Can someone wake me up from this Chris Nolan dreamworld in Inception, "Physical" traveling salesman problem ? Did someone forget to add weights to edges in math class?
In other news, Saudi Authorities have now asked the website "Slashdot" to reveal the identity of all those commenting on a matter of religious sacrilege. Slashdot.org will be taken down and all those who commented, including Anonymous (the dangerous hacker group) Cowards will be put to death. If this doesn't help, a Fatwah will be issue against all those using computer terminals. May Allah's will be done! Amen.
I live in India, and such Notes are very common here for almost every branch of Higher Education. In some cases of post-graduate and doctoral courses, the question papers are legitimately distributed by the University to students after an examination. For tests where the board does not distribute question papers, several companies which claim to be vestigial 'education' and 'training' companies pay examinees for reproducing or recollecting the questions. It is also common practice in India for corporates to hold screening examinations prior to fresh candidate intake. These question papers are also reproduced, solved by a team of experts and a key is published before the next examination. A good example is FreshersWorld.
This also happens for NCERT, Medical Entrance Examinations, Engineering Entrance Examinations among several others. No Legal action has been taken in the recent past to stop such recollection, despite the fact that it merely promotes rote learning, textual recall or fundamental pattern matching. Interestingly, in India, no one has referred to this practice as cheating, although it is. It is only in the past two years that Computer Aided Tests which shuffle questions and stagger timelines are being introduced to avoid this practice. Enforcement of legal sanctions in India especially across Educational boards, Varsities and Corporate Testing groups have not been easy.
Question papers, by themselves for any test are never copyrighted officially. Most Board question papers in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal do not come with any Copyright notices. Boards and Academic members have until recently been in the dark about 'Copyright Law' and have little idea as to how it is enforced. A vast number of books published are not registered for copyright, nor do they have ISBN assigned to them.
Part of the issue is the inability to enforce exclusivity on 'recalled' or 'reproduced' testing material. Another part is ignorance of the full extent of 'Copyright Law' itself, though this is significant in nations like India and China where their implementation has only now begun.
The headline gives the impression that this is being done right now. The timeline also gives a hint of the level of commitment. Before the "promised" SDK, we've heard stories like http://www.next-gen.biz/features/hacking-kinect -- So this response, whatever the spirit, is delayed. It is definitely not one of the "right" things Microsoft has done recently. (There may be others.)
And this is a good thing? We still have to wait until spring for the 'early release' SDK and the 'commercial version' will follow soon. (unmentioned date reference.)
I am in complete agreement. "Inventions" are defined too loosely themselves. Their utility has not been defined in terms of a specific purpose and context. The time-scale (and therefore chronological context) of the invention has not been defined. If all premises are ill defined or undefined, there is no point to debate. Each reply to the post is a new argument in a new context. So, absolutely, nothing to see here.
Bad blocks are inherent in NAND flash. SLC NAND Flash devices are more reliable (have fewer errors) and costly. MLC NAND Flash devices are less reliable (have more inherent errors) but are affordable and easily available. NAND Flash devices are known to progressively degrade until the number of bad blocks is too high to reliably store data. Inherent errors during manufacturing increase on usage (both read and write.) Most Flash Storage Devices will ultimately become too error-prone to store data. The industry might want to justify inherent errors (and gradually increasing errors) by calling it a fingerprint. They are still searching for techniques to make NAND Flash more reliable.
The article fails to provide mathematical basis to prove that two NAND flashes cannot have the same bad blocks on manufacturing or at some point of usage thereby obscuring identity. NAND flash controllers are designed to check and resolve errors using known algorithms. Most controllers allow hardware to hide errors while allowing OS device drivers to read the NAND flash medium. The Operating System and the NAND Flash Controller are at least two points were any such fingerprint can be compromised. The Filesystem adds another layer of abstraction. The number of "Real" bad blocks and remaps is usually stored on the NAND Flash. Altering the Bad Block Table is not difficult.
Hard Disks interestingly have similar failure rates and complex issues like Data remanence which have been studied. I wonder why no one proposed a signature scheme for using errors on Hard Drive Platters to identify them. Computer Forensics for Hard Drives has a longer track record of being studied. Marketing fud can be ignored.
Pitot tubes were invented in the 1700s by the French Engineer Henry Pitot and later modified for airspeed measurements. They are also used to measure aerodynamic speed in Formula racing cars too among other uses. Here is a comprehensive article following the crash investigation that is informative with photographs and the timeline of theories.
I read both the articles posted. They do not qualify as the best investigation reports. They seem to be building "What if" scenarios from all data that is available. Other A330 failures (no recent crashes reported) and Other places where ice in Pitot tubes led to failure (The Wikipedia article has a lot of information on this and planes which had problems notably, the X31.) The investigators are clearly under pressure to say what they have found and they are unable to report "nothing" to the press. With no luck in recovering the Black Box, the investigators (like they talk about Pilots not good at flying aircraft without the aid of in-flight safety systems) have to do it the old forensic way (reminds me of Crichton's Airframe). That is going to take time and the press, the Aircraft companies using A330s are impatient to know why.
Clearly no recent theory has come close to deducing the true reason for the crash. As I remember the first news item that appeared on the AF447 was that the plane "vanished" from Radar and was sought for by the Brazilian Air Force before the crash site was positively identified. The last exchanges between the Pilot and the Aircraft tower followed by an automated message from the aircraft remain the main clues apart from the debris in this horrific accident.
There is no debate on the fact that this is an invasion of privacy. It seems to be a sort of test to keep tech savvy people (would that be everyone?) out of the hiring process. I am shocked at this. Here is an interesting note, the US constitution aside from the 9th amendment does not guarantee the right to privacy. The right to privacy is enforced by the interpretation of the First, Third and Fifth amendments and of the Ninth amendment itself. The Fourth Amendment contains an explicit interpretation of the right to privacy specific to computers. They are still open to interpretation. So the issue is just not about private passwords here, there's a lot more being brought up. In India, Article 21 of the Indian Constitution expressly guarantees the Right to Privacy. There is some confusion and no explicit mention in the constitution of Britain either. From the little reading I have done, the right to privacy (and therefore keeping my own passwords from the state) has been created through addendum and interpretation of prior articles of constitution rather than a specific article or amendment mentioned in the constitution. ---- IANAL
Using the new In-Cell growing technique many companies seem to be coming up with vaccines in a shorter period than earlier. Medicinenet has an informative article on Flu Vaccines and immunization candidates, and goes on to say why they are required. This is a good read to understand why vaccination is being given importance here. The 1918 "Spanish" Flu epidemic Virus which is very similar to the recent outbreak was re-created in a laboratory in 2005 by Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger and colleagues at AFIP. Comparison with Avian flu strains led to the conclusion that Human Flu Virus strains are derived from Avian flu virii.
