What are they doing at Sega? Burning money? I bought a Dreamcast the first day they came out. I now own about 30 Dreamcast titles - I've easily sunk over $1500 in the system. And I LOVE IT. It is by far and away the best gaming system I've ever used. I used to play Quake competitively on a PC - now I play it on Dreamcast, with a keyboard and mouse, and it's SOOO much nicer. I run BSD on my Dreamcast.
The game availability is as vast as it is amazing. The PS2 is a year late, has like 10 titles, and no hardware anti-aliasing... and from what I've seen of the graphics, they're far from a generation ahead of dreamcast.
Am I missing something here? Millions of units sold, piles of great titles, terriffic hardware, no CSS or Rambus inside (gag)... HOW IS SEGA LOSING MONEY?
Is their CEO gambling? Are the engineers smoking crack wrapped in $100 bills? What's the deal here?
For a computer engineer it did not take long to think of a solution involving a robot.
For a computer scientist, it did not take long to figure out that you trap cats by putting a big pile of catnip on the floor, watching them eat it, and then carrying them outside, stoned out of their mind.
It's all about the point system.
Each patent examiner needs a certain number of "points" per pay period. (I'm intentionally keeping this simple, patent lawyers feel free to jump in).
Scoring goes like this:
Early approval: 2 points.
Denial: 1 point, plus you have to go through a bunch of crap if they appeal, which wastes time and earns you zero points.
This is all verbatim from the patent lawyer at my company (which I will not disclose). We're aggressively patenting common sense, and I'm helping. Her philosophy is: "if they'll let you, do it. if you don't, the competition will".
i agree with her. i've got options to protect. the problem is the aforementioned scoring system. if they changed that, stupid patents would come to a screeching halt.
Gore: I met a gentleman last week who had to pay $35 for his crack rock. This kind of prescription price gouging must stop!
Bush: Never use a drug named after a body part. Like Crack. That's a ghetto drug.
Nader: Unsafe on any Speed!
why give a tax cut
Gore: We should cut taxes, but never trees. Trees our our friends. My tree loves me.
Bush: We need to give money back to the corporations that create value and jobs in this country, like Exxon. Er, wait... um... there should be limits to what i say...
Nader: I'm not as much in favor of cutting taxes as taxing cuts, as no one likes cuts, and we should tax things we don't like.
electoral reform
Gore: We need electoral reform now! We should be able to dance with our happy buddhist monk friends, as their money showers down upon us!
Bush: Electoral reform is key, I think in particular we need to make those damn black people inelegible to vote. They never voted for my dad.
Nader: Look at these two clowns. Enough said.
intellectual property
Gore: I like my stuff.
Bush: Who let intellectuals own property! Nerds are queer!
Nader: This sound bite is copyright (c) 2000 Nader Productions, Inc.
encryption
Gore: I invented it.
Bush: See! He's queer! Nerd! NERD!
Nader: +++Q,SJD8AJS@#$1JSDFA+++
political protests
Gore: I remember the protests back in the 60's for nam, man, the weed was so thick... er, wait.
Bush: There should be limits to freedom. In particular, we need to shoot those damn people.
Nader: I am a political protest, damnit!
asteroids
Gore: aAAAHAHAHAHAH! Where! flee!
Bush: I remember that game. I could never figure out how to stop my ship.
Nader: Bush is a nerd! Queer!
the future
Gore: I'm gonna write a book about that.
Bush: I'm gonna outlaw the queer's book.
Nader: One of these two is gonna win a Darwin Award. It's in the cards, I tell ya.
Who told you to spy on your neighbour not to mention sell him out to the cops? What did this guy ever do to you?
Well if you must know, I found out because one day he asked me to help back up some mp3's for him using my burner, and he shared his hard drive using microsoft file sharing. I mounted it with RHUMBA. He was assuming I wouldn't look in every directory. Enough said.
And just how did you know he was running an ftp server with kiddie porn? Downloaded it yourself, didn't you? Hypocrits.
Well it's hard to tell someone's doing something illegal without seeing it. Of course, when you see a directory with about 11,000 jpg's in it and they all have names like 01123hgf-11-23-89.jpg you really don't know what you're in for till you open them. All I can say is it was a truly horrible 60 seconds.
Why did I call the cops? Because he spent a lot of time on AOL and on the phone trying to get kids to meet him in our dorm room. And that was something I couldn't let happen.
