I love CentOS as much as the next guy, but lets face it, their job is to compile srpms giving a clone of RHEL. They do it well, but thats hardly a "contribution" to anything.
It's a contribution to Redhat. When people who've been using CentOS at home or for development want support at work, which distro do you think they'll buy support for? It's also a contribution to the community, because they explicitly make sure all the GPL code stays available and compilable. I wouldn't doubt if they find and report (and probably fix) bugs as well.
mfilemon lets you do completely automated capture of printer output. mfilemon has a file format specification so that unique file names can be generated in a specific directory. A combination of mfilemon and ghostscript can turn printer output into just about any conceivable file format, including PDFs and TIFFs. At work we've used it to automate some document imaging processes. If you share the mfilemon printer to other users, they can "print" directly into a document imaging system without having to know what happens behind the scenes.
This is taking an already implausible and unnecessary idea (that we are in a VR universe) and adding additional unnecessary hypotheses (that there are more than one of them and in some of them copies of ourselves know they are in a simulated reality.) How does this aid our ability to understand the universe other than to prove we have wild imaginations?
IF we are in a simulated universe, THEN it's possible that we'll detect it. It's much like other famous hypothesis such as "IF the earth is round, THEN it's possible we could detect it" or "IF the earth revolves around the sun, THEN we should be able to detect it." Before scientists actually found a way to test those hypothesis, they were in the same general class of questions as my hypothesis. My guess is that what will actually happen is that the definition of "simulation" will be adjusted to exclude perfect simulations and people will realize that there is no difference between a real thing and a perfect simulation of that thing. That will render the question of simulation meaningless unless there are detectable differences in a simulation versus a real universe.
This is the failure of reconciling the metaphysical with the physical. I agree with you completely. There is no way for us to remove ourselves from the universe at large to observe it. Whitworth is not a scientist when he speaks of this. He is a philosopher exploring metaphysics and ontology.
There is also no way to remove ourselves from our own minds in order to examine the universe in a more objective way. At the heart of science is metaphysics and ontology.
Further, since the sum of our existence is contained within the VR simulation, and it can be paused OR ALTERED at will, the VR simulation could self-correct for any flaw we discover by simply rewriting the memories of any experiences we had, or deleting and replaying that part of the simulation with different variables. Again, since our experience is wholly under the control of the simulation, we again would be none the wiser.
You are speaking of "us" and "we" as if there's only one copy. What if someone else runs the same simulation, but lets us find out that it's a simulation? Additionally, such simulations could occur across any period of time in any universe, meaning that after a billion years of being suspended, someone else could find the backup tapes to the original simulation and start it up again, or if there's an infinite number of universes the same simulation will be started at random in many universes. It would be obvious to some of our simulated selves that we are in a simulation at the same time that our other selves will be oblivious to it. There is no single history of events, which means that exploring the idea of being in a simulated universe has the potential to be successful even if the current operators of the simulation are all malicious.
mfilemon is a printer port driver for Windows 2000/XP (maybe Vista and 2003, ymmv), so the Windows Printer thinks it's an Applescript or generic HP laser printer but it actually just dumps postscript files in a directory of your choosing. You can probably rig up any number of other scenarios where a "real" printer just sends postscript output to a network port somewhere that you can capture, or just turn on print-to-file with a normal printer, depending on how smart the DRM on the application is.
4. The top 5 known recoverable uranium holders are: Australia, Khazakhstan, Canada, USA, South Africa - they make up about 2/3rds of the total. From a Western world perspective, that's a much nicer set then the oil top 5: Saudi Arabia, Canada, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait...
so if I spend next weekend making a wardrobe with my hands. Its mine forever and nobody else's right?
The wood is yours.
but if I spend next weekend writing an article using my head and hands, It becomes everyone else's in 15 years?
The paper/computer/disk you have the article on is yours forever. If someone else has a copy, why should you control their physical paper/computer/disk that the copy is stored on, even for "only" 15 years? What gives you the right to control someone else's wardrobe just because it looks or functions like yours?
If I stick your wardrobe in a duplicator and an exact copy pops out, using my resources and energy to do so, is there anything
wrong with that? What if I can do that just by looking at your wardrobe or hearing about it on the Internet?
