What's sort of interesting here is not that Congress is concerned about piracy. In some sense, they of course should be. What gets me, though, is that save for a few large copyright holders like Disney and their kin, creative IP (to differentiate from technological or scientific IP, as in patents) represents a very, very small fraction of the revenue from companies which innovate with software, hardware, and other technology.
When, as it often is (think Verizon v. the RIAA or DRM being forced on TiVos, MP3 players, and so forth), technology companies are at odds with media companies, it is pure fallacy to proclaim that it is the media companies' concerns that best represent American innovation (especially when this "innovation" is merely another teeny-bopper or an animated mouse from the last century).
Congress, I have long admitted, follows the money. But the money, in this case, is not with the IP companies but with the technology companies. Does Intel want to build chips with integrated DRM? Of course not; such a move is not inherently profitable. Does Verizon want to be responsible for its subscribers' piracy, or Panasonic for the exact digital copies made with their MP3 players?
Congress is behaving here as irrationally as the RIAA themselves (an organization so clealy ignorant and terrified of technology that they couldn't profit from it as the Apple iMusic store is now doing). IP controls go both ways; an incentive for innovation, when overly broad, stifles anything new. Intellectual property controls are certainly necessary, to some degree, but, as framed in the Constitution, to promote innovation in the arts and sciences, never to stop it.
Oh, lingenfr, when will you learn? Unlike MS, who simply cannot afford such services (they barely have enough money for advertising as is), Opera, being one of the world's largest (and most sinister) software companies, spends billions to get the media in their collective pockets. This includes, of course, the editorial board of Slashdot.
The days of journalistic integrity are gone. How does the NYTimes manage to maintain their position at the top of the newspaper food chain? Well, they make up stories, but thats an exception (well, they and Fox). How does Slashdot afford all those fancy newfangled features, like "graphics" and "icons"? Simple. By allowing their opinions to be bought by Opera.
Actually, I honestly feel that cellphones (often called "cellphones") aren't really pushing the technological limits much at all; but rather, your perception of this stems from the growth in features and accessories being marketed.
Most of these features--crappy low-res cameras, SMS, e-mail, and simple PDA features--are not technological advances. What they represent is a sort of experimentation; phones are unlikely to get any smaller and still be usable, instead, designers are trying to determine what features are most wanted next to being able to make phone calls.
That said, the processor power in cellphones has remained fairly limited, while that in PDAs like the iPaq or the Zaurus is now greater than many of my still-useful desktops. PDAs are now running nearly-full-fledged operating systems like Windows Pocket PC or Linux. PDAs, just as phones, have to find their niche; designers must figure out what features make a PDA more desirable than just keeping notes and appointments, something which addmittedly has been somewhat supplanted by the phone.
The future is of course the merger of the two, not one beating the other in functionality, as you describe. Many PDAs can be used as phones, and many phones can be used as PDAs. To even make a distinction, or to claim that one category is advancing faster than another, is just silly. You consider a Treo a phone; many consider it a PDA. There will probably come a point, fairly quickly, where the only distinction is not whether it can make a call or not, but how big the screen is and how many added features it has.
Actually, arkanes, they stopped distributing Linux at about the time they made the announcement that they thought it contained SCO UNIX code. Correct me if I'm wrong.
" No one _forced_ SCO to release code without checking it, and the fact that they did reflects badly on their professionalism as a software company and even worse on their due diligence that they are meant to exercise in protecting their shareholders. If their code was eaten by the GPL then that was their fault."
I seriously doubt that. Had SCO released their code due to some sort of internal mixup, it would be their fault. But the chronology, according to SCO, is that IBM released SCO source code, in violation of the terms on which IBM was given the code, which led to that proprietary code being integrated into Linux as a whole. Only later did SCO release the code, and SCO was not the one to release it as GPL.
Since SCO didn't label it as GPL, SCO's code was never licensed as GPL by the owner, hence, it was never legally GPL'ed. Whether or not SCO released their code, unintentionally, while leaving it as GPL is really irrelevent, since it was, according to SCO, never actually GPL'ed to begin with, and their actions merely resulted from IBM's violation of their IP.
No one could ever, succesfully, argue in court that SCO "inadvertently" licensed their code as GPL. You cannot do such a thing inadvertently; if SCO did not know that their code was contained in Linux, the responsibility lies with IBM's alleged violation of SCO's IP, not with SCO itself. This is a very neat, cute scenario, but I can't imagine it would have any weight in court.
"Clyde predicts that groups of well-funded hackers working in concert will be able to launch Class I 'Flash attacks.' "
I'm not sure I see how this necessarily follows. Certainly it is possible, and part of security is taking into account what can be done, but I don't know how you would assume it at all likely. If I had to name the biggest security threat right now (in my humble opinion, that is) I'd be far less concerned about groups of well-funded hackers (funded by who? Terrorists? Saddam? Commie subversives?) than I would about DDoS attacks launched by some bored teen-ager (something a little more television should cure, at any rate).
DDoS attacks are very difficult to stop so long as plenty of unsecured home computers are available on broadband connections. All the host-based security in the world by the victim is virtually useless if he hasn't the bandwidth to resist the attack.
Meanwhile, where are these groups of well-funded attackers, and what motivation have they? DDoS attacks are individual events; they do not propogate themselves across the internet the way SQL Slammer did. Each is of course its own sort of risk, and the effects of worms such as Slammer are similar, creating DoS attacks by attempting to propogate so fast. But I just don't see what connection more and more aggresive worms have to do with groups of organized, well funded hackers acting for international terrorists or the like (a concern repeatedly brough up by the US Cybersecurity Czar). This sounds, in some respects, like Clyde is reiterating the same refrain, a refrain which calls for harsher crackdowns and beefing up target security when we should be holding companies with insecure code (such as MSSQL) responsible and encouraging software companies and users to beef up security not only on servers but on PCs, as well.