Among young people and children Flu vaccines claim to be 70%-90% effective, while this drops down to 30%-40% in people aged over 65 who may have other secondary complications. Hence the scale of vaccination required for the present outbreak (which has been repeatedly noted for not being as lethal as the 1918 Flu strain) may be entirely different covering only those in a risk category. More stress is on drugs that help in combating the Virus in an infected individual. These are usually amino-acid chain suppressors like Tamiflu. There has already been mobilization and distribution of the drugs to combat such an outbreak. The WHO has done a recent donation of drugs to Nigeria. This is however related to continued support of a H5N1 outbreak since 2006.
The role and importance of the Vaccines that would be available is not yet certain. It seems that the stress is more on treatment. Insofar stress on prevention without the involvement of Primary Medical care personnel. Only those who suspect infection have been requested to visit quarantine or medical facilities for treatment. The W.H.O's present stand with the Flu Virus has been a direct result of criticism during the second widespread Avian flu H5N1 attack incidents in 2006. Attention is being given to Avian Influenza as a pandemic because it leads to complications and secondaries making it difficult to fight other diseases with stronger morbidity.
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No Greater Friend, No Greater Enemy! (Lucius Cornelius Sulla)
Using the new In-Cell growing technique many companies seem to be coming up with vaccines in a shorter period than earlier. Medicinenet has an informative article on Flu Vaccines and immunization candidates, and goes on to say why they are required. This is a good read to understand why vaccination is being given importance here. The 1918 "Spanish" Flu epidemic Virus which is very similar to the recent outbreak was re-engineered in a laboratory in 2005 by Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger and colleagues at AFIP. Comparison with Avian flu strains led to the conclusion that Human Flu Virus strains are derived from Avian flu virii.
Among young people and children Flu vaccines claim to be 70%-90% effective, while this drops down to 30%-40% in people aged over 65 who may have other secondary complications. Hence the scale of vaccination required for the present outbreak (which has been repeatedly noted for not being as lethal as the 1918 Flu strain) may be entirely different covering only those in a risk category. More stress is on drugs that help in combating the Virus in an infected individual. These are usually amino-acid chain suppressors like Tamiflu. There has already been mobilization and distribution of the drugs to combat such an outbreak. The WHO has done a recent donation of drugs to Nigeria.
The role and importance of the Vaccines that would be available is not yet certain. It seems that the stress is more on treatment. Insofar stress on prevention without the involvement of Primary Medical care personnel. Only those who suspect infection have been requested to visit quarantine or medical facilities for treatment. The WHO's present stand with the Flu Virus has been a direct result of criticism during the second widespread Avian flu H5N1 attack incidents in 2006.
Here's a note about a man who claimed that he was being "paid" by Microsoft to edit Wikipedia articles. He also claimed to be a contributor for OOXML on Wikipedia. His contributions following this article were being dismissed as biased.
There are two parts to this issue. They are (1) "Should Wikipedia offer to pay those who edit articles?" and (2) "Should any Wikipedia contributor get paid for contributing articles?" On (1), Wikipedia's stance is clear, they are not willing to pay anyone to edit articles. They would like to continue with their open model with little or no moderation. On (2) they are merely talking about the quality of the resultant article. They seriously do not have a mechanism to stop a 3rd party Wikimedia contributor from contributing for money or for the sake of love of the subject or for personal bias.
IMHO, Wikipedia must avoid policing any and all editors unless they are on their own Payroll. Their open model has served as a simple mechanism to collect relevant information on a topic which may or may not necessarily be accurate. There have been enough debates that have concluded that Wikipedia cannot be quoted as a citation for serious scientific study due to lack of moderation and verification of sources.
The specific case (covered heavily - check Techdirt for one) in question has actually brought in a much larger problem to light. How should students treat code written as part of assignments or as part of their course-work in terms of licensing? Is there a precedent for licensing? Most research activities conducted by universities have already adopted licensing framework. Here's an example. There has been debate whether such licensing should be free. Just check Medical Research and you can open Pandora's box. One more example is Singapore's A-Star which is more of a group focused on preparing research for industry adoption including licensing and legal usage terms.
How about code released in books on Data Structures, Algorithms, Fundamental C programming? To my knowledge (do correct me if I am wrong), the code is usually licensed under the same copyright notice as the book itself. In some cases, the author changes this licensing and makes it available. One example is "Numerical Recipes in C" where the licensing terms of the code from the author(s) of the book is explicit and can be found on a google search.
When it comes to university assignments, it is no news that the same template (if not the same course material itself) tends to get recirculated over a periodic basis. In some cases this period is annual and in others, the frequency is different. The debate raised is ages old. For most data structure or standard assignments of programming, you could find most of the code online. You could use this as a starting point or choose to write your own and learn your fundamentals. That's up to the student and the professor who is teaching and grading.
There is some truth in the statement (IMHO) that the Academia is shielded from the real commercial world. It works positive in some cases and is counterproductive in fields like Engineering (not Theoretical Computer Science.) In this specific case, if the University were to read all the fine print they have on students sharing course material (for which they pay for) and lecture notes and assignments, they would find the right solution. Bringing this (issue between a student and the professor) out to Open forums seems more of a publicity stunt that is going to get someone infamous for some and noticeable for a few others.
Focusing on the larger issue, a Varsity must be clear on how course-work and assignments from the students will be licensed and treated. They already have set legal precedents for most research work (which in some cases is funded by commercial bodies.) Hopefully this issue raises a flag and lets varsities understand and embrace Open Source, encourage students to use it particularly in programming assignments. At the very least they should at least reserve procedures to let a student obtain due permission for displaying his/her works online under appropriate licensing. In the absence of a precedent and clear guidelines, such confusion and unnecessary nerve wracking experiences between a Professor and a Student are more likely to surface. I hope not.
I read through the article and a lot of blogs covering Riversimple. Here's what it looks like under the hood. It seems too early and preliminary for adoption. "Open Source" seems to have been employed purely as a buzzword to generate interest. Most of the detail is actually at the 40 Fires foundation website which will probably release design schematics. Their FAQ answers questions I had in mind and is a good place for a starting read. The codename for this car is Hybran. The EU welcomes Hydrogen cars as a strong "Green" alternative.
