I guess that my point is that I have more hardware/software flexibility with Linux/commodity hardware. The next is Windows/commodity hardware. Last is OSX/Apple hardware.
Yes, I realize I can get Office for the Mac and that I can emulate PCs on the Mac. Cringely's article talked about Linux being adopted over Apple because it keeps geeks employed. For me, on the server side, it's flexibility. On the desktop, I don't see any significant migration away from Windows.
First, I think Cringely is great. I mean who else would let us buy video tape of them having a nervous breakdown?
However, I think he's *WAY* off base here as to why Linux is being adopted faster than Apple. If I need a 64-way Linux machine, I can get it. If I need a cluster I can get it (off the shelf). If I want some funky hardware bit, I can get that as well.
My reason for not choosing Apple is vendor lock-in. If I can keep something that allows me to pick and choose parts from a wide variety of sources, I can build solutions that fit the need.
The one place where he might have a point is on the desktop, but I don't see a lot of Linux migration on the desktop. It's still Windows. People want Office even though they hate it.
A type of defamation. Slander is an untruthful oral (spoken) statement about a person that harms the person's reputation or standing in the community. Because slander is a tort (a civil wrong), the injured person can bring a lawsuit against the person who made the false statement. If the statement is made via broadcast media -- for example, over the radio or on TV -- it is considered libel, rather than slander, because the statement has the potential to reach a very wide audience.
IANAL but my guess is that SCO that because SCO isn't letting anybody see their evidence, nobody can tell if the claims are true. I would bet that if the claims are unfounded and it can be shown that SCO knew about it, then you'll see SCO get sued into dust. That is, unless IBM acquires them. Then it just all goes away.
Re:Ackward Worries, Threading and Responsiveness
on
Can .NET Really Scale?
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I have to pick a nit on someone and you're in the wrong place at the wrong time.
A lot of folks are lambasting this guy because he wants to do C# inside SQL Server. Most are saying, like you, that he just doesn't get it because you should separate the database from the application. That's true but it doesn't invalidate the need to have stored procedures (in any language you want be it PL/SQL or C#).
The idea behind a stored procedure is that your application may actually scale better by putting some of the logic "close to the data" because there is less contention for machine resources other than CPU.
For scalability, it's *generally* true that you want no processing to happen on the database because database servers are generally more expensive to scale. However, moving selected bits of logic to the database tier can result in huge scalability improvements.
It's not one-size-fits-all and unless you have a good working understanding of the problem, which is impossible with the data given, it's probably not a good idea to yell "WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU WANT TO DO THAT" at someone. Give the guy the benefit of the doubt.
If you think that stored procedure in C# (or any.NET language) isn't going to happen, you haven't been paying attention.
WTF? My VAIO is great except it's falling apart because Sony can figure out to tighten a screw. Jeez -- you've been fed too much marketing, buddy.
BTW, I am a former VAIO owner who:
1) Had most of the screws fall out 2) An HD make that "I'm about to die." squealing sound. 3) Tried to return it to Sony for service 4 times. 4) Each time I was promised a shipping box and documentation. 6) No shipping box or documentation ever arrived 7) The HD finally died 8) Two weeks after our house was burglarized 9) Insurance paid to get me a Dell 10) Rejoice! 11) ??? 12) Profit!
There's no reason for you to defend a company that can't ship a computer to you that does drop screws.
Timeline informs you that you are in violation of their patents but you continue to use the product for 2.5 years without checking out the claim yourself.
If you had engaged legal council and were advised by that legal council that you we safe, then Timeline's claim of bad faith has no basis. You are still liable for damages but not treble damages.
However, it is Timeline's position that if you simply took Microsoft's word for it, then you acted in bad faith. Timeline's position is nothing but a scare tactic.
Bad faith is "not simply bad judgment or negligence, but rather it implies the conscious doing of a wrong" -- Black's Law Dictionary. I fail to see how maintaining the status quo in the face of a contract dispute when your supplier - an actual party to the case tells you that everything is okay. It may be bad judgment to trust the MS's legal interpretation but I don't think doing so constitutes a conscious doing of a wrong.