In regards to how much real-world damage a cyberattack can create, this is a matter of much dispute, and it seems highly unlikely that terrorist organizations will resort to such moves rather than traditional, far more terrifying and effective acts of random violence. Still, I am pleased that some interest is being taken into cybersecurity; I just hope the focus is in the right place.
Re:Why I like gentoo..
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Gentoo Reviewed
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Hmm, I wasn't aware that RPMs worked with Gentoo. While they still aren't as good as DEBs, there's more of them (assuming Gentoo can use RPMs for all distros equally well).
In response to my "phenomenally stupid argument," well, this really isn't how we like to carry on civil discourse, you know? I can take criticism just fine, but some people might consider something like that an insult, and, hell, might even be annoyed or offended by it. Just a thought.
I don't see anything stupid about the argument, though. People who like to claim they have faster computers or are really elite because they compile themselves often don't know what they're talking about. As I stated before, sure, you will find some optimizations for your kernel or other large, CPU-intensive applications. I make sure to compile my kernel from scratch whenever I install a new system. But doing this for most applications just doesn't make sense. Take my example with gaim. What payoff is there, at even 5%? Could you run gaim, or Mozilla, or any number of simple command line applications like Pine or mutt any faster if you compiled them from source? Is that really the issue? I don't think so.
And while no single one of these applications should take an extraordinary time compiling from source, the added time adds up; the Gentoo installation is, from all accounts, far lengthier than it should be, is, in fact, far lengthier than even the most fertile stallion should be having sex, as you suggest.
This post shows that some people have arguments based on logic and what's best for their needs, and some are just fans for the sake of being fans. As I said, use whatever you like, but just because your distro makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside doesn't mean it does that for everyone. I'd never get as angry as you clearly did if someone insulted my distro of choice. Debian works for me, but may not be right for everyone. I use it on my workstation for the reasons I specified above, but I use other OSes where need be. Hell, I even suggest RedHat to people new to Linux; the installation is just that much better. I'm perfectly willing to admit Debian isn't best for everyone, and even that Gentoo has its advantages. There's a clear line between academic discussion and mindless zealotry. Make sure you don't cross it.
Re:Why I like gentoo..
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Gentoo Reviewed
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· Score: 2, Insightful
"I'm one of those people who insists on compiling everything myself and not using packages. I do this because I like to have some control over what options are used when compiling and that everything is optimized to run on my machine."
Aside from the fact that many big packages (kernel, X11, etc) are available in CPU-optimized versions (i.e. i686, etc), I'm sure the time you spend modifying compile-time optimization flags is quickly regained by the milliseconds faster in which your computer runs.
"Unfortunately, there's no consistent way to cleanly remove things that I compile."
If I'm not mistaken, the SRPM or deb-src style packages both do this. Personally, I save my time and use precompiled binaries.
"I'm a big fan of the ports collection in BSD because it solves both of those problems."
Me, too.
"...I have yet to find a way to use some packages from stable, some from testing, and some from unstable..."
Try adding specific modifications to your/etc/apt/sources.list file, or simply download the.debs and use dpkg to install.
As you can probably tell, I'm a bit Debian-biased, but here are my main concerns with Gentoo:
Compiling from source: Nice, if you want it, but a pain if you don't. While some distros (FreeBSD, Debian, and RedHat, for example) give you the option, Gentoo has no alternatives. And while it may not take a lot of time to compile the gaim source, I just don't care that much about having a few CPU-optimzations in there when I'm chatting online.
Installation: Hell, the Debian installation is nothing pretty, but I haven't heard much good about Gentoo's, either. At least Debian has various derivatives, like Knoppix or Librenix, which can ease the pain.
Speed of updates: This is the biggest issue, by far, with a package-based update system--how fast security updates make it into the package tree. Debian has some issues with this still, compared to the commercial distros like RH, but my perception while reading bugtraq is that Debian tends to beat Gentoo. Gentoo just doesn't have the community and developer base Debian does.
Of course, to each his own, and as long as you are happy, stick with it. I've heard good things about Gentoo and may have to give it a try sometime soon, but until I see some feature I just can't live without, I'll stick with Debian.
I'm more than a little curious how many people are wrongfully accused and seriously injured by whistleblowers vs. how many children are saved. No offense, but the argument that explicit media leads to further abuse or turns people into sex-crazed perverts is SO McCarthy-era.
I would, of course, never defend kiddie-porn, but only because of the children harmed in the actual filming, not because it has some perverting effect on viewers. When Ashcroft wanted to charge those who possesed porn that was "simulated" kiddie porn, the Supreme Court (rightfully, in my opinion) struck it down. There are no thought crimes, and no laws prohibiting things which are explicit simply because they may (according to you; I would dispute the claim) have some sort of perverting effect on people. Extend that, and you end up with bans on explicit (non-kiddie) porn, explicit movies and television, and Mark Twain and J.D. Salinger.
In comparison, quite a number of wrongful imprisonments spring to mind, especially when you comment on "terrorists in your apartment building." A Middle Eastern student (Jordanian, I believe) at NYU was arrested shortly after September 11 and held for a few months without a lawyer and only intermittent contact with his family because a hotel security guard claimed he had found a pilot's radio tranceiver in his room. It had, in fact, been found in the room beneath his, and he was completely exonerated of possessing a radio tranceiver (something that is not a crime, at least, not if you aren't Middle Eastern).
