I'm not sure I understand your logic. You say it's illegal to make a copy of a live performance because it's a broadcast. But then, isn't every recording made a copy of a broadcast, be it made by your voice, others voices, or off some broadcast mechanism like the internet/telephone/radio. If I'm just recording myself talking and the radio is on, am I violating the law? It seems to me that it's really hard to claim that it is because fundamentally you're making it very difficult for people to ever record anything.
It'd seem that such a recording would clearly then fall as illegal/legal based on fair use. Ie, recording a concert you went to to relive it surely is for personal, non-commercial use and would likely be fair use. So would having background music you're singing to in a recording that you end up playing for your friends some times. But, when you start selling such recordings, it seems reasonable to see that as illegal because it's against fair use.
I'd assume that the ban was put in place to stop personal use and to better clarify that bootlegs couldn't be sold. Case-law, though, should have been sufficient though, given how clear selling bootlegs is commercial which almost always innately throws out the exception of fair use.
Do you think oil based automobiles are going to cause flash flooding? Melt the ice caps? Put various coastlines under several meters of water?
I think if you believe that billions of tons of CO2 can do harm to the ecology of various places, you should consider the ramification of billions of tons of water. That was the point of my speculation. I don't think any efficient (assuming that externalities aren't taken into consideration) power source (strictly speaking, hydrogen is a power store, but it's the chief usable component being discussed) will have zero or even minute consequences when there are millions to billions of humans using said power source/store. As such, it is wise to either consider the possible consequences of a power source/store and be prepared to live with them, think of a new power source/store without the problems (like I said, I don't think it's possible, but I'd love to be proven wrong), or possibly internalize the consequences of the power source/store so that the accumulated side effects is minimized.
I've yet to hear of a mechanism, short of government, to aim towards the goal of internalization. Since I'm pro-small government, I'm edged towards the first option, since hydrogen/water based power store is one of the safest I can imagine. If a mechanism can be devised to achieve the third option without government, I'm all ears, as such a system would likely lead to the use of hydrogen or a comparable power store, being the most efficient known (taking into consideration externalities).
And where do you think all of this water is going to come from? Oceans and lakes. Where is going to end up? There's three possibilities: the atmosphere, the pavement, or stored in the car.
What is water vapor? A greenhouse gas (though a milder one than CO2). What does an even more water saturated atmosphere cause? More storms. In fact, the gas released will also cause an increase in air temperature (you can argue the same of fossil fuel burning). So, dumping into the atmosphere will mean a milder form of the global warming trend.
What about dumping it on the pavement? Beyond the fact that'll quick create lakes, it'll also ruin the environment (like cities) by flooding the place. Cities might have reservoirs to catch the waste, but they're the place with the least natural environment to lose to oversaturation.
Okay, what about storing it? That's a horrible idea. The more fuel you use, the heavier the car is. That means that the reverse of normal cars occurs (ie, the lighter empty tank makes the car more efficient). A few gallons of water, over the long term, is an efficiency loss. It's also a hassle to have to drain the car every time you fill the car up. The big plus, though, is that such a system offers a pretty reasonable recyclable source of water.
In the end, all hydrogen based engine forms I've heard of rely on dumping water vapor into the atmosphere. Thankfully the limitations of the atmosphere to hold water will at some point stop global warming. But I can only imagine the nature of ecological chaos for most of the world to be saturated in water vapor (including more violent hurricanes and thunder storms, wetter deserts, and even wetter tropics). When you take billions of tons of anything and start adding it at random to the atmosphere, you're almost assured to cause ecological chaos.
How would an efficient hydrogen-powered fuel cell solve all our problems? Do you believe that an even more efficient (approaching 100%) internal combustion engine would solve all our problems? Yes, it'd mean we'd be using 1/4th as much gas as we do now which would head-off our dependency on Middle East oil for some time (possibly rather short, given we'd probably just expand our power desires with that increase efficiency).
But the truth of the matter is, oil isn't a renewable resource. Hydrogen isn't either (do you see any natural generators lying around?). Sun-based mechanisms might be the answer (a la the pig fart/methane of Mad Max). But, that's where the real "solution" begins. Even a rather utterly inefficient engine with a limitless fuel source (well, reasonably limitless) is better than very efficient engine with a limited fuel source, in the long run.
It sounds like you're just focusing on the short-term solution to get people interested in finding a long-term energy source. The thing is, without a cheap long-term energy source, the current inefficient engines and their cheap short-term source will continue to look more attractive. I think this counts as the cart before the horse.
It's a different definition of bloat than you're accustomed to, I think. You see, the actual graphical detail gained from going from 1MB to 128MB textures in minute. Simple math says that a 128MB texture equates to an ~5800x5800 square. Few people have monitors of that resolution, and I highly doubt that game makers are actually using single textures of that size (I can imagine having 2+ layers of textures that'd approach that size, however).
The problem is, there's been very minimal marginal return in all the ways in which texture size has increased. In reality, once textures get remotely decent in size (ie, all polygons of a character, structure, etc have a unique texture assigned to them) the next biggest problem is the number of polygons themselves. In DOOM 3, you still see definitively non-round surfaces where there should be.
All that effort to squeeze 100,000 polygons down to 20,000 and then throwing more detailed textures in doesn't solve the fundamental problem that the size requires of the necessary polygons, the animation required, and the sheer GPU power necessary are still many levels away from where there's a noticeable increase in quality to the average user. This ignores that every 3D game I've played has, with enough effort, demonstrated clipping errors.