If you do compare it to other initiatives like OSCar, you would find this option from Riversimple probably at a better stage of adoption. But until they unveil their prototypes (16-Jun-2009 is not far) and manufacturing goals (however they intend to go about it,) consumers will be skeptical about adoption. They first have to hit a note on consumers _wanting_ it or _needing_ it before proposing an attractive business model. Most of the prior comments reflect that we are not yet ready. Design momentum on OSCar seems to have stalled in the year 2006.
In contrast another vehicle release earlier this year happened in India with a lot of buzz about a $2,500 car, the Nano from India. This car _can_ do more than 56 mpg on Gasoline. It isn't green, but you can grab one, drive one and feel much safer than the electric counterparts that roam about the cities. This car went through at least 2 yrs of testing because the average consumer was scared about safety. The adoption was further slowed down by slow manufacturing response from Tata Motors.
India has allowed an Electric car (REVA) to be used within City limits (for road safety and range concerns) manufactured by Reva. The vehicle (a modest 4 wheeler) which comes in multiple flavors has low adoption rates in cities which allow it. This car through evolution has been heavier than India's top selling gasoline small-car the Maruti Suzuki 800cc 4 seater, and offers lesser range within a city. It has a very short range of 80-100km and requires battery packs to be replaced every two years (or depending on usage.) From June, 2001 the adoption has been very slow. During July, 2008 at least 260 Reva's (multiple models) were sold which is a record high. The Reva is priced at a one time price tag of close to $6,500 with an installed set of batteries. These have to be replaced at about $1000 every year. There's some comprehensive information and links on the Wikipedia Article (Reva). The cost has been a factor in slowing down adoption added to the fact that electric charges are required almost on a nightly basis. India has welcomed the car with reduced parking charges and several cuts. The G-Whiz model sold outside India is far too pricey ($12000 in Chile) and does not enjoy these environment friendly regulatory benefits.
For crowded cities in India where pollution is a heavy problem, Electrical cars with limited range for office commuters who'd prefer some shade (where public transport is a little inconvenient with timings) has received early adoption. i would presume that countries facing rapid development and growth rates will have to take this more seriously. Scaling public transport infrastructure has always been a challenge in many developing countries owing to a myriad of reasons. The basis for creating indices to track air pollution is outlined quite well in this paper (PDF) from
What remains to be patented is a method for granting patents, such as it is now. We could then charge the USPTO for each patent granted or better still deny them the rights. Gawsh!!
Why would Google put all the effort and keep their browser running on Windows with their own linux port being delayed? I have a pet theory to that. Google did in fact sponsor adoption of firefox and provided lots of plugins.
Many of us *know* firefox can be a resource hog and also slower at rendering than many, we have few HTML rendering engines that can render most content.
I believe that Google is abstaining from releasing a competitor to firefox on Linux platforms for some reason. The "Chrome" and "Chromium" stories are going to stay that way for a while until they have good reasoning to go native.
They would still something similar to what they have done with Picasa (integrated wineserver approach.) It has worked before. So Chrome/Linux will be very similar to Chromium.
With all the talk about "Term Papers" and plagiarism, I believe everyone is forgetting something fundamental. The idea of Educational Institutions themselves is to provide Knowledge and Information. This, is supposed to be used as a tool by a student or a professional to solve hypothetical or real world problems or both. MIT provides a good quantum of course material (that one can read and use) online.
Fundamentally, if I were to repeat Galileo's equations or Newton's Laws or Kepler's laws (and the list goes on and on) verbatim as they had written it; does that constitute plagiarism? I was under the impression that the Internet (rather the Worldwide Web) was to facilitate increased flow of information and act as a medium through which people could "access" information much faster.
If you had to go to a library to read through an Encyclopaedia (I've done this in school), it roughly takes about 15 minutes to locate the topic, and then if you want to follow a trail of information, it involves physically perusing volumes of information. I believe this is where the Internet has changed things making it simpler and easier to follow a trail of information. If one could consider textbooks, dictionaries and technical reference material in a library as valid and trusted sources of information, then I don't see why we can't have Digital versions of the same available on the Internet to facilitate ease of access. Wikipedia was indeed a very strong attempt for easy access to the tip of the iceberg on many topics. I don't see people quoting 10 other websites having "valid and trusted" information. One could raise a Platonic argument on what exactly is trusted information?
Secondly, if a student were to complete a "Term Paper" or an Assignment based on information found in an Encyclopaedia in a Library, how is that not plagiarism? Reciting a verse from the Bible or a Poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson does not constitute plagiarism. I see no reason why plagiarism is considered a major issue. If the goal of learning is only to "present" information in different forms, then there is something seriously wrong with the education system. The goal of learning is to understand how knowledge, method and prior invention can be used to solve new problems; and further creatively find entirely new solutions to problems.
If Teachers and Lecturers cannot present new problems to their students, then older solutions will inevitably reappear (either by intent plagiarism or by co-incidence.) I believe the problem is not plagiarism, but choosing the right methods of teaching that have to be revisited. Using the same technique of teaching everywhere (by standardising it) and then calling those who try and simplify their solutions under the system is the problem. To quote something, Differential Calculus was simultaneously invented by Newton and Laplace to solve the same problem. No one shouted "Plagiarism" then. Following a 3 century old education system without being able to improve heavily, now that we are past the jet age into the electronic/information/bionic age, is where we need to improvise. There has been no fundamental change in education systems though one could quote many reforms through the years to modify what has been there for ages.
Symantec Decides to Close Shop, after finding that there are no serious vulnerabilities in Windows (their bread-winner) and other commercial operating systems in the market. I wonder why they still continue to release "System Guard", "Symantec Antivirus" and other products for this platform after their study has shown that there are no more critical flaws.
Seriously, Is Symantec intending to close shop? Publicity is good, but this is terrible.
I see that Citizendium is uses the same Wikimedia engine. They use it with the authentication patch (which Wikipedia for "open" reasons has avoided.) There have been endless discussions on Wikipedia vs Encyclopedias. The one thing that stands out is, most Encyclopedias "restrict" information unless they can validate it. I know that "Consensus" in itself is not a part of Scientific method, but only the last resort when a conclusion cannot be reached. Any attempt to clone the success of an existing freely editable Encyclopedic Wiki (rather than an Encyclopedia itself) is bound to produce the same results. Changing those fundamental variables that made Wikipeida possible "freedom", "open", "editable" are known recipes for disaster.
