I started playing female characters years ago in DND. The group of friends I played with was (as almost all DND groups I could find were) predominately male. We ocassionally had a bona-fide female game with us, but it was rare. Anyway, a complete DND contingent really needed a female; there were always situations where one was needed.
In some games... one on one fighters (my favourite of which is still the Soul Blade/Soul Caliber setup), most people I know play all the characters and just pick the one they're best at. If the coders have done their job properly, that's as likely to be a female as anything else (male, green electrical mutant, whatever).
In games like Quake and Unreal, I just don't see it. Alright, someone suggested that female characters are quicker, more agile, or have a thinner profile, but is that really true? I'll buy a thinner profile, maybe, but quicker? More agile? Isn't all this stuff running through the same code? Hmmmm...
In the end, tho, it is fascinating. Virtual worlds; the internet, video games, RPGs or whatever, are among the easiest ways to see what it's like being someone completely different than who you are. That's why I played RPGs... to go to a mythical place where I could imagine magical beasts, mythical places, and being someone else.
A few months ago, www.dogpoo.com had pictures of three or four dogs, in increasing size, on their web page. For a moderate amount, (larger amount for a larger dog), they would sign, seal, and deliver a bag of dog feces to whomever you chose.
The scent tag on that page would have to be truly disgusting!
A lot of modern crypto relies on large numbers with big prime factors. Breaking encrpytion schemes such as PGP that rely on this can be boiled down to factoring these large numbers into their big prime factors. Currently, one of the fastest methods for finding factors of an arbitrary number is the ECM (Elliptical Curve Method, I believe) which, clearly, relies on elliptical curves.
I'm not aware of any crpyto schemes that use these curves as part of the encryption scheme, but I'm not that versed in those areas.
I agree that it would be interesting to see if modular forms can be used to aid ECM factoring methods, now that the two fields are so closely related. It'll take a while for people to hunker through the math to figure it out, however.:-)
Alright, I'm no expert on this stuff, but I'm going to take a stab at explaining why anyone would care about the STW conjecture.
First, let's start somewhere seemingly unrelated that may be easier to deal with: Physics; specifically, gravity. I'm working under the assumption that everyone knows what gravity is, so, good. There are other forces that do similar things in Physics, however. The most common are the "Strong" and "Weak" electromagnetic forces. The force that holds electrons close to an atom, and that bonds atoms to each other in molecules are examples of these forces.
Now in Physics, there is a holy grail of theory called the 'Grand Unification Theory'. This is big important stuff. In an amazing oversimplification, it suggests that there is a single formula that relates all of these forces together. We _expect_ this from intuition, we currently just don't have any idea how to prove it, although progress is being made all over the place.
Now, skip back to mathematics. Mathematics is split into tons of different areas. Statistics, Number Theory (the stuff normally used in cryptography), Calculus, and so on. Robert Langlands proposed that there is a Grand Unification Theory (GUT) of sorts for mathematics. This is commonly referred to as the Langlands Proposition (or Program, according to the BBC article).
Some years ago, Yukata Taniyama (The 'T' in STW) asserted a conjecture that did two things. First, if proved, it would bring elliptic curves and modular forms together in the spirit of the GUT, thus giving the Langlands program a big push. Secondly and, while not really more important, at least more interesting to the public, he showed that if his conjecture was proved, the most famous unproved theorem at the time would follow. I speak, of course, of Fermat's last theorem (FLT). This was the holy grail of math at the time.
A few years ago, Andrew Wiles proved enough of Taniyama's conjecture to prove FLT. This was what made STW mainstream; had this not happened, noone would care and the BBC story would probably be overlooked. But it did happen, made lots of papers, was flawed, fixed, flawed again, and currently is believed to be correct.
What recently happened, in the BBC story, is that the _rest_ of the STW conjecture was proved. Not just the part that Wiles used to show FLT, but all of it. In math this elevates STW from a conjecture to a theorem and makes mathematicians everywhere giddy with joy since the Langlands Program is slightly closer to being proved.
And of course, giddy mathematicians are the types who post stuff to Slashdot, which is why this article is here at all.
