It's a lovely poem, by Eden Philpotts. I think it makes a very appropriate dept.
GHOSTIES AT THE WEDDING.
Turn down a glass afore his place;
Draw up the dog-eared chair;
For though we shall not see his face,
I think he will be here
Our wedding day to share.
Turn up the glass where she would be
And put a red rose there.
Her quick, grey eyes we cannot see,
But weren't they everywhere,
And shall not they be here?
Though them old blids are in the grave
And their good light's gone out,
We'd sooner their kind ghosties have
Than all the living rout
As will be there no doubt.
For some are dead as cannot die.
Some flown as cannot flee.
You still do fancy 'em near by.
'Tis so with him and she,
At any rate to we.
Turn down a glass afore his place;
Draw up the dog-eared chair;
For though we shall not see his face,
I think he will be here
Our wedding day to share.
Turn up the glass where she would be
And put a red rose there.
Her quick, grey eyes we cannot see,
But weren't they everywhere,
And shall not they be here?
Though them old blids are in the grave
And their good light's gone out,
We'd sooner their kind ghosties have
Than all the living rout
As will be there no doubt.
For some are dead as cannot die.
Some flown as cannot flee.
You still do fancy 'em near by.
'Tis so with him and she,
At any rate to we.
I've got a Radeon 9800SE All-In-Wonder, which has the new(ish) Rage Theatre 200 chip. This isn't supported by GATOS. I should, of course, have checked this before buying the machine, but there you go. The reason it isn't supported is because it's really complicated and all though ATI have released some specs (under NDA), the GATOS developer(s) haven't gotten round to doing the huge amount of work involved in writing a driver.
I say developer(s), because I think the effort to support the Rage Theatre 200 actually consists of one bloke, called Vlad or something. I think he might be a student of some kind. This may be completely wrong, and I don't want to cause any offence, but that's the impression I've got - one single developer working on the Rage Theatre 200 driver, intermittently, as a hobby. There's been a "don't expect anything for at least 6 months" notice on the website for nearly a year.
The value of open source software is that if something is used by many people and has a long lifetime, the community can build that piece of software into something valuable for everyone, with minimal cost and maximum gain for the participants. This, at least to me, seems to be the key feature of open source.
ATI seem to have gotten the wrong end of the stick and decided that the value of the open source community is that a multi-million dollar corporation can print out a copy of it's specs, along with an NDA of some description, and as if by magic, some student, perhaps called Vlad, will appear out of thin air and do all it's work for it.
Some points for ATI:
If you have to sign an NDA to write a driver, the open-source community cannot properly collaborate on it.
The commercial value for ATI of being able to support Linux is a hell of higher then the educational or entertainment value to a hobbyist in writing a driver.
Linux users are a significant market for desktop hardware. Significant enough, at least, to be worth writing a driver for.
If you seriously think that people want your products badly enough that they are going to sign NDAs and then toil away for free to write drivers, just so that they can have the privilege of paying you full whack for your hardware, you've got another thing coming
If number 4 isn't the way you think, then it would be less insulting if you just owned up and said you don't think it's worth supporting Linux, rather than hiding behind this "supporting third party projects" crap.
Rant over. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the above. In fact I hereby certify that the above is guaranteed to be inaccurate in some way. Please correct me. The emotion is real, though. I'm just fed up with having to reboot into Windows to watch TV.
It looks like the BBCs intention is absolutely not to compete with the likes of Real. All they are saying is that the license fees for the existing codecs do not scale, and that it will be cheaper from them to write their own. There is nothing in the BBC's remit that requires them to spend the license-payer's money on overpriced software they can more cheaply write themselves.
While it is true that dirac may reduce the amount that Real, etc, can make from their codecs, once again there is nothing in the BBC's charter which requires it to prop up commercial software markets at the license-payer's expense.