I know you're trying to provoke me to respond, so there are the facts, and I stand by my actions.
My roommate and I called the cops my junior year in college, when we found a guy in our suite running an ftp server with kiddie porn.
When the FBI comes to take your computer, you don't get it back. They didn't just take this kid's machine, they took my machine too - since our ethernet ran through the same hub, they were able to extend the search warrant. I got my computer back 2 years later. It's still sitting in my basement, running bsd, like it was before they took it.
Remember, you live in a free society until you don't. Due process for you is going to mean that they will duly detain your computers and schoolwork till it is useless to you.
Q: Does it play pong?
A: No.
Q: Does it contain within in a CSS compliant player, helping to fund the revocation of consumer rights?
A: Yes.
Q: THEN WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU BUYING IT?
A: It's a little faster than the dreamcast, even though the games aren't as good.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGGGHHHH.
Burn the playstation 2!!!!
The EULA for most hardware CAD design software (titles like PowerPCB & Orcad) reads (in summary) like this:
-You can't use this software in any manner designed for figuring out how fast it is.
-You can't benchmark this software. You can't publish benchmarks of this software. You can't sell it to someone who will publish benchmarks. You don't own the software, but if it's stolen, and someone makes benchmarks with your copy, you're liable.
-By agreeing to this license, you agree that
-We may inspect your premises with a software agent team at any time, 24/7/365. If you are not there to assist us with entering your premises, we may let ourselves in.
-We may recall your license electronically at any time, for any reason.
... i could go on but my fingers hurt.
Software that sells for 100k a copy doesn't mess around with wimpy licenses like the one at issue.
Here's a direct link to the file, broken up. I couldn't past it in entirely because apparently slashdot thinks long strings are lame. Which is lame. Ironic, huh?
Having a conscience doesn't mean you can't see Time Warner movies. It just makes life more expensive.
Every time you see an $8 TW movie, send $16 to the EFF. That's $24 a movie, so it will make you evaluate what you see more critically.
It's not like we don't have enough expendable income in this country. Today, at my local best buy in rockville, they called in the riot police because the people who lined up at 5 am for Playstation2's were trying to beat up the people who lined up at midnight and fell asleep.
Try going to the local line of rabid PS2 shoppers and tell them that the PS2 is selling their fair use rights out the window. I bet you they'll all ask you if they could sign away their "fair use" thingies for a lower number in line.
Actually I guess it would be more like BOOM. With gasoline, in an accident, you need many things for a catastrophe: 1) massively rupture the fuel tank 2) provide activation energy (a spark) 3) provide a pressurized chamber to fill with gas, creating an explosion
With an air powered car, the entire catastrophe scenario is summed up in a single event: crack the fuel tank, even a little. KAPOW! all the energy that car is carrying goes off in a single burst.
Now imagine a packed, 7 lane freeway of bumper to bumper traffic made up of air powered cars (like we have here in DC). Now imagine a semi rolls over onto one, causing it to explode. The explosion tears through the neighboring cars, causing them to explode. Causing the neighboring ones to explode. Causing the neighboring ones to explode. Causing...
well, you get the idea.
Ever seen that experiment where they put a million ping pong balls on a million mousetraps, and then throw another ping pong ball in the room?
Well, little troll boy, this works just as well on your regular American ATM card.
ATM cards have withdrawal limits. Whereas full credentials can access an entire bank account. It's a difference between 300 dollars and hundreds of thousands. That's why, in my original post, I was very clear about stating "entire bank account".
I learned how smartcards work a few years ago, when I was writing the VCAT driver for one of those early Towitoko Chipdrive suckers. They're neat. I just wish people wouldn't trust them so much.
Beacause you CAN attack them, and you can reprogram them too. Not generically, but on a platform-specific level. Check out the API if an employer is ever kind enough to buy it for you.
They ARE actually using smartcards to access both public and private services in Finland.
The electronic identification card is safe to use because it is based on high-security, microchip technology. (Just like Tickle-Me and Country Elmo!) As with other smart cards, every cardholder has a Personal Identification Number (PIN). In the event that the card is lost or that unauthorized access to the PIN codes is gained, there is a round-the-clock revocation service that revokes the card immediately.
The electronic identification card must be handled and protected just like other similar cards or documents, such as credit cards, driving licences, or passports. PINs should never be kept in the same place as the electronic ID card. The card and the related PIN may only be used by the holder to whom the card is issued.