There have been numerous debates on whether Wikipedia is a valuable resource for Research. The answer is a yes. However it is not a resource that can be cited. Like numerous sites on the internet, it only points one to other material for further reading or introduces the random reader to theories that may not essentially be correct. Some people thought Wikipedia could become a fundamental instrument to facilitate research, resulting in their attempts to create "authentication", "article validation" and the likes. A book is only as good as its authors. Wikipedia is only as good as its contributors and consumers. An Encyclopedia is no different. That would explain why Encyclopedia Brittanica and Microsoft Encarta are so different. To put it simply, this article on EncycloPedia is quite informative, yet you might not want to cite it if you are writing a thesis on them. You would need access to more Books and Information, such as those available in a Library.
Wikipedia remains a source for quickly looking up information. In this usage, there are no substitutes, not even Google. It contains good pionters and sometimes Valid and credible reference material. The "Wikipedia Falling" story is simply a amplified reaction to what I term is the "Tower of Babel" effect. If there are too many people converging to one source, they tend to separate at some point; someone might understand this better. So as evolution always is, this shall happen. But Wikipedia isn't the Tower of Babel and it ain't falling.
Aside from Semco (Brazil), there aren't many companies that call themselves grassroots managed (the reverse of top-down management.) However, historically all startups during the bootstrap phase have used such a management system before melding into hierarchy-managed organisations. If Flat/Democratically managed organisations were "better" (more efficient in providing higher employee satisfaction, effective delivery of products/services) one would have noticed a good number of NGOs and small companies (think of the size of "id Software") already adopting such a model.
The truth is, there is a severe degree of biological hierarchy imposed upon human society. That prevents any model from becoming fully effective. Studyies of primates (can'c cite off-hand, but am sure there are papers backing this up) prove that there is an inherent hierarchy. Most mammals (particularly the predators) also indicate hierarchy and specialisation. Another good example would be wolves, pack hunters whose stragies are close to us. I've seen many people being seduced by the idea of a truly flat organisation, direct democracy within its limits. The trouble was they never studied why it "could" (and probably would) fail. That resulted in the failure of the model. To put it bluntly, why do you think the vast majority of organisations in the world are built on hierarchy?
If someone could spend all their time writing a speech recognition tool to aid in coding, why not go the next step and actually start creating Code that spews out Code. This is theoretically possible, the only barrier being the presentation of the problem from the human and the interpretation of the problem by the machine. Heck, that's why we write (source) "code" and we use the fastest (and perhaps the most convenient) possible input devices. Is there statistical analysis to prove that a programmer spends more of his time typing source code rather than terminal commands, compile commands, test cases or documents? Papers on Software Engineering seem to point that coding isn't the most intensive part of any software project. Did I get this wrong?
I do not disagree that speech recognition is good for the average business user who usually is accustomed to typing by hunting rather than touch typing (which causes RSI.) The easier way instead of one getting sore throat over coding would be to have ergonomically friendly keyboards; Check out Kinesis (Macromedia Flash Warning) or try and use light projection keyboards that can project keyboards on almost any desktop surface. No one seems to have commented on handwritten code, whether they produce the same Stress injuries upon writing heavy volumes of text.
Further, I remember that MIT media labs did have a paper on reduced cognitive activity while speech was being used as an interface with people (spoken and listened to.) I am unable to get the link to this paper which opined that it was better not to use speech recognition where critical thought (driving, heavy machinery, precision engineering et al) is required. There are other problems when programmers start talking, everyone has to start wearing ear-muffs (so they wouldn't hear anyone talking, directional microphones to avoid picking up another conversation or noise.) I wonder why they haven't though of all of that before letting voice recognition help in coding. This doesn't seem a remotely convincing method of source code input.
Hey I got a link Newer by two days than the article posted. Anyway, at least someone isn't repeating a post. There were Amulet cores which were essentially ARM32 clockless cores much before ARM did make a public announcement. I wouldn't be surprised if the 996HS is a rebranded and reworked Amulet. Amulet was quite well known in Academic circles for at least 3 years. That's my $0.02.
LIC India was one of the largest users of Unix (SUN Solaris) systems prior to this announcement. They had trained Unix sysadmins and tape backup systems in 1998. Long before such an official announcement was made many of the client machines connecting to the servers were being switched to Linux even at regional offices. This time Redhat is migrating the servers too to Linux. So that in a sense is the corporate world beginning to embrace Linux.
Adding to this, Reliance Infocomm Ltd., one of the largest CDMA service providers does provide a rather clumsy, yet workable tool for dialing-up internet using their phones. They try to address a small but existent Linux Desktop market. There are OEM PCs that ship with TurboLinux desktops in India from many manufacturers.
However, the largets ATM chains, SBI - State Bank of India (now on a week long strike) and several other institutions continue to use flavors of legacy old systems including Microsoft Win32 platforms. Home users are most uncomfortable switching to Linux despite the arrival of Ubuntu/Kubuntu and other easily configurable alternatives. There is still much to be done. The transition is slow but definitely happening in the market, and that's the good news.
As for outsourcing blah, that's irrelevant to the article. Service firms adopt platforms that can put them in business with their clientele. That's business sense and they keep doing it.
The Gimpshop page clearly shows that most people seem to want a familiar interface when having used photoshop earlier. The other reason maybe the host of available plugins to photoshop (Kai's powertools and a few others that they already own) for the digital image manipulation business. But as Gimpshop clearly shows, Gimp can be hacked and made to look like photoshop for the average photoshop user. I am not sure this is possible with Adobe's photoshop itself. So Opensource and its flexibility from which GIMP is born far outweighs photoshop. IMO, GIMP is already better than photoshop thanks to flexibility. For those who haven't been able to hack it themselves, they just need to ask a group of hackers to help them with a Photoshop look and feel, compatibility with photoshop plugins if they are already used to the other application. No need to look for Photoshop killers here, Photoshop has been in use (like MS Windows) and has been quite a well written product. The GIMP has reached a far more flexible state matching features in a shorter period of time due to a large user base. With a few more hacks, usability, look and feel options and plugin support for third party plugins, for the GIMP it is only a matter of time before Adobe will need to rethink their Photoshop strategy.
