I can reliably induce a system freeze by suspending with opiemediaplayer open (with OZ 3.2 stable).
That, however, is avoidable now that I'm aware of the problem. The less predictable errors are bigger concerns for me. The worst thing is the frequent, temporary TCP/IP failures.
(Most of these problems aren't crashes, per se, they're lock-ups and failures. Nobody enjoys a frozen PDA. Even if "working", the 30 second lag to eject an MMC card is painful.)
That might be nice, but OpenZaurus doesn't even give you the source. Notice their download page has binary images, but no source (which is against GPL). Elsewhere, there are instructions to get the "buildroot", which is not source code (according to the definitions in the GNU GPL). Instead, it is patches which could possibly be applied to 3rd party packages to create the source code.
The OpenZaurus website suggests some of their software is GPL licensed (which makes sense, if it includes Linux), but they make little visible effort to obey that license.
His statement "the idea of wellstone, or bulk programmable matter woven from fibers surfaced with quantum dots, is original to me." is untrue. Many people have thought of this- science fiction authors have published books and even comics based on the idea. True, to make an exciting story, they have exaggerated the possibilities, but the core is there.
On a different note, science fiction authors have "invented" things like robots (Capek), communication satellites (Clarke), and even the internet (Gibson). Yet they obviously weren't rewarded when somebody actually invented the device. In the good old days, the patent office would prevent non-inventors from claiming an idea by requiring a working model to be presented at filing. Ideas are $0.10 per dozen.
Overall, however, his pseudo-patent application doesn't bother me. Quantum dots are unlikely to be manufacturable for practical uses inside 21 years from now- his claim will expire before the industry is even ready to be squelched. (R&D can be performed regardless of patents, it's only commercial exploitation that they'll block)
There is nothing illegal about giving things away for free (no strings attached, of course).
But Microsoft will never give something away with no strings attached. Even if someone gets a box of software for $0, he'll be required to go through the EULA ("and if you don't agree, then return it for a full refund").
Amoung other things, that license takes away his right to transfer ownership- which is exactly what a rational 2nd world government would do in this situation.
They'd consider Linux for a project, get Microsoft to jump in and give out piles of discounted Windows(tm) software... then sell it all to US companies for 20% under MSRP, and use the proceeds to hire local technicians to finish their Linux solution.
I had trouble understanding what you meant by "spurn". Here's what some words really mean:
spurn: avoid
spur: encourage spawn: create
So I suppose that you meant to say "no vendor lock-in, spur local economy" in the first case, and "some of you might know spawned the Linex Linux distribution (in Spanish)" in the second.
Can we write a law that refers to the Microsoft business entity specifically and prohibits them from "selling" their product at a loss as punishment for prior practices?
In the US, laws cannot be created that apply to specific persons or groups by name.
The section of the Constitution prohibiting this is in the powers of Congress, where it states "no bill of attainder or ex post facto law". (attainder defined)
It's related to division of powers- Congress can state what kinds of activities should be punished, but can't decide who is guilty of them. They can only make a law describing the criteria of the offense, and then wait for the police and courts to find suspects who match the requirements.
given, of course there's nothing in their license agreement that prohibits it.
I haven't checked lately, but it's very possible that there is something that prohibits it.
Microsoft's patch files are, after all, their own copyrighted property. Redistribution would be illegal unless they've given you specific permission. (Many software companies explicitly deny this permission, even for products which are free to download. Sun's JDK for example)
There are other legal pitfalls- reverse engineering, for example, might be required to check if a patch is needed. (You'd be writing code to check if there are security problems, which edges towards violating the DMCA or at least a EULA)
And anyhow, while some Linux developers are happy to do free work for IBM, you're less likely to find open source coders willing to put in time to fix Microsoft's oversights- especially for a field as unglamorous and time-consuming as patch distribution.
Re:If you use fstreams you ain't into performance
on
GCC 3.3 Released
·
· Score: 1
It's a POSIX function, so it'll work on most Unixy operating systems. Check/usr/include/sys/mman.h for the prototypes.