If the card is lost or obtained by a third party, or if the PIN comes to the attention of such party, this must immediately be reported to the certificate revocation list on 0800-162 622. For hearing-impaired people, a text telephone service is available on 0100-2288. The cardholder's responsibility for the card ceases when the card is reported as lost or stolen and the card is entered in the certificate revocation list.
How to fuck a Finnish smartcard holder in 3 easy steps:
1) Kidnap them and beat the pincode out of them.
2) Use their credentials to transfer the contents of their bank account to somewhere in Switzerland. Bank of Bermuda is also good for this.
3) Let them go.
They then report the card stolen, but it's too late, everything that happened is their responsibility.
I don't even have to go into the nightmare of employers and governments both having executeable access to the chip on your smartcard... tracking viruses for fired employees, using the shared credentials to track web sites used by employees in their personal time.... making "citizenship" and smartcard ownership the same, requiring citizenship/smartcard to buy food, denying citizenship/smartcard to political dissidents...
Certainly true - but not actually important. The main usages of computer software would be in patient record keeping, drug prescription advice (and interactions/side effects) and "expert system" style software,
For the purposes you describe, I agree, Linux makes a wonderful fit. I still assert, however, that my original comment has a place in this discussion, given all the posts about people's pacemakers crashing and life support systems going into microsoft blue-screen mode. My point was that neither microsoft nor linux should ever find their way into true safety-critical applications like the ones i just mentioned.
I agree that for non-realtime stuff such as the applications you mentioned, linux probably makes a much better fit than microsoft, especially since it is so much easier to network.
Apparently, Enea has implemented "The Halting Problem"
Heh, ok, your sarcasm is appreciated.
But you either didn't understand Turing, or you didn't understand me.
No, they haven't solved the halting problem. It's REALLY EASY to write a program that crashes under OSE. I do it all the time. All they're saying is that it can't corrupt system memory. The halting problem does not forbid true protected memory. OSE is just really good at sensing a crashed application, ending it, and restarting it. So if your pacemaker crashes, it can restart the "pace" process very, very quickly.
A handy thing.
That aside, it's an interesting statement to say that your OS can never crash. The interesting thing about it, as you point out, is that you can't prove it on paper.
It would be more accurate to say that OSE has never crashed. Ever. The Halting Problem only means that you can't prove that something will never crash. It does not, however, exclude the possibility that such code exists.
Here's a little bit of reality, try not to chew it too hard.
Linux isn't a real-time operating system. It makes a great real-time controller, but it just doesn't have the granularity to do real time.
As far as embedded medical software goes, there's only one name. And it's not vxworks, the microsoft of real-time embedded, either. That's the stuff that crashed the mars explorer.
ALL medical embedded stuff runs OSE by Enea systems. It comes in three kernel sizes, and it has the best error handling and inter-process communication constructs ever built, from a reliability standpoint. There are OSE systems out there with 10 years of uptime. In addition, OSE can make the interesting claim that it is impossible to crash the OS. This type of reliability is found in a field called "safety-critical systems", and ENEA nearly owns the market. Take a look at the data sheets on their web site.
Here's a great quote: "it is impossible for user processes to corrupt the OSE kernel."
And they're not kidding.
Open Source is a truly wonderful model, but keep in mind that a closed group of true experts can also make great software.
mass-marketed pop musicians bring in cash to the labels - which in turn means more support for the less popular, higher quality artists. "Every single artist that you do like is supported by another you might not like," said Lowery.
So the record labels support artists? At a loss? Sounds like communism...
David Lowery, leader of Cracker, voiced the strongest criticism of the file sharing service: "It's just bulls---t hippie capitalism," he said. "It's just not right."
"Hippie Capitalism"? Sounds like communism...
So which is it? Is Lowery pro-communist, or anti-communist? Or is he just a smoked-out idiot?
as I understand it, you don't have rights to the source unless a binary has been distributed to you.
Good point. If however, I was a kiosk owner, and I purchased a console, then I would be recieving the binaries (and the device) and I could then ask for the source, and distribute it freely myself.
This statement implies that they have modified the OS. Any direct modifications to linux would fall under the GPL. I searched their site and couldn't find the source.
I just sent them a polite email asking for the source code. I'll keep you posted, but feel free to join me in politely asking where all their GPL'd code is dropped.