And you imply it was everyone's property implicitly from the day I wrote it. So why the fuck would I bother? If you are going to let me keep the wardrobe, but you get all uppity about if I create something non tangible, then I'll just stick to carpentry.
Fine with me. If open source/free software proves anything, it's that there's a self sustaining set of people who will create intangible things without getting hung up on the idea of "property." Ideas are not property, unless you keep them to yourself. If you want to charge money to take everyone's clothes and store them in your wardrobe without telling them what you're storing them in, be my guest. Don't complain if other people see your wardrobe and build one for themselves.
in short, that's a great way to kill off all industries that don't create something physical. Well done, the internet allows us to have amazing digital economies, and you have found a way to stop it happening.
Ha, ha, ha, ha! Here you are posting nonsense on a web site using Free source code running on a Free operating system communicating over an open and public network using Free protocols, talking to my Free web browser. Your browser has a pretty good chance of being Free as well. The REAL business model of the Internet is letting experts get things done with the best tools available in the world, not paying a bunch of businessmen to "own" your software for you.
Make contracts enforceable in second life. Write up a simple description language for them, with in-world actions as clauses.
"X agrees to TransferLindens(Z) to Y on yyyy/mm/dd, and Y agrees to TransferLindens(Z*1.05) to X on yyyy/mm/dd+365 days" would be a simple 5% interest 1 year bond. It would be relatively simple to prove solvency at any point in time, making banks impossible to run scam from or bust. Just prevent any transaction or contract that would cause net worth (Lindens on hand plus incoming contracts minus outgoing contracts, ordered by time of transfer) to drop below zero. Players could put up real cash to finance loans by increasing their net worth enough to do so.
Loans and investments are a vital part of an economy, so it would make sense to support it with enforceable rules rather than ignore it and whine about scammers.
Not to mention applications like Visio or Publisher whose entire point is being able to modify and reuse the things created with them.
The *real* problem with every Microsoft file format is that it's a cheap wrapper around the data structures used internally by the application that created it. No abstraction, no official standard, and no concept of future or backward compatibility.
Bluray and HD-DVD use H.264, which has a ton of features that make the picture look nicer. Playing around with re-encoding DVDs using x264 tools, I've found that a lot of the blocking artifacts go away with H.264 because the codec was specifically designed to deblock well. Additionally, you can get MPEG2 quality H.264 movies at about a third to half of the bit rate. HD-DVD can also use some Microsoft codec, which I assume uses some of the same tricks H.264 does. Combined, that should be enough to give photograph quality to most still frames. It's all up to the people doing the encoding and how much motion is in the entire movie, though.
Even DVDs are insufficient to encode all movies perfectly. Even at 9800kb/s, my Van Helsing DVD has horrible blocking artifacts during some motion-heavy scenes (first harpy scene, for reference). Re-encoding with x264 isn't going to help there, since the source material is so poor. On the upside, I can drop the bit rate and save some space on my media server. If I ever get a HD drive, I'll compare the HD version of the movie to see if they've managed to fix that scene.
The DMCA alters the fundamental nature of copyright. The simple lock on a diary is a technological device protecting access to a copyrighted work, so possessing lock picks or keys for that diary is technically illegal unless the owner of the copyrighted work (not necessarily any individual diary owner) approves of it. In fact, even the existence of a single book with a lock could make possession of any matching key shape illegal, just as the existence of a DVD makes programs implementing the CSS algorithm illegal. There can be no distinction between mechanical and electronic devices, otherwise purely mechanical computers could break the DMCA with impunity. Even worse, book publishers could put timed or counter based locks on books, and those too would be protected by the DMCA. If the publisher wants people to buy a new copy of the book after two years or after it's been read ten times, who should stop them from exercising the same rights as the MAFIAA? If they put a fingerprint reader on books to tie copies to individuals, that would take care of the first sale doctrine as well. Once all the books are "protected", no one will be authorized to make or own normal copies any more. Do you know anyone who owns a DRM-free movie any more (think Macrovision, not just CSS)?