The BBC is not selling dirac. It is simply a tool they feel they need to do their job. However, they are releasing it under an open-source license. You may feel that this is anti-competitive as it undercuts Real, but Real et al are not the BBC's competitors. ITV, C4, etc are the BBC's competitors (though in an ideal world, the BBC is supposed to be about pulic service, not competition). By making the codec open-source, the BBC is freeing these other stations from the requirement to pay Real and its ilk. It is freely giving the products of its work to its most direct competitors, along with everyone else. This seems to be a very fair and competition-friendly way of going about things.
As for public service, a primary use for this new technology is to provide a huge, free, online repository of BBC content. This is an extraordinary project, entirely in the service of the public, which would be absolutely impossible for a commercial broadcaster to attempt. Whatever else people may have to say about the BBC's scorecard in living up to its remit (and I certainly think it's gone too far on a number of occasions) this is an absolute bullseye.
There are many reasons to buy a windows computer and stick linux on it. In my case it was simply that there wasn't a company that sold a computer I wanted without Windows pre-installed. Not being in America, we don't have Walmart anyway.
Another reason is that a high proportion of desktop linux users dual boot and buying with Windows pre-installed is usually the cheapest way to get it legally. Dual boot machines still count as an increase in Linux market share, because we start off with Windows having by far the higher share.
As for the parent post (grandparent? can't be arsed to look), it was disagreeing with the original point that the Linux market share is probably higher than the percentage of PCs that ship with it pre-installed. I'm not sure whether that's the case or not, but with factors like dual-booting, limited availability of preinstalled linux pcs for those that want them, people installing pirated windows on linux boxes and the fact that widespread availability of preinstalled linux boxes is a relatively recent thing, etc, etc, I shouldn't think there's much correlation at all between the two figures.
That's the principle. I'm not sure if they go up and over, or whether they just start at the top and go downwards, but they fly in a parabolic arc, following the path an object would take if you simply threw it in the direction and speed of the plane at the start of the arc.
That way, you are simply falling freely, having been launched into the air, and the plane is moving in such a way that its walls remain around you throughout your fall.
Sorry, that wasn't very clear... Maybe someone else can explain it better.
Don't know why I typed David Kay. I think he's actually a comedian.
Anyway, my rant was about the article, in case I didn't make it clear. I really am sure this guy has a lot of interesting stuff to say, it's just that the article didn't seem to get anything of interest across at all.
I'm doing it, so the probability's at least in in six billion.
I'm interested in brains and the like, so I'm writing a simulator so I can what kinds of circuits you can build with various types of neurons. There already are quite a few such simulators around, eg. snnap, genesis, etc, but the fact there are so many seems to indicate everybody wants something different from their neural network simulator, and I want my very own to play around with. Note the word play - I'm a programmer by trade, not a neuroscientist.
Anyway, I'm sure David Kay's jolly impressive and all, and I'm sure what he's actually doing is dead cool, but the article's a load of bollocks. Most of it's spent panting about how clever Kay is, then there's some wiffly-wafffly stuff about how we should all be dead guilty coz we're not using his stuff right and thank goodness he's decided to put us back on track.
I don't know much about Kay himself, it's the article which bothers me. I'm sure this amazing dude has better things to say than that
"nobody simulates things" (of course they do), "simulation is what computers are for" (I guess I'll have to stop word processing then, because it's not what computers are for... please!) and "the primary task of the Internet is to connect every person to every other person" (really, I thought it was for making candy-floss). If he doesn't he should be left to grumble in private so as not to embarass himself unnecessarily.
A common misconception. The Internet is powered by open protocols. The most popular implementations just happen to be open source.
Just a matter of definition of "is powered by", though the meaning of the original is clear. Besides, a protocol without an implementation never powered anything.
By that logic, you could also claim that pr0n and penis-enlargmenet products will boom.
Pr0n and penis-enlargement products are indeed booming, and will continue to boom, thanks almost entirely to the internet.