At every IETF meeting I've been to, including the most recent one in Pittsburgh, the IPv6 discussion went like this:
Q: Is microsoft going to support it in a release OS?
A: No, but microsoft research has a stack in development
Q: Does Cisco support it?
A: We're working on it.
Then half the room walks out the door, and all that's left is the Kame project talking about how they can tunnel their ipv6 site through ipv4 to see the dancing turtle.
IPv6 is dead till it ships in a microsoft stack. When it does, IPv6 will be real instantly.
While our democracy may have failed a bit, the candidates do, through extensive focus group testing, try to represent the people. Bush wouldn't say a word without his advisors telling him which demographic we're talking to.
So let's get it straight who Bush was talking to. Bush was talking to the Million Mom March. Bush was talking to the same Mom's who needed Microsoft's Digital Diva to explain to them how to send their email messages from their "cyberspace address" out over the "information superhighway".
He was talking to all the people who watched a high school full of children being led out by SWAT teams, the people who read newspapers and read about those two kid's obsession with the internet.
He was representing the great swath of Americans who just don't get it
My point is, don't blame Bush. Bush, as a C student, is uniuqely qualified to represent the vast and growing idiot demographic in America.
Blame the idiots. Think globally, but mock them locally.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd love to see a Beowulf cluster of those!
What are they doing at Sega? Burning money? I bought a Dreamcast the first day they came out. I now own about 30 Dreamcast titles - I've easily sunk over $1500 in the system. And I LOVE IT. It is by far and away the best gaming system I've ever used. I used to play Quake competitively on a PC - now I play it on Dreamcast, with a keyboard and mouse, and it's SOOO much nicer. I run BSD on my Dreamcast.
The game availability is as vast as it is amazing. The PS2 is a year late, has like 10 titles, and no hardware anti-aliasing... and from what I've seen of the graphics, they're far from a generation ahead of dreamcast.
Am I missing something here? Millions of units sold, piles of great titles, terriffic hardware, no CSS or Rambus inside (gag)... HOW IS SEGA LOSING MONEY?
Is their CEO gambling? Are the engineers smoking crack wrapped in $100 bills? What's the deal here?
If Microsoft buys Sega I'm going to cry.
For a computer engineer it did not take long to think of a solution involving a robot.
For a computer scientist, it did not take long to figure out that you trap cats by putting a big pile of catnip on the floor, watching them eat it, and then carrying them outside, stoned out of their mind.
the robot is cool too, i guess. (:
It's all about the point system.
Each patent examiner needs a certain number of "points" per pay period. (I'm intentionally keeping this simple, patent lawyers feel free to jump in).
Scoring goes like this:
Early approval: 2 points.
Denial: 1 point, plus you have to go through a bunch of crap if they appeal, which wastes time and earns you zero points.
This is all verbatim from the patent lawyer at my company (which I will not disclose). We're aggressively patenting common sense, and I'm helping. Her philosophy is: "if they'll let you, do it. if you don't, the competition will".
i agree with her. i've got options to protect. the problem is the aforementioned scoring system. if they changed that, stupid patents would come to a screeching halt.
Did they offer any reason why you should lose your property just because you are accused of a crime?
I wasn't accused of a crime. I wasn't losing my property, it just was "evidence" for a few years.
Do they compensate you for the value of that property at the time it was taken if they don't bring charges or lose the case? If not, then why?
No, because the law doesn't say they have to.
war on drugs
Gore: I met a gentleman last week who had to pay $35 for his crack rock. This kind of prescription price gouging must stop!
Bush: Never use a drug named after a body part. Like Crack. That's a ghetto drug.
Nader: Unsafe on any Speed!
why give a tax cut
Gore: We should cut taxes, but never trees. Trees our our friends. My tree loves me.
Bush: We need to give money back to the corporations that create value and jobs in this country, like Exxon. Er, wait... um... there should be limits to what i say...
Nader: I'm not as much in favor of cutting taxes as taxing cuts, as no one likes cuts, and we should tax things we don't like.
electoral reform
Gore: We need electoral reform now! We should be able to dance with our happy buddhist monk friends, as their money showers down upon us!
Bush: Electoral reform is key, I think in particular we need to make those damn black people inelegible to vote. They never voted for my dad.