So, it's hard to not call it bloat. You can expect to just double or triple the polygon count and expect the solution to solve itself. Something like the GPU actually splitting curves into polygons and rendering detailed textures on top is probably the step in the right direction (along with layered textures to simulate skin, various lighting effects (like mirrors, the changing opacity of glass, etc), and the minor things like more uniqueness in characters).
So, I'm sorry you don't realize it's bloat. But, just like an article said a long time ago, the human eye is more forgiving on things that only remotely look real than the things that strive to look real. Every new step which is a massive effort to add various effects will only be shrugged off until there's a clear point where the only real limitation to properly appearing things is the willingness to add the details. We're not there yet, so every baby step along the way looks like bloat to such "massive" GPU enhancement.
Can I cry that you're a moron? I mean this because the "left" candidate, Kerry, believes the exact same thing. He didn't like the war. He didn't like going to war. But he believes the President should be the one with the power to decare war.
Hence, this, if anything, is both anti-Bush and anti-Kerry (ie, anti-left and right; ie, every year the left and right look less different). That leaves Nader and Badnarik as "reasonable" candidates to consider. The Liberation Party (Badnarik's group) is on the ballet in 48 states and the District of Columbia. I say, vote for a change.
The thing is, that the previous analogies have been flawed. When it comes down to it, there's very little in the car's software that every changes. And the actual cars themselves have reached a limitation on their potential power for their perceived worth in large part due to the limitations of humans to drive effectively at high speeds (there's also the physical limitations of steering, alloy properties, and such).
There isn't, however, a limit (as of yet) to the computational power possible in a computer. And it's software (somewhat analogous to the driver) that keeps having higher requirements. Fundamentally, there's no "standard interface" between hardware and software. This is both because no one can agree on what interface is best and because there's nothing fundamentally requiring one interface over another. Writing a compatibility layer between interfaces is at best tedious and at worse so computationally expensive that it's still not a standard feature even *with* the massive increases in computational power (you can possibly also blame this fact on there being one main leader, Microsoft, and hence no real overwhelming need to design a standard interface regardless of possible performance penalties).
Various problems that we do want computers to do at some point are in fact exponential difficult. That means that short of a redesign of computers to somehow scale for such situations (such as neural nets) or there being a great limitation on the data set, computers as we know them have a long way to go before they reach a "satisfactory" level, without a strong need to be upgraded daily.
Yet, amazingly computers have already nearly reached the fully commodity stage. So, continuing the car analogy, entirely inept people can just throw away one broken computer (broken through their ineptitude) for another just like they do with cars. Over the long term, that's far from the economic solution. Assumedly, eventually people will realize that and learn enough to at least service their computer/car. Most people do, at least. So, I say give them time to understand it because people are smart enough to figure out how to advantage themselves.
It's not obvious that you can't protect music or video or whatever. The current "big threat" to the RIAA and MPAA is the internet. So, all that has to be done is blocking the recording of content on new DRM computers and successfully encrypting files well enough to make it near impossible to crack.
The general idea is to put in each computer a public and private key. The public key will verify that the media is allowed to be used. And the private key will guarantee only said computers can use the media. The private key and public key are in the BIOS, but the path between the BIOS and CPU are either epoxied over or embedded too deeply for the traces to be tapped for any usable signal. Even more, the BIOS might have its own small CPU to communicate encryptedly to the CPU to further obtuse the problem.
My point is, a few keys like these allow for a tree of more keys. And those more keys prevent more than one copy of a media from being used. So, yes, the media can be leaked. And such leaks will surely be watermarked and the source fired/sued. And the media will eventually be cracked. But, if the key used is even remotely long, it will take months or years using a whole army of computers. That's both the strength of encryption for the user and the weakness of encryption for the masses to be tied by it.
So, the core keys will be the ultimate prize as they will yield all other keys. And surely some software will have defects, and Microsoft, et al will surely try their best to make sure that none of those defects will leak any of the core keys. And if the keys are ever found, new keys will be made, old media will be invalidated, and people will be forced to upgrade under a strict program to prevent wide scale piracy.
The point also is to isolate the pirate into smaller groups and then they can hopefully bust them all in fewer swoops. Instead of facing 33 million pirates, there might only be 2 or 3 million. And the numbers will dwindle as few pre-DRM computers work. And the dedicated pirates will use all sorts of tricks to try to pirate data, but they media companies will mostly be in control.
I guess that's my point. You can't emulate what you don't know. And the computer DRM system proposed is geared towards making sure you never know. All the big players are joining together to stop piracy of their own media or to be in the in group when all the major media switches to DRM-only releases. So, the big question is just how long until the raw leaks stop, the cracking becomes impossibly hard, and the pre-DRM computers die of old age.
The idea, though, is to make all mainstream software/media only work with the specialed DRM hardware. And the hardware is designed to make it incredibly difficult to monitor the hardware to crack the software/media. Brute forcing the encryption is mostly infeasible, unless the encryption algorithm is proven flawed.
So, yes, non-mainstream can still produce their games and software on their general purpose computers. But, there will be a distinct lock-out between the two groups. And the dam between the two will be hardware backed encryption. And finding a key will be the holy grail that the group of hackers will search for. Of course, we can always hope for a defect in software to bust it all open like the ones in XBox or Gamecube.
And if everyone just stuck with standards, browsers would have to be judged on things like stability, speed, and general non-suckiness. We wouldn't want that.
