I agree that astronomy tackles these important issues - but the thing is, they ALWAYS do that. That is, EVERY discovery in astronomy brings us closer to understanding the all-important questions and answers - what I'm annoyed at is that the routine makes the news every friggin' time. Yes, they made a new discovery - that's awesome and should by all means make the news - but the notice that it might give us an insight into X is fallacious since it doesn't really tell us a damn thing (it may give us insight into another interesting area instead, or may not give us any insights at all).
...that on every article about space exploration, there's always a sentence attached, which reads something like "[this discovery] could lead scientists to a greater understanding of X" (where X is usually Life, Universe, or Everything) It's kind of starting to get on my nerves.. oh well..
In short it says, chip does nothing more than encrypt/decrypt data. It can't execute any code and is not made to be resistant to owner attack (e.g. timing cryptanalysis will work on it!). The only key(s) it controls are generated on-chip and never leave the chip [unencrypted]; there's no external "trusted authority" which manages the keys - so remote revokation is out of the question. Ergo, you have nothing to be afraid of if you're running current version of WindeXP or any version of *nix
*note: I'm not looking to flame/troll, this is just my $0.02. You have been warned*
didn't anyone notice that to OEMs, Windows costs about $10 a pop? Also, setting up Windows on different hardware configurations is pretty simple - download driver, point and click. Linux is very close most of the time, but too often it requires mucking about with drivers and whatnot - that increases the OEM's cost of setting up Linux for every configuration. In other words, instead of paying $10 per windows license, they're paying more or less the same amount to their techs for setting up linux (and subsequently supporting it, too - don't forget that linux professionals are more expensive that winderz professionals)
a) download perl source b) in perl source, modify all control symbols to other control symbols. e.g. "-" treated as "+", "+" treated as "@", etc. c) make a script to modify your code's control symbols with the same mapping and obfuscate all variable names to randomly generated ones d) run the obfuscated script on obfuscated perl
by the time they'll decode everything that version of your code will be outdated:)
I agree completely. My phone (Motorola T720) takes way too long to boot up and shut down (20 seconds or so). It got me so pissed that I don't even turn it off anymore... But that's not the biggest problem! The real problem is that it sometimes locks up or just reboots for reasons unknown. Even the simple process of charging the phone is handled through its software, which makes charging impossible sometimes -- VERY ANNOYING. And the last (worst) problem is that it can't seem to process everything at the right speed anymore. It could be I just dropped it one too many times, but when a phone call comes in, i'm seeing only half the information drawn on the screen (i mean internal screen, external one works wonderfully). And god forbid I should get a call while I'm talking to someone - that screen doesn't even come up anymore (at least the phone vibrates though)
My Nokia 5190 (although quite crappy), took maybe 3-5 seconds to boot up and just as long to shut down, regardless of how many addressbook entries I made. As for responsiveness, it was just perfect. anyway -- enough/. -- back to work
Well, since it's possible to map the video memory into a block device (the article says combining it with system memory is inefficient), you can devote that to a linux distro - but you have to run both OSes on the same CPU no matter what. So, you still need some special setup.. like Cooperative Linux
Doesn't it bother anyone that any software random number generators are merely pseudo-random? How do check randomness of Pi by comparing it to a pseudo-random set of numbers..?
There's an ISO circulating the net, called Hiren's Boot Disk. It has a lot of utilities for diagnosing and fixing nearly any PC. The only big problem with it is that it's probably less than legal - it has rescue versions of programs such as Partition Magic, Norton Antivirus, etc. It has copies of different burn-in tests (CPU, memory, HD, you name it). Up to you if you want to try it.
And if you don't like that, you can try Knoppix bootable CD. It has (i think) multi-CPU support and you can most likely find something to consume a lot of CPU power, e.g. an endless shell script or two.
