Heh. Hmmmm. So, for safety and sanity reasons, something innocuous perhaps -- Nerf toys? Hmmm. Suction-based devices? Adhesive strips?
Or, autonomous bumper cars (i.e. "weapons" being solid construction, speed, armor), which would be a tad less dangerous than a seg fault with an articulated arm ending in a chainsaw...
I thought 'bout Laser Tag, but that wouldn't be nearly as much fun.
Hmmm. You're allowed to pin/hold another bot for up to 30 seconds, so if one could grab/impale (i.e. figure out how to drive a long metal spike or two -- hydraulic press? blasting cartridges? The cartridges themselves aren't being used as weapons...) through the other bot. Or, alternately, drilling instead of spiking...
A battery of 105mm field howitzers on motorized carriages, behind entrenched infantry and APCs? A wing of AH64's, backed by assorted MBTs?
The competition was basically restricted to *very* short-range, non-mass-destruction weapons, driven by remote control. They *needed* "drivers", so the sole gain would be the lack of a human pilot actually *in* the vehicle/device.
They do fund a lot of research into mostly- or fully- autonomous vehicles, 'tho, with full-size designs 'tho.
Check the contest rules: Section 11, "Weapon Types". So, no flamethrower "bots", lasers (of > 5mW), untethered projectiles (although -- the rules would seem to imply harpoons are allowed...).
Hmmmm. This would have been far, far spiffier if they were actually autonomous, rather than large, armed remote-control vehicles.
That'd be showing a 1:1 correspondence between the two operating systems. There are larger, more fundamental differences between the OSes than the function names...
I don't have all the particulars -- in particular, whether AOL ever gave any "invitation" to others. If not, then yes -- it should be a quick case, *hole or no hole* (which was my main point: they're tangential).
Heh. How's the power drain of a typical PII-based notebook or laptop compared w/ the test machine?
I really don't see that much of a need for 15h of time (esp. if spares can be manufactured at a not extreme cost), but if it means that a more powerful CPU can be run for a longer (and still meaningful) time, that's spiffy.
Isn't domination of NCs and anything else that can run software a fairly logical extension of domination of desktops? The latter was adequate before the advent of spiffy PDAs and powerful consoles and talk 'bout all these network appliances and all that, but now...
If memory serves, MS did have a motto of something like "A computer on every desktop, running Microsoft software" or so. Considering now that people are putting more computing functionality in devices that are not traditional desktop computers, why not update that? It's in line with, say, trying to wrest the PDA market from 3Com's Palm devices w/ CE, and so forth.
Both MS and Sun could naturally have the same goal: domination of anything that runs -- or could run -- software. That could be an interesting fight {shrug}.
Yes. I'd generally rather implement the destructors and deallocators, and be *sure* that I can deallocate memory in a timely manner without waiting for a GC, and also that if an app leaks, it's the fault of the code itself (something that can be examined) versus the JVM.
If you've ever seen a particular vendor's JVM die with a bus error, you'll recognize the twin irritations that a) some implementations bite, and you have to work around them in your allegedly platform-indy code, and b) you won't be able to examine the JVM code to figure out what's triggering the crash, but instead can do just black-box testing and workarounds.
The documentation is sometimes iffy -- neither "Java in a Nutshell" nor Sun's online tutorials seem to bother noting byte-ordering (which is an issue for any app[let] that communicates, either via sockets or files...), leaving it to the user to experiment and determine that it's big-endian.
Or, if you need unrestricted network access, but the browsers you target don't natively support javakey, then you either have to force a plugin or have further hacks 'round that.
Legendary? Aye, that's a tad strong. Not everything they do is obviously inspired by other work (such as that done by Xerox PARC, or others).
If memory serves, they do have a fairly insane number of patents (many of which for seemingly minor details, such as single-clicking behavior under various circumstances and what not).
They have the resources to try strange things like mice with wheels, or {shudder} "Bob"-like software, because even if something completely flops, their flagship products will still more than compensate...
Perhaps, regarding conspiracy, he meant the alleged plots that many enthusiasts seem to believe regarding the Groom Lake AFB. Apparently, many would rather interpret the rabid security regarding that installation as pointing towards possession and concealment of alien corpses rather than the development of "stealth" aircraft and so forth... and there are those that suspect the Gov't of massive conspiracies t'ween the CIA and the USAF. {shrug}
Disclaimer: I've worked for MS as an intern. Not in any group where I'd know about the workings of AOL software (!), 'tho...