On a side note, "Google: The Service that Launched a Google of Browsers".
It seems Microsoft had good reason to fear a non-OS dependent service becoming dominant. Too bad for them they didn't notice Google until it was too late.
I'd imagine it'd go more like blocking all forms of input and trusted|untrusted program interaction. Then, MS could drop supporting MP3 directly while trying to get people to migrate over to their protected format (they're already doing that already). Overall, I get the impression that the control sought won't come for a long, long time, after there's no longer a computer around still made without DRM. So, it's more a fear that it's a long and creeping problem that has a high chance of being unstoppable once it begins.
You don't seem to realize that watt == j/s. Ie, a measurement of energy per second. Heat is drawn out from outside or an underground reserve (where you likely were dumping heat as part of air conditioning during the summer). And heat doesn't run the heat pump, but electricity does. So, you can't directly take the 4 watts of heat and use it to run the heat pump. Now, assumedly you *could* take the heat pump, attach it to a generator, and draw out enough heat from the surrounding air to produce more electricity than the heat pump original took. Most generators can get up to 30%..maybe 35% efficiency, in the conversion of heat to electricity. So, there should be a net gain of 1.4x the electricity.
The few problems with this is, a heat pump isn't designed to heat up water to over 100C. In fact, the coefficient drops pretty sharply when used to heat above ~20-30C. This is mostly because even if it is warm outside, you can't expect to be continuously drawing in heat without causing a temperature drop in the source (with a whole city using heat pumps, you can just imagine the temperature dropping a few degrees; this is at least one reason vertically oriented (ie, underground) heat sinks are preferred by people (also, ground tends to be a good insulator, so it's probably at least 5-6C warmer underground, which is an easier place to draw heat from, hence boosting the coefficient)) and a drop in the source temperature decreases the efficiency/coefficient. So, I highly doubt that such a system would work well. Even if it did work, the cost to put a generator into every home is pretty cost prohibitive for such marginal net gain (remember, that 35% heat->electricity conversion is peak efficiency, involving a good bit of maintainance, repair, etc).
I have to take offense at that, given that I've spent the last four months hacking a GPL'd project - osCommerce - and have not / do not plan to make the source code available.
Why? Because the code is so hacked, and so site-specific, that little benefit would accrue to the OSS community. Even if I DID publish, odds are nobody would be interested in this 'fork', as it's not nearly as clean, nor as upgradable, as the base package.
Not to be a troll, but that's a pretty bad excuse. It's like saying you wouldn't give a dollar to charity because a dollar probably wouldn't directly do much good. If you choose not to distribute it and give out the source or not give out the source anyways without distributing it, fine; I'm glad to see you exercising your rights. It just seems a bit unnerving to hear you say that you're holding back because you don't think it worthwhile to anyone else. If it's truly not worthwhile to them, it's little to no loss to them (okay, hypothetically it could be a big loss by going with it and realizing it'd require too much changes to be usable, but only a good deal into development; but even a mild disclaimer that "my version is site specific; you probably want the original osCommerce located <here>" would be enough to make even that possible issue moot). It might be an annoyance to you (from people asking you questions about the software), but that's a separate issue. So, please, don't let the unlikeliness of the source being used hold you back. Maybe even if your version is directly useless, it'll be a good example on how to modify osCommerce to their own end.
It's called a heat pump. It's an engine, just like a car engine is. Its job is to move heat. And it itself generates heat. That's why an air conditioner tends to have a coefficient at least one less than a heat pump (yes, a heat pump is just an air conditioner ran backwards, drawning in heat from an outside source (be it outside the home or deep below the home)).
>>"Correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't this have been done right in the beginning itself?"
>Depends on which question you're asking.
>"I want Windows to run faster, should we be performing buffer checks?"
>"I want Windows to be more secure, should we be performing buffer checks?"
How about:
"I want Windows to not do buffer checks so it exploits faster."
Seriously, the actual amount of work to guard against buffer overflows is generally either O(n) (for C strings) or O(1) (for just about anything else). An overhall of strings could make them O(1) for a size increase. And at that point, the performance penalty for doing buffer overflow checks is insanely small (mostly any cache miss you might have for the size of the error checking/reporting code; ie, a lot less than 9% and probably less than 0.1% for most any modern system).
The problem is poor coding. Automatic detection by the language (like with Java, Basic, etc) without error/exception handling leave DoS instead of exploitation. If we can get security through stack protection to the same effect, there's no major reason to switch languages.
In fact, the core thing that needs to be done is the code needs to be fixed. And that means several independent audits. Microsoft can't realistically expect to foister this cost as an upgrade directly, so I have little doubt they're using the knowledge gained from the stack guard protection to track down and fix problems in their new release, Longhorn. I actually hope they succeed. It'd be nice for Microsoft to be a good leader for a change.
"Yeah, sure, OSS runs over people just like Microsoft, but only Microsoft deserves criticism because they're more arrogant about it?"
Reword it to:
"Yeah, sure, OSS runs over people just like Microsoft, but Microsoft deserves more criticism because they're more arrogant about it?"
And you've got the point. And if Mozilla's developers start acting secretive or arrogant, I and others will start criticizing them more. That's how the world works. Of course, there's always going to be different degrees of "fan boys" who ignore the bad things a person/group does and still cheers long after most people feel they're deserving.