To the opponents of computer-aided proof (with their hard-to-check argument), I would say this: It's easy to check a proof. It's hard to come up with a proof. Computers are great at checking proofs - all the program needs to do is verify whether the steps are logically correct or there's a discrepancy. Coming up with a proof, on the other hand, is a very hard task (being NP-complete, unless defined in a certain way) and thus usually requires a human (or sometimes, a lot of humans) to work on the problem. A computer would not be able to come up with new principles of mathematics in order to tackle a given problem, it would only try to use every trick that has been discovered to the point of creation of the program (of course that doesn't have to be the case, but my point is that human intervention would be required to "teach" the computer about the new concept so that it would try to use it for the proof) That is not to say that computers are useless in proofs. Obviously, they're often used as assistants in proving something-or-other, but there's also a direction in computer science where your computer would take a program that you wrote in a certain manner, and prove certain properties about it, e.g. that it is not possible to get out of array bounds in your C program... *yawn* time to sleep
Just a minor clarification: a stroke is when a blood clot forms in the brain - it can form in ANY part of the brain, affecting almost ANY other part. What I'm saying is, the effects of a stroke will most likely be different for each patient. What's more, your grandmother is probably quite a bit older than 55 - she would have different problems at different age.
Umm.. Firefox 1.01 has come out already. I was running it until today. It's Thunderbird that has skipped a number. The article blatantly ignores the fact that Thunderbird 1.02 has ALSO been released, along with Firefox 1.02.
That ignorance, of course, is nothing compared to Microsoft, which hasn't released ANY updates for my version of IE (not that I use it;) for a month or so. Guess they're too busy patenting the Internet.
Slashdot Mirror
look at early CD-R formats, look at early DVD-R formats.. someone built one drive that works with both and the war ended..
I agree that astronomy tackles these important issues - but the thing is, they ALWAYS do that. That is, EVERY discovery in astronomy brings us closer to understanding the all-important questions and answers - what I'm annoyed at is that the routine makes the news every friggin' time. Yes, they made a new discovery - that's awesome and should by all means make the news - but the notice that it might give us an insight into X is fallacious since it doesn't really tell us a damn thing (it may give us insight into another interesting area instead, or may not give us any insights at all).
...that on every article about space exploration, there's always a sentence attached, which reads something like "[this discovery] could lead scientists to a greater understanding of X" (where X is usually Life, Universe, or Everything)
It's kind of starting to get on my nerves.. oh well..
Just found this article, it's an interesting read:a l.pdf
http://www.research.ibm.com/gsal/tcpa/tcpa_rebutt
In short it says, chip does nothing more than encrypt/decrypt data. It can't execute any code and is not made to be resistant to owner attack (e.g. timing cryptanalysis will work on it!). The only key(s) it controls are generated on-chip and never leave the chip [unencrypted]; there's no external "trusted authority" which manages the keys - so remote revokation is out of the question.
Ergo, you have nothing to be afraid of if you're running current version of WindeXP or any version of *nix
For those who don't speak Japanese, "mainichi" means "daily"
oh, wait...
*note: I'm not looking to flame/troll, this is just my $0.02. You have been warned*
didn't anyone notice that to OEMs, Windows costs about $10 a pop?
Also, setting up Windows on different hardware configurations is pretty simple - download driver, point and click. Linux is very close most of the time, but too often it requires mucking about with drivers and whatnot - that increases the OEM's cost of setting up Linux for every configuration.
In other words, instead of paying $10 per windows license, they're paying more or less the same amount to their techs for setting up linux (and subsequently supporting it, too - don't forget that linux professionals are more expensive that winderz professionals)
a) download perl source
:)
b) in perl source, modify all control symbols to other control symbols. e.g. "-" treated as "+", "+" treated as "@", etc.
c) make a script to modify your code's control symbols with the same mapping and obfuscate all variable names to randomly generated ones
d) run the obfuscated script on obfuscated perl
by the time they'll decode everything that version of your code will be outdated
or should i say, "Aww, why couldn't you have been the 'Preview' button???"
Tea, Earl Grey, hot
:P)
(can't believe nobody said it yet
BitComet can serve multiple torrents with different priorities, all within the same instance of the program
got ya beat -- *open source* (though for windows only) Oubliette
I agree completely.