Well, not Hype persay; or hype for hype's sake... but the fact that TransMeta has so MUCH Hype for not marketing any itself, is rare... that's what gets me excited about it. They still have to prove themselves of course with an actual product (or do they? Economics students should respond here).
And the side effects of the silent publicity are cool too. Any time Linux can get in the media in a non-negative (if not positive) way, I'm probably going to support it. TransMeta has been doing that, so yay!
This is why Transmeta is absolutely cool. Notwithstanding people that can read German (and I'm sure you're plentiful), we've got a one paragraph article that babelfishes really poorly about some bizarrely unsubstantiated rumors and it's going to be a VERY popular slashdot thread, because, well, because it's Transmeta. (Circular logic... cool).
As for real content, I'm surprised by even the rumor that the supposed chip would be a notebook chip. Why a notebook? Linus has said recently that Linux is likely to develop towards embedded applications (it really does perform well there). How let down would we be if Transmeta's first chips were low powered, linux-powered embedded app chips? Really think TV/Network Computers or the like...
Also, if I read the babeled German correctly, they're going to announce the Concept on Jan. 19th. It still could be sometime before we see product (whatever it may be). This should come as no surprise, since TransMeta clearly hasn't employed hundreds of chip-builders lately (someone would have noticed that, I think).
I'm waiting to be awed by whatever they eventually produce, but for now, it's enough to be in awe of the amazing hype and free-publicity. Amazing, isn't it that doing the exact opposite of Microsoft (by spending NOTHING on advertising) is garnering TransMeta (and thus Linus, and thus Linux) a decent amount of press?
Don - When they realize that they've had to pay more for computers because MS has charged high prices for their OS, they may take the issue more personally. It's close to certain that someone, somewhere will file a class action suit.
One thing I noticed in the reading of the document was the Judge's REPEATED note that an increase in the cost of the OS, even a high percentage increase (ala Windows 2k???) wouldn't appreciably increase the cost of a computer. [Read it, Judge says this often in just the first dozen pages]. Wether true or not, it conflicts with Don's statement, so class action suits based solely on this document will run into problems there.
The commentary is good. It was fun to watch all the stuff going on at the courthouse, too. A lot of people took turns talking to the press... the press asked a few questions, but never of Microsoft people, which seemed funny to me.
We should hold a larger party when the final legal ramifications thing comes out in January or February. Anyone interested?
If you live close to DC, you may want to check this notice out.
I was hoping to get down there myself to see if anyone showed up to cheer or boo or just drink beers and cry. Anyone interested?
I just noticed the site changed. Yesterday it said that at 6:30, you could get handed out copies of the verdict at the John Marshall entrance of the District Courthouse... I assume the location hasn't changed... someone on the DC-LUG said this is around 3rd and Connecticut... I believe in the NorthWest quarter.
Apologies to those of you not close enough to DC to care about this info.
If I recall, Digital did this with OpenVMS a few years ago, too. In fact, that license may have been free. People with Alpha hardware may want to check that out as well; it's a good OS... probably the most user-friendly command-line based OS available.
(Not that *nix isn't user-friendly.;-)
This is a good move on Digital's part, although I hope it helps Tru64 better than it did VMS which is still just hanging on.
Didn't think I'd ever see something so patently false and just outright wrong on slashdot, but I guess I've been proven wrong. I think the Anti-Microsoft sentiment's gotten a bit overstrong.
The great thing about SlashDot, (which is also, IMHO it's largest weakness), is that the top level stories are almost unilaterally not written by SlashDotters. If the article in question is false, it's because news.com reported it falsely. The rest of the SlashDot discussion is opinion only, no matter how authoritative people want to sound.
FYI - no. You don't need a license to connect to an M$ webserver (yet).
Maybe. But according to the article (which is what this discussion is about), 'authentication' is the key word that people are latching on to. If you use a secure, username/password based web server on Win2K, the article implies you will have to have a client license for every authorized user connected at a given time. Let's say SlashDot was running Win2K with Windows authentication (Sorry, this is blasphemy, I realize, but it's for a good cause)... Now I almost always connect anonymously at first and only log in if I want to comment. If everyone acts the same as I do, then 30,000 people can probably connect with only a few hundred SIMULTANEOUS, AUTHENTICATED users at a given time.