I think invisible ink counts, too, which makes sources of heat sufficient to brown egg whites illegal (or more obtusely, the knowledge of what happens when you cook an egg should be illegal). The DMCA is nothing less than the attempted destruction of free human knowledge and replacement of it with cheap and illiterate consumerism. I think overturning it will require a court case that brings the physical and mechanical aspects of the DMCA into question, or emphasizes the ability of mechanical devices to perform digital calculations. I think lawmakers and judges are mostly unaware of Turing, and it causes them to make senseless "electronic" laws with absurd consequences.
What you've said is all well and good until you try to play a DVD with free software. Even though I own a DVD, I cannot legally decrypt the video and audio on the disc because the DMCA makes it illegal. I cannot make fair use backup copies, because consumer level DVD writers cannot write the encrypted keys onto recordable media, and blank media has zeroed out key areas already (AFAIK). The DMCA trumps fair use, the first sale doctrine, and the concept of actually owning media. With the ability to revoke AACS keys and players, no customer can truly own HD content.
Invest the time and a small amount of cash. Rediscover your music. You just might be surprised.
Have you tried using a digital equalizer to bump up the frequency ranges in MP3s that you like to hear from LPs? I imagine you could recreate the "warmth" and any other features of LPs with a fairly simple EQ setup.
That has to be some nebulous territory to navigate. What if the subject of your photo only happens to be in front of a famous commercial building or object? Suppose a Ford vehicle exploded (due to natural or third party causes) in front of a Chrysler building; would Ford or Chrysler (or both) sue you for publishing the picture on your advertisement for asbestos driving clothes? Do notable or newsworthy events have some sort of exception if they're used in advertising?
Elisha Gray was an electrical engineer. Bell an expert in speech and hearing. Bell needed a technician to construct his apparatus.
As usual, the geeks lose and the businessmen who can't actually do anything on their own win. That's the system that patents perpetuate. The knowledge of how to make other people do things is favored over knowing how to actually do them yourself.
Digital stethoscopes have been around for a while, and I don't think anyone is questioning the value of being able to record heart sounds for later re-examination, training, etc. The main question is: being such a simple device (recording audio, transferring it to a computer later), why put an OS on it at all? You could do the same with a $.50, 8-bit microcontroller and a bit of C - no OS needed.
Until, like the GP suggested, you want to run a network stack and encrypt the traffic. Or compile fftw or some other common open source numerical package for filtering out noise or doing other useful things. Sure, you might be able to rewrite those packages to compile and run on a microcontroller, but why bother when another dollar or two will get you a pc-on-a-chip with Linux?
I guess none of you in the US are aware of facts like if I photograph your house and use that photo commercially, in most situations (advertising would be a prime example) I have to have your permission to do it, and you can charge me money for it. And it doesn't matter if your house is one day old or one thousand years old.
Commercially like Google Maps or commercially in some other way? Photographs taken from public areas are almost always free for any use by the copyright owner. If you can see it from a public place, so could (in theory) anyone else. If you want interior shots of my house, then you need my permission and probably should expect to pay for it.
cardinal numbers are for quantifying things, ~~ such as two beers, one golf ball, and twenty dollars.
Cardinal numbers also describe the sizes of sets such as the integers and the real numbers. Cantor proved that the cardinality of the integers (Aleph-0) is not equal to the cardinality of the reals (Aleph-1). Aleph-2 is even larger than the reals, etc.
the Universe, being infinite, does not lend itself to quantification and it is meaningless to discuss that aspect.
The integers are also infinite, but we know quite a lot about them. Same with the reals. If physics finds a Theory of Everything, it will specify the cardinality of the Universe as well.
the Universe is infinite in every respect. that is the only way that it can exist.
What cardinality does it have, then? There is no largest cardinality, so the universe obviously has a specific cardinality, otherwise it wouldn't exist by contradiction.
Slashdot Mirror
I love CentOS as much as the next guy, but lets face it, their job is to compile srpms giving a clone of RHEL. They do it well, but thats hardly a "contribution" to anything.