As I understand it, Phoenix was just the browser heartwood split out of the Mozilla suite, and thus it really always was "the Mozilla Browser"; Netscape's "Navigator" component but without the AOL/Netscape bloat and advertising... sounds good, doesn't it?
That's incorrect.
There was the "the Mozilla browser", which was an integral part of the "Mozilla suite" (as you call it). It had none of the AOL/Netscape advertising included with Netscape 7.0. (It brought some of its own bloat, though)
Phoenix was a separate application. No one could've honestly called it "the Mozilla browser". It was "a browser using Mozilla's Gecko"- a description that applied to Galeon and Chimera also.
Mozilla was never modular (except in terms of things like Gecko, which is a page rendering library, not a web-browsing component). That's why the Phoenix project sprang up- because the Mozilla browser itself was hopelessly entangled with the other apps.
Today, of course, the Mozilla team has decided separate apps is the way to go.
"Break in" isn't part of the popular defintion of "hacker". Many "hacker attacks" are denials-of-service, which don't involve any penetration of security. They can't be called a "break-in".
This is why the people who propose "cracker" in place of "hacker" for something the public can use to describe virus authors and DOSers is incorrect. "Crack" means to get access to secured materials, and it's just a subset of possible hacking.
The two usages of the word "hacker" ("computer criminal" and "expert programmer") apparently both derive from the MIT definition of "hack", which I believe predates the spread of computers.
They present it as "someone who does some sort of interesting and creative work at a high intensity level", and specifically mention that it often includes pranks.
Another definition which fits well is "someone who operates a complex system in a manner inconsistent with its designer's intent".
Either of those two definitions can apply to either the popular usage, or ESR's description.
it seems to be more fitting with more traditional media to have scrollbars on the right.
Unless you wanted to scroll backwards in the document. The traditional way would call for reaching to the left side in that case. And of course, with a traditional "natural media" UI, you'd have to drag across the whole page to turn it. (That actually sounds fun- for about 15 seconds)
I agree that "traditional consistency" is the reason Apple and Microsoft have placed all scrollbars on the bottom or right.
Also, since the language is left to right, you're more likely to find a sentence ending closer to the right-hand side than the left-hand side, and your eyes will be closer to the scrollbars.
It's not your eyes that matter, but your mouse (eyes can find the scrollbar faster and more reliably than a mouse cursor can). As someone is reading a document, she has no reason to put the mouse on the actual content- it can stay on the scrollbar the entire time.
But if she's editing the file, then there will be a need to click on a variety of words inside the content area. However, sentence endings will be no more commonly selected than other words. So overall, the left edge is closer to where the action is.
Windows sucks because you don't have any choice.
Of course, Microsoft and Apple will claim that an unchangable scrollbar positions is a feature that improves consistency. And they kind of have a point- it's a good thing when any user can sit down at a strange computer and be somewhat comfortable. (However, I would prefer a different technical implementation- UIs should be customizable, but it should always be easy to fallback to standardized "basic" or "advanced" input configs, without restarting any software.)
Having seen the Perspecta 3D in person, I can take a guess as to what the "TBA" polygon/second number will be.
Around 90.
That is, they showed an animated scene with 30 polys in it, and it got about 3 fps. And obviously, a 30 poly scene is so simplistic, it's pointless to bother viewing it from different angles. (They were wireframe, remember- No opacity with this device!)
Their higher-resolution demos (primarily individual 3d models, or playbacks of medical imaging) took more than 30 seconds to call up onto the device. That is, there is a significant delay before you can start to see a new 3d picture (Although once the picture is loaded, it will remain as you walk around the ball to look from all sides)
I had difficulty imaging what was taking so long- copying 116785152 pixels into a buffer shouldn't take excessively long over a SCSI cable. (And each pixel is less than 4 bits). I groundlessly decided that the conversion from a 3d voxel image into scanning instructions for the color beams (which must take the base's spinning into effect) was the time-consuming process. But that still didn't explain why they couldn't precalculate those representations.
