The article mentions 300 cars stolen a month in Karachi which has population about 13 million. Total new cars sold in Pakistan is about 80000 a year which has a population of 150 million. At that proportion, Karachi share is about 7000 cars new cars a year. That means 1 out of 2 cars on average gets stolen in its lifetime!
American publishers sell their books cheap in third world with the pretext that the students can't afford expensive text books. However, the truth is that they are doing dumping and hurting the local publishing industry. If you can get K & R C programming book for less than $2 in India, why would any Indian professor write another book on C? The only way to prevent such dumping is to send back these books back to US and that would teach a nice lesson to big publishers here
I bought mine K&R C book and many other books from India and good to hear that others too are getting the word out.
of new virus they should disable! frankly, this is the stupidest copy protection system. it is like giving a lock and a key to thief and putting a note on the door telling thief to turn the key wrong way.
this may be the reason for earlier story about MS wanting to control the BIOS too. So now the competition is between MS and Intel. This looks an interesting fight as both are titans and closely interdependent. Having killed other CPUs by promising a lot and delivering little, MS has put itself in a tight position. It can't fight with intel in the same way it fought with Digital. This is one of the reasons, why MS won't release 64 bit OS until intel gives go ahead (according to some newsgroup articles, people had seen 64-bit windows demo in 1997).
If bios is under MS control, and if MS OS is pre-installed, what are the chances that it will allow people to install other OS? Today, most pre-installed XP machine create single partition covering the entier the disk (many people think this is dangerous specially if the partition goes bad, you could loose all data). This effectively prevents installing linux atleast to non-hackers.
Still you can't discount Intel. Although MS can cotrol many PC manufacturers, most MB manufacturers will side with Intel and leave BIOS out of MS reach to be monopolized.
MS can play some dirty tricks too. If MS-OS detects that you are running some other OS too, then it can create some random fault in MS-OS and crash it which may give user the feeling that the other OS caused it. Anyone old enough to remember DR-DOS being incompatible with Windows warning?
what about SPDIF output from CD players? Would it still work? If so, there will be thousands people who have SPDIF compatible sound cards and they would be able to rip-off. OTOH, if SPDIF output is not possible, then there may be lots of return plus possibility of class asction lawsuit in america for deliberately selling defective CD.
1) shared nothing: in this, each computer is only connected to each other via simple IP network. no disks are shared. each machine serves part of data. these cluster doesn't work reliably when you have to aggregations. e.g. if one of the machine fails and you try to to "avg()" and if the data is spread across machines, the query would fail, since one of the machine is not available. most enterprise apps cannot work in this config without degradation. e.g. IBM study showed that 2 node cluster is slower and less reliable than 1 node system when running SAP.
IBM on windows and unix and MS uses this type of clustering (also called federated database approach or shared nothing approach).
2) shared disk between two computers: in this case, there are multiple machines and multiple disks. each disk is atleast connected to two computers. if one of the computer fails, other takes over. no mainstream database uses this mode, but it is used by hp-nonstop. still, each machine serves up part of the data and hence standard enterprise apps like SAP etc cannot take clustering advantage without lot of modification.
3) shared everything: in this, each disk is connected to all the machines in the cluster. any number of machines can fail and yet the system would keep running as long as atleast one machine is up. this is used by Oracle. all the machine sees all the data. standard apps like SAP etc can be run in this kind of configs with minor modification or no modification at all. this method is also used by IBM in their mainframe database (which outsells their windows and unix database by huge margine). most enterprise apps are deployed in this type of cluster configuration.
the approach one is simpler from hardware point of view. also, for database kernel writers, this is the easiest to implement. however, the user would need to break up data judiciously and spread acros s machines. also adding a node and removing a node will require re-partitioning of data. mostly only custom apps which are fully aware of your partitioning etc will be able to take advantage. it is also easy to make it scale for simple custom app and so most of TPC-C benchmarks are published in this configuration.
approach 3 requires special shared disk system. the database implementation is very complex. the kernel writers have to worry about two computers simultaneously accessing disks or overwriting each others data etc. this is the thing that Oracle is pushing across all platforms and IBM is pushing for its mainframes.
approach 2 is similar to approach 1 except that it adds redundancy and hence is more reliable.
not good enough. have a 3.2 GHz Xeon. You see, Win 3.1 crashes after about 2 hours on 20 MHz machines. So, it would crash an average of 7 seconds on 3.2 GHz xeon.
