This wouldn't test the system - the whole point, and unfortunately this was buried near the bottom of the article, is that the grid could repartition the map to ensure that no one node got swamped. The grid also has to move date between the nodes so that the game state was consistent between nodes - something that a chess analysis problem wouldn't need to do.
It might well be the case that this is a solution waiting for a problem.
Actually, thermal noise is random - as random as rayleigh instability in a lava lamp, or noise in a saturated CCD. In fact, in the case of the CCD, you are basically seeing thermal noise.
And such a circuit is truely random - it's not algorithmic. You would generate a random number by counting the ms between pulses generated in the circuit (or something along those lines).
The only thing you would have to be careful about is ambient temperature - unless you took that into consideration, the higher the temp, the more noise generated which would skew the numbers generated.
To paraphase Hitchhicker Guide to the Galaxy, "all we need is a nice hot cup of tea."
High geek-factor aside, this seems way to complex for the simple task of generating random numbers.
Why not have a simple electronic circuit (it's been years since I've done any circuit design) that's balanced so that thermal noise produce ticks. Stick a USB interface on it and there you have it. A device you could carry in your pocket.
I think this is a terrible idea. I think a better idea would be to change the mouse driver so that when you click and hold the middle (scroll wheel) button and move the mouse, it moves the window content.
Making copying easy and having someone actually copy are two separate issues. In fact the RIAA have already gone after the P2P companies and lost. I think it was unfortunate that the students running the search engines settled, rather than fighting in court as I reckon they had a good chance of winning.
My point is that allowing people to see what you have legally is different from downloading illegally.
The RIAA's "saving grace" with these court actions is probably due the fact that these people never owned the CDs in the first place, and everything that they have available was downloaded by them in the first place.
Personally, and I mentioned this in another post, I would have liked to see the RIAA set up a scheme where people who have downloaded music can buy a licence for it - I know that I would be willing to pay for any music that I downloaded, I've looked into buymusic.com and other ofderings, but they generally are to narrow on what is available or wrap up the music in crappy formats with DRM all over the place.
True, some people would abuse an honor system like this, but I think that most people are honest enough that it would work, and they can always go after the people sharing music they don't have licences for.
But what if someone takes your bought CD - then it's theft.
What I'm saying is that just having MP3s of songs doen't mean that you violated any copyright. I have plenty of MP3s, all ripped from CDs I bought so that I can listen to my music how I want. If someone happened to download a copy, then they are actually stealing from me.
What really gets on my goat is the fact you can walk down just about any street here in NYC and buy CDs and DVDs that are obviously illegal, right in front of the cops. Why not shut these people down first?
How about sending a letter that says, "Hey, you have a lot of music you don't have a licence for - go to this web site (http://riaa.com) and pay a buck per song and we won't sue you."
They would (A) have a revenue source, (B) not look like complete bar-stewards.
Apple have already proved that people are willing to pay for downloadable music.
The problem here is not the google page rankings - all the short-comings occur with other methods used by other search engines. A search for "Apple" (as mentioned in the artical) generates just as bad a list on MSN as it does on Google (if you are looking for tips on preventing apple-rot).
The real problem is two fold:
Search engines index text, words on the page with no reference to context.
User searches are too broad, searching for "Apple" will get you the company, while "Growing Apples" will give you a better chance of finding what you need.
I think the solution for this has already been solved by libraries to a certain extent. Generally, the "search engine" in a library will point you to a shelf, not a specific page in a book. You go to the shelf, and the look at a local seach engine to find the page (book index).
IMHO, site like google should index other specialized search engines, maybe even forwarding on your search to them. Google+ would also have to recognise synonyms and get clarification from the user.
I guess another way would be to move google+ away from being a word index, towards being a expert system that leads the user through a series of questions so that a better understanding is gained of the topic being sort after. Basically, the ES would craft the search term for the user so that more relevant pages are returned.
First, presumably they have a patent for this business model, so they can have a revenue source from sony, MS, sega, etc.
Second, for the game producers, this is a great idea. They develop on a PC, then release the game on the phantom, they only need to release on a PC ONLY IF the phantom version doesn't turn a profit for them.
Imagine an MP3 player that worked the same way - the RIAA would love it! Secure digital distribution (yes I know there is always the DAD recording method).
Yes, but squashing this work means that anyone who want's the data has to do the research which (a) takes time, (b) could be flagged by TIA.
Not that I'm advocating classifying this guys work - far from it - I believe that it should be used to find the problem points and fix them.
The point is that government is about taking away all our rights to protect us from ourselves and others, but this isn't happening here. What is happening is protecting business from bad press. As the article pointed out - a company with a single point of failure doesn't look like a good company, it doesn't matter if that failure point never gets attacked, would you trust that company?
I guess what the report is actually saying is that coders generally generate the same number of defects when they write code.
Let's face it - who writes code without at least one error in it, either syntacical or logical.
The question isn't about how well we write code, but how well we debug - how many times through the code-cycle we put the app.
I would say that open source is better in this respect as we don't have the business mentality to release code early to make money (after all M$, etc. is in the business of making money, not writing code). I think the prior report about the TCP/IP stack proves this point.
Reading this review reminded me strongly of Cory Doctorow's book "Down and out in the Magic Kingdom".
It also reminds me of a film where travel is accomplished by transfering the mind between bodies (I don't recall the name of it though).
It still sounds an interesting book, and will probably go on my "to get" list.
