interpretation" of it because the executive power (is this the right translation?) has chosen to enforce it.
Unlike the American system where the law is "positive" and the written word is what counts over interpretation.
A ''computer program'' is a set of statements or instructions to be used directly or indirectly in a computer in order to bring about a certain result
That also defines a DVD... (and all digital media). A digital stream is a set of instructions, and the DVD player is the machine that executes that set of instructions.
The concept is closely related to that of a Virtual Machine (or a Turing machine;). Even the menues are code. And the compressed stream must be executed to render the images.
What about an animation rendered by a different environment (e.g. Java program)?
That's the biggest problem with digital media (software, music, etc.), it cannot be easily defined.
Slashdot Mirror
>While it's great to suspect some extortion/conspiracy theory, the signed driver
>requirement is in place so that it'll be much harder for Hacker McPhee to install that
>driver rootkit on your machine.
Actually the real reason is to close the equivalent of the 'analog loophole' in software.
The easiest way to bypass DRM, for let's say, copyrighted music, in a highly DRMed system, is to write 'fake' soundcard driver. The driver would capture the unencripted audio in digital form.
You could even write a video card driver to capture video.
You are right. I'm from Argentina, and we were taught about Toxoplasmosis in 6th grade biology class (that's when we were 11 years old).
It usually is not dangerous, and the body gets rid of it quite easily (it takes a month or so, with flu-like symptoms), the biggest problem with it is getting the infection during a pregnancy, which can cause malformations in the fetus.
Typically you catch it from contact with cats (thats why woman who hadn't had toxoplasmosis shouldn't be in contact with cats during the pregnancy).
I'll probably burn some karma with this, but what caught my attention is that I assumed that the knowledge about it would be vox-populi, since it was taught to me in primary school.
I kind of agree with you in that aspect, but what I think is mor important is that in business talks (and all other high-stakes talks) non-verbal forms of communication play a huge role.
Tone of voice, posture, the way the eyes move and all sort of tiny little details about the way a person talks, that you unconsciously recognize are missing in WoW (and in most types of electronic communication).
It's already difficult to assess the state of mind of other people in meat-space, in an on-line game where your 'perceptions' are diminished or can be fooled by other means, it might as well become impossible.
The Java language is just a language (and a very small language).
The mixup comes from the "Java Platform Specification" (which includes the APIs and comes in several editions).
The "Java Language Specification" only requires a few classes (Thread, Object, Class and String) and that's about it.
But the usefulness of the language comes from the standard APIs, which let your programs run without modifications in almost every known OS.
I like your explanation, and I don't really think that it should be modded as flamebait.
Just thought some support would be nice.
PS: I'm not a native english speaker and there is a very good chance that I'm making some sort of mistake in this post. Be gentle!
Not necessarily, at the time of this writting, my desktop machine has 510 threads belonging to 48 processes (I'll grant you that is not a typical setting, it is a development workstation).
Single threaded applications are pretty rare, most modern applications have more than one path of execution (you cannot afford to freeze the screen while saving for example). Network I/O is much easier to program with threading, in oposition from asynchronous I/O (think a browser with several tabs/windows open).
I wouldn't so lightly assume that multi-threading support is only desirable for server systems.
Anyway, this has been designed mostlly for servers, consider that a typical Java server will have around 50-100 threads (maybe more than 300). This is where this technology makes more sense.
Have you tried portable consoles? Such as the GameBoy Micro, it has a wide selection of oldies and new games in old-school style.
Or you can wait for the Revolution to come out with downloadable games.
Response Time: 3ms gray-to-gray (avg.); 5ms white-black-white (typical)
Seems pretty fast.
Another (somewhat naive) technique consist on never deleting anything physically, only logically.
Basically you have:
- a version number added to each primary key
- a sequence to generate a new version number for each transaction
- and a status for deletable objects.
When you want to delete, you insert a new row with status deleted.
All your queries find the max version number, and filter out deleted records (unless you are searching for old information).
A process may periodically move old records to an archiving database.
This works well for systems that have somewhat simple queries.
From 'American Beauty':
"Never underestimate the power of denial"
What you say may be true.
But game development requires more bizarre skills than most common types of development (enterpise applications, web applications, etc.)
It usually involves quite complex math skills, knowledge of physics and many obscure algorithmic techniques that most programmers are not familiarized with.
I'm not saying that one type of programmers is necessary better than the other, just that good game prgrammers are even harder to find than (for lack of a better word) 'regular' programmers. That might justify the higher salary.
Lucene is not like google (it's not a full application), it's a library focused on searching text based documents (you could use it to build a mini-google).
The basic idea is that you want to build an index, and then search it, to find some document.
A document has several fields (e.g. text, title, lastModificationDate, author, categories, summary, url, etc.) which may be indexed, stored, or both.
You usually build your lucene documents, based on some real documents (e.g. web pages, PDF, records in a database, etc.), and then add them to the index.