Slashdot Mirror
Can someone wake me up from this Chris Nolan dreamworld in Inception, "Physical" traveling salesman problem ? Did someone forget to add weights to edges in math class?
In other news, Saudi Authorities have now asked the website "Slashdot" to reveal the identity of all those commenting on a matter of religious sacrilege. Slashdot.org will be taken down and all those who commented, including Anonymous (the dangerous hacker group) Cowards will be put to death. If this doesn't help, a Fatwah will be issue against all those using computer terminals. May Allah's will be done! Amen.
I live in India, and such Notes are very common here for almost every branch of Higher Education. In some cases of post-graduate and doctoral courses, the question papers are legitimately distributed by the University to students after an examination. For tests where the board does not distribute question papers, several companies which claim to be vestigial 'education' and 'training' companies pay examinees for reproducing or recollecting the questions. It is also common practice in India for corporates to hold screening examinations prior to fresh candidate intake. These question papers are also reproduced, solved by a team of experts and a key is published before the next examination. A good example is FreshersWorld.
This also happens for NCERT, Medical Entrance Examinations, Engineering Entrance Examinations among several others. No Legal action has been taken in the recent past to stop such recollection, despite the fact that it merely promotes rote learning, textual recall or fundamental pattern matching. Interestingly, in India, no one has referred to this practice as cheating, although it is. It is only in the past two years that Computer Aided Tests which shuffle questions and stagger timelines are being introduced to avoid this practice. Enforcement of legal sanctions in India especially across Educational boards, Varsities and Corporate Testing groups have not been easy.
Question papers, by themselves for any test are never copyrighted officially. Most Board question papers in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal do not come with any Copyright notices. Boards and Academic members have until recently been in the dark about 'Copyright Law' and have little idea as to how it is enforced. A vast number of books published are not registered for copyright, nor do they have ISBN assigned to them.
Part of the issue is the inability to enforce exclusivity on 'recalled' or 'reproduced' testing material. Another part is ignorance of the full extent of 'Copyright Law' itself, though this is significant in nations like India and China where their implementation has only now begun.
The headline gives the impression that this is being done right now. The timeline also gives a hint of the level of commitment. Before the "promised" SDK, we've heard stories like http://www.next-gen.biz/features/hacking-kinect -- So this response, whatever the spirit, is delayed. It is definitely not one of the "right" things Microsoft has done recently. (There may be others.)
And this is a good thing? We still have to wait until spring for the 'early release' SDK and the 'commercial version' will follow soon. (unmentioned date reference.)
I am in complete agreement. "Inventions" are defined too loosely themselves. Their utility has not been defined in terms of a specific purpose and context. The time-scale (and therefore chronological context) of the invention has not been defined. If all premises are ill defined or undefined, there is no point to debate. Each reply to the post is a new argument in a new context. So, absolutely, nothing to see here.
Bad blocks are inherent in NAND flash. SLC NAND Flash devices are more reliable (have fewer errors) and costly. MLC NAND Flash devices are less reliable (have more inherent errors) but are affordable and easily available. NAND Flash devices are known to progressively degrade until the number of bad blocks is too high to reliably store data. Inherent errors during manufacturing increase on usage (both read and write.) Most Flash Storage Devices will ultimately become too error-prone to store data. The industry might want to justify inherent errors (and gradually increasing errors) by calling it a fingerprint. They are still searching for techniques to make NAND Flash more reliable.
The article fails to provide mathematical basis to prove that two NAND flashes cannot have the same bad blocks on manufacturing or at some point of usage thereby obscuring identity. NAND flash controllers are designed to check and resolve errors using known algorithms. Most controllers allow hardware to hide errors while allowing OS device drivers to read the NAND flash medium. The Operating System and the NAND Flash Controller are at least two points were any such fingerprint can be compromised. The Filesystem adds another layer of abstraction. The number of "Real" bad blocks and remaps is usually stored on the NAND Flash. Altering the Bad Block Table is not difficult.
Hard Disks interestingly have similar failure rates and complex issues like Data remanence which have been studied. I wonder why no one proposed a signature scheme for using errors on Hard Drive Platters to identify them. Computer Forensics for Hard Drives has a longer track record of being studied. Marketing fud can be ignored.
Pitot tubes were invented in the 1700s by the French Engineer Henry Pitot and later modified for airspeed measurements. They are also used to measure aerodynamic speed in Formula racing cars too among other uses. Here is a comprehensive article following the crash investigation that is informative with photographs and the timeline of theories.
I read both the articles posted. They do not qualify as the best investigation reports. They seem to be building "What if" scenarios from all data that is available. Other A330 failures (no recent crashes reported) and Other places where ice in Pitot tubes led to failure (The Wikipedia article has a lot of information on this and planes which had problems notably, the X31.) The investigators are clearly under pressure to say what they have found and they are unable to report "nothing" to the press. With no luck in recovering the Black Box, the investigators (like they talk about Pilots not good at flying aircraft without the aid of in-flight safety systems) have to do it the old forensic way (reminds me of Crichton's Airframe). That is going to take time and the press, the Aircraft companies using A330s are impatient to know why.
Clearly no recent theory has come close to deducing the true reason for the crash. As I remember the first news item that appeared on the AF447 was that the plane "vanished" from Radar and was sought for by the Brazilian Air Force before the crash site was positively identified. The last exchanges between the Pilot and the Aircraft tower followed by an automated message from the aircraft remain the main clues apart from the debris in this horrific accident.
There is no debate on the fact that this is an invasion of privacy. It seems to be a sort of test to keep tech savvy people (would that be everyone?) out of the hiring process. I am shocked at this. Here is an interesting note, the US constitution aside from the 9th amendment does not guarantee the right to privacy. The right to privacy is enforced by the interpretation of the First, Third and Fifth amendments and of the Ninth amendment itself. The Fourth Amendment contains an explicit interpretation of the right to privacy specific to computers. They are still open to interpretation. So the issue is just not about private passwords here, there's a lot more being brought up. In India, Article 21 of the Indian Constitution expressly guarantees the Right to Privacy. There is some confusion and no explicit mention in the constitution of Britain either. From the little reading I have done, the right to privacy (and therefore keeping my own passwords from the state) has been created through addendum and interpretation of prior articles of constitution rather than a specific article or amendment mentioned in the constitution. ---- IANAL
Using the new In-Cell growing technique many companies seem to be coming up with vaccines in a shorter period than earlier. Medicinenet has an informative article on Flu Vaccines and immunization candidates, and goes on to say why they are required. This is a good read to understand why vaccination is being given importance here. The 1918 "Spanish" Flu epidemic Virus which is very similar to the recent outbreak was re-created in a laboratory in 2005 by Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger and colleagues at AFIP. Comparison with Avian flu strains led to the conclusion that Human Flu Virus strains are derived from Avian flu virii.