So from what we know (true or false; just how it was reported), there is going to be a cost associated with certaint types of Internet authorized connections to Win2k.
Microsoft has always had issues with their pricing. They kept changing the difference between per seat and per server licensing in the past. I've been administering NT 4 systems for years and I still don't understand their existing pricing.
The key here is that the cost is per SIMULTANEOUS user, end of story (if I read the article correctly and believe it). Microsoft will change this due to pressure in the next six months, but that will only cause much less understanding and many more headaches.
Note also that the article says a different license is needed for each AUTHENTICATION, which, if you use any Web Server but Microsoft's, doesn't have to be integrated to Windows security... so Windows 2000 won't be doing authentication.
It's not the price for Windows that went up because of web users, it's the price of IIS with Windows authentication. It's easy to switch to Netscape's internal authentication, and Microsoft can't charge you for that... it's also easy to switch to a Linux-based web server which is what I'm going to go recommend right now.
Just remember everyone: Moore's law holds for software and hardware EVERYWHERE except Microsoft... 10 years, more expensive, and just as slow as Windows 3.1.
How about everyone pay the owner of the patent, and us a really short window, say 2 years (1903-2002). Then, when everything fails in two years, sue the owner for damages for selling a faulty Y2K solution?
If they're charging for use, they have to be responsible to some degree for the results.:-)
[OF course, this will NEVER stand up in court, so it better be resolved by 2002].
"When I can run Solaris on a cheap Pentium box, I'll let you know how this comparison works."
Well, you can, of course. Solaris x86 has been out a while and is Free for, well, most people. I'm not saying it's a spectacular comparison, and of course, Microsoft was using the Sparc version (I think), but your particular objection was a bit off course. You should try it... I think they took it off of download, so you have to pay the $7 fee for the CD, but it's alright.
OLAP stuff is tough to write from scratch; even if you've got a good underlying database that's designed for OLAP, writing code to navigate a 7 dimension or higher cube isn't pretty. What is it you need to do that a low to mid tier package like Cognos won't do?
Holos, which Seagate recently bought, is very open and strong. They have a structured programming language that gives you as much support as I imagine you could use for back AND front end work. Their web interface is developing, but it's in early stages yet... hopefully by next calendar year they'll have a new release out that will pretty that part up. If you need real strong scalability, Unix support (sorry, no Linux to my knowledge), and fairly open control, it may be worth looking into.
Unfortunately, people that need the sophistication of OLAP haven't been the people that write OpenSource software, so I don't know of any truly open solutions. If anyone wants to write one, tho, I'm willing to help!
PowerPlay isn't particularly "open", and has the limitations talked about above. Largely graphical user interface, little back end programming ability, and no adaptive interface to speak of. Their next generation software looks a lot better, but of course it isn't out yet. The current release has had, in my opinion, some problems scaling. Check my reply to the main topic for more.
Well, this was the same thing people were saying the FIRST time TransMeta came out with Patent requests. It's more obvious now that they're aiming at generic instruction set chips (GISC?) that can "emulate" other chips.
But what's changed? Well, for starters, there's a bit more talk about the instruction forecasting method they're going to use.
I also don't see any mention of the new self-configuring chip technology that's made news in the last year. People thought that would be the Intel Killer, since it could be programmed to be faster at whatever it's doing at the moment.
Anyway, if TransMeta goes as expected, it'd be great to see them outpace x86 chips with the same instructions, but if it's capable of that, imagine exploting its power with native code? The "meta" part is great as a transition, but imagine Linux compiled natively on a chip capable of such feats?
Or one could invent new virtual machines and meta-emulate the hardware on these chips for development? Just imagine, a true InterCal chip!
Well, the pages I've been using have just now started to be refused by HotMail. Looks like they had to take down the whole hotmail site to fix the problem; I wonder how long that will last! I can't connect to www.hotmail.com, or via the "crack", it seems.