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This wouldn't test the system - the whole point, and unfortunately this was buried near the bottom of the article, is that the grid could repartition the map to ensure that no one node got swamped. The grid also has to move date between the nodes so that the game state was consistent between nodes - something that a chess analysis problem wouldn't need to do.
It might well be the case that this is a solution waiting for a problem.
Actually, thermal noise is random - as random as rayleigh instability in a lava lamp, or noise in a saturated CCD. In fact, in the case of the CCD, you are basically seeing thermal noise.
And such a circuit is truely random - it's not algorithmic. You would generate a random number by counting the ms between pulses generated in the circuit (or something along those lines).
The only thing you would have to be careful about is ambient temperature - unless you took that into consideration, the higher the temp, the more noise generated which would skew the numbers generated.
To paraphase Hitchhicker Guide to the Galaxy, "all we need is a nice hot cup of tea."
High geek-factor aside, this seems way to complex for the simple task of generating random numbers.
Why not have a simple electronic circuit (it's been years since I've done any circuit design) that's balanced so that thermal noise produce ticks. Stick a USB interface on it and there you have it. A device you could carry in your pocket.
I think this is a terrible idea. I think a better idea would be to change the mouse driver so that when you click and hold the middle (scroll wheel) button and move the mouse, it moves the window content.
Making copying easy and having someone actually copy are two separate issues. In fact the RIAA have already gone after the P2P companies and lost. I think it was unfortunate that the students running the search engines settled, rather than fighting in court as I reckon they had a good chance of winning.
My point is that allowing people to see what you have legally is different from downloading illegally.
The RIAA's "saving grace" with these court actions is probably due the fact that these people never owned the CDs in the first place, and everything that they have available was downloaded by them in the first place.
Personally, and I mentioned this in another post, I would have liked to see the RIAA set up a scheme where people who have downloaded music can buy a licence for it - I know that I would be willing to pay for any music that I downloaded, I've looked into buymusic.com and other ofderings, but they generally are to narrow on what is available or wrap up the music in crappy formats with DRM all over the place.
True, some people would abuse an honor system like this, but I think that most people are honest enough that it would work, and they can always go after the people sharing music they don't have licences for.
True.
But what if someone takes your bought CD - then it's theft.
What I'm saying is that just having MP3s of songs doen't mean that you violated any copyright. I have plenty of MP3s, all ripped from CDs I bought so that I can listen to my music how I want. If someone happened to download a copy, then they are actually stealing from me.
What really gets on my goat is the fact you can walk down just about any street here in NYC and buy CDs and DVDs that are obviously illegal, right in front of the cops. Why not shut these people down first?
How about sending a letter that says, "Hey, you have a lot of music you don't have a licence for - go to this web site (http://riaa.com) and pay a buck per song and we won't sue you."
They would (A) have a revenue source, (B) not look like complete bar-stewards.
Apple have already proved that people are willing to pay for downloadable music.
I'm no lawyer, but just having the files available for download, IMHO, doesn't equate to copyright violation. Here's my reasoning...
So the RIAA have to prove that you downloaded illegally all the music that you show in kaaza, just having a list available is not enough.
Of course, I'm probably missing a crutial point somewhere...
Addendum. If this is true (that you have to download the files to break CR, what if you allowed people to upload files to you?
Need I say more?
The problem here is not the google page rankings - all the short-comings occur with other methods used by other search engines. A search for "Apple" (as mentioned in the artical) generates just as bad a list on MSN as it does on Google (if you are looking for tips on preventing apple-rot).
The real problem is two fold:
I think the solution for this has already been solved by libraries to a certain extent. Generally, the "search engine" in a library will point you to a shelf, not a specific page in a book. You go to the shelf, and the look at a local seach engine to find the page (book index).
IMHO, site like google should index other specialized search engines, maybe even forwarding on your search to them. Google+ would also have to recognise synonyms and get clarification from the user.
I guess another way would be to move google+ away from being a word index, towards being a expert system that leads the user through a series of questions so that a better understanding is gained of the topic being sort after. Basically, the ES would craft the search term for the user so that more relevant pages are returned.
I would have to disagree in two regards.
First, presumably they have a patent for this business model, so they can have a revenue source from sony, MS, sega, etc.
Second, for the game producers, this is a great idea. They develop on a PC, then release the game on the phantom, they only need to release on a PC ONLY IF the phantom version doesn't turn a profit for them.
Imagine an MP3 player that worked the same way - the RIAA would love it! Secure digital distribution (yes I know there is always the DAD recording method).
Yes, but squashing this work means that anyone who want's the data has to do the research which (a) takes time, (b) could be flagged by TIA.
Not that I'm advocating classifying this guys work - far from it - I believe that it should be used to find the problem points and fix them.
The point is that government is about taking away all our rights to protect us from ourselves and others, but this isn't happening here. What is happening is protecting business from bad press. As the article pointed out - a company with a single point of failure doesn't look like a good company, it doesn't matter if that failure point never gets attacked, would you trust that company?
I guess what the report is actually saying is that coders generally generate the same number of defects when they write code.
Let's face it - who writes code without at least one error in it, either syntacical or logical.
The question isn't about how well we write code, but how well we debug - how many times through the code-cycle we put the app.
I would say that open source is better in this respect as we don't have the business mentality to release code early to make money (after all M$, etc. is in the business of making money, not writing code). I think the prior report about the TCP/IP stack proves this point.
Reading this review reminded me strongly of Cory Doctorow's book "Down and out in the Magic Kingdom". It also reminds me of a film where travel is accomplished by transfering the mind between bodies (I don't recall the name of it though). It still sounds an interesting book, and will probably go on my "to get" list.