Hmmm. If the buffer overflow actually exists, *and* Microsoft is sure of that, they'd better be able to prove it -- in other words, document and release code to both AOL and a forum such as BugTraq. A history of such alleged holes and copies of the relevant binaries and such forwarded to an independent group should work...
If they cannot substantiate the existence of such, then this would seem to be either a bizarre game of chicken, or it would seem that at the very least an apology is in order -- possibly more, for laying very specific and public charges on AOL's products.
In the meantime, that has little bearing on whether it's legal for AOL to block other services from using their messaging system, security hole or no.
Re:Killing is now the quickest way to get attentio
on
Quack!
·
· Score: 1
* "If it bleeds, it leads."
* Stories involving death can have a longer life. Reporters can focus the funerals, backgrounds, family histories, and whatnot of everyone involved. They can follow up by constantly pointing their cameras at the survivors. They can ask random people on the street for impressions. And so forth... it's probably a lot harder to be scouring for deep stories about, oh, the risks inherent with the current situation regarding Dagestan, or even the Mideast than it is to milk a human-interest/tragedy story 'bout some teens.
As for terrorism, it's easier to profile US teens, than, say, even an infamous figure like Abu Nidal, and it's probably far easier to milk as a story. How many people even remember what Hezbollah is, and what they did to the Marine Barracks in Beirut? Or, the Tupac Amaru guerillas and the whole matter of the Japanese Embassy in Peru?
Stories about shootings allow further longevity through perpetual tie-ins w/ the gun-ban/control issue, where both sides can hurl ridiculous statements at each other and posture for the camera. The fact that there is a Presidential election coming next year only intensifies this.
Death stories have lots of "empathy" value. It's a lot harder to milk a report that consumer prices have behaved in a certain way, or that former Energy Sec'y O'Leary weakened security measures, compared to those of fatal accidents (especially those involving celebs) and so forth.
Hmmmm. In my experience, a number of high school teachers *really* treated their jobs as more than just "work" -- they *wanted* to teach, and do it well. Whether it involved getting students to write coherent, analytical essays about history; helping students understand entropy and reaction energy in chemistry; or leading them through appreciation and understanding of literature, to the degree that one might hand students a copy of _Macbeth_ and they might actually at least partially comprehend it, it mattered to them. That's not to say that this held universally, but school for some of us was far from the useless dreariness that it's occasionally portrayed as.
On the other hand, television also does not have to be a pointless wasteland. Consider, say, satire. One can view the old BBC series, "Blackadder", as simply a humorous look at classic Britain; or, alternately, one can examine *why* they made fun of what they did. A teacher of mine showed the "Archbishop of Canterbury" episode, for instance, which jokingly addresses the traditional conflict between the spiritual and temporal powers... A classic movie like "Dr. Strangelove" may serve purely for entertainment, or as an examination of Cold War paranoia and the dangers of the MAD strategy. And so forth...
As for the summer, well -- considering that the audience here is most likely a tad "geekier" than the norm, it would not surprise me a bit if many a summer had been spent in fairly geeky ways. If you're interested in mathematics, or research in any of the sciences, or similar stuff, there's plenty out there.
Plus figuring out how to remove read-privs for the software itself, or guaranteeing that it can only be run on the server. In addition, you'll need to work out where and how (privileges, ownership) to store the data. Most apps probably aren't written this way, with the exception of those that use licensing servers.
1. Only if they buy it. I doubt that happens often, particularly in areas where one can buy software with even cloned manuals and boxes, for a mere fraction of the standard price (because only duplication costs and perhaps bribing the local officials are involved, not development or advertising). It's a fairly flimsy excuse.
2. You presumably aren't aware of the client-server model. Bzzzzzzzzzzt, next.
* The sheer *power* it gives the distributor. Businesses *need* to know that they can access their data; if licensing fees go up, or file format support is dropped, or any conditions change, then that security is gone. Ditto home users; imagine the fee for, oh, "Quicken" and related apps right before mid-April (Apr 15 is when US federal income tax filings are due, non-USers).