Or are they just refusing traffic from my site?:-)
Slashdot Mirror
I started playing female characters years ago in DND. The group of friends I played with was (as almost all DND groups I could find were) predominately male. We ocassionally had a bona-fide female game with us, but it was rare. Anyway, a complete DND contingent really needed a female; there were always situations where one was needed.
In some games... one on one fighters (my favourite of which is still the Soul Blade/Soul Caliber setup), most people I know play all the characters and just pick the one they're best at. If the coders have done their job properly, that's as likely to be a female as anything else (male, green electrical mutant, whatever).
In games like Quake and Unreal, I just don't see it. Alright, someone suggested that female characters are quicker, more agile, or have a thinner profile, but is that really true? I'll buy a thinner profile, maybe, but quicker? More agile? Isn't all this stuff running through the same code? Hmmmm...
In the end, tho, it is fascinating. Virtual worlds; the internet, video games, RPGs or whatever, are among the easiest ways to see what it's like being someone completely different than who you are. That's why I played RPGs... to go to a mythical place where I could imagine magical beasts, mythical places, and being someone else.
Can't wait to see the second part of the article.
A few months ago, www.dogpoo.com had pictures of three or four dogs, in increasing size, on their web page. For a moderate amount, (larger amount for a larger dog), they would sign, seal, and deliver a bag of dog feces to whomever you chose.
The scent tag on that page would have to be truly disgusting!
A lot of modern crypto relies on large numbers with big prime factors. Breaking encrpytion schemes such as PGP that rely on this can be boiled down to factoring these large numbers into their big prime factors. Currently, one of the fastest methods for finding factors of an arbitrary number is the ECM (Elliptical Curve Method, I believe) which, clearly, relies on elliptical curves.
:-)
I'm not aware of any crpyto schemes that use these curves as part of the encryption scheme, but I'm not that versed in those areas.
I agree that it would be interesting to see if modular forms can be used to aid ECM factoring methods, now that the two fields are so closely related. It'll take a while for people to hunker through the math to figure it out, however.
Alright, I'm no expert on this stuff, but I'm going to take a stab at explaining why anyone would care about the STW conjecture.
First, let's start somewhere seemingly unrelated that may be easier to deal with: Physics; specifically, gravity. I'm working under the assumption that everyone knows what gravity is, so, good. There are other forces that do similar things in Physics, however. The most common are the "Strong" and "Weak" electromagnetic forces. The force that holds electrons close to an atom, and that bonds atoms to each other in molecules are examples of these forces.
Now in Physics, there is a holy grail of theory called the 'Grand Unification Theory'. This is big important stuff. In an amazing oversimplification, it suggests that there is a single formula that relates all of these forces together. We _expect_ this from intuition, we currently just don't have any idea how to prove it, although progress is being made all over the place.
Now, skip back to mathematics. Mathematics is split into tons of different areas. Statistics, Number Theory (the stuff normally used in cryptography), Calculus, and so on. Robert Langlands proposed that there is a Grand Unification Theory (GUT) of sorts for mathematics. This is commonly referred to as the Langlands Proposition (or Program, according to the BBC article).
Some years ago, Yukata Taniyama (The 'T' in STW) asserted a conjecture that did two things. First, if proved, it would bring elliptic curves and modular forms together in the spirit of the GUT, thus giving the Langlands program a big push. Secondly and, while not really more important, at least more interesting to the public, he showed that if his conjecture was proved, the most famous unproved theorem at the time would follow. I speak, of course, of Fermat's last theorem (FLT). This was the holy grail of math at the time.
A few years ago, Andrew Wiles proved enough of Taniyama's conjecture to prove FLT. This was what made STW mainstream; had this not happened, noone would care and the BBC story would probably be overlooked. But it did happen, made lots of papers, was flawed, fixed, flawed again, and currently is believed to be correct.
What recently happened, in the BBC story, is that the _rest_ of the STW conjecture was proved. Not just the part that Wiles used to show FLT, but all of it. In math this elevates STW from a conjecture to a theorem and makes mathematicians everywhere giddy with joy since the Langlands Program is slightly closer to being proved.