It's a contribution to Redhat. When people who've been using CentOS at home or for development want support at work, which distro do you think they'll buy support for? It's also a contribution to the community, because they explicitly make sure all the GPL code stays available and compilable. I wouldn't doubt if they find and report (and probably fix) bugs as well.
mfilemon lets you do completely automated capture of printer output. mfilemon has a file format specification so that unique file names can be generated in a specific directory. A combination of mfilemon and ghostscript can turn printer output into just about any conceivable file format, including PDFs and TIFFs. At work we've used it to automate some document imaging processes. If you share the mfilemon printer to other users, they can "print" directly into a document imaging system without having to know what happens behind the scenes.
This is taking an already implausible and unnecessary idea (that we are in a VR universe) and adding additional unnecessary hypotheses (that there are more than one of them and in some of them copies of ourselves know they are in a simulated reality.) How does this aid our ability to understand the universe other than to prove we have wild imaginations?
IF we are in a simulated universe, THEN it's possible that we'll detect it. It's much like other famous hypothesis such as "IF the earth is round, THEN it's possible we could detect it" or "IF the earth revolves around the sun, THEN we should be able to detect it." Before scientists actually found a way to test those hypothesis, they were in the same general class of questions as my hypothesis. My guess is that what will actually happen is that the definition of "simulation" will be adjusted to exclude perfect simulations and people will realize that there is no difference between a real thing and a perfect simulation of that thing. That will render the question of simulation meaningless unless there are detectable differences in a simulation versus a real universe.
This is the failure of reconciling the metaphysical with the physical. I agree with you completely. There is no way for us to remove ourselves from the universe at large to observe it. Whitworth is not a scientist when he speaks of this. He is a philosopher exploring metaphysics and ontology.
There is also no way to remove ourselves from our own minds in order to examine the universe in a more objective way. At the heart of science is metaphysics and ontology.
Further, since the sum of our existence is contained within the VR simulation, and it can be paused OR ALTERED at will, the VR simulation could self-correct for any flaw we discover by simply rewriting the memories of any experiences we had, or deleting and replaying that part of the simulation with different variables. Again, since our experience is wholly under the control of the simulation, we again would be none the wiser.
You are speaking of "us" and "we" as if there's only one copy. What if someone else runs the same simulation, but lets us find out that it's a simulation? Additionally, such simulations could occur across any period of time in any universe, meaning that after a billion years of being suspended, someone else could find the backup tapes to the original simulation and start it up again, or if there's an infinite number of universes the same simulation will be started at random in many universes. It would be obvious to some of our simulated selves that we are in a simulation at the same time that our other selves will be oblivious to it. There is no single history of events, which means that exploring the idea of being in a simulated universe has the potential to be successful even if the current operators of the simulation are all malicious.
mfilemon is a printer port driver for Windows 2000/XP (maybe Vista and 2003, ymmv), so the Windows Printer thinks it's an Applescript or generic HP laser printer but it actually just dumps postscript files in a directory of your choosing. You can probably rig up any number of other scenarios where a "real" printer just sends postscript output to a network port somewhere that you can capture, or just turn on print-to-file with a normal printer, depending on how smart the DRM on the application is.
4. The top 5 known recoverable uranium holders are: Australia, Khazakhstan, Canada, USA, South Africa - they make up about 2/3rds of the total. From a Western world perspective, that's a much nicer set then the oil top 5: Saudi Arabia, Canada, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait...
But Canada is on both lists! How can I choose?!
In-game contracts are automatic, and essentially just as reliable as the in-game economy itself.
so if I spend next weekend making a wardrobe with my hands. Its mine forever and nobody else's right?
The wood is yours.
but if I spend next weekend writing an article using my head and hands, It becomes everyone else's in 15 years?
The paper/computer/disk you have the article on is yours forever. If someone else has a copy, why should you control their physical paper/computer/disk that the copy is stored on, even for "only" 15 years? What gives you the right to control someone else's wardrobe just because it looks or functions like yours?
If I stick your wardrobe in a duplicator and an exact copy pops out, using my resources and energy to do so, is there anything wrong with that? What if I can do that just by looking at your wardrobe or hearing about it on the Internet?