* It obviously ties in with UCITA. Renting implies a way to disable, perhaps by forcing some client-server model (code stays on proprietary service provider).
* Security. It'd better be darn safe, lest somebody figure out how to exploit any upgrading system.
Whereas you probably won't be finding, say, any need to keep around the latest drek on VHS, you *will* quite possibly need to keep around application software in the long-term.
Think data files. Think proprietary data file formats. Think about the existing investment in training, and how ugly it'd be to retrain employees to use a different package, or what happens if you communicate with somebody with an older version that can't read the current file format of the day.
There's a lot of required continuity. Even nominally compatible upgrades can break that, if behavioral quirks change or support is dropped (which happens...).
Which is more important: guaranteeing that you can obtain the latest "Zelda" release, or knowing that you won't be held hostage with unreadable data if the application subscription/rental rate climbs up, or if features you need get obsoleted (think: changing APIs, ala Java's deprecation, etc)? App software is VERY different.
Or, opt for slavery. Before y'all flame, a) I'm not saying that's a GOOD thing -- it's incredibly reprehensible for a society to avoid work by enslaving another, and not particularly practical besides, and b) there's precedent in a certain species of ant which has evolved to the point where it lives off the work of others. Seriously. It enslaves another type of ant to do its work...
For reference, the federal gov't was not authorized to collect an income tax until 1913. That's not exactly the days of wooden huts...
The reason largely is that the government before then had not been that involved in social services. It's got far more commitments now, and those are *expensive* -- especially when they are based on *old* life-expectancy estimates and so forth.
Nowadays, it's not unusual for a liberal to drive a Saab or Mercedes -- or have a chaffeur.
* Not all geeks seek wealth. For my part, given the choice between taking my degree directly into the workforce and becoming quite well off, versus opting for a grad degree -- I chose the latter, and I doubt I'm the only one here like that.
Why? Wealth won't make me happy. It might be a tad ironic in the view of some, but my capitalist bent does not really include rampant materialism.
* Wealth does not preclude liberalism; in fact, you'll probably find that the richest and the poorest both have more liberals than the middle-class. The poorest, obviously, have much to benefit, and the very, very rich sometimes don't see that they'll lose (because they'll *still* be well off).
Example: Most of the Hollywood actors, directors, and so forth are very well off. With *very* few exceptions, they also tend to be liberal; consider, say, Gere's expounding on foreign policy, or Streisand mouthing off on firearms, or so forth; the few exceptions that come to mind include Heston and Norris.
* California *is* quite liberal. Considering the number of nominally progressive acts they go for (medical marijuana, emissions controls, and so forth) they tend to be fairly leftist.
I've actually read a fair bit by both Marx and Engels, having a compilation of Socialist/Communist dogma, written by and edited by its believers. I don't believe in just studying that which I agree with...
Here is my brief understanding.
Marx assumed implosion. Specifically, that an already-industrialized society with capitalism run rampant would implode as the assets gradually shifted from the poorest to the wealthiest. The proletariat would eventually find themselves unable to buy anything that they produce, meaning that the bourgeousie would not be able to sell and the whole cycle would devolve into chaos. The proletariat would revolt en masse and overthrow the bourgeousie, forming a collective. Incidentally, this hasn't happened yet in any large nation that I'm aware of -- the Bolshevik Revolution was also partly political, and involved a fairly small portion of the people whose sole justification was not purely lack of wages due to alleged capitalist oppression.
This collective would in theory implement a worker's paradise. The concept was that everybody would somehow work as much as they could, but for essentially guaranteed or fixed compensation; that is, everybody would be provided for and theoretically nobody would be either left behind, or be disproportionately well off.
This has nothing to do with OSS. OSS exists in parallel with the development of proprietary software. The movement neither demands that all capable programmers / software designers put in what it decides to be their share, nor does it allocate benefits; instead, those who wish to can contribute, and those who wish to can benefit. It's not even a finite resource that is being shared, in that if I, say, obtain a copy of gcc, that doesn't mean that there is one less copy of gcc available for the next (as long as the bandwidth is not near saturation).
Slashdot Mirror
Heh. Hmmmm. So, for safety and sanity reasons, something innocuous perhaps -- Nerf toys? Hmmm. Suction-based devices? Adhesive strips?