/. -- back to work
My phone (Motorola T720) takes way too long to boot up and shut down (20 seconds or so). It got me so pissed that I don't even turn it off anymore... But that's not the biggest problem!
The real problem is that it sometimes locks up or just reboots for reasons unknown. Even the simple process of charging the phone is handled through its software, which makes charging impossible sometimes -- VERY ANNOYING.
And the last (worst) problem is that it can't seem to process everything at the right speed anymore. It could be I just dropped it one too many times, but when a phone call comes in, i'm seeing only half the information drawn on the screen (i mean internal screen, external one works wonderfully). And god forbid I should get a call while I'm talking to someone - that screen doesn't even come up anymore (at least the phone vibrates though)
My Nokia 5190 (although quite crappy), took maybe 3-5 seconds to boot up and just as long to shut down, regardless of how many addressbook entries I made. As for responsiveness, it was just perfect.
anyway -- enough
Thank you, sweet zombie Jesus!
Well, since it's possible to map the video memory into a block device (the article says combining it with system memory is inefficient), you can devote that to a linux distro - but you have to run both OSes on the same CPU no matter what. So, you still need some special setup.. like Cooperative Linux
sounds like the author could use this little gem: http://kerneltrap.org/node/143 :)
Doesn't it bother anyone that any software random number generators are merely pseudo-random? How do check randomness of Pi by comparing it to a pseudo-random set of numbers..?
Step right up, folks!
Who needs a grain of rice when you can get your name written on a smallest living object - a single cell!
There's an ISO circulating the net, called Hiren's Boot Disk. It has a lot of utilities for diagnosing and fixing nearly any PC. The only big problem with it is that it's probably less than legal - it has rescue versions of programs such as Partition Magic, Norton Antivirus, etc. It has copies of different burn-in tests (CPU, memory, HD, you name it). Up to you if you want to try it.
And if you don't like that, you can try Knoppix bootable CD. It has (i think) multi-CPU support and you can most likely find something to consume a lot of CPU power, e.g. an endless shell script or two.
To the opponents of computer-aided proof (with their hard-to-check argument), I would say this:
It's easy to check a proof. It's hard to come up with a proof. Computers are great at checking proofs - all the program needs to do is verify whether the steps are logically correct or there's a discrepancy. Coming up with a proof, on the other hand, is a very hard task (being NP-complete, unless defined in a certain way) and thus usually requires a human (or sometimes, a lot of humans) to work on the problem.
A computer would not be able to come up with new principles of mathematics in order to tackle a given problem, it would only try to use every trick that has been discovered to the point of creation of the program (of course that doesn't have to be the case, but my point is that human intervention would be required to "teach" the computer about the new concept so that it would try to use it for the proof)
That is not to say that computers are useless in proofs. Obviously, they're often used as assistants in proving something-or-other, but there's also a direction in computer science where your computer would take a program that you wrote in a certain manner, and prove certain properties about it, e.g. that it is not possible to get out of array bounds in your C program...
*yawn*
time to sleep
Just a minor clarification: a stroke is when a blood clot forms in the brain - it can form in ANY part of the brain, affecting almost ANY other part. What I'm saying is, the effects of a stroke will most likely be different for each patient. What's more, your grandmother is probably quite a bit older than 55 - she would have different problems at different age.
:)
Good luck with your grandmother
What will happen to all that money??? Think I can have some? :D
Umm.. Firefox 1.01 has come out already. I was running it until today. It's Thunderbird that has skipped a number. The article blatantly ignores the fact that Thunderbird 1.02 has ALSO been released, along with Firefox 1.02.
;) for a month or so. Guess they're too busy patenting the Internet.
That ignorance, of course, is nothing compared to Microsoft, which hasn't released ANY updates for my version of IE (not that I use it
someone actually wrote a program to filter any kiddie porn from your node.. just use that :P
time to migrate to freenet, boys & girls