No, because the first thing you'd do is create a group that had access to this file and which contained only these five users. That invalidates your first condition, "all of which are in different groups."
Now, if there were just a way for non-root users to manage groups. As it is, I would have to ask a root-type person to create a group for me, jim, sara, bret,...
HMM, perhaps I should write a utility to do this. To allow users (or a subset of the users) to create and manage groups. If done correctly, this could simplify sysadmin's lives.
Re:Proof that it's optimal? I don't believe that.
on
David Huffman is Dead
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· Score: 1
It is optimal for so-called instantaneous coding (where you know a symbol has been output as soon as you see its last bit).
Interesting thing is that previous attempts at solving this problem relied on trying at each stage to seperate the characters into two sets of equal probability, then seperating these sets in two and so-on. Not so easy. It takes a long time and still doesn't produce very good results. Huffman's insight (obvious in hindsight) was to do it bottom-up. Start with the least frequent characters, unify them into a new character and repeat.
.xinitrc wouldn't make much sense in XML... it's one of those things that are really a shell script, like.login or.profile... One more difficulty in doing this.. deciding exactly what is or is not a config file:)
you could always do something like:
#!/usr/bin/xml2sh . . . XML code . . .
and have this xml2sh program convert the user's XML version of.login,.xinitrc, or whatever to a shell script to perform the indicated actions. This could help get a lot of applications 'XML ready' without having to rewrite them all at once. As I understand it, the whole point of this is to have a common config file format that is easily parsed and edited by machines, so you could put together the intended XML configuration for a particular application by using xml2sh (or whatever we call it) to do a slower prototype version before committing to use an XML parser in the application itself.
The problem is that often might makes right. Take Gateway2000 for example. Their trademark was "Gateway2000" and all their computers and ads said so. A smaller company called 'gateway research', or 'gateway computing', or something like that had the domain gateway.com. Gateway2000 decided that they wanted to change their name to 'gateway' and since they were doing this, they ought to have gateway.com "to reduce confusion" Gateway2000 made a joke offer for the domain name ($10000 or so), so when the owner turned them down, they took it to court and won because "who had ever heard of the small company" I con't even remember what it is called now.
as far as I understand the cool thing about the TiVo is that you do'nt have to program it in advance: it just records all the time, over 24 hours or whatever the disk capacity is.
That would be a lot of disk space and a lot of processing power. I think it can record two shows at the same time, so if you like two things that are both on at the same time, you can record both, even if you're not around
I hadn't even thought of that:) I was tied up in thinking why you couldn't just have a backup. I mean, what if someone stole one of the backup tapes and started releasing signed copies of BO:):):):):)
And what about those lists? Seems like insertion onto the head of a list should be O(1) until you run out of memory and have to start swapping. What's up w/ that?
anyone with any sense keeps something as sensitive as a key for 80m machines in a tamperproof hardware device
I would even go further and say that the computer with this key is not only tamper proof, but has no way to get the key in or out of it. Imagine that you have a computer that will cryptographically sign whatever data you send to it over a serial line. It could also be prompted for its public key, and would return this to you, but under no circumstances would it divulge the private key.
This means no backup, no restore. When the system arrives, you plug it in and it uses some internally shielded noise source to generate its key. Any attempt to physically remove this key would result in the system clearing this memory.
it's about an order of magnitude more expensive in time and labor to fix something after it has been committed than before.
Perhaps in a closed-source model, but I think that with GPLd source, releasing a beta or even alpha quality program will help defray the development cost as this can get the code inspected and improved by several orders of magnitude more people.
I usually treat free software as beta or alpha until I've played with it enough myself (or heard from others) to convince myself otherwise. This is not a slam. If the authors of this software had waited until the code was production quality, they would most likely have had a smaller team and it would have taken much longer to do. As someone (sorry for forgetting who) recently said right here on slashdot: releasing the source at the end isn't as good as having the source open the whole time.
Is it just me, or has Linux spread like kudzu in the same 5-6 year period that Microsoft has been steadily retreating? At one point, NT was supossed to run on Intel, PowerPC, MIPS and Alpha. Linux now runs on these and more, while NT is only on Intel now. When Transmeta, or whoever comes out with a new, hot chip, it seems that it is easier to get Linux on it than almost anything else, certainly easier than NT.