Or, autonomous bumper cars (i.e. "weapons" being solid construction, speed, armor), which would be a tad less dangerous than a seg fault with an articulated arm ending in a chainsaw...
I thought 'bout Laser Tag, but that wouldn't be nearly as much fun.
Hmmm. You're allowed to pin/hold another bot for up to 30 seconds, so if one could grab/impale (i.e. figure out how to drive a long metal spike or two -- hydraulic press? blasting cartridges? The cartridges themselves aren't being used as weapons...) through the other bot. Or, alternately, drilling instead of spiking...
A battery of 105mm field howitzers on motorized carriages, behind entrenched infantry and APCs? A wing of AH64's, backed by assorted MBTs?
The competition was basically restricted to *very* short-range, non-mass-destruction weapons, driven by remote control. They *needed* "drivers", so the sole gain would be the lack of a human pilot actually *in* the vehicle/device.
They do fund a lot of research into mostly- or fully- autonomous vehicles, 'tho, with full-size designs 'tho.
Check the contest rules: Section 11, "Weapon Types". So, no flamethrower "bots", lasers (of > 5mW), untethered projectiles (although -- the rules would seem to imply harpoons are allowed...).
Hmmmm. This would have been far, far spiffier if they were actually autonomous, rather than large, armed remote-control vehicles.
!
That'd be showing a 1:1 correspondence between the two operating systems. There are larger, more fundamental differences between the OSes than the function names...
I don't have all the particulars -- in particular, whether AOL ever gave any "invitation" to others. If not, then yes -- it should be a quick case, *hole or no hole* (which was my main point: they're tangential).
Heh. How's the power drain of a typical PII-based notebook or laptop compared w/ the test machine?
I really don't see that much of a need for 15h of time (esp. if spares can be manufactured at a not extreme cost), but if it means that a more powerful CPU can be run for a longer (and still meaningful) time, that's spiffy.
Oh, so you've already designed a working prototype? Let us know when it's available.
Isn't domination of NCs and anything else that can run software a fairly logical extension of domination of desktops? The latter was adequate before the advent of spiffy PDAs and powerful consoles and talk 'bout all these network appliances and all that, but now...
If memory serves, MS did have a motto of something like "A computer on every desktop, running Microsoft software" or so. Considering now that people are putting more computing functionality in devices that are not traditional desktop computers, why not update that? It's in line with, say, trying to wrest the PDA market from 3Com's Palm devices w/ CE, and so forth.
Both MS and Sun could naturally have the same goal: domination of anything that runs -- or could run -- software. That could be an interesting fight {shrug}.
Yes. I'd generally rather implement the destructors and deallocators, and be *sure* that I can deallocate memory in a timely manner without waiting for a GC, and also that if an app leaks, it's the fault of the code itself (something that can be examined) versus the JVM.
If you've ever seen a particular vendor's JVM die with a bus error, you'll recognize the twin irritations that a) some implementations bite, and you have to work around them in your allegedly platform-indy code, and b) you won't be able to examine the JVM code to figure out what's triggering the crash, but instead can do just black-box testing and workarounds.
The documentation is sometimes iffy -- neither "Java in a Nutshell" nor Sun's online tutorials seem to bother noting byte-ordering (which is an issue for any app[let] that communicates, either via sockets or files...), leaving it to the user to experiment and determine that it's big-endian.
Or, if you need unrestricted network access, but the browsers you target don't natively support javakey, then you either have to force a plugin or have further hacks 'round that.
Errrrrrrrrrrg.
Legendary? Aye, that's a tad strong. Not everything they do is obviously inspired by other work (such as that done by Xerox PARC, or others).
If memory serves, they do have a fairly insane number of patents (many of which for seemingly minor details, such as single-clicking behavior under various circumstances and what not).
They have the resources to try strange things like mice with wheels, or {shudder} "Bob"-like software, because even if something completely flops, their flagship products will still more than compensate...
Perhaps, regarding conspiracy, he meant the alleged plots that many enthusiasts seem to believe regarding the Groom Lake AFB. Apparently, many would rather interpret the rabid security regarding that installation as pointing towards possession and concealment of alien corpses rather than the development of "stealth" aircraft and so forth... and there are those that suspect the Gov't of massive conspiracies t'ween the CIA and the USAF. {shrug}
What you really saw was the planet Venus. ;) Nothing to see, everybody move on...