As for fishing for excuses, like I was saying, it's the fact that Microsoft has had it occur so damn often while *still* acting like everything is a-okay that makes each new instance just another reenforcement of why I dislike Microsoft's attitude. More than anything, it tells me I can never really trust them when they say their software is good or secure. I most often trust the weary person more than the arrogant person because the weary person is probably closer to the truth. If you don't work that way, that's your thing. But please don't accuse me of "fishing for excuses".
No, you're not lining up the right parts. The drug use is the development of software (whatever you like to do to feel good in your spare time). The running over people is the security vulnerabilities (which is bound to happen). And the arrogance is the arrogance of the drug user (can't get much more direct than that).
So, the problem isn't the drug use. And it isn't even the running over people persay, though that's clearly a problem. But if a single person/company keeps running over people and acting like everything is okay, you start getting pissed off at them. I really don't know else to make it more clear.
I'd guess that this focus will end up biting MS in the ass, in the end. Currently, Microsoft is trying (well, still trying) to get Windows on servers, datacenters, etc. If it's not a desktop, Microsoft is trying to put Windows on it. Why? Because they've saturated their growth in the desktop market (that came about as a result of the mass computer buying of the 90s). The only way to continue their growth is to diversify. And the biggest and most successful brand name they have is Windows.
The problem is, while they're busying trying to still penetrate the server market, which Linux is doing a nice job at expanding into (at the expense, mostly, of Unix machines), Linux has the real potential to encroach on the desktop market. I'm sure Microsoft realizes that. I'm sure they also realizing that "circling the wagons" to "weather out" the Linux threat won't work. That's the whole point of Longhorn. The fact that WinFS *still* isn't coming in Windows is a real disappoint/problem, though. It's both a sign of a core problem (backwards compatibility, both in the outside appearance but also in the code itself which is surely a major reason it was put on hold) and a sign that Microsoft's strategy of adding in tons of features (vapor or otherwise) isn't working.
In the past, the FUD/vapor of a perspective product launch, even if it kept being pushed back, would end up killing or crippling the competitor's product. Instead, Linux really hasn't done anything but slowly grow in the desktop space. Without an actual strategy to combat Linux, a sudden burst in people using Linux could severely cripple the Windows money stream for Microsoft. Then, Microsoft will have to use its massive cash reserve to try to come up with a way to continue to make money.
Of course, if Microsoft develops another highly profitable department, this becomes less of an issue. But, the only thing that's even close to that is XBox. Maybe that'll keep Microsoft alive, but then Microsoft will only be known as a #2 or #3 console maker. I don't think the CEO of Microsoft would like that too much.
Maybe an analogy would make it more clear? I don't scorn drug users. I scorn drug users who go around running over people because they're stoned while claiming they're perfectly okay to be doing drug.
That is to say, I don't scorn all developers that produce software that has bugs. I scorn those who write software with bugs that gloat about how they write great, easy-to-use, etc software. Clearly, if their software didn't have bugs, there'd be nothing to scorn except their arrogance. If their software didn't actually have all the problems it does, they'd have a well-founded arrogance, and any scorn I'd feel would be jealousy. That's not the case.
Bottom line is that Miranda gained unauthorized access to information and stole that information, and he did so at the behest of his superiors. While it seems a stretch to call him a hacker or a cracker because of his lack of skills, it describes what he did, regardless of the challenge it presented.
He didn't steal the information. He committed copyright infringement and possibly trade secret violations. And yes, he probably should be "hung out to dry" for it. But, making a photocopy of documents in a filing cabinet doesn't make you a hacker (or cracker) either. Just because you commit a crime on a computer doesn't make you a hacker.
Hacker means interest in a system and how it works (computer or otherwise). Cracker means breaking into a system for gain. Even if you consider crackers hackers, he's still not a hacker because he didn't *break* into anything. It's at minimal the difference between trespassing and breaking & entering. That doesn't mean the illegal end is any less punishable, but it probably* does mean something for punishment of the means.
*This assumes that anyone else actually bothers to make the distinction.
Here's the problem. Premium customers might be at less risk not directly because they know there's a flaw (since most Windows shops can't drop everything and switch to another OS until a patch is release) but because there might be a mechanism to mitigate or remove the risk without a patch that is an acceptable act. At the same time, black hats in a premium company can use the information to make a worm to affect everyone else.
The real issue issue then is MS's position on the subject. If MS *was* giving out patches only to premium members, then such patches would be paramount to extortion given the monopolistic power of MS. However, without preferential patch release, MS can safely steer clear of that obstacle and point out the various past product defect cases where it was never considered extortion to not tell everyone about the defect at once. Of course being a monopoly, having to pay for patches in any way might be seen as a form of extortion. Realize, extortion and blackmail are illegal even though none of their components are necessarily illegal; with the threat of worms so prevalent, it'd be hard to argue that MS doesn't realize that not giving some people patches isn't a form of threat.
Even assuming he does believe all of this, all that work just means something for people to do. Look at all the rather stupid jobs people in the US do that have little to no meaning (assuming one realizes that once you reach say $1 million/year, there's little point to working for more; or the various jobs where you basically do nothing, be it in business or government, yet are still well paid). It seems clearly the case that power/wealth are ends in themselves for some people, and they don't care that they're doing something "worthwhile" or that any of it makes any real sense to them.