And you imply it was everyone's property implicitly from the day I wrote it. So why the fuck would I bother? If you are going to let me keep the wardrobe, but you get all uppity about if I create something non tangible, then I'll just stick to carpentry.
Fine with me. If open source/free software proves anything, it's that there's a self sustaining set of people who will create intangible things without getting hung up on the idea of "property." Ideas are not property, unless you keep them to yourself. If you want to charge money to take everyone's clothes and store them in your wardrobe without telling them what you're storing them in, be my guest. Don't complain if other people see your wardrobe and build one for themselves.
in short, that's a great way to kill off all industries that don't create something physical. Well done, the internet allows us to have amazing digital economies, and you have found a way to stop it happening.
Ha, ha, ha, ha! Here you are posting nonsense on a web site using Free source code running on a Free operating system communicating over an open and public network using Free protocols, talking to my Free web browser. Your browser has a pretty good chance of being Free as well. The REAL business model of the Internet is letting experts get things done with the best tools available in the world, not paying a bunch of businessmen to "own" your software for you.
Make contracts enforceable in second life. Write up a simple description language for them, with in-world actions as clauses.
"X agrees to TransferLindens(Z) to Y on yyyy/mm/dd, and Y agrees to TransferLindens(Z*1.05) to X on yyyy/mm/dd+365 days" would be a simple 5% interest 1 year bond. It would be relatively simple to prove solvency at any point in time, making banks impossible to run scam from or bust. Just prevent any transaction or contract that would cause net worth (Lindens on hand plus incoming contracts minus outgoing contracts, ordered by time of transfer) to drop below zero. Players could put up real cash to finance loans by increasing their net worth enough to do so.
Loans and investments are a vital part of an economy, so it would make sense to support it with enforceable rules rather than ignore it and whine about scammers.
Not to mention applications like Visio or Publisher whose entire point is being able to modify and reuse the things created with them.
The *real* problem with every Microsoft file format is that it's a cheap wrapper around the data structures used internally by the application that created it. No abstraction, no official standard, and no concept of future or backward compatibility.
Bluray and HD-DVD use H.264, which has a ton of features that make the picture look nicer. Playing around with re-encoding DVDs using x264 tools, I've found that a lot of the blocking artifacts go away with H.264 because the codec was specifically designed to deblock well. Additionally, you can get MPEG2 quality H.264 movies at about a third to half of the bit rate. HD-DVD can also use some Microsoft codec, which I assume uses some of the same tricks H.264 does. Combined, that should be enough to give photograph quality to most still frames. It's all up to the people doing the encoding and how much motion is in the entire movie, though.
Even DVDs are insufficient to encode all movies perfectly. Even at 9800kb/s, my Van Helsing DVD has horrible blocking artifacts during some motion-heavy scenes (first harpy scene, for reference). Re-encoding with x264 isn't going to help there, since the source material is so poor. On the upside, I can drop the bit rate and save some space on my media server. If I ever get a HD drive, I'll compare the HD version of the movie to see if they've managed to fix that scene.
The DMCA alters the fundamental nature of copyright. The simple lock on a diary is a technological device protecting access to a copyrighted work, so possessing lock picks or keys for that diary is technically illegal unless the owner of the copyrighted work (not necessarily any individual diary owner) approves of it. In fact, even the existence of a single book with a lock could make possession of any matching key shape illegal, just as the existence of a DVD makes programs implementing the CSS algorithm illegal. There can be no distinction between mechanical and electronic devices, otherwise purely mechanical computers could break the DMCA with impunity. Even worse, book publishers could put timed or counter based locks on books, and those too would be protected by the DMCA. If the publisher wants people to buy a new copy of the book after two years or after it's been read ten times, who should stop them from exercising the same rights as the MAFIAA? If they put a fingerprint reader on books to tie copies to individuals, that would take care of the first sale doctrine as well. Once all the books are "protected", no one will be authorized to make or own normal copies any more. Do you know anyone who owns a DRM-free movie any more (think Macrovision, not just CSS)?