However, If I were a big MS SQL Server customer, I'd want to be holding a letter from MS saying that they couldn't provide a copy of the agreement or a letter from my lawyer saying that they'd looked into it and could determine for sure who was right. Both show that you tried.
BTW, IANAL - my spouse is a law student. Taking my legal advice would be roughly equivalent to trusting your doctor's dog's veterinarian to treat your heart condition - probably worse than picking a random stranger.
I think you hit the nail on the head. A lot of us have considered technology the great equalizer but didn't stop to think that we're living above the norm so "equalization" means loss.
But, you correctly point out that as demand for cheap labor increases, the labor becomes not quite as cheap. Hence the sort of "rolling" equalization that you describe.
I think that false economies abound in such a scenario but, hey, why not give it a try?
Smoking kills about 420,000 Americans eachs year. The 9/11 attackers were pussies they only got about 3,000.
Americans commit suicide at about a 30,000 a year rate. The 9/11 attackers should just leave it to the professionals.
About 16,000 murders take place in America a year. Jeeze -- Only 3,000. These guys need to get their act together.
Now compare that with what a full-out nuclear exchange would do to India and Pakastan. This shows about 1.7 Million dead in India and another 1.8 Million dead in Pakistan.
No, but people I trust do this all the time. With palladium in place the good work these people would be in danger.
However, I don't think for a minute that all the clone MB manufacturers will make it impossible to boot an unsigned OS. I mean, most have setting that allow you to use processors whose frequency multipliers has been unlocked.
Nope, my car assumes that other people want to do bad stuff to/with my car. The XBox assumes that I want to do bad stuff to/with *MY* XBox.
The correct analogy is a motorcycle that prevented me from changing parts because I might make the motorcycle faster so I could speed. Which, of course, would harm the "driving community".
I wouldn't own a motorcycle like that, nor would I whine if some modification I made to my motorcycle made it illegal to ride on public roads. I'd change it back or take the bike to the track.
Unfortunately, MS isn't letting people change it back. The crucial difference is that MS owns the XBox Live network. They can make the rules. We can either choose to accept those rules or not use XBox live. I choose the latter.
I really do know people who think this way. One works for MS and the other keeps getting SYN flooded while playing online games.
I don't feel that way. I refuse to own an XBox because I just don't want the hassle of dealing with a product that assumes that you're bad from the start.
From the art: -- "Planting in the U.S. Southwest has been part of our business model from the beginning," Miller said. --
I wish people would stop using this as a justification. This roughly translates to "We've been doing bad stuff from the start. If you didn't want us to do bad stuff, you should have caught us sooner. We have the right to continue doing bas stuff because it would be unfair to make us stop now."
No company has the right to have its business model protected. If we found out tomorrow that (to put a far-fetched scenario out of my butt) toilet brushed caused migrating geese to die in huge numbers, I don't think that we should accept "But selling toilet brushes is our business model." as justification to let it continue to happen.
Sometimes the behavior and ignorance of my fellow citizens of the US embarrass me. (I am assuming that you are a US citizen)
There are two ways of looking WWII. One is to say that we bailed out Europe but another is to say that we didn't have the guts to stand shoulder to shoulder with our allies against an immoral aggressor bent on genocide.
There are millions of people who fought and died while the US sat undecided on the sidelines. To throw out, "how about thanking the USA for saving your ass in World War I and II" is to dishonor them and I think it is terribly unfair.
I don't care about the software he uses. The design is neat. It's the first spinnerbot that I know of that spins the entire chassis instead of just shell.
To do this the wheels that the bot spins on have to brake at precise intervals to provide the ability to do anything but just sit there and spin. That means he probably has some form of onboard computing.
BattleBots is neat but one of the things that's always detracted from it in my mind is that the bots always seemed like big, strong, remote controlled cars with no intelligence. This seems like a small step towards intelligence and may actually raise the bar.
Uh. I learned in high school physics that rockets work through that whole equal and oposite reaction thing not by pushing off something. That's why they work in space where there's nothing to push off of.