And of course, giddy mathematicians are the types who post stuff to Slashdot, which is why this article is here at all.
Was that any better?
Well, not Hype persay; or hype for hype's sake... but the fact that TransMeta has so MUCH Hype for not marketing any itself, is rare... that's what gets me excited about it. They still have to prove themselves of course with an actual product (or do they? Economics students should respond here).
And the side effects of the silent publicity are cool too. Any time Linux can get in the media in a non-negative (if not positive) way, I'm probably going to support it. TransMeta has been doing that, so yay!
This is why Transmeta is absolutely cool. Notwithstanding people that can read German (and I'm sure you're plentiful), we've got a one paragraph article that babelfishes really poorly about some bizarrely unsubstantiated rumors and it's going to be a VERY popular slashdot thread, because, well, because it's Transmeta. (Circular logic... cool).
As for real content, I'm surprised by even the rumor that the supposed chip would be a notebook chip. Why a notebook? Linus has said recently that Linux is likely to develop towards embedded applications (it really does perform well there). How let down would we be if Transmeta's first chips were low powered, linux-powered embedded app chips? Really think TV/Network Computers or the like...
Also, if I read the babeled German correctly, they're going to announce the Concept on Jan. 19th. It still could be sometime before we see product (whatever it may be). This should come as no surprise, since TransMeta clearly hasn't employed hundreds of chip-builders lately (someone would have noticed that, I think).
I'm waiting to be awed by whatever they eventually produce, but for now, it's enough to be in awe of the amazing hype and free-publicity. Amazing, isn't it that doing the exact opposite of Microsoft (by spending NOTHING on advertising) is garnering TransMeta (and thus Linus, and thus Linux) a decent amount of press?
Keep it up TransMeta!
One thing I noticed in the reading of the document was the Judge's REPEATED note that an increase in the cost of the OS, even a high percentage increase (ala Windows 2k???) wouldn't appreciably increase the cost of a computer. [Read it, Judge says this often in just the first dozen pages]. Wether true or not, it conflicts with Don's statement, so class action suits based solely on this document will run into problems there.
The commentary is good. It was fun to watch all the stuff going on at the courthouse, too. A lot of people took turns talking to the press... the press asked a few questions, but never of Microsoft people, which seemed funny to me.
We should hold a larger party when the final legal ramifications thing comes out in January or February. Anyone interested?
I was hoping to get down there myself to see if anyone showed up to cheer or boo or just drink beers and cry. Anyone interested?
I just noticed the site changed. Yesterday it said that at 6:30, you could get handed out copies of the verdict at the John Marshall entrance of the District Courthouse... I assume the location hasn't changed... someone on the DC-LUG said this is around 3rd and Connecticut... I believe in the NorthWest quarter.
Apologies to those of you not close enough to DC to care about this info.
If I recall, Digital did this with OpenVMS a few years ago, too. In fact, that license may have been free. People with Alpha hardware may want to check that out as well; it's a good OS... probably the most user-friendly command-line based OS available.
;-)
(Not that *nix isn't user-friendly.
This is a good move on Digital's part, although I hope it helps Tru64 better than it did VMS which is still just hanging on.
The great thing about SlashDot, (which is also, IMHO it's largest weakness), is that the top level stories are almost unilaterally not written by SlashDotters. If the article in question is false, it's because news.com reported it falsely. The rest of the SlashDot discussion is opinion only, no matter how authoritative people want to sound.
FYI - no. You don't need a license to connect to an M$ webserver (yet).
Maybe. But according to the article (which is what this discussion is about), 'authentication' is the key word that people are latching on to. If you use a secure, username/password based web server on Win2K, the article implies you will have to have a client license for every authorized user connected at a given time. Let's say SlashDot was running Win2K with Windows authentication (Sorry, this is blasphemy, I realize, but it's for a good cause)... Now I almost always connect anonymously at first and only log in if I want to comment. If everyone acts the same as I do, then 30,000 people can probably connect with only a few hundred SIMULTANEOUS, AUTHENTICATED users at a given time.