Disclaimer: I've worked for MS as an intern. Not in any group where I'd know about the workings of AOL software (!), 'tho...
Hmmm. If the buffer overflow actually exists, *and* Microsoft is sure of that, they'd better be able to prove it -- in other words, document and release code to both AOL and a forum such as BugTraq. A history of such alleged holes and copies of the relevant binaries and such forwarded to an independent group should work...
If they cannot substantiate the existence of such, then this would seem to be either a bizarre game of chicken, or it would seem that at the very least an apology is in order -- possibly more, for laying very specific and public charges on AOL's products.
In the meantime, that has little bearing on whether it's legal for AOL to block other services from using their messaging system, security hole or no.
* "If it bleeds, it leads."
* Stories involving death can have a longer life. Reporters can focus the funerals, backgrounds, family histories, and whatnot of everyone involved. They can follow up by constantly pointing their cameras at the survivors. They can ask random people on the street for impressions. And so forth... it's probably a lot harder to be scouring for deep stories about, oh, the risks inherent with the current situation regarding Dagestan, or even the Mideast than it is to milk a human-interest/tragedy story 'bout some teens.
As for terrorism, it's easier to profile US teens, than, say, even an infamous figure like Abu Nidal, and it's probably far easier to milk as a story. How many people even remember what Hezbollah is, and what they did to the Marine Barracks in Beirut? Or, the Tupac Amaru guerillas and the whole matter of the Japanese Embassy in Peru?
Stories about shootings allow further longevity through perpetual tie-ins w/ the gun-ban/control issue, where both sides can hurl ridiculous statements at each other and posture for the camera. The fact that there is a Presidential election coming next year only intensifies this.
Death stories have lots of "empathy" value. It's a lot harder to milk a report that consumer prices have behaved in a certain way, or that former Energy Sec'y O'Leary weakened security measures, compared to those of fatal accidents (especially those involving celebs) and so forth.
Hmmmm. In my experience, a number of high school teachers *really* treated their jobs as more than just "work" -- they *wanted* to teach, and do it well. Whether it involved getting students to write coherent, analytical essays about history; helping students understand entropy and reaction energy in chemistry; or leading them through appreciation and understanding of literature, to the degree that one might hand students a copy of _Macbeth_ and they might actually at least partially comprehend it, it mattered to them. That's not to say that this held universally, but school for some of us was far from the useless dreariness that it's occasionally portrayed as.
On the other hand, television also does not have to be a pointless wasteland. Consider, say, satire. One can view the old BBC series, "Blackadder", as simply a humorous look at classic Britain; or, alternately, one can examine *why* they made fun of what they did. A teacher of mine showed the "Archbishop of Canterbury" episode, for instance, which jokingly addresses the traditional conflict between the spiritual and temporal powers... A classic movie like "Dr. Strangelove" may serve purely for entertainment, or as an examination of Cold War paranoia and the dangers of the MAD strategy. And so forth...
As for the summer, well -- considering that the audience here is most likely a tad "geekier" than the norm, it would not surprise me a bit if many a summer had been spent in fairly geeky ways. If you're interested in mathematics, or research in any of the sciences, or similar stuff, there's plenty out there.
Plus figuring out how to remove read-privs for the software itself, or guaranteeing that it can only be run on the server. In addition, you'll need to work out where and how (privileges, ownership) to store the data. Most apps probably aren't written this way, with the exception of those that use licensing servers.
*plonk*
1. Only if they buy it. I doubt that happens often, particularly in areas where one can buy software with even cloned manuals and boxes, for a mere fraction of the standard price (because only duplication costs and perhaps bribing the local officials are involved, not development or advertising). It's a fairly flimsy excuse.
2. You presumably aren't aware of the client-server model. Bzzzzzzzzzzt, next.
My chief worries would be:
* The sheer *power* it gives the distributor. Businesses *need* to know that they can access their data; if licensing fees go up, or file format support is dropped, or any conditions change, then that security is gone. Ditto home users; imagine the fee for, oh, "Quicken" and related apps right before mid-April (Apr 15 is when US federal income tax filings are due, non-USers).