Among young people and children Flu vaccines claim to be 70%-90% effective, while this drops down to 30%-40% in people aged over 65 who may have other secondary complications. Hence the scale of vaccination required for the present outbreak (which has been repeatedly noted for not being as lethal as the 1918 Flu strain) may be entirely different covering only those in a risk category. More stress is on drugs that help in combating the Virus in an infected individual. These are usually amino-acid chain suppressors like Tamiflu. There has already been mobilization and distribution of the drugs to combat such an outbreak. The WHO has done a recent donation of drugs to Nigeria. This is however related to continued support of a H5N1 outbreak since 2006.
The role and importance of the Vaccines that would be available is not yet certain. It seems that the stress is more on treatment. Insofar stress on prevention without the involvement of Primary Medical care personnel. Only those who suspect infection have been requested to visit quarantine or medical facilities for treatment. The W.H.O's present stand with the Flu Virus has been a direct result of criticism during the second widespread Avian flu H5N1 attack incidents in 2006. Attention is being given to Avian Influenza as a pandemic because it leads to complications and secondaries making it difficult to fight other diseases with stronger morbidity. -- No Greater Friend, No Greater Enemy! (Lucius Cornelius Sulla)
Using the new In-Cell growing technique many companies seem to be coming up with vaccines in a shorter period than earlier. Medicinenet has an informative article on Flu Vaccines and immunization candidates, and goes on to say why they are required. This is a good read to understand why vaccination is being given importance here. The 1918 "Spanish" Flu epidemic Virus which is very similar to the recent outbreak was re-engineered in a laboratory in 2005 by Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger and colleagues at AFIP. Comparison with Avian flu strains led to the conclusion that Human Flu Virus strains are derived from Avian flu virii.
Among young people and children Flu vaccines claim to be 70%-90% effective, while this drops down to 30%-40% in people aged over 65 who may have other secondary complications. Hence the scale of vaccination required for the present outbreak (which has been repeatedly noted for not being as lethal as the 1918 Flu strain) may be entirely different covering only those in a risk category. More stress is on drugs that help in combating the Virus in an infected individual. These are usually amino-acid chain suppressors like Tamiflu. There has already been mobilization and distribution of the drugs to combat such an outbreak. The WHO has done a recent donation of drugs to Nigeria.
The role and importance of the Vaccines that would be available is not yet certain. It seems that the stress is more on treatment. Insofar stress on prevention without the involvement of Primary Medical care personnel. Only those who suspect infection have been requested to visit quarantine or medical facilities for treatment. The WHO's present stand with the Flu Virus has been a direct result of criticism during the second widespread Avian flu H5N1 attack incidents in 2006.
Here's a note about a man who claimed that he was being "paid" by Microsoft to edit Wikipedia articles. He also claimed to be a contributor for OOXML on Wikipedia. His contributions following this article were being dismissed as biased.
There are two parts to this issue. They are (1) "Should Wikipedia offer to pay those who edit articles?" and (2) "Should any Wikipedia contributor get paid for contributing articles?" On (1), Wikipedia's stance is clear, they are not willing to pay anyone to edit articles. They would like to continue with their open model with little or no moderation. On (2) they are merely talking about the quality of the resultant article. They seriously do not have a mechanism to stop a 3rd party Wikimedia contributor from contributing for money or for the sake of love of the subject or for personal bias.
IMHO, Wikipedia must avoid policing any and all editors unless they are on their own Payroll. Their open model has served as a simple mechanism to collect relevant information on a topic which may or may not necessarily be accurate. There have been enough debates that have concluded that Wikipedia cannot be quoted as a citation for serious scientific study due to lack of moderation and verification of sources.
The specific case (covered heavily - check Techdirt for one) in question has actually brought in a much larger problem to light. How should students treat code written as part of assignments or as part of their course-work in terms of licensing? Is there a precedent for licensing? Most research activities conducted by universities have already adopted licensing framework. Here's an example. There has been debate whether such licensing should be free. Just check Medical Research and you can open Pandora's box. One more example is Singapore's A-Star which is more of a group focused on preparing research for industry adoption including licensing and legal usage terms.
How about code released in books on Data Structures, Algorithms, Fundamental C programming? To my knowledge (do correct me if I am wrong), the code is usually licensed under the same copyright notice as the book itself. In some cases, the author changes this licensing and makes it available. One example is "Numerical Recipes in C" where the licensing terms of the code from the author(s) of the book is explicit and can be found on a google search.
When it comes to university assignments, it is no news that the same template (if not the same course material itself) tends to get recirculated over a periodic basis. In some cases this period is annual and in others, the frequency is different. The debate raised is ages old. For most data structure or standard assignments of programming, you could find most of the code online. You could use this as a starting point or choose to write your own and learn your fundamentals. That's up to the student and the professor who is teaching and grading.
There is some truth in the statement (IMHO) that the Academia is shielded from the real commercial world. It works positive in some cases and is counterproductive in fields like Engineering (not Theoretical Computer Science.) In this specific case, if the University were to read all the fine print they have on students sharing course material (for which they pay for) and lecture notes and assignments, they would find the right solution. Bringing this (issue between a student and the professor) out to Open forums seems more of a publicity stunt that is going to get someone infamous for some and noticeable for a few others.
Focusing on the larger issue, a Varsity must be clear on how course-work and assignments from the students will be licensed and treated. They already have set legal precedents for most research work (which in some cases is funded by commercial bodies.) Hopefully this issue raises a flag and lets varsities understand and embrace Open Source, encourage students to use it particularly in programming assignments. At the very least they should at least reserve procedures to let a student obtain due permission for displaying his/her works online under appropriate licensing. In the absence of a precedent and clear guidelines, such confusion and unnecessary nerve wracking experiences between a Professor and a Student are more likely to surface. I hope not.
I read through the article and a lot of blogs covering Riversimple. Here's what it looks like under the hood. It seems too early and preliminary for adoption. "Open Source" seems to have been employed purely as a buzzword to generate interest. Most of the detail is actually at the 40 Fires foundation website which will probably release design schematics. Their FAQ answers questions I had in mind and is a good place for a starting read. The codename for this car is Hybran. The EU welcomes Hydrogen cars as a strong "Green" alternative.