If you were to program in C using COM and CORBA based purely on their specification, which one would be easy to program? COM spec is from MS and using their tools in C# and C++, you can simplify things, but that doesn't make COM or DCOM simpler.
it was more than 5 years ago, microsoft mentioned that they will port DCOM to unix. This killed of many CORBA projects on windows at many organizations. COM specs are binary specs. I am not sure about DCOM and ActiveX. But microsoft hasn't been able to port to unix even after 5 years. Either they lied or it is extremely difficult. CORBA is the only architecture which is alternative to DCOM. Not sure, how much of its complexity is due to portability.
as you increase number of bits, you need to increase signal strength to differentiate the multiple levels that are created. this requires more power and in the end you lose. in general a bandwidth increase is better way to increase communication speed than increasing signal strength and the same applies to computing. i don't have the precise figure, but during my studies, we did some calculations about power required vs number of bits of computing and it turned out that theoretically, a best system uses "e" number of levels (e=2.718....).
now i know this is funny, but atleast in one of the systems used (in 80s and 90s), by NASA, the A/D converter was a 3-level converter (not 3-bits). in their signal, the noise dominates over signal, so multiple samples are averaged. you can increase quality of each sample, but then tape can store less samples. most common practise is to use 1-bit converter in these kind of systems. the ideal converter is to use e-level converter. 3-lever was a better compromise.
a computer printing for art painting. just give the photo of the model or scene to computer and start painting. if you are off-color or shape, the printer will correct it...
can university of wisconsin put a fake ntp server which identifies netgear router queries and sends random times and throw them into confusion so much that each netgear router owner would call their support desk. i think this would be a good way to handle such menacing thing.
So how come, nobody is prosecuting a person who discovered hotmail security flaw? that was the easiest to exploit and he showed it to everyone about how to exploit it(see this story). just go to hotmail website using the link information provided and you will be able to reset anyone's password that you wanted to
and get a new password delivered to whatever email you wanted to. what is more, the inventor falls in classic "terrorist" profile of FBI/CIA: a muslim male in 16-45 years range from Pakistan.
it has 320x480, 64k color display, same as what is already available for a long time. same goes for bluetooth. the only new feature is wi-fi which was available previously through external CF cards.
Other than new look, i failed to see anything newsworthy in this.
Dr Kanazawa suggests "a single psychological mechanism" is responsible for this: the competitive edge among young men to fight for glory and gain the attention of women.
in britain a lady complained that many times, her phone rings but noone is there at the other end. also, whenever this happens, a neighbours dog barks! the coincidence happened too often to be accidental so the phone company investigated it.
they found that there were some loose wires and whenever dog used to pee on them, it used to create short circuit. this used to give shock to dog (guess where) and that is why it was barking. also, due to short circuit, the phone used to ring.
well the phone company fixed the fault and so should Sony do in this case.
"The BSA is lobbying foreign governments to avoid open source because of this case, even as we speak."
Asking BSA whether you should use Linux is like asking Ford whether you should use public transport. If any foreign government listens to BSA and decides not to use Linux, then it is guilty of stupidity or corruption.
"A proposed audio workaround for the blind still has problems since it has to be garbled to the point where most people can't understand it to prevent a computer from recognizing the letters."
Can't you just ask a question, like:
how much is 2 + 2?
what number comes after 10?
type in a 4 letter word beginning with "k".
okay, the problem would be that each website will need to come with its own set of questions. but we can have few templates where you just substitute new parameters each time.
I am sure, no software is intelligent enough to crack all these questions. by the time, the software becomes intelligent enough to answer these questions, we can come up with something else. it is cat and mouse game except that mouse keeps winning.
NEC claims 5 hr battery life. those who want this battery life can possibly buy transmeta based computer. you get lower speed and better battery life. how many of you would want Lithium battery and 1 GHz computer vs fuel cell and 2 GHz computer, if they both have same battery life and same cost? i would go with former.
Slashdot Mirror
Just like you do in USA? ha! ha! ha!
The article mentions 300 cars stolen a month in Karachi which has population about 13 million. Total new cars sold in Pakistan is about 80000 a year which has a population of 150 million. At that proportion, Karachi share is about 7000 cars new cars a year. That means 1 out of 2 cars on average gets stolen in its lifetime!