* It obviously ties in with UCITA. Renting implies a way to disable, perhaps by forcing some client-server model (code stays on proprietary service provider).
* Security. It'd better be darn safe, lest somebody figure out how to exploit any upgrading system.
There's a very large difference...
Whereas you probably won't be finding, say, any need to keep around the latest drek on VHS, you *will* quite possibly need to keep around application software in the long-term.
Think data files. Think proprietary data file formats. Think about the existing investment in training, and how ugly it'd be to retrain employees to use a different package, or what happens if you communicate with somebody with an older version that can't read the current file format of the day.
There's a lot of required continuity. Even nominally compatible upgrades can break that, if behavioral quirks change or support is dropped (which happens...).
Which is more important: guaranteeing that you can obtain the latest "Zelda" release, or knowing that you won't be held hostage with unreadable data if the application subscription/rental rate climbs up, or if features you need get obsoleted (think: changing APIs, ala Java's deprecation, etc)? App software is VERY different.
Why would they have an account?
Or, opt for slavery. Before y'all flame, a) I'm not saying that's a GOOD thing -- it's incredibly reprehensible for a society to avoid work by enslaving another, and not particularly practical besides, and b) there's precedent in a certain species of ant which has evolved to the point where it lives off the work of others. Seriously. It enslaves another type of ant to do its work...
For reference, the federal gov't was not authorized to collect an income tax until 1913. That's not exactly the days of wooden huts...
The reason largely is that the government before then had not been that involved in social services. It's got far more commitments now, and those are *expensive* -- especially when they are based on *old* life-expectancy estimates and so forth.
Nowadays, it's not unusual for a liberal to drive a Saab or Mercedes -- or have a chaffeur.
* Not all geeks seek wealth. For my part, given the choice between taking my degree directly into the workforce and becoming quite well off, versus opting for a grad degree -- I chose the latter, and I doubt I'm the only one here like that.
Why? Wealth won't make me happy. It might be a tad ironic in the view of some, but my capitalist bent does not really include rampant materialism.
* Wealth does not preclude liberalism; in fact, you'll probably find that the richest and the poorest both have more liberals than the middle-class. The poorest, obviously, have much to benefit, and the very, very rich sometimes don't see that they'll lose (because they'll *still* be well off).
Example: Most of the Hollywood actors, directors, and so forth are very well off. With *very* few exceptions, they also tend to be liberal; consider, say, Gere's expounding on foreign policy, or Streisand mouthing off on firearms, or so forth; the few exceptions that come to mind include Heston and Norris.
* California *is* quite liberal. Considering the number of nominally progressive acts they go for (medical marijuana, emissions controls, and so forth) they tend to be fairly leftist.
I've actually read a fair bit by both Marx and Engels, having a compilation of Socialist/Communist dogma, written by and edited by its believers. I don't believe in just studying that which I agree with...
Here is my brief understanding.
Marx assumed implosion. Specifically, that an already-industrialized society with capitalism run rampant would implode as the assets gradually shifted from the poorest to the wealthiest. The proletariat would eventually find themselves unable to buy anything that they produce, meaning that the bourgeousie would not be able to sell and the whole cycle would devolve into chaos. The proletariat would revolt en masse and overthrow the bourgeousie, forming a collective. Incidentally, this hasn't happened yet in any large nation that I'm aware of -- the Bolshevik Revolution was also partly political, and involved a fairly small portion of the people whose sole justification was not purely lack of wages due to alleged capitalist oppression.
This collective would in theory implement a worker's paradise. The concept was that everybody would somehow work as much as they could, but for essentially guaranteed or fixed compensation; that is, everybody would be provided for and theoretically nobody would be either left behind, or be disproportionately well off.
This has nothing to do with OSS. OSS exists in parallel with the development of proprietary software. The movement neither demands that all capable programmers / software designers put in what it decides to be their share, nor does it allocate benefits; instead, those who wish to can contribute, and those who wish to can benefit. It's not even a finite resource that is being shared, in that if I, say, obtain a copy of gcc, that doesn't mean that there is one less copy of gcc available for the next (as long as the bandwidth is not near saturation).
So there's really not that much of a parallel.