If you do compare it to other initiatives like OSCar, you would find this option from Riversimple probably at a better stage of adoption. But until they unveil their prototypes (16-Jun-2009 is not far) and manufacturing goals (however they intend to go about it,) consumers will be skeptical about adoption. They first have to hit a note on consumers _wanting_ it or _needing_ it before proposing an attractive business model. Most of the prior comments reflect that we are not yet ready. Design momentum on OSCar seems to have stalled in the year 2006.
In contrast another vehicle release earlier this year happened in India with a lot of buzz about a $2,500 car, the Nano from India. This car _can_ do more than 56 mpg on Gasoline. It isn't green, but you can grab one, drive one and feel much safer than the electric counterparts that roam about the cities. This car went through at least 2 yrs of testing because the average consumer was scared about safety. The adoption was further slowed down by slow manufacturing response from Tata Motors.
India has allowed an Electric car (REVA) to be used within City limits (for road safety and range concerns) manufactured by Reva. The vehicle (a modest 4 wheeler) which comes in multiple flavors has low adoption rates in cities which allow it. This car through evolution has been heavier than India's top selling gasoline small-car the Maruti Suzuki 800cc 4 seater, and offers lesser range within a city. It has a very short range of 80-100km and requires battery packs to be replaced every two years (or depending on usage.) From June, 2001 the adoption has been very slow. During July, 2008 at least 260 Reva's (multiple models) were sold which is a record high. The Reva is priced at a one time price tag of close to $6,500 with an installed set of batteries. These have to be replaced at about $1000 every year. There's some comprehensive information and links on the Wikipedia Article (Reva). The cost has been a factor in slowing down adoption added to the fact that electric charges are required almost on a nightly basis. India has welcomed the car with reduced parking charges and several cuts. The G-Whiz model sold outside India is far too pricey ($12000 in Chile) and does not enjoy these environment friendly regulatory benefits.
For crowded cities in India where pollution is a heavy problem, Electrical cars with limited range for office commuters who'd prefer some shade (where public transport is a little inconvenient with timings) has received early adoption. i would presume that countries facing rapid development and growth rates will have to take this more seriously. Scaling public transport infrastructure has always been a challenge in many developing countries owing to a myriad of reasons. The basis for creating indices to track air pollution is outlined quite well in this paper (PDF) from
What remains to be patented is a method for granting patents, such as it is now. We could then charge the USPTO for each patent granted or better still deny them the rights. Gawsh!!
Why would Google put all the effort and keep their browser running on Windows with their own linux port being delayed? I have a pet theory to that. Google did in fact sponsor adoption of firefox and provided lots of plugins. Many of us *know* firefox can be a resource hog and also slower at rendering than many, we have few HTML rendering engines that can render most content. I believe that Google is abstaining from releasing a competitor to firefox on Linux platforms for some reason. The "Chrome" and "Chromium" stories are going to stay that way for a while until they have good reasoning to go native. They would still something similar to what they have done with Picasa (integrated wineserver approach.) It has worked before. So Chrome/Linux will be very similar to Chromium.
Geez, I thought we should be reading it on the spanking new $12M "controlled" In2ernet ...Guess /.ers aren't invited there.
With all the talk about "Term Papers" and plagiarism, I believe everyone is forgetting something fundamental. The idea of Educational Institutions themselves is to provide Knowledge and Information. This, is supposed to be used as a tool by a student or a professional to solve hypothetical or real world problems or both. MIT provides a good quantum of course material (that one can read and use) online.
Fundamentally, if I were to repeat Galileo's equations or Newton's Laws or Kepler's laws (and the list goes on and on) verbatim as they had written it; does that constitute plagiarism? I was under the impression that the Internet (rather the Worldwide Web) was to facilitate increased flow of information and act as a medium through which people could "access" information much faster.
If you had to go to a library to read through an Encyclopaedia (I've done this in school), it roughly takes about 15 minutes to locate the topic, and then if you want to follow a trail of information, it involves physically perusing volumes of information. I believe this is where the Internet has changed things making it simpler and easier to follow a trail of information. If one could consider textbooks, dictionaries and technical reference material in a library as valid and trusted sources of information, then I don't see why we can't have Digital versions of the same available on the Internet to facilitate ease of access. Wikipedia was indeed a very strong attempt for easy access to the tip of the iceberg on many topics. I don't see people quoting 10 other websites having "valid and trusted" information. One could raise a Platonic argument on what exactly is trusted information?
Secondly, if a student were to complete a "Term Paper" or an Assignment based on information found in an Encyclopaedia in a Library, how is that not plagiarism? Reciting a verse from the Bible or a Poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson does not constitute plagiarism. I see no reason why plagiarism is considered a major issue. If the goal of learning is only to "present" information in different forms, then there is something seriously wrong with the education system. The goal of learning is to understand how knowledge, method and prior invention can be used to solve new problems; and further creatively find entirely new solutions to problems.
If Teachers and Lecturers cannot present new problems to their students, then older solutions will inevitably reappear (either by intent plagiarism or by co-incidence.) I believe the problem is not plagiarism, but choosing the right methods of teaching that have to be revisited. Using the same technique of teaching everywhere (by standardising it) and then calling those who try and simplify their solutions under the system is the problem. To quote something, Differential Calculus was simultaneously invented by Newton and Laplace to solve the same problem. No one shouted "Plagiarism" then. Following a 3 century old education system without being able to improve heavily, now that we are past the jet age into the electronic/information/bionic age, is where we need to improvise. There has been no fundamental change in education systems though one could quote many reforms through the years to modify what has been there for ages.
Symantec Decides to Close Shop, after finding that there are no serious vulnerabilities in Windows (their bread-winner) and other commercial operating systems in the market. I wonder why they still continue to release "System Guard", "Symantec Antivirus" and other products for this platform after their study has shown that there are no more critical flaws.
Seriously, Is Symantec intending to close shop? Publicity is good, but this is terrible.
I see that Citizendium is uses the same Wikimedia engine. They use it with the authentication patch (which Wikipedia for "open" reasons has avoided.) There have been endless discussions on Wikipedia vs Encyclopedias. The one thing that stands out is, most Encyclopedias "restrict" information unless they can validate it. I know that "Consensus" in itself is not a part of Scientific method, but only the last resort when a conclusion cannot be reached. Any attempt to clone the success of an existing freely editable Encyclopedic Wiki (rather than an Encyclopedia itself) is bound to produce the same results. Changing those fundamental variables that made Wikipeida possible "freedom", "open", "editable" are known recipes for disaster.