Suspicion and accusations are not what we need to protect our safety, but they do aid in removing our liberties. Are we trying to merely defend our physical safety, or our society which embraces people without suspicions based solely on their accents on the sound of their last names? Some may be heroic whistleblowers, but others are just scared, suspicious fools.
Re:using air currents to regain altitude
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Mars Flier Prototype
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· Score: 4, Informative
Aside from the obvious comment that NASA surely knows what they are doing (more of a conversation stopper than anything), I think you miss a few points.
First, in reference to your comments on structural and weight limitations, the actual force born by the wings is far less, since there is far less gravity. In addition, while the thinner air is certainly a hindrance to how much lift can be acheived with the same area, it also means that the stresses that must be absorbed from turbulence and the like are probably a lot less.
In reference to unfolding wings, these have, I recall, been tested on Earth, so if they work in our dense air and stronger gravity, they should be fine on Mars. If I knew a link I'd post it; you can probably find more with google.
Finally, you talk a lot about control system algorithms. However, there are a number of reasons that Unmanned Autonomous Vehicles are simpler when flying than when driving. There are a couple of relevent articles in this month's Popular Science, as well as a very good one in the New York Times magazine from a few weeks ago that I just finished reading. If you think about it, the amount of leeway available in the air is far greater than that on the ground; whereas a car driver must maintain precision navigation within a few feet on a road and avoid obstacles and the like, a pilot can, during cruise, simply trim out the plane's elevators, maintain a proper heading, and get by without even an autopilot. If he drifts off by a few hundred feet altitude or a few degrees heading, it doesn't really matter. This is why we already have numerous UAV's in the air in the military (such as the well-known Predator drone) and why Boeing 777s and the new Airbus 330 (isn't that it?) both can supposedly fly without even needing a pilot, in an emergency.
In comparison, DARPA is working with a few contractors to develop UAV ground vehicles, but is really nowhere near production stage.
My knowledge about gliders specifically is limited, my personal experience being limited to powered planes, but I would imagine that with a fair level of accuracy, finding thermals and gaining altitude should not be all that difficult, since most of the control software already exists in some form or another.
Obviously we've all heard in general the debate on manned vs. unmanned expeditions. I may as well point out the obvious, that the money put into a project like this is pretty much a drop in the bucket compared to the amount needed for a manned mission.
More pertinant to this particular mission, though, and intersting in regard to the general debate, is the point that in this instance, we are looking at an unmanned mission with capabilities in fact different, not just lesser, than those of a manned mission. Certainly there is much valuable information to be gained from a manned mission that a glider will not provide, but by the same token, this mission will provide greater mobility and a larger sampling of the planet than any traditional manned (or unmanned) missions can.
While we all want to see manned missions, at the same time we must realize that pragmatically, unmanned missions often have not only more for the money, but more in and of themselves to contribute.
I'm involved in an organization which takes corporate-donated computers (and funds), refurbishes them, and installs them in educational centers, schools, Head Start centers, and the like in various cities in the US, as well as on various trips abroad (this summer to Ghana, previously to Ghana, India, Thailand, and Equador). I've often debated that which you mention, whether it is better for me to be doing this or something more important. After all, how can I feel I am doing the right thing when I see a homeless man outside the school I am putting a computer in?
My feeling is that I don't have skills worth much for some problems. I'm not a doctor or a civil engineer. I can't treat sickness or starvation, and if I were to try, my labor would be little more than manual labor that anyone can do. To be utterly cold and calculating about it, I'd be doing work worth, say, 5 bucks an hour. But when I do this, with what skills I have, I'm donating time worth well more than that, and donating, hopefully, something many times more valuable.
Many people say that when we bridge the "digital divide" and allow uneducated, agrarian people to take part in the 21st century economy, we are helping to solve their food and medical problems in the long run by solving their poverty. Certainly there is some truth to this; as the old adage goes, when you teach a man to fish, you feed him for his life. This isn't my motivation, though. My motivation is just to do what I can. There are many kinds of service, but I think giving people the opportunity to help people in the ways they know how is best. I know many people who were extremely enthusiastic participants when they found out they could serve the community in a way they were suited to, rather than simply handing out meals at a soup kitchen or pushing around boxes at a food bank.
See, you raise an interesting point which is really farther-reaching than just the spam question. The idea that there is a "spirit of the Internet," like the slogan "Information Wants To Be Free," has been around pretty much since universities first signed on to the Internet, and is at once responsible for many attitudes regarding appropriate behavior and regulation of the 'Net while being little more than a myth.
This idea is discussed in Larry Lessig'sCode and Other Laws of Cyberspace (which was actually reviewed here on slashdot, according to the cover). Subscribors to this myth often say that the architecture of the Internet doesn't permit control, that the ability to anonymously browse the Web, to trade files and information without oversight or responsibility to the authorities, guarantees that the Internet will always be free.
"This is the fallacy of 'is-ism'" writes Lessig, "to confuse how something is with how it must be." Lessig claims that encroaching commerce, as much as legislation, can and does change the architechture of the 'Net to permit control (and in some of his other works points to this as the means of strong intellectual property controls, privacy invasion, and the like).
Lessig seems to see this as largely a bad thing (certainly the Passport vulnerability teaches us the risk of such designs), but clearly the flip side is that if digital certificates became the norm and senders had to take more responsibility for their emails, we would combat spam more effectively. This is not the only benefit; digital certificates would help deal with fraud on auctions like EBay and permit greater security across the 'Net.
I personally agree that the 'Net should be less regulated and should be a free exchange of ideas; if a nation with especially strict rules attempts to limit its part of the Internet, all of us are affected. But clearly the 'Net can be regulated, and there may even be situations where it should be so.
