I learned Assembly language programming from Randall Hyde using his monster tome (available online for free and in print) the Art of Assembly Language Programming.
What Randy Hyde taught me is that it is important for a beginner programmer to quickly learn what kind of instructions the high level code you write is being translated into, how basic machine organization works and how the compiler and OS figure into running your code. Writting Assembly is no longer important (thank goodness) however the process of LEARNING how to write Assembly is a crucial step in a well rounded CS curriculum.
When Randy Hyde taught x86 Assembly to us at UC Riverside it was the toughest lower-division class and the weeder for the people who shouldn't be computer scientists. Without that core people are making it to upper-division and performing very poorly in OS, compilers and architecture.
My Roomba is already a better robot then it is a vacum cleaner. They should put more effort into improving the cleaning ability then on fancy robotics.
Applying more and more sophistocated graphical rendering techniques to graphical user interfaces should not be patentable. The reason they weren't used twenty years ago isn't that NO ONE thought of it, its because of performance advances since then.
How unique is software in being incumbered by BOTH patents and copyright?
Here we are talking about confining an application to a directory, but the user, or other apps on the system don't care about what's 'in' that directory. Only the executable knows and/or cares about the structure of this 'directory'. So why not make it a single file, a kind of unmounted file system that only the executable mounts and reads and writes to, as part of the loading process. A persistent store for both code and data, very general very powerful.
Now as for shared libraries, this should be handled by a COM broker, with Apps registering uses of component API's. If no app wants an API then all implementations of that API are unnecessary and can be removed.
Using the non-scientific but sound engineering definition based on 2^10 rather than 10^3 you will need 1,100 accounts for a terabyte.
Thats a 10% discrepency, by the time we get to yottabytes (2^80 vs 10^24) we hit a 20% discrepency. Hard drive makers profit margin just keeps getting larger. Invest now (long term investment, exponential payoff!!!)
So can open source software get in trouble for bundling apps that step on other companies? If not, then what about bundling closed source binary only apps? If not them then why Microsoft. Where do we want the line drawn? Where will it be drawn? Can Microsoft publish and/or finance open source Windows software projects to 'bundle' with Windows. (What I ask you is the good of an open source windows antivirus suite except for use on windows?)
Microsoft may NEED to continue to bundle more apps in order to compete with Linux, that is a potential problem for the whole anti-trust argument isn't it? If MS has to open the source of IE, WMP, MS-Antivirus etc. to avoid anti-trust concerns then so be it, if the alternative is loosing desktop market share they will do anything necessary.
I always thought the Open Source Movement should not pursue Anti-trust complaints for just this reason. More free software is better as long as it is our 'good' free software. If you sell your OS you can't make it competitive by bundling necessary apps, but if you give it away you can. I just don't see a consistent way of looking at the situation that stops Microsoft from bundling whatever it wants.
I believe that Linux has removed the monopoly view of Microsoft so they are free to do what they can to survive. Sure Windows still has market dominance but it is no longer a monopoly.
I'm sorry, this is offtopic but why in the world is the URL for C|net's News.com actually news.com.com? This seems really odd, I would have thought it was a SPAMer type trick to fool unwitting AOLers.
You could, more simply, have your little script listen for messages (UDP) sent to port x. If the message has the following form.
"open port Y for ip Z using key K"
if the port opening policy accepts this command then it is opened otherwise it is not. Better yet 'REAL' crypto could be used to protect the ports. Fore example...
"open port Y for ip Z @ TIMESTAMP" Encrypted by K.
This simpler implementation (more likely to be correct) will provide equivalent security.
If Microsoft is wrong then we should be able to design and build a third party media player that can play iTunes Music store songs and a plugin so Winamp can play them.
Otherwise Microsoft is right... Oh wait you can just Burn a CD in iTunes and rip the CD into mp3 right in iTunes. Nevermind cary on nothing to see here.
Who cares what is inside the event horizon of a 'black hole'? Does it really matter whether the mass is in a singularity at the center or distributed about the surface? Doesn't the event horizon effectively mask the differences? Or does this better explain black hole quantum radiation a la Stephen Hawking?
I say a 'black hole' is any object with an event horizon no matter what strange undetectable theory we are using to describe what is inside that horizon.
But consider paying $400 for 20GB rather then settling for 15GB at $300. That is 5 extra GB for $100 which makes 11 extra GB for $50 look like a bargain...
I think we can expect the new 15GB $300 iPod to eat away at both the mini and 20GB models.
The question of whether atomically constructing arbitrary large objects is possible is irrelevant.
It won't ever happen because...
1. It would be easier to construct 'The Matrix'.
2. The construction of 'The Matrix' would remove the desire or need to do this.
Many science fiction ideas can be disregarded in this way, including teleportation and time travel. Ignore the ludite anti-machine slant that 'The Matrix' movies have put on 'The Matrix' and you willl see the good it could be used for.