Overall, it was very disappointing that a translucent, flickering, jiggling wireframe image in a $20,000+ 3d globe couldn't even animate at the 12hz that is the minimum for a human operator to percieve it as motion.
I agree with your point though- it's incorrect to label any existing mass market game as possessing "3d graphics"- they all use 2d output images, which incidently are created by a model of a 3d world to varying fidelity. (Some products can validly claim to have 3d gameplay)
Granted, there are only 8 colors available at high resolution, but it points out the fact that 3D graphics cards and monitors have a long way to go yet.
Having tried an assortment of 3d output devices, it's true that they have a way to go- but much more importantly, software has a long way to go before it'll be able to take advantage of that hardware. Existing popular software for data manipulation doesn't even take full advantage of NVidia-style 3d accelerator cards yet.
In English and related languages, letters are written from left to right, and from top to bottom. Following this same pattern, icons and directory listings in most GUIs also their content gravitating towards the upper left corner a window.
Therefore, most useful content will be on the left, so a mouse cursor will on average have less distance to travel when making the transition from editing to scrolling and back (the recent advent of mouse scrollwheels reduces the importance of this effect)
The only reason not to have scrollbars on the top and left is if there was some other useful clickable stuff already using that space. The top of windows is devoted to menus or buttons- traditionally, there hasn't been anything on the left, although recently some button bars or "Sidebars" show up there.
Today, some people virtually consider MATLAB to be a programming language. It finds its way into large engineering projects via a MATLAB->C compiler. And of course, it has native support for matrices.
Why does spoofing matter? "Intercepting" would matter, but is that possible?
If spyware sends Ctrl-Alt-Del, that's fine- it just goes to the login screen, right? And then PCanywhere/DSView/BO2k is powerless.
Supposedly (the DoD was very firm about having this before they'd buy Windows NT), there is no way any program aside from the OS installed windows login screen can be getting your input after CtrlAltDel.
I haven't seen much HTML-reading by filters, but I'm just a user.
However, one of the benefits you stated from using HTTP is that it will allow applications to run across firewalls. The people who installed the firewall, of course, will claim you're circumventing their protections. I predict that if executable or heavily interactive HTTP messages become more popular, firewalls/proxies will start to be instructed to filter out "dangerous" content (meaning anything that's more complex than a static page with CGI forms, or other traditional web-browser things)
Many corps need javascript for their "intranet" applications, but don't want to allow it for websites. However, I think they use security zone settings in Microsoft IE to do this.
The guys I'm talking about, overly-restrictive IT directors, don't only want to protect their computers from outside people.
They also need to "protect" their employees from outside computers. That means things like restricting what content they can view, and being able to log or investigate any traffic that goes in or out. TC could undermine this- the data can do arbitrary things, meaning it could do some things the watchmen won't like.
Specifically, it could bootstrap an encrypted tunnel to let arbitrary unsnoopable data pass in and out. (Either completely protected if the end-user typed in his own local decrypt key, or otherwise just prohibitively expensive for the spy code to execute all the data to find out if it's contents are really allowed)
My megacorp employer, for instance, is very fearful of this. They block the SSH port (22), but not FTP or telnet(23). Being able to monitor their employees is actually more important than protecting their employees from being spied upon by others on the internet. (Additionally, their proxy parses HTTP and SMTP traffic, although IDK just what it's looking out for).
The actions that typical corporate infosec people will want to permit outside software to run are very limited. A non-TC language restricts what a program can do, making it's behavior easier to prove. (Thus, they can feel safe about allowing a strong language with a restrictive API, or a weak "language" with somewhat more powerful local permissions)
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Where are you getting crashes?
I can reliably induce a system freeze by suspending with opiemediaplayer open (with OZ 3.2 stable).
That, however, is avoidable now that I'm aware of the problem. The less predictable errors are bigger concerns for me. The worst thing is the frequent, temporary TCP/IP failures.
(Most of these problems aren't crashes, per se, they're lock-ups and failures. Nobody enjoys a frozen PDA. Even if "working", the 30 second lag to eject an MMC card is painful.)