On another note, from the standpoint of Constitutional law, it is fairly innacurate to compare commercial speech like spam to political, individual, or artistic speech, which all earn strong First Amendmant protection and for which strict scrutiny must be met to limit those freedoms. Limitations to commercial speech, in contrast, must only meet intermediate scrutiny (a reasonable governmental interest rather than a compelling one), as evidenced by FTC regulations on advertisements and the like, regulations which would not stand against political activism and the like.
Would the co-author Rael Dornfest be the same Rael of the Raelians? You'd be amazed what an experience like being abducted by aliens and having your way with their beautiful female robots will do for your OSX skills.
"So I guess the fact that web browsers (just to name one example) have done this for years doesn't count as prior art."
No, it doesn't. Glad to see you're catching on. See, what Amazon patented was a predictive autocomplete based not on what you had searched for before (as most web browsers do) or what you had typed before (as OpenOffice.org does) or what code starts with that pattern (as IDE's with code-completion do) but rather what the most popular search starting with that pattern currently is among all of Amazon's customers.
While this is clearly yet another patent for a rather obvious business practice, it is not something I have seen in use before and is certainly more innovative than One-Click.
No. Google suggests an alternate based on very close search which produces a large or larger number of hits. It does not, as far as I know (and none of us can be sure since their algorithm is secret), suggest based on popularity of the search. If it suggested a similar-spelled search from, say, the Lycos 50, then yes, it would be comparable.
"Can anyone even speculate how lyrics sites hurt the industry?"
I would have to guess their motivation is concern about certain works they own the title to falling into public domain. This would be similar to the reasons that companies like Xerox, Velcro, and (more than anyone else) Disney have such ravenous IP enforcement protocols; for fear of their intellectual property becoming public domain.
For example, Disney sued a small day care facility a few years ago that had painted a bunch of children's story characters, including some owned by Disney, on its walls. Obviously, Disney didn't think that this day care facility itself was hurting Disney's profits, but feared that if it allowed such copyright dilution to continue, it would lose its most valuable holdings.
Presumably the RIAA is concerned that someone will argue that lyrics sites constitute clear dilution into the public domain, and that the songwriters no longer own and can restrict performance of the song. So there is a method to their madness.
That said, they clearly do not realize the benefits they get from these sites as well, and I would be very surprised if anyone even attempted to argue that, just because some pop-song is published on the Web, that song is now public domain.
I think the real world applications of this sort of technology are pretty extensive. Off-the-shelf long-range WiFi (with the addition of a Pringles can or whatever) is applicable for solving the so-called "Last Mile Problem" as well as for cheaply extending the infrastructure in third world countries.
I was recently involved in a fairly casual discussion of how to create a WAN link between computer labs at two different campuses of a university in Ghana. The main campus, in the capital city of Akra (sp?) has a limited satellite connection to the Internet costing something around a few thousand a month, supposedly. None of the other three campuses have or can afford a similar connection. This isn't a big enough gateway to share WWW access, but a WAN could allow Intranet and Internet-based email, as well as Intranet sites, file sharing, and perhaps even VoIP to augment the poor phone systems.
So the big problem was how to set up this connection. The telco system apparently isn't too good; only around 400 new lines are added per year, so getting ahold of a large number of leased lines would be virtual impossible. Obviously, setting up an independent wired backbone is financially out of the question. So we started toying with the idea of a WiFi link, which seemed like the only possibility.
The only problem is that if we are trying to set up a 200km link (between the main campus and one in the north; I don't recall the name of the city) we would need repeaters in some remote areas without consistent power, not to mention having to plot good line-of-site and build fairly secure base stations. What we realised was that we could attempt to piggyback the existing private cell-phone infrastructure. There is a cell system spanning the north and south, which means a stable backbone, on which we can either rent data bandwidth (probably expensive) or, better yet, on who's repeater stations (probably microwave antennas) we could rent physical space.
Our informal conclusion was that the University should consider renting space on repeater stations for their own WiFi hubs and create a WAN using long-distance line-of-site connections with off-the-shelf, inexpensive WiFi components. Projects like this pave the way to practical, inexpensive applications of WiFi technology.
I think the really important issue hardly even mentioned in the Post article is what punitive measures, if any, would be used to actually fight spam. When spammers are so difficult to track, will a bounty system like that proposed by others be used? Will those who's products are being advertised be held accountable? What about ISPs? Clearly, spammers cannot just be tracked down so easily when they break this law, but sometimes those associated with them can be.
As for the "prior relationship" exception, presumably legitimate marketers, like e-tailers mailing their customers, could simply have a click-through agreement making the spam solicited.
Actually, I doubt it is as easy as that. The Scientologists, admittedly a bunch of kooks (they'll probably sue me for saying that), have been struggling for some time to get recognition as a religion, complete with tax-free property ownership and such. As far as I know, it's been fairly difficult.
OK, I did admit to oversimplification and you did catch me on it. Ignoring the generational nature of the console market does leave out a lot of important complexity explaining in part the success of the PS2. However, do not discard the importance of its backwards compatability, and, by extension, the success of the original PlayStation, an unexpected dark-horse if there ever were. And if you consider the PS2's early start (to the detriment of the state of their technology, I would say) such an advantage, then this begs the question of why the Dreamcast did not do well. It had a start that made it the technological leader for a fair amount of time (you blame marketing for this; I didn't follow the release close enough to comment).
I don't see any debate over the XBox vs. the PS2 when it comes to hardware. The XBox has a faster CPU, faster graphics processing, more RAM, I believe, and added features the PS2 doesn't even have, most visibly but not limited to the hard disk. Granted, some of this is wasted on games written for easy portability between all three platforms, but games written specifically for the XBox show a clear superiority. Not to start what is probably a common debate among hardcore gamers.