Or perhaps it is like 'the one ring', none of us can wield it although we would use it to do good it would corrupt us.
If you are interested in reversable circuits read what Feynman had to say about them in his lectures on computation.
While they may be helpful for certain things, especially quantum computers (but that is a whole different story) there is a snag.
They are deterministic; great CS people like Rabin have taught us the value of probabilistic turing machines and today we use them as the basis of determining what is computationally efficient (BPP, see Michael Sipser's intro to computation and complexity).
Every once in a while you have to take a non-reversable step to pick a random number (as well as through away garbage you don't want to store any more) and this negates the thermodynamic advantages of reversible computing.
I believe that companies currently have an incentive to word patent applications in a manner that is as general as possible to maximize their use of the patent.
If a company submits a patent that is too broad as in this case there is clearly a large body of previous work that supercedes this patent. In this case the company should be refused the patent. They then reword the patent until the Patent office lets it through.
How do we change the current patent system to remove this incentive? The brute force method would be to strengthen the patent granting process to ensure that no such patents are accepted but the cost of this solution falls soley on the patent office. Do we punish companies when patents are rejected with fines to fund the patent office?
Dollar = Base Currency, Penny = Minimum Currency
on
Making Change
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· Score: 1
In the US the dollar is the base currency. Thus an integral number of coins of any sort must be equal to one dollar. 18 cent coins do not satisfy this requirement (nor do any coins greater then 50 cents) and thus make the process of making change harder.
We also wish to have a minimum currency, which we take to be a penny. Thus an integral number of pennies must equal any other coin.
With these two, perfectly reasonable requirements the current system of penny, nickel, dime, quarter is optimal. The only remaining valid coins are 50 cent pieces (used but rarely), 20 cent pieces, 4 cent pieces, and 2 cent pieces.
His optimization problem was under-constrained. No wonder he didn't get a unique answer.
If Microsoft were to sign the Xbox linux project's code could they distribute that signature under a for-profit license or would the GPL protect it to ensure that it could be distributed? It isn't source code. Could this be a way for Microsoft to steal GPL code for its profit?
Just a thought.
This is essentially a very simple idea. The interesting question is how they solved the following problem. Neither the article or (awful) website gives any information.
Let me oversee how this system works...
Lets say a customer wants to purchase 1,000 peppercoins worth $0.05 for $50.00. In return for $50.00 the service sends 1,000 peppercoins. Now, approximately 5 of these 1,000 peppercoins will be worth $10.00 each and the other 995 will be essentially worthless. Certainly it should be impossible for the customer to separate the 'good' from the 'bad' (if the customer could pick out the 'good' peppercoins he would cash them in himself). On the other hand the merchant must then not be able to tell the difference between 'good' and 'bad' peppercoins (if he could he would sell this ability to customers for a nifty fee). Thus only the service can reliably distinguish between 'good' and 'bad' peppercoins. Thus each of the 1,000 peppercoins the customer purchases must go back to peppercoin for 'sorting' and the service must take action on each of these individually.
At this point I see absolutely no advantage in the probabilistic marking of peppercoins since the service has to make a transaction for each of the peppercoins. They might as well then treat every peppercoin as worth $0.05 and debit and credit customers and merchants as appropriate.
I don't see a way that probabilistic marking will dramatically reduce the processing done per transaction by the peppercoin service, but then again I am not Ron Rivest.:) Anyone see how it is done?
Slashdot Mirror
What Randy Hyde taught me is that it is important for a beginner programmer to quickly learn what kind of instructions the high level code you write is being translated into, how basic machine organization works and how the compiler and OS figure into running your code. Writting Assembly is no longer important (thank goodness) however the process of LEARNING how to write Assembly is a crucial step in a well rounded CS curriculum.
When Randy Hyde taught x86 Assembly to us at UC Riverside it was the toughest lower-division class and the weeder for the people who shouldn't be computer scientists. Without that core people are making it to upper-division and performing very poorly in OS, compilers and architecture.
My Roomba is already a better robot then it is a vacum cleaner. They should put more effort into improving the cleaning ability then on fancy robotics.
Applying more and more sophistocated graphical rendering techniques to graphical user interfaces should not be patentable. The reason they weren't used twenty years ago isn't that NO ONE thought of it, its because of performance advances since then.
How unique is software in being incumbered by BOTH patents and copyright?
Now as for shared libraries, this should be handled by a COM broker, with Apps registering uses of component API's. If no app wants an API then all implementations of that API are unnecessary and can be removed.
Thats a 10% discrepency, by the time we get to yottabytes (2^80 vs 10^24) we hit a 20% discrepency. Hard drive makers profit margin just keeps getting larger. Invest now (long term investment, exponential payoff!!!)