There have been numerous debates on whether Wikipedia is a valuable resource for Research. The answer is a yes. However it is not a resource that can be cited. Like numerous sites on the internet, it only points one to other material for further reading or introduces the random reader to theories that may not essentially be correct. Some people thought Wikipedia could become a fundamental instrument to facilitate research, resulting in their attempts to create "authentication", "article validation" and the likes. A book is only as good as its authors. Wikipedia is only as good as its contributors and consumers. An Encyclopedia is no different. That would explain why Encyclopedia Brittanica and Microsoft Encarta are so different. To put it simply, this article on EncycloPedia is quite informative, yet you might not want to cite it if you are writing a thesis on them. You would need access to more Books and Information, such as those available in a Library. Wikipedia remains a source for quickly looking up information. In this usage, there are no substitutes, not even Google. It contains good pionters and sometimes Valid and credible reference material. The "Wikipedia Falling" story is simply a amplified reaction to what I term is the "Tower of Babel" effect. If there are too many people converging to one source, they tend to separate at some point; someone might understand this better. So as evolution always is, this shall happen. But Wikipedia isn't the Tower of Babel and it ain't falling.
Aside from Semco (Brazil), there aren't many companies that call themselves grassroots managed (the reverse of top-down management.) However, historically all startups during the bootstrap phase have used such a management system before melding into hierarchy-managed organisations. If Flat/Democratically managed organisations were "better" (more efficient in providing higher employee satisfaction, effective delivery of products/services) one would have noticed a good number of NGOs and small companies (think of the size of "id Software") already adopting such a model.
The truth is, there is a severe degree of biological hierarchy imposed upon human society. That prevents any model from becoming fully effective. Studyies of primates (can'c cite off-hand, but am sure there are papers backing this up) prove that there is an inherent hierarchy. Most mammals (particularly the predators) also indicate hierarchy and specialisation. Another good example would be wolves, pack hunters whose stragies are close to us. I've seen many people being seduced by the idea of a truly flat organisation, direct democracy within its limits. The trouble was they never studied why it "could" (and probably would) fail. That resulted in the failure of the model. To put it bluntly, why do you think the vast majority of organisations in the world are built on hierarchy?
If someone could spend all their time writing a speech recognition tool to aid in coding, why not go the next step and actually start creating Code that spews out Code. This is theoretically possible, the only barrier being the presentation of the problem from the human and the interpretation of the problem by the machine. Heck, that's why we write (source) "code" and we use the fastest (and perhaps the most convenient) possible input devices. Is there statistical analysis to prove that a programmer spends more of his time typing source code rather than terminal commands, compile commands, test cases or documents? Papers on Software Engineering seem to point that coding isn't the most intensive part of any software project. Did I get this wrong?
I do not disagree that speech recognition is good for the average business user who usually is accustomed to typing by hunting rather than touch typing (which causes RSI.) The easier way instead of one getting sore throat over coding would be to have ergonomically friendly keyboards; Check out Kinesis (Macromedia Flash Warning) or try and use light projection keyboards that can project keyboards on almost any desktop surface. No one seems to have commented on handwritten code, whether they produce the same Stress injuries upon writing heavy volumes of text.
Further, I remember that MIT media labs did have a paper on reduced cognitive activity while speech was being used as an interface with people (spoken and listened to.) I am unable to get the link to this paper which opined that it was better not to use speech recognition where critical thought (driving, heavy machinery, precision engineering et al) is required. There are other problems when programmers start talking, everyone has to start wearing ear-muffs (so they wouldn't hear anyone talking, directional microphones to avoid picking up another conversation or noise.) I wonder why they haven't though of all of that before letting voice recognition help in coding. This doesn't seem a remotely convincing method of source code input.
Hey I got a link Newer by two days than the article posted. Anyway, at least someone isn't repeating a post. There were Amulet cores which were essentially ARM32 clockless cores much before ARM did make a public announcement. I wouldn't be surprised if the 996HS is a rebranded and reworked Amulet. Amulet was quite well known in Academic circles for at least 3 years. That's my $0.02.
LIC India was one of the largest users of Unix (SUN Solaris) systems prior to this announcement. They had trained Unix sysadmins and tape backup systems in 1998. Long before such an official announcement was made many of the client machines connecting to the servers were being switched to Linux even at regional offices. This time Redhat is migrating the servers too to Linux. So that in a sense is the corporate world beginning to embrace Linux.
Adding to this, Reliance Infocomm Ltd., one of the largest CDMA service providers does provide a rather clumsy, yet workable tool for dialing-up internet using their phones. They try to address a small but existent Linux Desktop market. There are OEM PCs that ship with TurboLinux desktops in India from many manufacturers.
However, the largets ATM chains, SBI - State Bank of India (now on a week long strike) and several other institutions continue to use flavors of legacy old systems including Microsoft Win32 platforms. Home users are most uncomfortable switching to Linux despite the arrival of Ubuntu/Kubuntu and other easily configurable alternatives. There is still much to be done. The transition is slow but definitely happening in the market, and that's the good news.
As for outsourcing blah, that's irrelevant to the article. Service firms adopt platforms that can put them in business with their clientele. That's business sense and they keep doing it.
The Gimpshop page clearly shows that most people seem to want a familiar interface when having used photoshop earlier. The other reason maybe the host of available plugins to photoshop (Kai's powertools and a few others that they already own) for the digital image manipulation business. But as Gimpshop clearly shows, Gimp can be hacked and made to look like photoshop for the average photoshop user. I am not sure this is possible with Adobe's photoshop itself. So Opensource and its flexibility from which GIMP is born far outweighs photoshop. IMO, GIMP is already better than photoshop thanks to flexibility. For those who haven't been able to hack it themselves, they just need to ask a group of hackers to help them with a Photoshop look and feel, compatibility with photoshop plugins if they are already used to the other application. No need to look for Photoshop killers here, Photoshop has been in use (like MS Windows) and has been quite a well written product. The GIMP has reached a far more flexible state matching features in a shorter period of time due to a large user base. With a few more hacks, usability, look and feel options and plugin support for third party plugins, for the GIMP it is only a matter of time before Adobe will need to rethink their Photoshop strategy.