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I'm not sure I understand your logic. You say it's illegal to make a copy of a live performance because it's a broadcast. But then, isn't every recording made a copy of a broadcast, be it made by your voice, others voices, or off some broadcast mechanism like the internet/telephone/radio. If I'm just recording myself talking and the radio is on, am I violating the law? It seems to me that it's really hard to claim that it is because fundamentally you're making it very difficult for people to ever record anything.
It'd seem that such a recording would clearly then fall as illegal/legal based on fair use. Ie, recording a concert you went to to relive it surely is for personal, non-commercial use and would likely be fair use. So would having background music you're singing to in a recording that you end up playing for your friends some times. But, when you start selling such recordings, it seems reasonable to see that as illegal because it's against fair use.
I'd assume that the ban was put in place to stop personal use and to better clarify that bootlegs couldn't be sold. Case-law, though, should have been sufficient though, given how clear selling bootlegs is commercial which almost always innately throws out the exception of fair use.
Do you think oil based automobiles are going to cause flash flooding? Melt the ice caps? Put various coastlines under several meters of water?
I think if you believe that billions of tons of CO2 can do harm to the ecology of various places, you should consider the ramification of billions of tons of water. That was the point of my speculation. I don't think any efficient (assuming that externalities aren't taken into consideration) power source (strictly speaking, hydrogen is a power store, but it's the chief usable component being discussed) will have zero or even minute consequences when there are millions to billions of humans using said power source/store. As such, it is wise to either consider the possible consequences of a power source/store and be prepared to live with them, think of a new power source/store without the problems (like I said, I don't think it's possible, but I'd love to be proven wrong), or possibly internalize the consequences of the power source/store so that the accumulated side effects is minimized.
I've yet to hear of a mechanism, short of government, to aim towards the goal of internalization. Since I'm pro-small government, I'm edged towards the first option, since hydrogen/water based power store is one of the safest I can imagine. If a mechanism can be devised to achieve the third option without government, I'm all ears, as such a system would likely lead to the use of hydrogen or a comparable power store, being the most efficient known (taking into consideration externalities).
And where do you think all of this water is going to come from? Oceans and lakes. Where is going to end up? There's three possibilities: the atmosphere, the pavement, or stored in the car.
What is water vapor? A greenhouse gas (though a milder one than CO2). What does an even more water saturated atmosphere cause? More storms. In fact, the gas released will also cause an increase in air temperature (you can argue the same of fossil fuel burning). So, dumping into the atmosphere will mean a milder form of the global warming trend.
What about dumping it on the pavement? Beyond the fact that'll quick create lakes, it'll also ruin the environment (like cities) by flooding the place. Cities might have reservoirs to catch the waste, but they're the place with the least natural environment to lose to oversaturation.
Okay, what about storing it? That's a horrible idea. The more fuel you use, the heavier the car is. That means that the reverse of normal cars occurs (ie, the lighter empty tank makes the car more efficient). A few gallons of water, over the long term, is an efficiency loss. It's also a hassle to have to drain the car every time you fill the car up. The big plus, though, is that such a system offers a pretty reasonable recyclable source of water.
In the end, all hydrogen based engine forms I've heard of rely on dumping water vapor into the atmosphere. Thankfully the limitations of the atmosphere to hold water will at some point stop global warming. But I can only imagine the nature of ecological chaos for most of the world to be saturated in water vapor (including more violent hurricanes and thunder storms, wetter deserts, and even wetter tropics). When you take billions of tons of anything and start adding it at random to the atmosphere, you're almost assured to cause ecological chaos.
How would an efficient hydrogen-powered fuel cell solve all our problems? Do you believe that an even more efficient (approaching 100%) internal combustion engine would solve all our problems? Yes, it'd mean we'd be using 1/4th as much gas as we do now which would head-off our dependency on Middle East oil for some time (possibly rather short, given we'd probably just expand our power desires with that increase efficiency).
But the truth of the matter is, oil isn't a renewable resource. Hydrogen isn't either (do you see any natural generators lying around?). Sun-based mechanisms might be the answer (a la the pig fart/methane of Mad Max). But, that's where the real "solution" begins. Even a rather utterly inefficient engine with a limitless fuel source (well, reasonably limitless) is better than very efficient engine with a limited fuel source, in the long run.
It sounds like you're just focusing on the short-term solution to get people interested in finding a long-term energy source. The thing is, without a cheap long-term energy source, the current inefficient engines and their cheap short-term source will continue to look more attractive. I think this counts as the cart before the horse.
It's a different definition of bloat than you're accustomed to, I think. You see, the actual graphical detail gained from going from 1MB to 128MB textures in minute. Simple math says that a 128MB texture equates to an ~5800x5800 square. Few people have monitors of that resolution, and I highly doubt that game makers are actually using single textures of that size (I can imagine having 2+ layers of textures that'd approach that size, however).
The problem is, there's been very minimal marginal return in all the ways in which texture size has increased. In reality, once textures get remotely decent in size (ie, all polygons of a character, structure, etc have a unique texture assigned to them) the next biggest problem is the number of polygons themselves. In DOOM 3, you still see definitively non-round surfaces where there should be.
All that effort to squeeze 100,000 polygons down to 20,000 and then throwing more detailed textures in doesn't solve the fundamental problem that the size requires of the necessary polygons, the animation required, and the sheer GPU power necessary are still many levels away from where there's a noticeable increase in quality to the average user. This ignores that every 3D game I've played has, with enough effort, demonstrated clipping errors.