The big problem is that I can't figure out if you're joking or not.
Check with a patent lawyer, you have a certain amount of time between the first public disclosure of an invention and when you have to file the patent -- at least in the U.S. The same does not hold true for international patent law. However, unless you are *REALLY* greedy an unbreakable algorithm such as yours would be worth more than enough money in the US market.
Second, in the US, there's a thing called a "provisional" patent application. It's notes or a paper describing the invention that is filed with the patent office as a placeholder for the real application. Be careful here. Talk to a real patent lawyer.
So here's what I'd do:
1) Prepare a paper on your invention 2) Work with a patent attorney to file the paper as a provisional patent application -- should take very little time and money 3) Submit the paper for peer review 4) If the paper survives, amend the provisional application, and you're on your way
It's important to note that by following this plan you retain rights in the US but may be out of luck in other jurisdictions.
Oh, one last bit of advice, never follow any advice given by a Slashdot reader.;-)
for someone's grandfather and complain that the service was a sham because they didn't say anything about your Uncle George who recently died?
All you folks who're complaining that we should remember other people from other tragic events are missing the point. This is about the victims of 9/11.
If you would like to stage a rememberance for people who died in some other event, please feel free. No one's going to stop you.
If an american company wishes to salute the victims and the heros of 9/11 by forgoing advertising revenue for the day, that's thier choice. I think it sends a powerful message. The US culture is one of success at almost any cost. This says that it's more important to show support for the victims than it is to make a buck.
Maybe I'm being dense but if you'r emulating the hardware, why can't you just emulate hacked hardware?
This is real. And very scary.
on
CD Copy Stopper
·
· Score: 1
Here's the scenario.
Implement a bi-directional communication channel with the smart card. It has to work in a standard CD-ROM drive and you can't modulate the laser itself. However you can make the laser either shine on the smart chip sensors or not. Assuming a reasonably consistent spin rate, you can use head position to communicate information into the smart chip (think serial bit banging and maybe manchester encoding).
Such a com channel would be slow. Max of one bit per rev probably less including encoding and error correction. A single spin cd-rom does about 540 revs/sec when reading from the inside of the CD.
Next, you set up a secure com channel with the smart chip using Diffie-Hellman-Merckle key exchange and transmit the decryption key over the secured channel.
Assuming a 256-bit session key and a 1024-bit content encryption key, there's about 1.5K of data that needs to be exchanged, so the low-bandwidth of the com channel isn't really that big a deal.
Still you could break into the installer and grab the key, but Palladium is supposed to prevent unauthorized debugging and allow you cryptographically tie data to a particular computer and user. Maybe Paladium will work and maybe it won't -- all a know about Palladium I learn from Bruce Schneier's analysis.
Assuming that Palladium works, you you have a secure channel between the CD and installer as well as a secure channel between the installer and a particular machine/user combination (through the hard disk).
That leaves the only method of circumvention to be chip tampering or maybe memory buss snooping, which, while not impossible, certainly raises the bar. It only takes one crack per title -- still knocks me out of the running and I'm not exactly a newbie. It will certainly stop the script kiddies.
It all hinges on bidirectional communicaton with the smart chip. Given that and a working Palladium this is reasonably tough but not impossible to break. You have to crack Palladium.
I've always had the burning desire to ask a real AI Researcher about "Understanding Computers and Cognition" by Winograd and Flores.
How did their work inform or change AI researcher's outlook for an eventual solution? Are these ideas well respected or just considered unjust pessimism?
For those who aren't familiar this has some background. Here's and excerpt:
This article has presented hermeneutics primarily as a philosophy of understanding rather than as a set of technologies for interpretation in specific domains. As such, the hermeneutic tradition seems able to speak to AI researchers in two distinct ways. First, hermeneutics provides some basis for arguing against the feasibility of the AI project, at least under its present dispensation. Whether represented by Dilthey's idea of empathetic understanding or Heidegger's idea of situated understanding, hermeneutics seems to have discovered a quality in the human situation that is vital for knowledge of others and oneself but has not yet been simulated mechanically. Because these doubts are generated from a ongoing
intellectual tradition and because they refine some fairly common intuitions, they cannot easily be dismissed as ``irrational technological pessimism.'' On the other hand, these doubts should stimulate attempts by AI researchers to overcome them, as were some of the doubts raised by Dreyfus (1972). At the very least, then, the insights of the various hermeneutical camps can be expected to receive increasing attention in the artificial intelligence community.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess that my point is that I have more hardware/software flexibility with Linux/commodity hardware. The next is Windows/commodity hardware. Last is OSX/Apple hardware.