Having the source is nice,
That might be nice, but OpenZaurus doesn't even give you the source. Notice their download page has binary images, but no source (which is against GPL). Elsewhere, there are instructions to get the "buildroot", which is not source code (according to the definitions in the GNU GPL). Instead, it is patches which could possibly be applied to 3rd party packages to create the source code.
The OpenZaurus website suggests some of their software is GPL licensed (which makes sense, if it includes Linux), but they make little visible effort to obey that license.
His statement "the idea of wellstone, or bulk programmable matter woven from fibers surfaced with quantum dots, is original to me." is untrue. Many people have thought of this- science fiction authors have published books and even comics based on the idea. True, to make an exciting story, they have exaggerated the possibilities, but the core is there.
On a different note, science fiction authors have "invented" things like robots (Capek), communication satellites (Clarke), and even the internet (Gibson). Yet they obviously weren't rewarded when somebody actually invented the device. In the good old days, the patent office would prevent non-inventors from claiming an idea by requiring a working model to be presented at filing. Ideas are $0.10 per dozen.
Overall, however, his pseudo-patent application doesn't bother me. Quantum dots are unlikely to be manufacturable for practical uses inside 21 years from now- his claim will expire before the industry is even ready to be squelched. (R&D can be performed regardless of patents, it's only commercial exploitation that they'll block)
There is nothing illegal about giving things away for free (no strings attached, of course).
But Microsoft will never give something away with no strings attached. Even if someone gets a box of software for $0, he'll be required to go through the EULA ("and if you don't agree, then return it for a full refund").
Amoung other things, that license takes away his right to transfer ownership- which is exactly what a rational 2nd world government would do in this situation.
They'd consider Linux for a project, get Microsoft to jump in and give out piles of discounted Windows(tm) software... then sell it all to US companies for 20% under MSRP, and use the proceeds to hire local technicians to finish their Linux solution.
- spurn: avoid
So I suppose that you meant to say "no vendor lock-in, spur local economy" in the first case, and "some of you might know spawned the Linex Linux distribution (in Spanish)" in the second.spur: encourage
spawn: create
Also, doesn't "bollocking" have a K?
Can we write a law that refers to the Microsoft business entity specifically and prohibits them from "selling" their product at a loss as punishment for prior practices?
In the US, laws cannot be created that apply to specific persons or groups by name.
The section of the Constitution prohibiting this is in the powers of Congress, where it states "no bill of attainder or ex post facto law". (attainder defined)
It's related to division of powers- Congress can state what kinds of activities should be punished, but can't decide who is guilty of them. They can only make a law describing the criteria of the offense, and then wait for the police and courts to find suspects who match the requirements.
given, of course there's nothing in their license agreement that prohibits it.
I haven't checked lately, but it's very possible that there is something that prohibits it.
Microsoft's patch files are, after all, their own copyrighted property. Redistribution would be illegal unless they've given you specific permission. (Many software companies explicitly deny this permission, even for products which are free to download. Sun's JDK for example)
There are other legal pitfalls- reverse engineering, for example, might be required to check if a patch is needed. (You'd be writing code to check if there are security problems, which edges towards violating the DMCA or at least a EULA)
And anyhow, while some Linux developers are happy to do free work for IBM, you're less likely to find open source coders willing to put in time to fix Microsoft's oversights- especially for a field as unglamorous and time-consuming as patch distribution.
It's a POSIX function, so it'll work on most Unixy operating systems. Check /usr/include/sys/mman.h for the prototypes.
. They ARE aware of the Firebird database project, but collectively (between about ten to twenty of them) "can't see any naming conflict"
You make it seem like amateurs decided. What about the highly-paid Intellectual Property attorneys from AOL Time Warner? They approved it too.
Presumably he means Ann Harrison of Firebird.
Of course, "Mozilla Firebird" has exactly zero users right now...
That's normal for vaporware.
As I understand it, Phoenix was just the browser heartwood split out of the Mozilla suite, and thus it really always was "the Mozilla Browser"; Netscape's "Navigator" component but without the AOL/Netscape bloat and advertising... sounds good, doesn't it?