I think that a lot of the assumptions that go into today's filesystems make them something that wouldn't work too well on this drive. If the seek time is negligible (it isn't on disks), then you could use a really braindead allocation algorithm that wouldn't bother to keep files contiguous.
This could help to solve NASA's storage problem. I've heard, maybe even on/. that they get so much data that there is really no way to archive it. Other groups also generate this kind of data. There will always be projects that will use large amounts of storage -- buildings of file cabinets, vaults of punched cards, paper or EM tape, hard drives, hard drive arrays. If the price is right, there'll be someone who wants to store an arbiutrarily large amount of data.
Thus, any true invasions of my privacy are illegal and I can prosecute those that do it.
Would that that were the case. Unfortunately, in many places in the US, it is not illegal to spy on people. A couple in MD had neighbors who spied on them by installing cameras in their house. The couple found out and tried to take their neighbors to court, but found that neither state nor federal law was broken, so they had no recourse.
Also, if users can run almost-current MS offerings on Linux, then this will go a long way to weakening Microsoft's tieing arrangements:
If I can run Word on Linux, why buy that extra copy of Windows.
Wait a minute, the only reason I was using Word is that it was the best word processor for Windows. Now, I might try Corel.
I have a feeling that many people run Windows because that's where the Words and Excels run, and people use Word and Excel because that's what runs on Windows. Wine (could) upset the whole apple cart.
Seems like it usually takes me about 1/2 hour to pick what I want installed and 15 minutes for the machine to install it. Now that I have a larger HD, I just install everything.
If you want an ultra fast Linux install, what about the following:
1) boot from CD 2) format and partition the HD 3) create symlinks on the HD to a live image on the CD 4) use a copy-on write scheme to turn the symlink into a real file if somebody trys to write to it 5) The system can now be used 6) continue copying the filesystem from the CD "in the background"
Even though the complete install might take 5-10 minutes, the time between booting from the CD and logging in could be on the order of a minute or so.
I think this is to provide left and right double quotes, left and right single quotes and a distinct apostrophe. Anyone know why ascii doesn't have two types of double quotes, while it does have two types of single quotes?
Debian, or whatever distribution (roll your own distro?) Linux kernels can be used in a wide variety of applications. Pare it down and it can run kiosks, or handheld computers, put a user friendly GUI on it for new users, xterms and Emacs for people like me:) I agree with you. Development on the Linux kernel will continue, regardless, and those who don't like distribution X will be free ot use distribution Y.
A bit of a ramble, but I can really see the embedded applications taking off. Circuit Cellar has ads for many types of embedded procesor systems, and more and more of them are mentioning Linux in their ads, some even display the "sign of the penguin".
Can someone explain to me the point of having a citizenship in a "country" like this? What will it get you?
If you become a citizen and pay your taxes, you can get an inside deal on the country's IPO:) Seriously though, some companies have quite a bit of power (money, capital, etc) although they don't own any land and may even lease the office space that they have
For my money, the theaters are being a little too draconian. You have to stay with your kids? They watch you to make sure you do? OTOH, I have seen 8 year old kids go to movies like "The Matrix" and "Pulp Fiction". That's just not right.
But I think the blame lies with the parents. They are the ones taking the kids to the movie, instead of finding a sitter, etc. Maybe the movie theatres should just show a kids movie in parallel with the big attractions (in another smaller theater), that way the kids would be nearby and not exposed to clearly adult-oriented movies
If viruses are developed faster because their makers moved to an "open source" model, then this would seem to provide an argument that anti-viral software should also have an open source model.
But for the most part, anti virus software is just a bandaid to cover for something that the OS should be doing in the first place. Frankly, I think OSS and Free software developers have better things to do with their time. Secure delete and undelete in Linux might be nice.
The US in particular is so wasteful of energy that the kind of money spent on those projects would be better spent on some simple, down-to-earth conservation programs.
I heard an estimate once that if we converted all incandescent lights in homes in the US to flurescent lights with motion sensors, the energy savings could be in the billions of dollars!
Amen to that! I spent one summer working 12 hour shifts in a plastics factory and alternating 3 and 4 days a week. Work now is much nicer.
Also, this bill does nothing for the people who have to work multiple jobs to support their families. If a person works 35 hours a week at job A, 10 at job B and another 35 at job C, they are entitled to no overtime pay.