Microsoft may NEED to continue to bundle more apps in order to compete with Linux, that is a potential problem for the whole anti-trust argument isn't it? If MS has to open the source of IE, WMP, MS-Antivirus etc. to avoid anti-trust concerns then so be it, if the alternative is loosing desktop market share they will do anything necessary.
I always thought the Open Source Movement should not pursue Anti-trust complaints for just this reason. More free software is better as long as it is our 'good' free software. If you sell your OS you can't make it competitive by bundling necessary apps, but if you give it away you can. I just don't see a consistent way of looking at the situation that stops Microsoft from bundling whatever it wants.
I believe that Linux has removed the monopoly view of Microsoft so they are free to do what they can to survive. Sure Windows still has market dominance but it is no longer a monopoly.
What were they thinking?
"open port Y for ip Z using key K"
if the port opening policy accepts this command then it is opened otherwise it is not. Better yet 'REAL' crypto could be used to protect the ports. Fore example...
"open port Y for ip Z @ TIMESTAMP" Encrypted by K.
This simpler implementation (more likely to be correct) will provide equivalent security.
Call me back when they make it 2.5" or double the resolution to get a decent pixel density.
Otherwise Microsoft is right... Oh wait you can just Burn a CD in iTunes and rip the CD into mp3 right in iTunes. Nevermind cary on nothing to see here.
I say a 'black hole' is any object with an event horizon no matter what strange undetectable theory we are using to describe what is inside that horizon.
I think we can expect the new 15GB $300 iPod to eat away at both the mini and 20GB models.
It won't ever happen because...
1. It would be easier to construct 'The Matrix'.
2. The construction of 'The Matrix' would remove the desire or need to do this.
Many science fiction ideas can be disregarded in this way, including teleportation and time travel. Ignore the ludite anti-machine slant that 'The Matrix' movies have put on 'The Matrix' and you willl see the good it could be used for.
Or perhaps it is like 'the one ring', none of us can wield it although we would use it to do good it would corrupt us.
While they may be helpful for certain things, especially quantum computers (but that is a whole different story) there is a snag. They are deterministic; great CS people like Rabin have taught us the value of probabilistic turing machines and today we use them as the basis of determining what is computationally efficient (BPP, see Michael Sipser's intro to computation and complexity). Every once in a while you have to take a non-reversable step to pick a random number (as well as through away garbage you don't want to store any more) and this negates the thermodynamic advantages of reversible computing.
No Free Lunch
In addition to data formats the bill should require open networking protocol formats. That covers the disk and the wire(/less).
If a company submits a patent that is too broad as in this case there is clearly a large body of previous work that supercedes this patent. In this case the company should be refused the patent. They then reword the patent until the Patent office lets it through.
How do we change the current patent system to remove this incentive? The brute force method would be to strengthen the patent granting process to ensure that no such patents are accepted but the cost of this solution falls soley on the patent office. Do we punish companies when patents are rejected with fines to fund the patent office?
We also wish to have a minimum currency, which we take to be a penny. Thus an integral number of pennies must equal any other coin.
With these two, perfectly reasonable requirements the current system of penny, nickel, dime, quarter is optimal. The only remaining valid coins are 50 cent pieces (used but rarely), 20 cent pieces, 4 cent pieces, and 2 cent pieces.
His optimization problem was under-constrained. No wonder he didn't get a unique answer.
If Microsoft were to sign the Xbox linux project's code could they distribute that signature under a for-profit license or would the GPL protect it to ensure that it could be distributed? It isn't source code. Could this be a way for Microsoft to steal GPL code for its profit? Just a thought.
This is essentially a very simple idea. The interesting question is how they solved the following problem. Neither the article or (awful) website gives any information. :) Anyone see how it is done?
Let me oversee how this system works...
Lets say a customer wants to purchase 1,000 peppercoins worth $0.05 for $50.00. In return for $50.00 the service sends 1,000 peppercoins. Now, approximately 5 of these 1,000 peppercoins will be worth $10.00 each and the other 995 will be essentially worthless. Certainly it should be impossible for the customer to separate the 'good' from the 'bad' (if the customer could pick out the 'good' peppercoins he would cash them in himself). On the other hand the merchant must then not be able to tell the difference between 'good' and 'bad' peppercoins (if he could he would sell this ability to customers for a nifty fee). Thus only the service can reliably distinguish between 'good' and 'bad' peppercoins. Thus each of the 1,000 peppercoins the customer purchases must go back to peppercoin for 'sorting' and the service must take action on each of these individually.
At this point I see absolutely no advantage in the probabilistic marking of peppercoins since the service has to make a transaction for each of the peppercoins. They might as well then treat every peppercoin as worth $0.05 and debit and credit customers and merchants as appropriate. I don't see a way that probabilistic marking will dramatically reduce the processing done per transaction by the peppercoin service, but then again I am not Ron Rivest.