Once you have an index, you build a query to search one or more fields (lucene provides a QueryParser class, which handles the most common cases), and you get a Hits collection containing the documents matching your query in some order (this can be customized).
Before a document is added to the index, it is passed through an Analyzer which converts the text in the fields to terms, which are the basic internal concept that is indexed.
Another interesting feature of lucene indexes is that they can be searched while they are being built without noticeable loss of search performance, and that they are process-safe (many processes can access them for reading, only one for writing), this has the drawback that the indexes are append-only (actually a separate index is created if you modify an index), but periodical optimization of the indexes removes unnecessary entries and inefficiencies.
Hope this helps!
juancn
Well... I live in one of those countries, and Microsoft products are as free as linux ;)
Actually, robot itself comes from Czech robota, "servitude, forced labor."
So the questions are, in a way, worth asking (although they might not be useful).
I agree with you (albeit partially) that for robots to be really useful, they should be closer to tools (I don't want/need a neurotic blender), but a ceratin level of advanced AI can be necessary since some problems are inherently fuzzy.
So, following this guy's reasoning, since all code has bugs, a bug might corrupt the shared memory, and therefore, you break all processes!
The size is because it needs a Java VM to run.
But Clevercactus will run under any operating system that supports Java (including linux).
I know the main developer (we went to college toghether), and he is an incredibly bright person and developer. I've been using CC since it was named spaces and it was in beta, it doesn't have spyware nor ads, and I refuse to believe that Diego (thats the main developer's name) will ever allow spyware in one of his programs.
Those technologies may be 'cleaner' (in some sense), but each have many problems for mass deployment, lets choose three problems for example:
1- Power density is low
2- Dependent on climate
3- Some are not so 'green'
Wind and Solar require huge ammounts of terrain to produce a usable ammount of energy. The Power density is not very good (in the same surface area, a nuclear power plant can produce much more energy and provide storage and processing facilities for the residue)
Hidro requires dams (which tend to destroy the envirnment by the way), and most importantly, they require huge ammounts of water.
Geo-thermal also requires much water and produces some residue that might be toxic.
Hidro, Wind and Solar all tend to destroy the environment when deployed in large scale, and all depend on the weather for production (hidro uses dams as buffers to compensate water flow).
You say that "The only thing standing in solar's way is the large up-front cost"
I almost agree with you, that's one of the reasons, but solar systems tend to deteriorate very fast (5-10 years on the average) and need replacement.
If you take in consideration that you usually need more energy to manufacture solar cells than the energy they provide in their lifetime, they are not so 'green', although that may change in the future with organic solar cells.
It's not just that, the thing about knobs and any rotational interface is that the human hand is much better at performing rotational movements than discrete linear ones.
Think about doorknobs, the steering-wheel (although not a hand movement, but the principle applies also).
Another example is the trayectory a mouse cursor follows on the screen, you'll see that the trayectory is always a curve, and linear trayectories are very hard to mantain.
Maybe because the 2-wheeled platform is more stable.
It's easier to tip a three wheeled vehicle an make it fall, whereas a self-stabilized two wheeled vehicle can handle different terrains.
... or just record it from analog.
But the soundcard driver would provide the best quality for transcoding.
I completely agree with you. I just couldn't find the right words to express it at the time I made the post (since I'm not a native english speaker, sometimes words elude me ;).
You may have more addresses, but addresses are chosen based on how efficient you can route packets to those addresses (more local information, less global knowledge about routes).
IPv6 (as IPv4) is also designed with the idea that addresses are somewhat related to physical location, you cannot choose arbitrary addresses, there isn't an easy way to provide the IP equivalent of "number portability" among providers.
Spam is a side-effect of the origins of the internet, when it was a network of peers, where everyone was the same (universities, mostly).
Trust was the primary asset, and email was designed without concerns about anonymity nor security (in the beggining, they all knew each other)
Now the network has become global, millions of people use it everyday, and we lost the trust, we have firewalls, spam checkers, complex authentication mechanisms, etc.
We have to find a way to re-establish the trust (maybe through better protocolos and infrastructure), but until then, all sorts of abuse will continue to be commonplace.
Ask Google to search for:
'100km to feet'
It will return before the results:
100 kilometers = 328 083.99 feet
The same works for other math operations.
In Argentinian law, the law has no meaning until a Judge makes an "interpretation" of it because the executive power (is this the right translation?) has chosen to enforce it.
Unlike the American system where the law is "positive" and the written word is what counts over interpretation.
A ''computer program'' is a set of statements or instructions to be used directly or indirectly in a computer in order to bring about a certain result
;). Even the menues are code. And the compressed stream must be executed to render the images.
That also defines a DVD... (and all digital media). A digital stream is a set of instructions, and the DVD player is the machine that executes that set of instructions.
The concept is closely related to that of a Virtual Machine (or a Turing machine
What about an animation rendered by a different environment (e.g. Java program)?
That's the biggest problem with digital media (software, music, etc.), it cannot be easily defined.