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No, because the first thing you'd do is create a group that had access to this file and which contained only these five users. That invalidates your first condition, "all of which are in different groups."
Now, if there were just a way for non-root users to manage groups. As it is, I would have to ask a root-type person to create a group for me, jim, sara, bret, ...
HMM, perhaps I should write a utility to do this. To allow users (or a subset of the users) to create and manage groups. If done correctly, this could simplify sysadmin's lives.
It is optimal for so-called instantaneous coding (where you know a symbol has been output as soon as you see its last bit).
Interesting thing is that previous attempts at solving this problem relied on trying at each stage to seperate the characters into two sets of equal probability, then seperating these sets in two and so-on. Not so easy. It takes a long time and still doesn't produce very good results. Huffman's insight (obvious in hindsight) was to do it bottom-up. Start with the least frequent characters, unify them into a new character and repeat.
Ah, the world needs more "lazy" folks like this.
"Real world proof points" isn't even English, and "Boeing uses it!" isn't proof of anything.
Besides, doesn't Boeing use Linux too?
you could always do something like:
#!/usr/bin/xml2shXML code
and have this xml2sh program convert the user's XML version of .login, .xinitrc, or whatever to a shell script to perform the indicated actions. This could help get a lot of applications 'XML ready' without having to rewrite them all at once. As I understand it, the whole point of this is to have a common config file format that is easily parsed and edited by machines, so you could put together the intended XML configuration for a particular application by using xml2sh (or whatever we call it) to do a slower prototype version before committing to use an XML parser in the application itself.
The problem is that often might makes right. Take Gateway2000 for example. Their trademark was "Gateway2000" and all their computers and ads said so. A smaller company called 'gateway research', or 'gateway computing', or something like that had the domain gateway.com. Gateway2000 decided that they wanted to change their name to 'gateway' and since they were doing this, they ought to have gateway.com "to reduce confusion" Gateway2000 made a joke offer for the domain name ($10000 or so), so when the owner turned them down, they took it to court and won because "who had ever heard of the small company" I con't even remember what it is called now.
Nah, if it's based on the SW training droid it will just give you a nasty shock.
as far as I understand the cool thing about the TiVo is that you do'nt have to program it in advance: it just records all the time, over 24 hours or whatever the disk capacity is.
That would be a lot of disk space and a lot of processing power. I think it can record two shows at the same time, so if you like two things that are both on at the same time, you can record both, even if you're not around
I hadn't even thought of that :) I was tied up in thinking why you couldn't just have a backup. I mean, what if someone stole one of the backup tapes and started releasing signed copies of BO :):):):):)
I agree. I'm glad to see Microsoft concentrating on its strngths (writing games).
And what about those lists? Seems like insertion onto the head of a list should be O(1) until you run out of memory and have to start swapping. What's up w/ that?
anyone with any sense keeps something as sensitive as a key for 80m machines in a tamperproof hardware device
I would even go further and say that the computer with this key is not only tamper proof, but has no way to get the key in or out of it. Imagine that you have a computer that will cryptographically sign whatever data you send to it over a serial line. It could also be prompted for its public key, and would return this to you, but under no circumstances would it divulge the private key.
This means no backup, no restore. When the system arrives, you plug it in and it uses some internally shielded noise source to generate its key. Any attempt to physically remove this key would result in the system clearing this memory.
it's about an order of magnitude more expensive in time and labor to fix something after it has been committed than before.
Perhaps in a closed-source model, but I think that with GPLd source, releasing a beta or even alpha quality program will help defray the development cost as this can get the code inspected and improved by several orders of magnitude more people.
I usually treat free software as beta or alpha until I've played with it enough myself (or heard from others) to convince myself otherwise. This is not a slam. If the authors of this software had waited until the code was production quality, they would most likely have had a smaller team and it would have taken much longer to do. As someone (sorry for forgetting who) recently said right here on slashdot: releasing the source at the end isn't as good as having the source open the whole time.
Is it just me, or has Linux spread like kudzu in the same 5-6 year period that Microsoft has been steadily retreating? At one point, NT was supossed to run on Intel, PowerPC, MIPS and Alpha. Linux now runs on these and more, while NT is only on Intel now. When Transmeta, or whoever comes out with a new, hot chip, it seems that it is easier to get Linux on it than almost anything else, certainly easier than NT.