So, it's hard to not call it bloat. You can expect to just double or triple the polygon count and expect the solution to solve itself. Something like the GPU actually splitting curves into polygons and rendering detailed textures on top is probably the step in the right direction (along with layered textures to simulate skin, various lighting effects (like mirrors, the changing opacity of glass, etc), and the minor things like more uniqueness in characters).
So, I'm sorry you don't realize it's bloat. But, just like an article said a long time ago, the human eye is more forgiving on things that only remotely look real than the things that strive to look real. Every new step which is a massive effort to add various effects will only be shrugged off until there's a clear point where the only real limitation to properly appearing things is the willingness to add the details. We're not there yet, so every baby step along the way looks like bloat to such "massive" GPU enhancement.
Can I cry that you're a moron? I mean this because the "left" candidate, Kerry, believes the exact same thing. He didn't like the war. He didn't like going to war. But he believes the President should be the one with the power to decare war.
Hence, this, if anything, is both anti-Bush and anti-Kerry (ie, anti-left and right; ie, every year the left and right look less different). That leaves Nader and Badnarik as "reasonable" candidates to consider. The Liberation Party (Badnarik's group) is on the ballet in 48 states and the District of Columbia. I say, vote for a change.
The thing is, that the previous analogies have been flawed. When it comes down to it, there's very little in the car's software that every changes. And the actual cars themselves have reached a limitation on their potential power for their perceived worth in large part due to the limitations of humans to drive effectively at high speeds (there's also the physical limitations of steering, alloy properties, and such).
There isn't, however, a limit (as of yet) to the computational power possible in a computer. And it's software (somewhat analogous to the driver) that keeps having higher requirements. Fundamentally, there's no "standard interface" between hardware and software. This is both because no one can agree on what interface is best and because there's nothing fundamentally requiring one interface over another. Writing a compatibility layer between interfaces is at best tedious and at worse so computationally expensive that it's still not a standard feature even *with* the massive increases in computational power (you can possibly also blame this fact on there being one main leader, Microsoft, and hence no real overwhelming need to design a standard interface regardless of possible performance penalties).
Various problems that we do want computers to do at some point are in fact exponential difficult. That means that short of a redesign of computers to somehow scale for such situations (such as neural nets) or there being a great limitation on the data set, computers as we know them have a long way to go before they reach a "satisfactory" level, without a strong need to be upgraded daily.
Yet, amazingly computers have already nearly reached the fully commodity stage. So, continuing the car analogy, entirely inept people can just throw away one broken computer (broken through their ineptitude) for another just like they do with cars. Over the long term, that's far from the economic solution. Assumedly, eventually people will realize that and learn enough to at least service their computer/car. Most people do, at least. So, I say give them time to understand it because people are smart enough to figure out how to advantage themselves.
It's not obvious that you can't protect music or video or whatever. The current "big threat" to the RIAA and MPAA is the internet. So, all that has to be done is blocking the recording of content on new DRM computers and successfully encrypting files well enough to make it near impossible to crack.
The general idea is to put in each computer a public and private key. The public key will verify that the media is allowed to be used. And the private key will guarantee only said computers can use the media. The private key and public key are in the BIOS, but the path between the BIOS and CPU are either epoxied over or embedded too deeply for the traces to be tapped for any usable signal. Even more, the BIOS might have its own small CPU to communicate encryptedly to the CPU to further obtuse the problem.
My point is, a few keys like these allow for a tree of more keys. And those more keys prevent more than one copy of a media from being used. So, yes, the media can be leaked. And such leaks will surely be watermarked and the source fired/sued. And the media will eventually be cracked. But, if the key used is even remotely long, it will take months or years using a whole army of computers. That's both the strength of encryption for the user and the weakness of encryption for the masses to be tied by it.
So, the core keys will be the ultimate prize as they will yield all other keys. And surely some software will have defects, and Microsoft, et al will surely try their best to make sure that none of those defects will leak any of the core keys. And if the keys are ever found, new keys will be made, old media will be invalidated, and people will be forced to upgrade under a strict program to prevent wide scale piracy.
The point also is to isolate the pirate into smaller groups and then they can hopefully bust them all in fewer swoops. Instead of facing 33 million pirates, there might only be 2 or 3 million. And the numbers will dwindle as few pre-DRM computers work. And the dedicated pirates will use all sorts of tricks to try to pirate data, but they media companies will mostly be in control.
I guess that's my point. You can't emulate what you don't know. And the computer DRM system proposed is geared towards making sure you never know. All the big players are joining together to stop piracy of their own media or to be in the in group when all the major media switches to DRM-only releases. So, the big question is just how long until the raw leaks stop, the cracking becomes impossibly hard, and the pre-DRM computers die of old age.
The idea, though, is to make all mainstream software/media only work with the specialed DRM hardware. And the hardware is designed to make it incredibly difficult to monitor the hardware to crack the software/media. Brute forcing the encryption is mostly infeasible, unless the encryption algorithm is proven flawed.
So, yes, non-mainstream can still produce their games and software on their general purpose computers. But, there will be a distinct lock-out between the two groups. And the dam between the two will be hardware backed encryption. And finding a key will be the holy grail that the group of hackers will search for. Of course, we can always hope for a defect in software to bust it all open like the ones in XBox or Gamecube.
And if everyone just stuck with standards, browsers would have to be judged on things like stability, speed, and general non-suckiness. We wouldn't want that.
On a side note, "Google: The Service that Launched a Google of Browsers".