Yes, I realize I can get Office for the Mac and that I can emulate PCs on the Mac. Cringely's article talked about Linux being adopted over Apple because it keeps geeks employed. For me, on the server side, it's flexibility. On the desktop, I don't see any significant migration away from Windows.
First, I think Cringely is great. I mean who else would let us buy video tape of them having a nervous breakdown?
However, I think he's *WAY* off base here as to why Linux is being adopted faster than Apple. If I need a 64-way Linux machine, I can get it. If I need a cluster I can get it (off the shelf). If I want some funky hardware bit, I can get that as well.
My reason for not choosing Apple is vendor lock-in. If I can keep something that allows me to pick and choose parts from a wide variety of sources, I can build solutions that fit the need.
The one place where he might have a point is on the desktop, but I don't see a lot of Linux migration on the desktop. It's still Windows. People want Office even though they hate it.
Try
Windows Crash Vs. Linux Crash
Black's law's definition of slander:
A type of defamation. Slander is an untruthful oral (spoken) statement about a person that harms the person's reputation or standing in the community. Because slander is a tort (a civil wrong), the injured person can bring a lawsuit against the person who made the false statement. If the statement is made via broadcast media -- for example, over the radio or on TV -- it is considered libel, rather than slander, because the statement has the potential to reach a very wide audience.
IANAL but my guess is that SCO that because SCO isn't letting anybody see their evidence, nobody can tell if the claims are true. I would bet that if the claims are unfounded and it can be shown that SCO knew about it, then you'll see SCO get sued into dust. That is, unless IBM acquires them. Then it just all goes away.
I have to pick a nit on someone and you're in the wrong place at the wrong time.
.NET language) isn't going to happen, you haven't been paying attention.
A lot of folks are lambasting this guy because he wants to do C# inside SQL Server. Most are saying, like you, that he just doesn't get it because you should separate the database from the application. That's true but it doesn't invalidate the need to have stored procedures (in any language you want be it PL/SQL or C#).
The idea behind a stored procedure is that your application may actually scale better by putting some of the logic "close to the data" because there is less contention for machine resources other than CPU.
For scalability, it's *generally* true that you want no processing to happen on the database because database servers are generally more expensive to scale. However, moving selected bits of logic to the database tier can result in huge scalability improvements.
It's not one-size-fits-all and unless you have a good working understanding of the problem, which is impossible with the data given, it's probably not a good idea to yell "WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU WANT TO DO THAT" at someone. Give the guy the benefit of the doubt.
If you think that stored procedure in C# (or any
WTF? My VAIO is great except it's falling apart because Sony can figure out to tighten a screw. Jeez -- you've been fed too much marketing, buddy.
BTW, I am a former VAIO owner who:
1) Had most of the screws fall out
2) An HD make that "I'm about to die." squealing sound.
3) Tried to return it to Sony for service 4 times.
4) Each time I was promised a shipping box and documentation.
6) No shipping box or documentation ever arrived
7) The HD finally died
8) Two weeks after our house was burglarized
9) Insurance paid to get me a Dell
10) Rejoice!
11) ???
12) Profit!
There's no reason for you to defend a company that can't ship a computer to you that does drop screws.
sunk cost
Timeline informs you that you are in violation of their patents but you continue to use the product for 2.5 years without checking out the claim yourself.
If you had engaged legal council and were advised by that legal council that you we safe, then Timeline's claim of bad faith has no basis. You are still liable for damages but not treble damages.
However, it is Timeline's position that if you simply took Microsoft's word for it, then you acted in bad faith. Timeline's position is nothing but a scare tactic.