American publishers sell their books cheap in third world with the pretext that the students can't afford expensive text books. However, the truth is that they are doing dumping and hurting the local publishing industry. If you can get K & R C programming book for less than $2 in India, why would any Indian professor write another book on C? The only way to prevent such dumping is to send back these books back to US and that would teach a nice lesson to big publishers here
I bought mine K&R C book and many other books from India and good to hear that others too are getting the word out.
this is offtopic. i attached the reply to wrong topic. i had two browser windows open with different slashdot articles. sorry.
of new virus they should disable! frankly, this is the stupidest copy protection system. it is like giving a lock and a key to thief and putting a note on the door telling thief to turn the key wrong way.
this may be the reason for earlier story about MS wanting to control the BIOS too. So now the competition is between MS and Intel. This looks an interesting fight as both are titans and closely interdependent. Having killed other CPUs by promising a lot and delivering little, MS has put itself in a tight position. It can't fight with intel in the same way it fought with Digital. This is one of the reasons, why MS won't release 64 bit OS until intel gives go ahead (according to some newsgroup articles, people had seen 64-bit windows demo in 1997).
If bios is under MS control, and if MS OS is pre-installed, what are the chances that it will allow people to install other OS? Today, most pre-installed XP machine create single partition covering the entier the disk (many people think this is dangerous specially if the partition goes bad, you could loose all data). This effectively prevents installing linux atleast to non-hackers.
Still you can't discount Intel. Although MS can cotrol many PC manufacturers, most MB manufacturers will side with Intel and leave BIOS out of MS reach to be monopolized.
MS can play some dirty tricks too. If MS-OS detects that you are running some other OS too, then it can create some random fault in MS-OS and crash it which may give user the feeling that the other OS caused it. Anyone old enough to remember DR-DOS being incompatible with Windows warning?
how come we didn't see so much outrage when US banned al jazeera in Iraq?
what about SPDIF output from CD players? Would it still work? If so, there will be thousands people who have SPDIF compatible sound cards and they would be able to rip-off. OTOH, if SPDIF output is not possible, then there may be lots of return plus possibility of class asction lawsuit in america for deliberately selling defective CD.
there are basically three type of clusters:
1) shared nothing: in this, each computer is only connected to each other via simple IP network. no disks are shared. each machine serves part of data. these cluster doesn't work reliably when you have to aggregations. e.g. if one of the machine fails and you try to to "avg()" and if the data is spread across machines, the query would fail, since one of the machine is not available. most enterprise apps cannot work in this config without degradation. e.g. IBM study showed that 2 node cluster is slower and less reliable than 1 node system when running SAP.
IBM on windows and unix and MS uses this type of clustering (also called federated database approach or shared nothing approach).
2) shared disk between two computers: in this case, there are multiple machines and multiple disks. each disk is atleast connected to two computers. if one of the computer fails, other takes over. no mainstream database uses this mode, but it is used by hp-nonstop. still, each machine serves up part of the data and hence standard enterprise apps like SAP etc cannot take clustering advantage without lot of modification.
3) shared everything: in this, each disk is connected to all the machines in the cluster. any number of machines can fail and yet the system would keep running as long as atleast one machine is up. this is used by Oracle. all the machine sees all the data. standard apps like SAP etc can be run in this kind of configs with minor modification or no modification at all. this method is also used by IBM in their mainframe database (which outsells their windows and unix database by huge margine). most enterprise apps are deployed in this type of cluster configuration.
the approach one is simpler from hardware point of view. also, for database kernel writers, this is the easiest to implement. however, the user would need to break up data judiciously and spread acros s machines. also adding a node and removing a node will require re-partitioning of data. mostly only custom apps which are fully aware of your partitioning etc will be able to take advantage.
it is also easy to make it scale for simple custom app and so most of TPC-C benchmarks are published in this configuration.
approach 3 requires special shared disk system. the database implementation is very complex. the kernel writers have to worry about two computers simultaneously accessing disks or overwriting each others data etc. this is the thing that Oracle is pushing across all platforms and IBM is pushing for its mainframes.
approach 2 is similar to approach 1 except that it adds redundancy and hence is more reliable.
1) create rfid tag
2) create blocker tag
3) profit
" DCOM was ported by DEC to Digital UNIX, but no one really used it."