And no, I am not discounting, criticizing, or undervaluing Nintendo's intellectual property or market share among the younger crowd. My only comment would be to avoid both too-tight a focus on that one market (although I suppose young Nintendo fans eventually grow into older Nintendo fans, if Nintendo only makes more mature games available) and to avoid overdependence on classics like Mario. Disney, for example, has relied so much on their IP (and their team of ravenous enforcing lawyers) that most of their recent movies have been unmitigated disasters, while Pixar has managed to break ground in virtually all of their recent movies produced in coopoeration with Disney, and has been responsible for most, if not all, of Disney's current successes.
OK, but, I think useful features is a totally different issue than many of the specific complaints you had in the essay. Now, I agree that, for example, there may be issues with packaging the Java VM, but they are fairly minor issues. When it comes to useful features, the most important step is not specifically what features are available--in my mind that is a later task once the language has been adequetly developed--but rather how those features are added.
For example, Java comes with so many professionally-written, extremely useable and well-documented built-in class libraries. This is really one of the greatest points in Java's favor; you yourself commented quite accurately on the value of CPAN for Perl, and I see Java class libraries as much the same thing. Is it important that Java has a class for SSL negotiation, or that it can have one so easily?
I admit that this sort of language structure is probably beyond the scope of what you were discussing; designing a complete language from scratch is certainly beyond my own experience. But I think true usability and features both derive more from that sort of abstract structure issue than from mundane complaints about syntax. Even the most alien sytax will look natural with enough use; natural spoken languages, cobbled together over centuries or millenia, are apt demonstrators of that. But the true defining features of a programming language or a real language is not the punctuation but the abstract structure.
For example (using real languages), Japanese has only two tenses, past and present/future, and very little specificity of the subject in a normal sentence, while Latin has 6 tenses and a very clear specificity on the subject of every verb. Programming languages can run much the same spectrum, in a sense (though all are necessarily much more specific than any spoken language); programming languages range from strict variable typing to laisse-faire. Programming languages can be functional or imperative. These sorts of issues, not punctuation, are the important features to consider. Nonetheless, it was an informative and well-thought-out essay; I appreciate someone making this discussion accesible and making it in layman's terms.
Slashdot Mirror
When, as it often is (think Verizon v. the RIAA or DRM being forced on TiVos, MP3 players, and so forth), technology companies are at odds with media companies, it is pure fallacy to proclaim that it is the media companies' concerns that best represent American innovation (especially when this "innovation" is merely another teeny-bopper or an animated mouse from the last century).
Congress, I have long admitted, follows the money. But the money, in this case, is not with the IP companies but with the technology companies. Does Intel want to build chips with integrated DRM? Of course not; such a move is not inherently profitable. Does Verizon want to be responsible for its subscribers' piracy, or Panasonic for the exact digital copies made with their MP3 players?
Congress is behaving here as irrationally as the RIAA themselves (an organization so clealy ignorant and terrified of technology that they couldn't profit from it as the Apple iMusic store is now doing). IP controls go both ways; an incentive for innovation, when overly broad, stifles anything new. Intellectual property controls are certainly necessary, to some degree, but, as framed in the Constitution, to promote innovation in the arts and sciences, never to stop it.
The days of journalistic integrity are gone. How does the NYTimes manage to maintain their position at the top of the newspaper food chain? Well, they make up stories, but thats an exception (well, they and Fox). How does Slashdot afford all those fancy newfangled features, like "graphics" and "icons"? Simple. By allowing their opinions to be bought by Opera.
Most of these features--crappy low-res cameras, SMS, e-mail, and simple PDA features--are not technological advances. What they represent is a sort of experimentation; phones are unlikely to get any smaller and still be usable, instead, designers are trying to determine what features are most wanted next to being able to make phone calls.
That said, the processor power in cellphones has remained fairly limited, while that in PDAs like the iPaq or the Zaurus is now greater than many of my still-useful desktops. PDAs are now running nearly-full-fledged operating systems like Windows Pocket PC or Linux. PDAs, just as phones, have to find their niche; designers must figure out what features make a PDA more desirable than just keeping notes and appointments, something which addmittedly has been somewhat supplanted by the phone.
The future is of course the merger of the two, not one beating the other in functionality, as you describe. Many PDAs can be used as phones, and many phones can be used as PDAs. To even make a distinction, or to claim that one category is advancing faster than another, is just silly. You consider a Treo a phone; many consider it a PDA. There will probably come a point, fairly quickly, where the only distinction is not whether it can make a call or not, but how big the screen is and how many added features it has.
You are to 2003 as Richard Nixon was to 1972.
Actually, arkanes, they stopped distributing Linux at about the time they made the announcement that they thought it contained SCO UNIX code. Correct me if I'm wrong.
I seriously doubt that. Had SCO released their code due to some sort of internal mixup, it would be their fault. But the chronology, according to SCO, is that IBM released SCO source code, in violation of the terms on which IBM was given the code, which led to that proprietary code being integrated into Linux as a whole. Only later did SCO release the code, and SCO was not the one to release it as GPL.
Since SCO didn't label it as GPL, SCO's code was never licensed as GPL by the owner, hence, it was never legally GPL'ed. Whether or not SCO released their code, unintentionally, while leaving it as GPL is really irrelevent, since it was, according to SCO, never actually GPL'ed to begin with, and their actions merely resulted from IBM's violation of their IP.
No one could ever, succesfully, argue in court that SCO "inadvertently" licensed their code as GPL. You cannot do such a thing inadvertently; if SCO did not know that their code was contained in Linux, the responsibility lies with IBM's alleged violation of SCO's IP, not with SCO itself. This is a very neat, cute scenario, but I can't imagine it would have any weight in court.