So from what we know (true or false; just how it was reported), there is going to be a cost associated with certaint types of Internet authorized connections to Win2k.
Lata,
---Chip
Microsoft has always had issues with their pricing. They kept changing the difference between per seat and per server licensing in the past. I've been administering NT 4 systems for years and I still don't understand their existing pricing.
The key here is that the cost is per SIMULTANEOUS user, end of story (if I read the article correctly and believe it). Microsoft will change this due to pressure in the next six months, but that will only cause much less understanding and many more headaches.
Note also that the article says a different license is needed for each AUTHENTICATION, which, if you use any Web Server but Microsoft's, doesn't have to be integrated to Windows security... so Windows 2000 won't be doing authentication.
It's not the price for Windows that went up because of web users, it's the price of IIS with Windows authentication. It's easy to switch to Netscape's internal authentication, and Microsoft can't charge you for that... it's also easy to switch to a Linux-based web server which is what I'm going to go recommend right now.
Just remember everyone: Moore's law holds for software and hardware EVERYWHERE except Microsoft... 10 years, more expensive, and just as slow as Windows 3.1.
How about everyone pay the owner of the patent, and us a really short window, say 2 years (1903-2002). Then, when everything fails in two years, sue the owner for damages for selling a faulty Y2K solution?
:-)
If they're charging for use, they have to be responsible to some degree for the results.
[OF course, this will NEVER stand up in court, so it better be resolved by 2002].
"When I can run Solaris on a cheap Pentium box, I'll let you know how this comparison works."
Well, you can, of course. Solaris x86 has been out a while and is Free for, well, most people. I'm not saying it's a spectacular comparison, and of course, Microsoft was using the Sparc version (I think), but your particular objection was a bit off course. You should try it... I think they took it off of download, so you have to pay the $7 fee for the CD, but it's alright.
OLAP stuff is tough to write from scratch; even if you've got a good underlying database that's designed for OLAP, writing code to navigate a 7 dimension or higher cube isn't pretty. What is it you need to do that a low to mid tier package like Cognos won't do?
Holos, which Seagate recently bought, is very open and strong. They have a structured programming language that gives you as much support as I imagine you could use for back AND front end work. Their web interface is developing, but it's in early stages yet... hopefully by next calendar year they'll have a new release out that will pretty that part up. If you need real strong scalability, Unix support (sorry, no Linux to my knowledge), and fairly open control, it may be worth looking into.
Unfortunately, people that need the sophistication of OLAP haven't been the people that write OpenSource software, so I don't know of any truly open solutions. If anyone wants to write one, tho, I'm willing to help!
PowerPlay isn't particularly "open", and has the limitations talked about above. Largely graphical user interface, little back end programming ability, and no adaptive interface to speak of. Their next generation software looks a lot better, but of course it isn't out yet. The current release has had, in my opinion, some problems scaling. Check my reply to the main topic for more.
Well, this was the same thing people were saying the FIRST time TransMeta came out with Patent requests. It's more obvious now that they're aiming at generic instruction set chips (GISC?) that can "emulate" other chips.
But what's changed? Well, for starters, there's a bit more talk about the instruction forecasting method they're going to use.
I also don't see any mention of the new self-configuring chip technology that's made news in the last year. People thought that would be the Intel Killer, since it could be programmed to be faster at whatever it's doing at the moment.
Anyway, if TransMeta goes as expected, it'd be great to see them outpace x86 chips with the same instructions, but if it's capable of that, imagine exploting its power with native code? The "meta" part is great as a transition, but imagine Linux compiled natively on a chip capable of such feats?
Or one could invent new virtual machines and meta-emulate the hardware on these chips for development? Just imagine, a true InterCal chip!
Well, the pages I've been using have just now started to be refused by HotMail. Looks like they had to take down the whole hotmail site to fix the problem; I wonder how long that will last! I can't connect to www.hotmail.com, or via the "crack", it seems.
:-)
Or are they just refusing traffic from my site?
---ZahrGnosis