It seems Microsoft had good reason to fear a non-OS dependent service becoming dominant. Too bad for them they didn't notice Google until it was too late.
I, sir/madam, am deeply offended with your use of my handle. Now, what's your name and address so I can sue you? :)
That's SO pre-1984. There are no Bic pens. There never were Bic pens. Now, join me in our 30 minute hate against thieves.
I'd imagine it'd go more like blocking all forms of input and trusted|untrusted program interaction. Then, MS could drop supporting MP3 directly while trying to get people to migrate over to their protected format (they're already doing that already). Overall, I get the impression that the control sought won't come for a long, long time, after there's no longer a computer around still made without DRM. So, it's more a fear that it's a long and creeping problem that has a high chance of being unstoppable once it begins.
You don't seem to realize that watt == j/s. Ie, a measurement of energy per second. Heat is drawn out from outside or an underground reserve (where you likely were dumping heat as part of air conditioning during the summer). And heat doesn't run the heat pump, but electricity does. So, you can't directly take the 4 watts of heat and use it to run the heat pump. Now, assumedly you *could* take the heat pump, attach it to a generator, and draw out enough heat from the surrounding air to produce more electricity than the heat pump original took. Most generators can get up to 30%..maybe 35% efficiency, in the conversion of heat to electricity. So, there should be a net gain of 1.4x the electricity.
The few problems with this is, a heat pump isn't designed to heat up water to over 100C. In fact, the coefficient drops pretty sharply when used to heat above ~20-30C. This is mostly because even if it is warm outside, you can't expect to be continuously drawing in heat without causing a temperature drop in the source (with a whole city using heat pumps, you can just imagine the temperature dropping a few degrees; this is at least one reason vertically oriented (ie, underground) heat sinks are preferred by people (also, ground tends to be a good insulator, so it's probably at least 5-6C warmer underground, which is an easier place to draw heat from, hence boosting the coefficient)) and a drop in the source temperature decreases the efficiency/coefficient. So, I highly doubt that such a system would work well. Even if it did work, the cost to put a generator into every home is pretty cost prohibitive for such marginal net gain (remember, that 35% heat->electricity conversion is peak efficiency, involving a good bit of maintainance, repair, etc).
I have to take offense at that, given that I've spent the last four months hacking a GPL'd project - osCommerce - and have not / do not plan to make the source code available.
Why? Because the code is so hacked, and so site-specific, that little benefit would accrue to the OSS community. Even if I DID publish, odds are nobody would be interested in this 'fork', as it's not nearly as clean, nor as upgradable, as the base package.
Not to be a troll, but that's a pretty bad excuse. It's like saying you wouldn't give a dollar to charity because a dollar probably wouldn't directly do much good. If you choose not to distribute it and give out the source or not give out the source anyways without distributing it, fine; I'm glad to see you exercising your rights. It just seems a bit unnerving to hear you say that you're holding back because you don't think it worthwhile to anyone else. If it's truly not worthwhile to them, it's little to no loss to them (okay, hypothetically it could be a big loss by going with it and realizing it'd require too much changes to be usable, but only a good deal into development; but even a mild disclaimer that "my version is site specific; you probably want the original osCommerce located <here>" would be enough to make even that possible issue moot). It might be an annoyance to you (from people asking you questions about the software), but that's a separate issue. So, please, don't let the unlikeliness of the source being used hold you back. Maybe even if your version is directly useless, it'll be a good example on how to modify osCommerce to their own end.
It's called a heat pump. It's an engine, just like a car engine is. Its job is to move heat. And it itself generates heat. That's why an air conditioner tends to have a coefficient at least one less than a heat pump (yes, a heat pump is just an air conditioner ran backwards, drawning in heat from an outside source (be it outside the home or deep below the home)).
>>"Correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't this have been done right in the beginning itself?"
>Depends on which question you're asking.
>"I want Windows to run faster, should we be performing buffer checks?"
>"I want Windows to be more secure, should we be performing buffer checks?"
How about:
"I want Windows to not do buffer checks so it exploits faster."
Seriously, the actual amount of work to guard against buffer overflows is generally either O(n) (for C strings) or O(1) (for just about anything else). An overhall of strings could make them O(1) for a size increase. And at that point, the performance penalty for doing buffer overflow checks is insanely small (mostly any cache miss you might have for the size of the error checking/reporting code; ie, a lot less than 9% and probably less than 0.1% for most any modern system).
The problem is poor coding. Automatic detection by the language (like with Java, Basic, etc) without error/exception handling leave DoS instead of exploitation. If we can get security through stack protection to the same effect, there's no major reason to switch languages.
In fact, the core thing that needs to be done is the code needs to be fixed. And that means several independent audits. Microsoft can't realistically expect to foister this cost as an upgrade directly, so I have little doubt they're using the knowledge gained from the stack guard protection to track down and fix problems in their new release, Longhorn. I actually hope they succeed. It'd be nice for Microsoft to be a good leader for a change.
"Yeah, sure, OSS runs over people just like Microsoft, but only Microsoft deserves criticism because they're more arrogant about it?"
Reword it to:
"Yeah, sure, OSS runs over people just like Microsoft, but Microsoft deserves more criticism because they're more arrogant about it?"
And you've got the point. And if Mozilla's developers start acting secretive or arrogant, I and others will start criticizing them more. That's how the world works. Of course, there's always going to be different degrees of "fan boys" who ignore the bad things a person/group does and still cheers long after most people feel they're deserving.