Huh? 99.99% of the most anti-American people can't read, let alone install Mandrake.
You seem to be claiming that being capable of running linux implies an absence of negative feelings towards the US. You're new around here, aren't you?
Microsoft themselves confirmed the authenticity of at least the first halloween memo.
My feedback (they must be drowning in this stuff)
on
BBC Links Linux To MyDoom
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
No doubt you have received a large amount of feedback on this story. I really must add my voice. I do not intend to rant or even complain, merely to correct.
The fundamental premise of this story, that MyDoom's attack on SCO implies that the virus was probably written by linux fanatics, is flawed for a number of reasons.
The article itself says there is no proof of this accusation, but this is buried deep down in the text. Most of the article, including the headline, presents the accusation as fact, with the full weight of the BBC's authority behind it. This is NOT fact. It is supposition.
MyDoom did not only attack SCO and Microsoft. It installed trojans intended to leave the infected computer open for easy unauthorised use. MyDoom-infected computers can be used to relay spam or log keystrokes in order to steal credit card numbers and other valuable information. If the purpose was simnply to attack SCO this would be entirely unnecessary. This disproves your last line "It is about malice not money". Spamming and credit card fraud are most certainly about money.
MyDoom is most likely to have originated in Russia (see http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1035350.htm) . Spamming and virus writing has in the past frequently been linked to organised crime in Russia.
Attacking SCO's site HURTS linux (as I'll explain in point 4). Spammers have absolutely no reason to love open-source software. Most of the email infrastructure operates on open-source software, and attempts to stop spammers are being spearheaded by open source developers. MyDoom was most likely written by spammers, with the SCO attack intended to conceal the primary purpose (and therefore the real writers) of the virus, which is to spread spam and commit credit card fraud.
The battle being fought by the providers of proprietary software against the "open source community" is by and large a propaganda war. It is extremely difficult to compete with open-source on quality, and near impossible to compete on price. A commonly used tactic is therefore to attempt to tarnish the image of its authors. The most common image presented is that of a bunch of marginally competent hackers operating out of their parents' basements. With IBM pouring a billion dollars a year into open source development, and with Novell, HP, Sun, SGI and a host of other major organisations now "betting the company" on it, it is not hard to see that this is false. The people referred to as the "open source community" are the people who write the software that runs more that 60% of websites wordwide, that runs Google and Amazon, that provides the CGI special effects for every modern blockbuster, that is trusted in the datacentres of almost every single major corporation. These are not the kind of people who write viruses. Many of the writers of open source software are among the leading experts in their fields and work in labs owned by major corporations and universities. The largest part of the outrage of the open source community is in response to their unfair portrayal as something akin to the virus-writing, website-defacing "script-kiddies" who make many a linux sysadmin's life difficult and who are universally loathed by the open-source community. Against this backdrop, it would make absolutely no sense to attack SCO's site. It just provides further ammunition for the continuing attempts to blacken the name of open-source development.
If the servers of kernel.org (the linux kernel archives) were attacked by a virus in this fashion, and the BBC were to post an article baldly accusing, say, Microsoft of the misdeed, the BBC would find themselves on the receiving end of a lawsuit so quickly it wouldn't know what had hit it. Fortunately, all you will get from the open-source community is a huge pile of email, ranging from rants to considered responses.
A lot of people do feel very strongly about linux, about open-source software and about the SCO lawsuits. Some of these can come across as fanatical,
If you're curious, it stands for "When I am king you will be first against the wall", which is a line from one of the songs on the album "OK, Computer" by Radiohead ("Paranoid Android", I think). I had it all in lowercase, so it's not technically quite the same as the password, but still.
irony ( P ) Pronunciation Key (r-n, r-)
n. pl. ironies
The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning.
An expression or utterance marked by a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning.
A literary style employing such contrasts for humorous or rhetorical effect. See Synonyms at wit1.
Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs: "Hyde noted the irony of Ireland's copying the nation she most hated" (Richard Kain).
An occurrence, result, or circumstance notable for such incongruity. See Usage Note at ironic.
Dramatic irony.
Socratic irony.
Source: The American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright (C) 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
quantum computer
[computer] A type of computer which uses the ability of quantum systems, such as a collection of atoms, to be in many different states at once. In theory, such superpositions allow the computer to perform many different computations
simultaneously. This capability is combined with interference among the states to produce answers to some problems, such as factoring integers, much more rapidly than is possible with
conventional computers. In practice, such machines have not yet been built due to their extreme sensitivity to noise.
Source: The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, (C) 1993-2003 Denis Howe
Form factors the size of subatomic particles will never catch on. Where do you put the USB port on a quark? And don't get me started on the eye strain a correspondingly sized monitor would cause.
That is so inconsiderate! You've gone and ruined the whole of creation for me.
Re:Anyone remember the BBC Micro?
on
First Computers
·
· Score: 1
I couldn't help noticing your use of the word "mom". Does that mean BBCs were available in America?
Acorn's later machine, the Archimedes, was awesome too. It was WAY ahead of its time. A 32-bit RISC home computer in 1987?!!???!??!??!!!?!
Re:Anyone remember the BBC Micro?
on
First Computers
·
· Score: 1
Best computer ever. The BBC B was my first computer (when I was about 6 or 7, IIRC). The thing practically sat there and BEGGED you to learn how it worked! Of course, that was the whole point. The BBC was developed to be used to teach kids about computers, and it worked like a dream. I'm a software engineer nowadays, and I think I owe a lot of that to having spent my formative years tinkering with a BBC.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a lovely poem, by Eden Philpotts. I think it makes a very appropriate dept.
GHOSTIES AT THE WEDDING.
Turn down a glass afore his place;
Draw up the dog-eared chair;
For though we shall not see his face,
I think he will be here
Our wedding day to share.
Turn up the glass where she would be
And put a red rose there.
Her quick, grey eyes we cannot see,
But weren't they everywhere,
And shall not they be here?
Though them old blids are in the grave
And their good light's gone out,
We'd sooner their kind ghosties have
Than all the living rout
As will be there no doubt.
For some are dead as cannot die.
Some flown as cannot flee.
You still do fancy 'em near by.
'Tis so with him and she,
At any rate to we.
From Project Gutenberg
GHOSTIES AT THE WEDDING.
Turn down a glass afore his place; Draw up the dog-eared chair; For though we shall not see his face, I think he will be here Our wedding day to share.
Turn up the glass where she would be And put a red rose there. Her quick, grey eyes we cannot see, But weren't they everywhere, And shall not they be here?
Though them old blids are in the grave And their good light's gone out, We'd sooner their kind ghosties have Than all the living rout As will be there no doubt.
For some are dead as cannot die. Some flown as cannot flee. You still do fancy 'em near by. 'Tis so with him and she, At any rate to we.
At least that's my theory.
I've got a Radeon 9800SE All-In-Wonder, which has the new(ish) Rage Theatre 200 chip. This isn't supported by GATOS. I should, of course, have checked this before buying the machine, but there you go. The reason it isn't supported is because it's really complicated and all though ATI have released some specs (under NDA), the GATOS developer(s) haven't gotten round to doing the huge amount of work involved in writing a driver.
I say developer(s), because I think the effort to support the Rage Theatre 200 actually consists of one bloke, called Vlad or something. I think he might be a student of some kind. This may be completely wrong, and I don't want to cause any offence, but that's the impression I've got - one single developer working on the Rage Theatre 200 driver, intermittently, as a hobby. There's been a "don't expect anything for at least 6 months" notice on the website for nearly a year.
The value of open source software is that if something is used by many people and has a long lifetime, the community can build that piece of software into something valuable for everyone, with minimal cost and maximum gain for the participants. This, at least to me, seems to be the key feature of open source.