That's incorrect.
There was the "the Mozilla browser", which was an integral part of the "Mozilla suite" (as you call it). It had none of the AOL/Netscape advertising included with Netscape 7.0. (It brought some of its own bloat, though)
Phoenix was a separate application. No one could've honestly called it "the Mozilla browser". It was "a browser using Mozilla's Gecko"- a description that applied to Galeon and Chimera also.
Mozilla was never modular (except in terms of things like Gecko, which is a page rendering library, not a web-browsing component). That's why the Phoenix project sprang up- because the Mozilla browser itself was hopelessly entangled with the other apps.
Today, of course, the Mozilla team has decided separate apps is the way to go.
The use of "UNIX" for Linux et al is only legally inaccurate, as it's a trademark violation. It's correct both culturally and technically.
the matrix was more synonymous of capitalist society than religion.
You're not the only one to think that
Neo is an accomplished philosopher.
No he's not. He doesn't learn these things for himself- they're shown to him, and he blithely accepts. He's a student, not a teacher.
A truely accomplished philosopher is the one who has big ideas, and can explain them to the ignorant.
(Plato had a stunt about leading a slave through the steps of completing a proof...)
"Break in" isn't part of the popular defintion of "hacker". Many "hacker attacks" are denials-of-service, which don't involve any penetration of security. They can't be called a "break-in".
This is why the people who propose "cracker" in place of "hacker" for something the public can use to describe virus authors and DOSers is incorrect. "Crack" means to get access to secured materials, and it's just a subset of possible hacking.
The two usages of the word "hacker" ("computer criminal" and "expert programmer") apparently both derive from the MIT definition of "hack", which I believe predates the spread of computers.
They present it as "someone who does some sort of interesting and creative work at a high intensity level", and specifically mention that it often includes pranks.
Another definition which fits well is "someone who operates a complex system in a manner inconsistent with its designer's intent".
Either of those two definitions can apply to either the popular usage, or ESR's description.
it seems to be more fitting with more traditional media to have scrollbars on the right.
Unless you wanted to scroll backwards in the document. The traditional way would call for reaching to the left side in that case. And of course, with a traditional "natural media" UI, you'd have to drag across the whole page to turn it. (That actually sounds fun- for about 15 seconds)
I agree that "traditional consistency" is the reason Apple and Microsoft have placed all scrollbars on the bottom or right.
Also, since the language is left to right, you're more likely to find a sentence ending closer to the right-hand side than the left-hand side, and your eyes will be closer to the scrollbars.
It's not your eyes that matter, but your mouse (eyes can find the scrollbar faster and more reliably than a mouse cursor can). As someone is reading a document, she has no reason to put the mouse on the actual content- it can stay on the scrollbar the entire time.
But if she's editing the file, then there will be a need to click on a variety of words inside the content area. However, sentence endings will be no more commonly selected than other words. So overall, the left edge is closer to where the action is.
Windows sucks because you don't have any choice.
Of course, Microsoft and Apple will claim that an unchangable scrollbar positions is a feature that improves consistency. And they kind of have a point- it's a good thing when any user can sit down at a strange computer and be somewhat comfortable. (However, I would prefer a different technical implementation- UIs should be customizable, but it should always be easy to fallback to standardized "basic" or "advanced" input configs, without restarting any software.)
Having seen the Perspecta 3D in person, I can take a guess as to what the "TBA" polygon/second number will be.
Around 90.
That is, they showed an animated scene with 30 polys in it, and it got about 3 fps. And obviously, a 30 poly scene is so simplistic, it's pointless to bother viewing it from different angles. (They were wireframe, remember- No opacity with this device!)