I'm not sure I see how this necessarily follows. Certainly it is possible, and part of security is taking into account what can be done, but I don't know how you would assume it at all likely. If I had to name the biggest security threat right now (in my humble opinion, that is) I'd be far less concerned about groups of well-funded hackers (funded by who? Terrorists? Saddam? Commie subversives?) than I would about DDoS attacks launched by some bored teen-ager (something a little more television should cure, at any rate).
DDoS attacks are very difficult to stop so long as plenty of unsecured home computers are available on broadband connections. All the host-based security in the world by the victim is virtually useless if he hasn't the bandwidth to resist the attack.
Meanwhile, where are these groups of well-funded attackers, and what motivation have they? DDoS attacks are individual events; they do not propogate themselves across the internet the way SQL Slammer did. Each is of course its own sort of risk, and the effects of worms such as Slammer are similar, creating DoS attacks by attempting to propogate so fast. But I just don't see what connection more and more aggresive worms have to do with groups of organized, well funded hackers acting for international terrorists or the like (a concern repeatedly brough up by the US Cybersecurity Czar). This sounds, in some respects, like Clyde is reiterating the same refrain, a refrain which calls for harsher crackdowns and beefing up target security when we should be holding companies with insecure code (such as MSSQL) responsible and encouraging software companies and users to beef up security not only on servers but on PCs, as well.
In regards to how much real-world damage a cyberattack can create, this is a matter of much dispute, and it seems highly unlikely that terrorist organizations will resort to such moves rather than traditional, far more terrifying and effective acts of random violence. Still, I am pleased that some interest is being taken into cybersecurity; I just hope the focus is in the right place.
In response to my "phenomenally stupid argument," well, this really isn't how we like to carry on civil discourse, you know? I can take criticism just fine, but some people might consider something like that an insult, and, hell, might even be annoyed or offended by it. Just a thought.
I don't see anything stupid about the argument, though. People who like to claim they have faster computers or are really elite because they compile themselves often don't know what they're talking about. As I stated before, sure, you will find some optimizations for your kernel or other large, CPU-intensive applications. I make sure to compile my kernel from scratch whenever I install a new system. But doing this for most applications just doesn't make sense. Take my example with gaim. What payoff is there, at even 5%? Could you run gaim, or Mozilla, or any number of simple command line applications like Pine or mutt any faster if you compiled them from source? Is that really the issue? I don't think so.
And while no single one of these applications should take an extraordinary time compiling from source, the added time adds up; the Gentoo installation is, from all accounts, far lengthier than it should be, is, in fact, far lengthier than even the most fertile stallion should be having sex, as you suggest.
This post shows that some people have arguments based on logic and what's best for their needs, and some are just fans for the sake of being fans. As I said, use whatever you like, but just because your distro makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside doesn't mean it does that for everyone. I'd never get as angry as you clearly did if someone insulted my distro of choice. Debian works for me, but may not be right for everyone. I use it on my workstation for the reasons I specified above, but I use other OSes where need be. Hell, I even suggest RedHat to people new to Linux; the installation is just that much better. I'm perfectly willing to admit Debian isn't best for everyone, and even that Gentoo has its advantages. There's a clear line between academic discussion and mindless zealotry. Make sure you don't cross it.
Aside from the fact that many big packages (kernel, X11, etc) are available in CPU-optimized versions (i.e. i686, etc), I'm sure the time you spend modifying compile-time optimization flags is quickly regained by the milliseconds faster in which your computer runs.
"Unfortunately, there's no consistent way to cleanly remove things that I compile."
If I'm not mistaken, the SRPM or deb-src style packages both do this. Personally, I save my time and use precompiled binaries.
"I'm a big fan of the ports collection in BSD because it solves both of those problems."
Me, too.
"...I have yet to find a way to use some packages from stable, some from testing, and some from unstable..."
Try adding specific modifications to your /etc/apt/sources.list file, or simply download the .debs and use dpkg to install.
As you can probably tell, I'm a bit Debian-biased, but here are my main concerns with Gentoo:
Compiling from source: Nice, if you want it, but a pain if you don't. While some distros (FreeBSD, Debian, and RedHat, for example) give you the option, Gentoo has no alternatives. And while it may not take a lot of time to compile the gaim source, I just don't care that much about having a few CPU-optimzations in there when I'm chatting online.
Installation: Hell, the Debian installation is nothing pretty, but I haven't heard much good about Gentoo's, either. At least Debian has various derivatives, like Knoppix or Librenix, which can ease the pain.
Speed of updates: This is the biggest issue, by far, with a package-based update system--how fast security updates make it into the package tree. Debian has some issues with this still, compared to the commercial distros like RH, but my perception while reading bugtraq is that Debian tends to beat Gentoo. Gentoo just doesn't have the community and developer base Debian does.
Of course, to each his own, and as long as you are happy, stick with it. I've heard good things about Gentoo and may have to give it a try sometime soon, but until I see some feature I just can't live without, I'll stick with Debian.
I would, of course, never defend kiddie-porn, but only because of the children harmed in the actual filming, not because it has some perverting effect on viewers. When Ashcroft wanted to charge those who possesed porn that was "simulated" kiddie porn, the Supreme Court (rightfully, in my opinion) struck it down. There are no thought crimes, and no laws prohibiting things which are explicit simply because they may (according to you; I would dispute the claim) have some sort of perverting effect on people. Extend that, and you end up with bans on explicit (non-kiddie) porn, explicit movies and television, and Mark Twain and J.D. Salinger.