Nader: Look at these two clowns. Enough said.
intellectual property
Gore: I like my stuff.
Bush: Who let intellectuals own property! Nerds are queer!
Nader: This sound bite is copyright (c) 2000 Nader Productions, Inc.
encryption
Gore: I invented it.
Bush: See! He's queer! Nerd! NERD!
Nader: +++Q,SJD8AJS@#$1JSDFA+++
political protests
Gore: I remember the protests back in the 60's for nam, man, the weed was so thick... er, wait.
Bush: There should be limits to freedom. In particular, we need to shoot those damn people.
Nader: I am a political protest, damnit!
asteroids
Gore: aAAAHAHAHAHAH! Where! flee!
Bush: I remember that game. I could never figure out how to stop my ship.
Nader: Bush is a nerd! Queer!
the future
Gore: I'm gonna write a book about that.
Bush: I'm gonna outlaw the queer's book.
Nader: One of these two is gonna win a Darwin Award. It's in the cards, I tell ya.
Who told you to spy on your neighbour not to mention sell him out to the cops? What did this guy ever do to you?
Well if you must know, I found out because one day he asked me to help back up some mp3's for him using my burner, and he shared his hard drive using microsoft file sharing. I mounted it with RHUMBA. He was assuming I wouldn't look in every directory. Enough said.
And just how did you know he was running an ftp server with kiddie porn? Downloaded it yourself, didn't you? Hypocrits.
Well it's hard to tell someone's doing something illegal without seeing it. Of course, when you see a directory with about 11,000 jpg's in it and they all have names like 01123hgf-11-23-89.jpg you really don't know what you're in for till you open them. All I can say is it was a truly horrible 60 seconds.
Why did I call the cops? Because he spent a lot of time on AOL and on the phone trying to get kids to meet him in our dorm room. And that was something I couldn't let happen.
I know you're trying to provoke me to respond, so there are the facts, and I stand by my actions.
Kiss your computers goodbye
My roommate and I called the cops my junior year in college, when we found a guy in our suite running an ftp server with kiddie porn.
When the FBI comes to take your computer, you don't get it back. They didn't just take this kid's machine, they took my machine too - since our ethernet ran through the same hub, they were able to extend the search warrant. I got my computer back 2 years later. It's still sitting in my basement, running bsd, like it was before they took it.
Remember, you live in a free society until you don't. Due process for you is going to mean that they will duly detain your computers and schoolwork till it is useless to you.
Shame on you for being so smart.
New way to generate mad hits:
1) Pretend you've scammed google
2) Get it published in the trade press
3) Wait for the slashdot effect to show up
Boom! 100,000 hits in 10 minutes, and all you need is one faked up naked natalie portman picture - customers for life!
I'm pretty sure there's a scam going on, but google's not the sucker...
While they're at it, maybe they can patent faulty division. I remember that innovation of theirs back from the Pentium.
Then if anyone does that to us again, Intel can sue them for us...
Q: Does it play pong?
A: No.
Q: Does it contain within in a CSS compliant player, helping to fund the revocation of consumer rights?
A: Yes.
Q: THEN WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU BUYING IT?
A: It's a little faster than the dreamcast, even though the games aren't as good.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGGGHHHH.
Burn the playstation 2!!!!
The EULA for most hardware CAD design software (titles like PowerPCB & Orcad) reads (in summary) like this:
-You can't use this software in any manner designed for figuring out how fast it is.
-You can't benchmark this software. You can't publish benchmarks of this software. You can't sell it to someone who will publish benchmarks. You don't own the software, but if it's stolen, and someone makes benchmarks with your copy, you're liable.
-By agreeing to this license, you agree that
-We may inspect your premises with a software agent team at any time, 24/7/365. If you are not there to assist us with entering your premises, we may let ourselves in.
-We may recall your license electronically at any time, for any reason.
... i could go on but my fingers hurt.
Software that sells for 100k a copy doesn't mess around with wimpy licenses like the one at issue.
The real problem is the UCITA.
Sadly, I don't give a fuck what New Line Cinema thinks i can link to.
b /
4 09389c0a6e/dnd__480.mov
Here's the crappy trailer
Here's a direct link to the file, broken up. I couldn't past it in entirely because apparently slashdot thinks long strings are lame. Which is lame. Ironic, huh?
http://a784.g.akamai.net/5/784/51/4cba529b0c96f
1a1a1aaa2198c627970773d80669d84574a8d80d 3cb12453c02589f25382f668c9329e0375e81785ea61cd36a
If this post is removed, slashdot censors.