ATI seem to have gotten the wrong end of the stick and decided that the value of the open source community is that a multi-million dollar corporation can print out a copy of it's specs, along with an NDA of some description, and as if by magic, some student, perhaps called Vlad, will appear out of thin air and do all it's work for it.
Some points for ATI:
Rant over. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the above. In fact I hereby certify that the above is guaranteed to be inaccurate in some way. Please correct me. The emotion is real, though. I'm just fed up with having to reboot into Windows to watch TV.
You've lost me.
Dirac notation - huge triangular sideburns?
Dirac delta function - infinitely high mohican?
Erm...
It looks like the BBCs intention is absolutely not to compete with the likes of Real. All they are saying is that the license fees for the existing codecs do not scale, and that it will be cheaper from them to write their own. There is nothing in the BBC's remit that requires them to spend the license-payer's money on overpriced software they can more cheaply write themselves.
While it is true that dirac may reduce the amount that Real, etc, can make from their codecs, once again there is nothing in the BBC's charter which requires it to prop up commercial software markets at the license-payer's expense.
The BBC is not selling dirac. It is simply a tool they feel they need to do their job. However, they are releasing it under an open-source license. You may feel that this is anti-competitive as it undercuts Real, but Real et al are not the BBC's competitors. ITV, C4, etc are the BBC's competitors (though in an ideal world, the BBC is supposed to be about pulic service, not competition). By making the codec open-source, the BBC is freeing these other stations from the requirement to pay Real and its ilk. It is freely giving the products of its work to its most direct competitors, along with everyone else. This seems to be a very fair and competition-friendly way of going about things.
As for public service, a primary use for this new technology is to provide a huge, free, online repository of BBC content. This is an extraordinary project, entirely in the service of the public, which would be absolutely impossible for a commercial broadcaster to attempt. Whatever else people may have to say about the BBC's scorecard in living up to its remit (and I certainly think it's gone too far on a number of occasions) this is an absolute bullseye.
This colour scheme's making me thirsty.
There are many reasons to buy a windows computer and stick linux on it. In my case it was simply that there wasn't a company that sold a computer I wanted without Windows pre-installed. Not being in America, we don't have Walmart anyway.
Another reason is that a high proportion of desktop linux users dual boot and buying with Windows pre-installed is usually the cheapest way to get it legally. Dual boot machines still count as an increase in Linux market share, because we start off with Windows having by far the higher share.
As for the parent post (grandparent? can't be arsed to look), it was disagreeing with the original point that the Linux market share is probably higher than the percentage of PCs that ship with it pre-installed. I'm not sure whether that's the case or not, but with factors like dual-booting, limited availability of preinstalled linux pcs for those that want them, people installing pirated windows on linux boxes and the fact that widespread availability of preinstalled linux boxes is a relatively recent thing, etc, etc, I shouldn't think there's much correlation at all between the two figures.
That's the principle. I'm not sure if they go up and over, or whether they just start at the top and go downwards, but they fly in a parabolic arc, following the path an object would take if you simply threw it in the direction and speed of the plane at the start of the arc.
That way, you are simply falling freely, having been launched into the air, and the plane is moving in such a way that its walls remain around you throughout your fall.
Sorry, that wasn't very clear... Maybe someone else can explain it better.
Don't know why I typed David Kay. I think he's actually a comedian.
Anyway, my rant was about the article, in case I didn't make it clear. I really am sure this guy has a lot of interesting stuff to say, it's just that the article didn't seem to get anything of interest across at all.
I'm doing it, so the probability's at least in in six billion.
I'm interested in brains and the like, so I'm writing a simulator so I can what kinds of circuits you can build with various types of neurons. There already are quite a few such simulators around, eg. snnap, genesis, etc, but the fact there are so many seems to indicate everybody wants something different from their neural network simulator, and I want my very own to play around with. Note the word play - I'm a programmer by trade, not a neuroscientist.