A philosophical question: Can it be still counted as ported?
not good enough. have a 3.2 GHz Xeon. You see, Win 3.1 crashes after about 2 hours on 20 MHz machines. So, it would crash an average of 7 seconds on 3.2 GHz xeon.
If you were to program in C using COM and CORBA based purely on their specification, which one would be easy to program? COM spec is from MS and using their tools in C# and C++, you can simplify things, but that doesn't make COM or DCOM simpler.
it was more than 5 years ago, microsoft mentioned that they will port DCOM to unix. This killed of many CORBA projects on windows at many organizations. COM specs are binary specs. I am not sure about DCOM and ActiveX. But microsoft hasn't been able to port to unix even after 5 years. Either they lied or it is extremely difficult. CORBA is the only architecture which is alternative to DCOM. Not sure, how much of its complexity is due to portability.
as you increase number of bits, you need to increase signal strength to differentiate the multiple levels that are created. this requires more power and in the end you lose. in general a bandwidth increase is better way to increase communication speed than increasing signal strength and the same applies to computing. i don't have the precise figure, but during my studies, we did some calculations about power required vs number of bits of computing and it turned out that theoretically, a best system uses "e" number of levels (e=2.718....).
now i know this is funny, but atleast in one of the systems used (in 80s and 90s), by NASA, the A/D converter was a 3-level converter (not 3-bits). in their signal, the noise dominates over signal, so multiple samples are averaged. you can increase quality of each sample, but then tape can store less samples. most common practise is to use 1-bit converter in these kind of systems. the ideal converter is to use e-level converter. 3-lever was a better compromise.
"Fake Boobs?"
yeah...in p0rn movies.
a computer printing for art painting. just give the photo of the model or scene to computer and start painting. if you are off-color or shape, the printer will correct it...
can university of wisconsin put a fake ntp server which identifies netgear router queries and sends random times and throw them into confusion so much that each netgear router owner would call their support desk. i think this would be a good way to handle such menacing thing.
So how come, nobody is prosecuting a person who discovered hotmail security flaw? that was the easiest to exploit and he showed it to everyone about how to exploit it(see this story). just go to hotmail website using the link information provided and you will be able to reset anyone's password that you wanted to and get a new password delivered to whatever email you wanted to. what is more, the inventor falls in classic "terrorist" profile of FBI/CIA: a muslim male in 16-45 years range from Pakistan.
it has 320x480, 64k color display, same as what is already available for a long time. same goes for bluetooth. the only new feature is wi-fi which was available previously through external CF cards.
Other than new look, i failed to see anything newsworthy in this.
Dr Kanazawa suggests "a single psychological mechanism" is responsible for this: the competitive edge among young men to fight for glory and gain the attention of women.
Isn't this what Freud said nearly 100 years ago?
in britain a lady complained that many times, her phone rings but noone is there at the other end. also, whenever this happens, a neighbours dog barks! the coincidence happened too often to be accidental so the phone company investigated it.
they found that there were some loose wires and whenever dog used to pee on them, it used to create short circuit. this used to give shock to dog (guess where) and that is why it was barking. also, due to short circuit, the phone used to ring.
well the phone company fixed the fault and so should Sony do in this case.
"The BSA is lobbying foreign governments to avoid open source because of this case, even as we speak."
Asking BSA whether you should use Linux is like asking Ford whether you should use public transport. If any foreign government listens to BSA and decides not to use Linux, then it is guilty of stupidity or corruption.
"A proposed audio workaround for the blind still has problems since it has to be garbled to the point where most people can't understand it to prevent a computer from recognizing the letters."
Can't you just ask a question, like:
how much is 2 + 2?
what number comes after 10?
type in a 4 letter word beginning with "k".
okay, the problem would be that each website will need to come with its own set of questions. but we can have few templates where you just substitute new parameters each time.
I am sure, no software is intelligent enough to crack all these questions. by the time, the software becomes intelligent enough to answer these questions, we can come up with something else. it is cat and mouse game except that mouse keeps winning.
NEC claims 5 hr battery life. those who want this battery life can possibly buy transmeta based computer. you get lower speed and better battery life. how many of you would want Lithium battery and 1 GHz computer vs fuel cell and 2 GHz computer, if they both have same battery life and same cost? i would go with former.