Having a conscience doesn't mean you can't see Time Warner movies. It just makes life more expensive.
Every time you see an $8 TW movie, send $16 to the EFF. That's $24 a movie, so it will make you evaluate what you see more critically.
It's not like we don't have enough expendable income in this country. Today, at my local best buy in rockville, they called in the riot police because the people who lined up at 5 am for Playstation2's were trying to beat up the people who lined up at midnight and fell asleep.
Try going to the local line of rabid PS2 shoppers and tell them that the PS2 is selling their fair use rights out the window. I bet you they'll all ask you if they could sign away their "fair use" thingies for a lower number in line.
One word sums up ALL my fears about this concept.
POP!
Actually I guess it would be more like BOOM. With gasoline, in an accident, you need many things for a catastrophe: 1) massively rupture the fuel tank 2) provide activation energy (a spark) 3) provide a pressurized chamber to fill with gas, creating an explosion
With an air powered car, the entire catastrophe scenario is summed up in a single event: crack the fuel tank, even a little. KAPOW! all the energy that car is carrying goes off in a single burst.
Now imagine a packed, 7 lane freeway of bumper to bumper traffic made up of air powered cars (like we have here in DC). Now imagine a semi rolls over onto one, causing it to explode. The explosion tears through the neighboring cars, causing them to explode. Causing the neighboring ones to explode. Causing the neighboring ones to explode. Causing...
well, you get the idea.
Ever seen that experiment where they put a million ping pong balls on a million mousetraps, and then throw another ping pong ball in the room?
fun stuff.
Well, little troll boy, this works just as well on your regular American ATM card.
ATM cards have withdrawal limits. Whereas full credentials can access an entire bank account. It's a difference between 300 dollars and hundreds of thousands. That's why, in my original post, I was very clear about stating "entire bank account".
I learned how smartcards work a few years ago, when I was writing the VCAT driver for one of those early Towitoko Chipdrive suckers. They're neat. I just wish people wouldn't trust them so much.
Beacause you CAN attack them, and you can reprogram them too. Not generically, but on a platform-specific level. Check out the API if an employer is ever kind enough to buy it for you.
P.S. why call me names?
They ARE actually using smartcards to access both public and private services in Finland.
The electronic identification card is safe to use because it is based on high-security, microchip technology. (Just like Tickle-Me and Country Elmo!) As with other smart cards, every cardholder has a Personal Identification Number (PIN). In the event that the card is lost or that unauthorized access to the PIN codes is gained, there is a round-the-clock revocation service that revokes the card immediately.
The electronic identification card must be handled and protected just like other similar cards or documents, such as credit cards, driving licences, or passports. PINs should never be kept in the same place as the electronic ID card. The card and the related PIN may only be used by the holder to whom the card is issued.
If the card is lost or obtained by a third party, or if the PIN comes to the attention of such party, this must immediately be reported to the certificate revocation list on 0800-162 622. For hearing-impaired people, a text telephone service is available on 0100-2288. The cardholder's responsibility for the card ceases when the card is reported as lost or stolen and the card is entered in the certificate revocation list.
How to fuck a Finnish smartcard holder in 3 easy steps:
1) Kidnap them and beat the pincode out of them.
2) Use their credentials to transfer the contents of their bank account to somewhere in Switzerland. Bank of Bermuda is also good for this.
3) Let them go.
They then report the card stolen, but it's too late, everything that happened is their responsibility.
I don't even have to go into the nightmare of employers and governments both having executeable access to the chip on your smartcard... tracking viruses for fired employees, using the shared credentials to track web sites used by employees in their personal time.... making "citizenship" and smartcard ownership the same, requiring citizenship/smartcard to buy food, denying citizenship/smartcard to political dissidents...
dear god. got to go take some soma.
Certainly true - but not actually important. The main usages of computer software would be in patient record keeping, drug prescription advice (and interactions/side effects) and "expert system" style software,
For the purposes you describe, I agree, Linux makes a wonderful fit. I still assert, however, that my original comment has a place in this discussion, given all the posts about people's pacemakers crashing and life support systems going into microsoft blue-screen mode. My point was that neither microsoft nor linux should ever find their way into true safety-critical applications like the ones i just mentioned.