Anyway, I'm sure David Kay's jolly impressive and all, and I'm sure what he's actually doing is dead cool, but the article's a load of bollocks. Most of it's spent panting about how clever Kay is, then there's some wiffly-wafffly stuff about how we should all be dead guilty coz we're not using his stuff right and thank goodness he's decided to put us back on track.
I don't know much about Kay himself, it's the article which bothers me. I'm sure this amazing dude has better things to say than that "nobody simulates things" (of course they do), "simulation is what computers are for" (I guess I'll have to stop word processing then, because it's not what computers are for... please!) and "the primary task of the Internet is to connect every person to every other person" (really, I thought it was for making candy-floss). If he doesn't he should be left to grumble in private so as not to embarass himself unnecessarily.
Presumably it's 8 hours from when you open the packaging, not when you leave the shop.
SCO haven't moved the trial back. They've requested that the trial be moved back. The judge has taken it under advisement.
Microsoft themselves confirmed the authenticity of at least the first halloween memo.
No doubt you have received a large amount of feedback on this story. I really must add my voice. I do not intend to rant or even complain, merely to correct.
The fundamental premise of this story, that MyDoom's attack on SCO implies that the virus was probably written by linux fanatics, is flawed for a number of reasons.
If the servers of kernel.org (the linux kernel archives) were attacked by a virus in this fashion, and the BBC were to post an article baldly accusing, say, Microsoft of the misdeed, the BBC would find themselves on the receiving end of a lawsuit so quickly it wouldn't know what had hit it. Fortunately, all you will get from the open-source community is a huge pile of email, ranging from rants to considered responses.
A lot of people do feel very strongly about linux, about open-source software and about the SCO lawsuits. Some of these can come across as fanatical,
Me, for one. They should hyphenate that or something.
Indeed. This seems to be quite a coincidence.
If you're curious, it stands for "When I am king you will be first against the wall", which is a line from one of the songs on the album "OK, Computer" by Radiohead ("Paranoid Android", I think). I had it all in lowercase, so it's not technically quite the same as the password, but still.
Ho-hum.
Yum!
This easily the funniest post in the thread. Thanks for the laugh.
And you actually seem to understand what irony is. It's so rare to see that nowadays.
Bravo!
irony ( P ) Pronunciation Key (r-n, r-) n. pl. ironies
An expression or utterance marked by a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning. A literary style employing such contrasts for humorous or rhetorical effect. See Synonyms at wit1.
An occurrence, result, or circumstance notable for such incongruity. See Usage Note at ironic.
Source: The American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright (C) 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
quantum computer
[computer] A type of computer which uses the ability of quantum systems, such as a collection of atoms, to be in many different states at once. In theory, such superpositions allow the computer to perform many different computations simultaneously. This capability is combined with interference among the states to produce answers to some problems, such as factoring integers, much more rapidly than is possible with conventional computers. In practice, such machines have not yet been built due to their extreme sensitivity to noise.
Source: The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, (C) 1993-2003 Denis Howe
Form factors the size of subatomic particles will never catch on. Where do you put the USB port on a quark? And don't get me started on the eye strain a correspondingly sized monitor would cause.
That is so inconsiderate! You've gone and ruined the whole of creation for me.
I couldn't help noticing your use of the word "mom". Does that mean BBCs were available in America? Acorn's later machine, the Archimedes, was awesome too. It was WAY ahead of its time. A 32-bit RISC home computer in 1987?!!???!??!??!!!?!
Best computer ever. The BBC B was my first computer (when I was about 6 or 7, IIRC). The thing practically sat there and BEGGED you to learn how it worked! Of course, that was the whole point. The BBC was developed to be used to teach kids about computers, and it worked like a dream. I'm a software engineer nowadays, and I think I owe a lot of that to having spent my formative years tinkering with a BBC.