Their higher-resolution demos (primarily individual 3d models, or playbacks of medical imaging) took more than 30 seconds to call up onto the device. That is, there is a significant delay before you can start to see a new 3d picture (Although once the picture is loaded, it will remain as you walk around the ball to look from all sides)
I had difficulty imaging what was taking so long- copying 116785152 pixels into a buffer shouldn't take excessively long over a SCSI cable. (And each pixel is less than 4 bits). I groundlessly decided that the conversion from a 3d voxel image into scanning instructions for the color beams (which must take the base's spinning into effect) was the time-consuming process. But that still didn't explain why they couldn't precalculate those representations.
Overall, it was very disappointing that a translucent, flickering, jiggling wireframe image in a $20,000+ 3d globe couldn't even animate at the 12hz that is the minimum for a human operator to percieve it as motion.
I agree with your point though- it's incorrect to label any existing mass market game as possessing "3d graphics"- they all use 2d output images, which incidently are created by a model of a 3d world to varying fidelity. (Some products can validly claim to have 3d gameplay)
Granted, there are only 8 colors available at high resolution, but it points out the fact that 3D graphics cards and monitors have a long way to go yet.
Having tried an assortment of 3d output devices, it's true that they have a way to go- but much more importantly, software has a long way to go before it'll be able to take advantage of that hardware. Existing popular software for data manipulation doesn't even take full advantage of NVidia-style 3d accelerator cards yet.
In English and related languages, letters are written from left to right, and from top to bottom. Following this same pattern, icons and directory listings in most GUIs also their content gravitating towards the upper left corner a window.
Therefore, most useful content will be on the left, so a mouse cursor will on average have less distance to travel when making the transition from editing to scrolling and back (the recent advent of mouse scrollwheels reduces the importance of this effect)
The only reason not to have scrollbars on the top and left is if there was some other useful clickable stuff already using that space. The top of windows is devoted to menus or buttons- traditionally, there hasn't been anything on the left, although recently some button bars or "Sidebars" show up there.
Today, some people virtually consider MATLAB to be a programming language. It finds its way into large engineering projects via a MATLAB->C compiler. And of course, it has native support for matrices.
The space shuttle a product of "USA", United Space Alliance, which is a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
Why does spoofing matter? "Intercepting" would matter, but is that possible?
If spyware sends Ctrl-Alt-Del, that's fine- it just goes to the login screen, right? And then PCanywhere/DSView/BO2k is powerless.
Supposedly (the DoD was very firm about having this before they'd buy Windows NT), there is no way any program aside from the OS installed windows login screen can be getting your input after CtrlAltDel.
I haven't seen much HTML-reading by filters, but I'm just a user.
However, one of the benefits you stated from using HTTP is that it will allow applications to run across firewalls. The people who installed the firewall, of course, will claim you're circumventing their protections. I predict that if executable or heavily interactive HTTP messages become more popular, firewalls/proxies will start to be instructed to filter out "dangerous" content (meaning anything that's more complex than a static page with CGI forms, or other traditional web-browser things)
Many corps need javascript for their "intranet" applications, but don't want to allow it for websites. However, I think they use security zone settings in Microsoft IE to do this.
The guys I'm talking about, overly-restrictive IT directors, don't only want to protect their computers from outside people.
They also need to "protect" their employees from outside computers. That means things like restricting what content they can view, and being able to log or investigate any traffic that goes in or out. TC could undermine this- the data can do arbitrary things, meaning it could do some things the watchmen won't like.
Specifically, it could bootstrap an encrypted tunnel to let arbitrary unsnoopable data pass in and out. (Either completely protected if the end-user typed in his own local decrypt key, or otherwise just prohibitively expensive for the spy code to execute all the data to find out if it's contents are really allowed)
My megacorp employer, for instance, is very fearful of this. They block the SSH port (22), but not FTP or telnet(23). Being able to monitor their employees is actually more important than protecting their employees from being spied upon by others on the internet. (Additionally, their proxy parses HTTP and SMTP traffic, although IDK just what it's looking out for).
The actions that typical corporate infosec people will want to permit outside software to run are very limited. A non-TC language restricts what a program can do, making it's behavior easier to prove. (Thus, they can feel safe about allowing a strong language with a restrictive API, or a weak "language" with somewhat more powerful local permissions)