I agree that for non-realtime stuff such as the applications you mentioned, linux probably makes a much better fit than microsoft, especially since it is so much easier to network.
Apparently, Enea has implemented "The Halting Problem"
Heh, ok, your sarcasm is appreciated.
But you either didn't understand Turing, or you didn't understand me.
No, they haven't solved the halting problem. It's REALLY EASY to write a program that crashes under OSE. I do it all the time. All they're saying is that it can't corrupt system memory. The halting problem does not forbid true protected memory. OSE is just really good at sensing a crashed application, ending it, and restarting it. So if your pacemaker crashes, it can restart the "pace" process very, very quickly.
A handy thing.
That aside, it's an interesting statement to say that your OS can never crash. The interesting thing about it, as you point out, is that you can't prove it on paper.
It would be more accurate to say that OSE has never crashed. Ever. The Halting Problem only means that you can't prove that something will never crash. It does not, however, exclude the possibility that such code exists.
Here's a little bit of reality, try not to chew it too hard.
Linux isn't a real-time operating system. It makes a great real-time controller, but it just doesn't have the granularity to do real time.
As far as embedded medical software goes, there's only one name. And it's not vxworks, the microsoft of real-time embedded, either. That's the stuff that crashed the mars explorer.
ALL medical embedded stuff runs OSE by Enea systems. It comes in three kernel sizes, and it has the best error handling and inter-process communication constructs ever built, from a reliability standpoint. There are OSE systems out there with 10 years of uptime. In addition, OSE can make the interesting claim that it is impossible to crash the OS. This type of reliability is found in a field called "safety-critical systems", and ENEA nearly owns the market. Take a look at the data sheets on their web site.
Here's a great quote: "it is impossible for user processes to corrupt the OSE kernel."
And they're not kidding.
Open Source is a truly wonderful model, but keep in mind that a closed group of true experts can also make great software.
mass-marketed pop musicians bring in cash to the labels - which in turn means more support for the less popular, higher quality artists. "Every single artist that you do like is supported by another you might not like," said Lowery.
So the record labels support artists? At a loss? Sounds like communism...
David Lowery, leader of Cracker, voiced the strongest criticism of the file sharing service: "It's just bulls---t hippie capitalism," he said. "It's just not right."
"Hippie Capitalism"? Sounds like communism...
So which is it? Is Lowery pro-communist, or anti-communist? Or is he just a smoked-out idiot?
Hey, Hey, Hey it's like being stupid...
as I understand it, you don't have rights to the source unless a binary has been distributed to you.
Good point. If however, I was a kiosk owner, and I purchased a console, then I would be recieving the binaries (and the device) and I could then ask for the source, and distribute it freely myself.
Volunteers?
They run a Linux- derivative operating system.
This statement implies that they have modified the OS. Any direct modifications to linux would fall under the GPL. I searched their site and couldn't find the source.
I just sent them a polite email asking for the source code. I'll keep you posted, but feel free to join me in politely asking where all their GPL'd code is dropped.
Sure would be fun to play with.
At every IETF meeting I've been to, including the most recent one in Pittsburgh, the IPv6 discussion went like this:
Q: Is microsoft going to support it in a release OS?
A: No, but microsoft research has a stack in development
Q: Does Cisco support it?
A: We're working on it.
Then half the room walks out the door, and all that's left is the Kame project talking about how they can tunnel their ipv6 site through ipv4 to see the dancing turtle.
IPv6 is dead till it ships in a microsoft stack. When it does, IPv6 will be real instantly.
And you can quote me on that.
While our democracy may have failed a bit, the candidates do, through extensive focus group testing, try to represent the people. Bush wouldn't say a word without his advisors telling him which demographic we're talking to.
So let's get it straight who Bush was talking to. Bush was talking to the Million Mom March. Bush was talking to the same Mom's who needed Microsoft's Digital Diva to explain to them how to send their email messages from their "cyberspace address" out over the "information superhighway".
He was talking to all the people who watched a high school full of children being led out by SWAT teams, the people who read newspapers and read about those two kid's obsession with the internet.
He was representing the great swath of Americans who just don't get it
My point is, don't blame Bush. Bush, as a C student, is uniuqely qualified to represent the vast and growing idiot demographic in America.
Blame the idiots. Think globally, but mock them locally.
-just a thought.