Bad faith is "not simply bad judgment or negligence, but rather it implies the conscious doing of a wrong" -- Black's Law Dictionary. I fail to see how maintaining the status quo in the face of a contract dispute when your supplier - an actual party to the case tells you that everything is okay. It may be bad judgment to trust the MS's legal interpretation but I don't think doing so constitutes a conscious doing of a wrong.
However, If I were a big MS SQL Server customer, I'd want to be holding a letter from MS saying that they couldn't provide a copy of the agreement or a letter from my lawyer saying that they'd looked into it and could determine for sure who was right. Both show that you tried.
BTW, IANAL - my spouse is a law student. Taking my legal advice would be roughly equivalent to trusting your doctor's dog's veterinarian to treat your heart condition - probably worse than picking a random stranger.
I think you hit the nail on the head. A lot of us have considered technology the great equalizer but didn't stop to think that we're living above the norm so "equalization" means loss.
But, you correctly point out that as demand for cheap labor increases, the labor becomes not quite as cheap. Hence the sort of "rolling" equalization that you describe.
I think that false economies abound in such a scenario but, hey, why not give it a try?
Smoking kills about 420,000 Americans eachs year. The 9/11 attackers were pussies they only got about 3,000.
Americans commit suicide at about a 30,000 a year rate. The 9/11 attackers should just leave it to the professionals.
About 16,000 murders take place in America a year. Jeeze -- Only 3,000. These guys need to get their act together.
Now compare that with what a full-out nuclear exchange would do to India and Pakastan. This shows about 1.7 Million dead in India and another 1.8 Million dead in Pakistan.
All I ask is that you switch on your brain.
Let's see, they've:
Damn! I'm glad they're not really evil. As my mamma used to say, "Evil is as evil does."
Check out some good independent music:
Henry Rollins
Ani Difranco
However, I don't think for a minute that all the clone MB manufacturers will make it impossible to boot an unsigned OS. I mean, most have setting that allow you to use processors whose frequency multipliers has been unlocked.
Nope, my car assumes that other people want to do bad stuff to/with my car. The XBox assumes that I want to do bad stuff to/with *MY* XBox.
The correct analogy is a motorcycle that prevented me from changing parts because I might make the motorcycle faster so I could speed. Which, of course, would harm the "driving community".
I wouldn't own a motorcycle like that, nor would I whine if some modification I made to my motorcycle made it illegal to ride on public roads. I'd change it back or take the bike to the track.
Unfortunately, MS isn't letting people change it back. The crucial difference is that MS owns the XBox Live network. They can make the rules. We can either choose to accept those rules or not use XBox live. I choose the latter.
I really do know people who think this way. One works for MS and the other keeps getting SYN flooded while playing online games.
I don't feel that way. I refuse to own an XBox because I just don't want the hassle of dealing with a product that assumes that you're bad from the start.
From the art:
--
"Planting in the U.S. Southwest has been part of our business model from the beginning," Miller said.
--
I wish people would stop using this as a justification. This roughly translates to "We've been doing bad stuff from the start. If you didn't want us to do bad stuff, you should have caught us sooner. We have the right to continue doing bas stuff because it would be unfair to make us stop now."
No company has the right to have its business model protected. If we found out tomorrow that (to put a far-fetched scenario out of my butt) toilet brushed caused migrating geese to die in huge numbers, I don't think that we should accept "But selling toilet brushes is our business model." as justification to let it continue to happen.
Yeah but semi-pro stuff is easy to find and pretty cheap.
This might work for $379.
Sometimes the behavior and ignorance of my fellow citizens of the US embarrass me. (I am assuming that you are a US citizen)
There are two ways of looking WWII. One is to say that we bailed out Europe but another is to say that we didn't have the guts to stand shoulder to shoulder with our allies against an immoral aggressor bent on genocide.
There are millions of people who fought and died while the US sat undecided on the sidelines. To throw out, "how about thanking the USA for saving your ass in World War I and II" is to dishonor them and I think it is terribly unfair.