In comparison, quite a number of wrongful imprisonments spring to mind, especially when you comment on "terrorists in your apartment building." A Middle Eastern student (Jordanian, I believe) at NYU was arrested shortly after September 11 and held for a few months without a lawyer and only intermittent contact with his family because a hotel security guard claimed he had found a pilot's radio tranceiver in his room. It had, in fact, been found in the room beneath his, and he was completely exonerated of possessing a radio tranceiver (something that is not a crime, at least, not if you aren't Middle Eastern).
Suspicion and accusations are not what we need to protect our safety, but they do aid in removing our liberties. Are we trying to merely defend our physical safety, or our society which embraces people without suspicions based solely on their accents on the sound of their last names? Some may be heroic whistleblowers, but others are just scared, suspicious fools.
First, in reference to your comments on structural and weight limitations, the actual force born by the wings is far less, since there is far less gravity. In addition, while the thinner air is certainly a hindrance to how much lift can be acheived with the same area, it also means that the stresses that must be absorbed from turbulence and the like are probably a lot less.
In reference to unfolding wings, these have, I recall, been tested on Earth, so if they work in our dense air and stronger gravity, they should be fine on Mars. If I knew a link I'd post it; you can probably find more with google.
Finally, you talk a lot about control system algorithms. However, there are a number of reasons that Unmanned Autonomous Vehicles are simpler when flying than when driving. There are a couple of relevent articles in this month's Popular Science, as well as a very good one in the New York Times magazine from a few weeks ago that I just finished reading. If you think about it, the amount of leeway available in the air is far greater than that on the ground; whereas a car driver must maintain precision navigation within a few feet on a road and avoid obstacles and the like, a pilot can, during cruise, simply trim out the plane's elevators, maintain a proper heading, and get by without even an autopilot. If he drifts off by a few hundred feet altitude or a few degrees heading, it doesn't really matter. This is why we already have numerous UAV's in the air in the military (such as the well-known Predator drone) and why Boeing 777s and the new Airbus 330 (isn't that it?) both can supposedly fly without even needing a pilot, in an emergency.
In comparison, DARPA is working with a few contractors to develop UAV ground vehicles, but is really nowhere near production stage.
My knowledge about gliders specifically is limited, my personal experience being limited to powered planes, but I would imagine that with a fair level of accuracy, finding thermals and gaining altitude should not be all that difficult, since most of the control software already exists in some form or another.
More pertinant to this particular mission, though, and intersting in regard to the general debate, is the point that in this instance, we are looking at an unmanned mission with capabilities in fact different, not just lesser, than those of a manned mission. Certainly there is much valuable information to be gained from a manned mission that a glider will not provide, but by the same token, this mission will provide greater mobility and a larger sampling of the planet than any traditional manned (or unmanned) missions can.
While we all want to see manned missions, at the same time we must realize that pragmatically, unmanned missions often have not only more for the money, but more in and of themselves to contribute.
My feeling is that I don't have skills worth much for some problems. I'm not a doctor or a civil engineer. I can't treat sickness or starvation, and if I were to try, my labor would be little more than manual labor that anyone can do. To be utterly cold and calculating about it, I'd be doing work worth, say, 5 bucks an hour. But when I do this, with what skills I have, I'm donating time worth well more than that, and donating, hopefully, something many times more valuable.
Many people say that when we bridge the "digital divide" and allow uneducated, agrarian people to take part in the 21st century economy, we are helping to solve their food and medical problems in the long run by solving their poverty. Certainly there is some truth to this; as the old adage goes, when you teach a man to fish, you feed him for his life. This isn't my motivation, though. My motivation is just to do what I can. There are many kinds of service, but I think giving people the opportunity to help people in the ways they know how is best. I know many people who were extremely enthusiastic participants when they found out they could serve the community in a way they were suited to, rather than simply handing out meals at a soup kitchen or pushing around boxes at a food bank.
No, weaseling out of things is what seperates us from the animals. Well, except the weasel.
This idea is discussed in Larry Lessig's Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (which was actually reviewed here on slashdot, according to the cover). Subscribors to this myth often say that the architecture of the Internet doesn't permit control, that the ability to anonymously browse the Web, to trade files and information without oversight or responsibility to the authorities, guarantees that the Internet will always be free.
"This is the fallacy of 'is-ism'" writes Lessig, "to confuse how something is with how it must be." Lessig claims that encroaching commerce, as much as legislation, can and does change the architechture of the 'Net to permit control (and in some of his other works points to this as the means of strong intellectual property controls, privacy invasion, and the like).
Lessig seems to see this as largely a bad thing (certainly the Passport vulnerability teaches us the risk of such designs), but clearly the flip side is that if digital certificates became the norm and senders had to take more responsibility for their emails, we would combat spam more effectively. This is not the only benefit; digital certificates would help deal with fraud on auctions like EBay and permit greater security across the 'Net.
I personally agree that the 'Net should be less regulated and should be a free exchange of ideas; if a nation with especially strict rules attempts to limit its part of the Internet, all of us are affected. But clearly the 'Net can be regulated, and there may even be situations where it should be so.
On another note, from the standpoint of Constitutional law, it is fairly innacurate to compare commercial speech like spam to political, individual, or artistic speech, which all earn strong First Amendmant protection and for which strict scrutiny must be met to limit those freedoms. Limitations to commercial speech, in contrast, must only meet intermediate scrutiny (a reasonable governmental interest rather than a compelling one), as evidenced by FTC regulations on advertisements and the like, regulations which would not stand against political activism and the like.
Isn't a tithe compulsory? At least if you want to get into heaven?
Would the co-author Rael Dornfest be the same Rael of the Raelians? You'd be amazed what an experience like being abducted by aliens and having your way with their beautiful female robots will do for your OSX skills.