As for fishing for excuses, like I was saying, it's the fact that Microsoft has had it occur so damn often while *still* acting like everything is a-okay that makes each new instance just another reenforcement of why I dislike Microsoft's attitude. More than anything, it tells me I can never really trust them when they say their software is good or secure. I most often trust the weary person more than the arrogant person because the weary person is probably closer to the truth. If you don't work that way, that's your thing. But please don't accuse me of "fishing for excuses".
No, you're not lining up the right parts. The drug use is the development of software (whatever you like to do to feel good in your spare time). The running over people is the security vulnerabilities (which is bound to happen). And the arrogance is the arrogance of the drug user (can't get much more direct than that).
So, the problem isn't the drug use. And it isn't even the running over people persay, though that's clearly a problem. But if a single person/company keeps running over people and acting like everything is okay, you start getting pissed off at them. I really don't know else to make it more clear.
I'd guess that this focus will end up biting MS in the ass, in the end. Currently, Microsoft is trying (well, still trying) to get Windows on servers, datacenters, etc. If it's not a desktop, Microsoft is trying to put Windows on it. Why? Because they've saturated their growth in the desktop market (that came about as a result of the mass computer buying of the 90s). The only way to continue their growth is to diversify. And the biggest and most successful brand name they have is Windows.
The problem is, while they're busying trying to still penetrate the server market, which Linux is doing a nice job at expanding into (at the expense, mostly, of Unix machines), Linux has the real potential to encroach on the desktop market. I'm sure Microsoft realizes that. I'm sure they also realizing that "circling the wagons" to "weather out" the Linux threat won't work. That's the whole point of Longhorn. The fact that WinFS *still* isn't coming in Windows is a real disappoint/problem, though. It's both a sign of a core problem (backwards compatibility, both in the outside appearance but also in the code itself which is surely a major reason it was put on hold) and a sign that Microsoft's strategy of adding in tons of features (vapor or otherwise) isn't working.
In the past, the FUD/vapor of a perspective product launch, even if it kept being pushed back, would end up killing or crippling the competitor's product. Instead, Linux really hasn't done anything but slowly grow in the desktop space. Without an actual strategy to combat Linux, a sudden burst in people using Linux could severely cripple the Windows money stream for Microsoft. Then, Microsoft will have to use its massive cash reserve to try to come up with a way to continue to make money.
Of course, if Microsoft develops another highly profitable department, this becomes less of an issue. But, the only thing that's even close to that is XBox. Maybe that'll keep Microsoft alive, but then Microsoft will only be known as a #2 or #3 console maker. I don't think the CEO of Microsoft would like that too much.
There's no way I know of. You can use
ln(x) = n * ln(n)
and fiddle with n until it's close enough, though.
Maybe an analogy would make it more clear? I don't scorn drug users. I scorn drug users who go around running over people because they're stoned while claiming they're perfectly okay to be doing drug.
That is to say, I don't scorn all developers that produce software that has bugs. I scorn those who write software with bugs that gloat about how they write great, easy-to-use, etc software. Clearly, if their software didn't have bugs, there'd be nothing to scorn except their arrogance. If their software didn't actually have all the problems it does, they'd have a well-founded arrogance, and any scorn I'd feel would be jealousy. That's not the case.
Bottom line is that Miranda gained unauthorized access to information and stole that information, and he did so at the behest of his superiors. While it seems a stretch to call him a hacker or a cracker because of his lack of skills, it describes what he did, regardless of the challenge it presented.
He didn't steal the information. He committed copyright infringement and possibly trade secret violations. And yes, he probably should be "hung out to dry" for it. But, making a photocopy of documents in a filing cabinet doesn't make you a hacker (or cracker) either. Just because you commit a crime on a computer doesn't make you a hacker.
Hacker means interest in a system and how it works (computer or otherwise). Cracker means breaking into a system for gain. Even if you consider crackers hackers, he's still not a hacker because he didn't *break* into anything. It's at minimal the difference between trespassing and breaking & entering. That doesn't mean the illegal end is any less punishable, but it probably* does mean something for punishment of the means.
*This assumes that anyone else actually bothers to make the distinction.
Here's the problem. Premium customers might be at less risk not directly because they know there's a flaw (since most Windows shops can't drop everything and switch to another OS until a patch is release) but because there might be a mechanism to mitigate or remove the risk without a patch that is an acceptable act. At the same time, black hats in a premium company can use the information to make a worm to affect everyone else.
The real issue issue then is MS's position on the subject. If MS *was* giving out patches only to premium members, then such patches would be paramount to extortion given the monopolistic power of MS. However, without preferential patch release, MS can safely steer clear of that obstacle and point out the various past product defect cases where it was never considered extortion to not tell everyone about the defect at once. Of course being a monopoly, having to pay for patches in any way might be seen as a form of extortion. Realize, extortion and blackmail are illegal even though none of their components are necessarily illegal; with the threat of worms so prevalent, it'd be hard to argue that MS doesn't realize that not giving some people patches isn't a form of threat.
Even assuming he does believe all of this, all that work just means something for people to do. Look at all the rather stupid jobs people in the US do that have little to no meaning (assuming one realizes that once you reach say $1 million/year, there's little point to working for more; or the various jobs where you basically do nothing, be it in business or government, yet are still well paid). It seems clearly the case that power/wealth are ends in themselves for some people, and they don't care that they're doing something "worthwhile" or that any of it makes any real sense to them.