I think that a lot of the assumptions that go into today's filesystems make them something that wouldn't work too well on this drive. If the seek time is negligible (it isn't on disks), then you could use a really braindead allocation algorithm that wouldn't bother to keep files contiguous.
This could help to solve NASA's storage problem. I've heard, maybe even on /. that they get so much data that there is really no way to archive it. Other groups also generate this kind of data. There will always be projects that will use large amounts of storage -- buildings of file cabinets, vaults of punched cards, paper or EM tape, hard drives, hard drive arrays. If the price is right, there'll be someone who wants to store an arbiutrarily large amount of data.
Thus, any true invasions of my privacy are illegal and I can prosecute those that do it.
Would that that were the case. Unfortunately, in many places in the US, it is not illegal to spy on people. A couple in MD had neighbors who spied on them by installing cameras in their house. The couple found out and tried to take their neighbors to court, but found that neither state nor federal law was broken, so they had no recourse.
IANAL, but I believe this is still the case.
Also, if users can run almost-current MS offerings on Linux, then this will go a long way to weakening Microsoft's tieing arrangements:
If I can run Word on Linux, why buy that extra copy of Windows.
Wait a minute, the only reason I was using Word is that it was the best word processor for Windows. Now, I might try Corel.
I have a feeling that many people run Windows because that's where the Words and Excels run, and people use Word and Excel because that's what runs on Windows. Wine (could) upset the whole apple cart.
Seems like it usually takes me about 1/2 hour to pick what I want installed and 15 minutes for the machine to install it. Now that I have a larger HD, I just install everything.
If you want an ultra fast Linux install, what about the following:
1) boot from CD
2) format and partition the HD
3) create symlinks on the HD to a live image on the CD
4) use a copy-on write scheme to turn the symlink into a real file if somebody trys to write to it
5) The system can now be used
6) continue copying the filesystem from the CD "in the background"
Even though the complete install might take 5-10 minutes, the time between booting from the CD and logging in could be on the order of a minute or so.
I think this is to provide left and right double quotes, left and right single quotes and a distinct apostrophe. Anyone know why ascii doesn't have two types of double quotes, while it does have two types of single quotes?
Debian, or whatever distribution (roll your own distro?) Linux kernels can be used in a wide variety of applications. Pare it down and it can run kiosks, or handheld computers, put a user friendly GUI on it for new users, xterms and Emacs for people like me:) I agree with you. Development on the Linux kernel will continue, regardless, and those who don't like distribution X will be free ot use distribution Y.
A bit of a ramble, but I can really see the embedded applications taking off. Circuit Cellar has ads for many types of embedded procesor systems, and more and more of them are mentioning Linux in their ads, some even display the "sign of the penguin".
Can someone explain to me the point of having a citizenship in a "country" like this? What will it get you?
If you become a citizen and pay your taxes, you can get an inside deal on the country's IPO :) Seriously though, some companies have quite a bit of power (money, capital, etc) although they don't own any land and may even lease the office space that they have
For my money, the theaters are being a little too draconian. You have to stay with your kids? They watch you to make sure you do? OTOH, I have seen 8 year old kids go to movies like "The Matrix" and "Pulp Fiction". That's just not right.
But I think the blame lies with the parents. They are the ones taking the kids to the movie, instead of finding a sitter, etc. Maybe the movie theatres should just show a kids movie in parallel with the big attractions (in another smaller theater), that way the kids would be nearby and not exposed to clearly adult-oriented movies
If viruses are developed faster because their makers moved to an "open source" model, then this would seem to provide an argument that anti-viral software should also have an open source model.
But for the most part, anti virus software is just a bandaid to cover for something that the OS should be doing in the first place. Frankly, I think OSS and Free software developers have better things to do with their time. Secure delete and undelete in Linux might be nice.
The US in particular is so wasteful of energy that the kind of money spent on those projects would be better spent on some simple, down-to-earth conservation programs.
I heard an estimate once that if we converted all incandescent lights in homes in the US to flurescent lights with motion sensors, the energy savings could be in the billions of dollars!
Amen to that! I spent one summer working 12 hour shifts in a plastics factory and alternating 3 and 4 days a week. Work now is much nicer.
Also, this bill does nothing for the people who have to work multiple jobs to support their families. If a person works 35 hours a week at job A, 10 at job B and another 35 at job C, they are entitled to no overtime pay.