No, it doesn't. Glad to see you're catching on. See, what Amazon patented was a predictive autocomplete based not on what you had searched for before (as most web browsers do) or what you had typed before (as OpenOffice.org does) or what code starts with that pattern (as IDE's with code-completion do) but rather what the most popular search starting with that pattern currently is among all of Amazon's customers.
While this is clearly yet another patent for a rather obvious business practice, it is not something I have seen in use before and is certainly more innovative than One-Click.
No. Google suggests an alternate based on very close search which produces a large or larger number of hits. It does not, as far as I know (and none of us can be sure since their algorithm is secret), suggest based on popularity of the search. If it suggested a similar-spelled search from, say, the Lycos 50, then yes, it would be comparable.
I would have to guess their motivation is concern about certain works they own the title to falling into public domain. This would be similar to the reasons that companies like Xerox, Velcro, and (more than anyone else) Disney have such ravenous IP enforcement protocols; for fear of their intellectual property becoming public domain.
For example, Disney sued a small day care facility a few years ago that had painted a bunch of children's story characters, including some owned by Disney, on its walls. Obviously, Disney didn't think that this day care facility itself was hurting Disney's profits, but feared that if it allowed such copyright dilution to continue, it would lose its most valuable holdings.
Presumably the RIAA is concerned that someone will argue that lyrics sites constitute clear dilution into the public domain, and that the songwriters no longer own and can restrict performance of the song. So there is a method to their madness.
That said, they clearly do not realize the benefits they get from these sites as well, and I would be very surprised if anyone even attempted to argue that, just because some pop-song is published on the Web, that song is now public domain.
I was recently involved in a fairly casual discussion of how to create a WAN link between computer labs at two different campuses of a university in Ghana. The main campus, in the capital city of Akra (sp?) has a limited satellite connection to the Internet costing something around a few thousand a month, supposedly. None of the other three campuses have or can afford a similar connection. This isn't a big enough gateway to share WWW access, but a WAN could allow Intranet and Internet-based email, as well as Intranet sites, file sharing, and perhaps even VoIP to augment the poor phone systems.
So the big problem was how to set up this connection. The telco system apparently isn't too good; only around 400 new lines are added per year, so getting ahold of a large number of leased lines would be virtual impossible. Obviously, setting up an independent wired backbone is financially out of the question. So we started toying with the idea of a WiFi link, which seemed like the only possibility.
The only problem is that if we are trying to set up a 200km link (between the main campus and one in the north; I don't recall the name of the city) we would need repeaters in some remote areas without consistent power, not to mention having to plot good line-of-site and build fairly secure base stations. What we realised was that we could attempt to piggyback the existing private cell-phone infrastructure. There is a cell system spanning the north and south, which means a stable backbone, on which we can either rent data bandwidth (probably expensive) or, better yet, on who's repeater stations (probably microwave antennas) we could rent physical space.
Our informal conclusion was that the University should consider renting space on repeater stations for their own WiFi hubs and create a WAN using long-distance line-of-site connections with off-the-shelf, inexpensive WiFi components. Projects like this pave the way to practical, inexpensive applications of WiFi technology.
As for the "prior relationship" exception, presumably legitimate marketers, like e-tailers mailing their customers, could simply have a click-through agreement making the spam solicited.
Actually, I doubt it is as easy as that. The Scientologists, admittedly a bunch of kooks (they'll probably sue me for saying that), have been struggling for some time to get recognition as a religion, complete with tax-free property ownership and such. As far as I know, it's been fairly difficult.
I don't see any debate over the XBox vs. the PS2 when it comes to hardware. The XBox has a faster CPU, faster graphics processing, more RAM, I believe, and added features the PS2 doesn't even have, most visibly but not limited to the hard disk. Granted, some of this is wasted on games written for easy portability between all three platforms, but games written specifically for the XBox show a clear superiority. Not to start what is probably a common debate among hardcore gamers.
And no, I am not discounting, criticizing, or undervaluing Nintendo's intellectual property or market share among the younger crowd. My only comment would be to avoid both too-tight a focus on that one market (although I suppose young Nintendo fans eventually grow into older Nintendo fans, if Nintendo only makes more mature games available) and to avoid overdependence on classics like Mario. Disney, for example, has relied so much on their IP (and their team of ravenous enforcing lawyers) that most of their recent movies have been unmitigated disasters, while Pixar has managed to break ground in virtually all of their recent movies produced in coopoeration with Disney, and has been responsible for most, if not all, of Disney's current successes.
For example, Java comes with so many professionally-written, extremely useable and well-documented built-in class libraries. This is really one of the greatest points in Java's favor; you yourself commented quite accurately on the value of CPAN for Perl, and I see Java class libraries as much the same thing. Is it important that Java has a class for SSL negotiation, or that it can have one so easily?
I admit that this sort of language structure is probably beyond the scope of what you were discussing; designing a complete language from scratch is certainly beyond my own experience. But I think true usability and features both derive more from that sort of abstract structure issue than from mundane complaints about syntax. Even the most alien sytax will look natural with enough use; natural spoken languages, cobbled together over centuries or millenia, are apt demonstrators of that. But the true defining features of a programming language or a real language is not the punctuation but the abstract structure.
For example (using real languages), Japanese has only two tenses, past and present/future, and very little specificity of the subject in a normal sentence, while Latin has 6 tenses and a very clear specificity on the subject of every verb. Programming languages can run much the same spectrum, in a sense (though all are necessarily much more specific than any spoken language); programming languages range from strict variable typing to laisse-faire. Programming languages can be functional or imperative. These sorts of issues, not punctuation, are the important features to consider. Nonetheless, it was an informative and well-thought-out essay; I appreciate someone making this discussion accesible and making it in layman's terms.
OK, true. But its still not slashdotted. And how'd you know about the turles?