I think invisible ink counts, too, which makes sources of heat sufficient to brown egg whites illegal (or more obtusely, the knowledge of what happens when you cook an egg should be illegal). The DMCA is nothing less than the attempted destruction of free human knowledge and replacement of it with cheap and illiterate consumerism. I think overturning it will require a court case that brings the physical and mechanical aspects of the DMCA into question, or emphasizes the ability of mechanical devices to perform digital calculations. I think lawmakers and judges are mostly unaware of Turing, and it causes them to make senseless "electronic" laws with absurd consequences.
What you've said is all well and good until you try to play a DVD with free software. Even though I own a DVD, I cannot legally decrypt the video and audio on the disc because the DMCA makes it illegal. I cannot make fair use backup copies, because consumer level DVD writers cannot write the encrypted keys onto recordable media, and blank media has zeroed out key areas already (AFAIK). The DMCA trumps fair use, the first sale doctrine, and the concept of actually owning media. With the ability to revoke AACS keys and players, no customer can truly own HD content.
Invest the time and a small amount of cash. Rediscover your music. You just might be surprised.
Have you tried using a digital equalizer to bump up the frequency ranges in MP3s that you like to hear from LPs? I imagine you could recreate the "warmth" and any other features of LPs with a fairly simple EQ setup.
That has to be some nebulous territory to navigate. What if the subject of your photo only happens to be in front of a famous commercial building or object? Suppose a Ford vehicle exploded (due to natural or third party causes) in front of a Chrysler building; would Ford or Chrysler (or both) sue you for publishing the picture on your advertisement for asbestos driving clothes? Do notable or newsworthy events have some sort of exception if they're used in advertising?
Elisha Gray was an electrical engineer. Bell an expert in speech and hearing. Bell needed a technician to construct his apparatus.
As usual, the geeks lose and the businessmen who can't actually do anything on their own win. That's the system that patents perpetuate. The knowledge of how to make other people do things is favored over knowing how to actually do them yourself.
And cramming all of this onto the stethoscope rather than on a PC is better because???
Maybe doctors want to wear stethoscopes instead of PCs around their necks?
Digital stethoscopes have been around for a while, and I don't think anyone is questioning the value of being able to record heart sounds for later re-examination, training, etc. The main question is: being such a simple device (recording audio, transferring it to a computer later), why put an OS on it at all? You could do the same with a $.50, 8-bit microcontroller and a bit of C - no OS needed.
Until, like the GP suggested, you want to run a network stack and encrypt the traffic. Or compile fftw or some other common open source numerical package for filtering out noise or doing other useful things. Sure, you might be able to rewrite those packages to compile and run on a microcontroller, but why bother when another dollar or two will get you a pc-on-a-chip with Linux?
I guess none of you in the US are aware of facts like if I photograph your house and use that photo commercially, in most situations (advertising would be a prime example) I have to have your permission to do it, and you can charge me money for it. And it doesn't matter if your house is one day old or one thousand years old.
Commercially like Google Maps or commercially in some other way? Photographs taken from public areas are almost always free for any use by the copyright owner. If you can see it from a public place, so could (in theory) anyone else. If you want interior shots of my house, then you need my permission and probably should expect to pay for it.
... will society grant computer intelligences the same rights that us humans do?
When computer intelligence can give a convincing argument for doing so.
cardinal numbers are for quantifying things, ~~ such as two beers, one golf ball, and twenty dollars.
Cardinal numbers also describe the sizes of sets such as the integers and the real numbers. Cantor proved that the cardinality of the integers (Aleph-0) is not equal to the cardinality of the reals (Aleph-1). Aleph-2 is even larger than the reals, etc.
the Universe, being infinite, does not lend itself to quantification and it is meaningless to discuss that aspect.
The integers are also infinite, but we know quite a lot about them. Same with the reals. If physics finds a Theory of Everything, it will specify the cardinality of the Universe as well.
the Universe is infinite in every respect. that is the only way that it can exist.
What cardinality does it have, then? There is no largest cardinality, so the universe obviously has a specific cardinality, otherwise it wouldn't exist by contradiction.
but is he Emacs or Vi ?
The answer is almost certainly an unequivocal "Yes."
(b) because he'd been told to cover two weeks' worth of material in two days. I quit after lunch on the first day.
So did they ever actually get to the "Hello, World!" example?
</cheap shot at java>