I don't care about the software he uses. The design is neat. It's the first spinnerbot that I know of that spins the entire chassis instead of just shell.
To do this the wheels that the bot spins on have to brake at precise intervals to provide the ability to do anything but just sit there and spin. That means he probably has some form of onboard computing.
BattleBots is neat but one of the things that's always detracted from it in my mind is that the bots always seemed like big, strong, remote controlled cars with no intelligence. This seems like a small step towards intelligence and may actually raise the bar.
Uh. I learned in high school physics that rockets work through that whole equal and oposite reaction thing not by pushing off something. That's why they work in space where there's nothing to push off of.
The big problem is that I can't figure out if you're joking or not.
Check with a patent lawyer, you have a certain amount of time between the first public disclosure of an invention and when you have to file the patent -- at least in the U.S. The same does not hold true for international patent law. However, unless you are *REALLY* greedy an unbreakable algorithm such as yours would be worth more than enough money in the US market.
;-)
Second, in the US, there's a thing called a "provisional" patent application. It's notes or a paper describing the invention that is filed with the patent office as a placeholder for the real application. Be careful here. Talk to a real patent lawyer.
So here's what I'd do:
1) Prepare a paper on your invention
2) Work with a patent attorney to file the paper as a provisional patent application -- should take very little time and money
3) Submit the paper for peer review
4) If the paper survives, amend the provisional application, and you're on your way
It's important to note that by following this plan you retain rights in the US but may be out of luck in other jurisdictions.
Oh, one last bit of advice, never follow any advice given by a Slashdot reader.
The kneejerk reactionaries on slashdot pull in all different directions -- meaning that the tend to cancel each other out.
Nope. It's the groups of people with "vision" that you have to worry about.
for someone's grandfather and complain that the service was a sham because they didn't say anything about your Uncle George who recently died?
All you folks who're complaining that we should remember other people from other tragic events are missing the point. This is about the victims of 9/11.
If you would like to stage a rememberance for people who died in some other event, please feel free. No one's going to stop you.
If an american company wishes to salute the victims and the heros of 9/11 by forgoing advertising revenue for the day, that's thier choice. I think it sends a powerful message. The US culture is one of success at almost any cost. This says that it's more important to show support for the victims than it is to make a buck.
Maybe I'm being dense but if you'r emulating the hardware, why can't you just emulate hacked hardware?
Here's the scenario.
Implement a bi-directional communication channel with the smart card. It has to work in a standard CD-ROM drive and you can't modulate the laser itself. However you can make the laser either shine on the smart chip sensors or not. Assuming a reasonably consistent spin rate, you can use head position to communicate information into the smart chip (think serial bit banging and maybe manchester encoding).
Such a com channel would be slow. Max of one bit per rev probably less including encoding and error correction. A single spin cd-rom does about 540 revs/sec when reading from the inside of the CD.
Next, you set up a secure com channel with the smart chip using Diffie-Hellman-Merckle key exchange and transmit the decryption key over the secured channel.
Assuming a 256-bit session key and a 1024-bit content encryption key, there's about 1.5K of data that needs to be exchanged, so the low-bandwidth of the com channel isn't really that big a deal.
Still you could break into the installer and grab the key, but Palladium is supposed to prevent unauthorized debugging and allow you cryptographically tie data to a particular computer and user. Maybe Paladium will work and maybe it won't -- all a know about Palladium I learn from Bruce Schneier's analysis.
Assuming that Palladium works, you you have a secure channel between the CD and installer as well as a secure channel between the installer and a particular machine/user combination (through the hard disk).
That leaves the only method of circumvention to be chip tampering or maybe memory buss snooping, which, while not impossible, certainly raises the bar. It only takes one crack per title -- still knocks me out of the running and I'm not exactly a newbie. It will certainly stop the script kiddies.
It all hinges on bidirectional communicaton with the smart chip. Given that and a working Palladium this is reasonably tough but not impossible to break. You have to crack Palladium.
How did their work inform or change AI researcher's outlook for an eventual solution? Are these ideas well respected or just considered unjust pessimism?
For those who aren't familiar this has some background. Here's and excerpt: