Of course. What is cheaper? Replacing the custom 5-year-old application that Just Works(tm) and costed $200.000 to write, and is generating $200.000 revenue with something that May Not Work(tm), or moving over to a service that is maybe $500/month more expensive but doesn't require IE7?
And in the end, place 1-2 machines with SP2, IE7 and and that service access while keeping the rest of the net unchanged.
Typing this from NT4 machine. I could move over to Win2k with custom apps that are installed here, but that would cost quite a bit of lost time, and no real gain. Moving over to XP SP2 would only result in halved performance of the machine, and would require re-purchasing all the special software in XP-compilant versions, costing equivalent of about 2 years of revenue generated by it.
The security is handled by the firewall (external) and secure usage habits. The system stability is unmatched. (sorry to say that, my personal Gentoo box has more problems than this one). With Cygwin I have all the power tools I need. And if it would happen (didn't) that some customer sends data in a format that can't be handled by any software that runs on NT4, I'd just go to a neighbour room, load it up on XP and export to something I can import locally.
"A major journal will receive ten times more papers than it can publish." and "Peer reviewers and authors are not paid. This gives them little incentive to do things either on time or in the way they are asked. Someone has to nicely chase them and organise them and help them.
Please, make your mind! Do you get too many articles and have to employ extra people to read them all, or too few articles and employ extra people to "chase the authors nicely"?
How long between the neutrino and the photon waves do you estimate? Once in space they both run at speed of light, so only the period inside the star would matter... difference of speed of light in void and speed of light in plasma doesn't seem to be VERY big...
...with the small detail that the wave travels at speed of light and there's nothing that would hint us that it's going to happen. If you were given 10 minute warning to reach shelter, that wouldn't be a problem. But you're not. You're on the day side - you're fried. On the night side - well, if the warning (at night, when most people sleep) reaches you fast enough, you can get to shelters before wind and rain from the radioactive side of the planet reaches you. Then live in the post-nuclear world where half of the planet is dead and the other contaminated.
The stunt hack was cool. Having a baloon with your logo to inflate in the middle of a foodball pitch, in the middle of the match, was cool.
What would be coool?
Distributing tee-shirts with MIT and Caltech written in funny ink, "MIT" vanishing, "Caltech" appearing shortly after being worn (so the most hardcore MIT fanatics would find themself wearing shirts advertizing Caltech). Have "Caltech" written on the square by having many of you walk casually in pattern, with some paint on shoes, so where more people walk, there's more of the paint (sand, brick dust, coal?) left, building the sign.
Yes, but it's a narrow subcategory - it's a single theorem, single problem. Like an automated testing device that is technically capable (or can't, because it's broken) test a number of devices, including itself. You're never sure if the result is valid if you use it for testing itself. But if you can use other, proven (even if way less efficient and working in much narrower area) techniques to test that device, proving it works okay, you can test anything using it.
(seems people from Microsoft, the "Get the facts" campaign, don't quite get that idea...)
Everything can be illegal today:) The question isn't if the actual author will be sued in the US. It's if somebody in the US did the same thing, would they have their asses sued?
Hens aren't particularly bright animals, so they are quite convenient target of research - rarely some obscure unknown "feature" of the brain gets in the way. So a lot of research was made. Hen's NI has weasels hard-coded as natural enemy. Seeing a weasel is a signal to panic and run. But the researchers were testing just "how exactly" is the recognition of a weasel coded. Not too exactly, it shows. Simplifying the model, they got to a point where the "weasel" was just a black ellipse cut out from paper, with two brighter spots in one end. It triggers the panic reaction in hens. Now there's another signal a hen recognises: chirp of the chicken. The signal tells the hen to search for the chicken and to nurse it. The sound must be pretty exact recording, but may be emitted by quite arbitrary object to trigger the reaction. Then they got the idea of making the "weasel" cutout to emit the chirp. The hen just stands, watching the object and completely ignores the world around. It can be pushed, it can be stabbed, it's not reacting, just standing there, only basic functions like ballancing on the legs working, but all senses are blocked - until quite a while after one of the signals is removed. Essentially, they just crashed the hen's firmware...
Actually, there's a neat hole in DMCA. It says the -solemn- purpose of your work must be to circumvent protection. Integrate mini-tetris in your crack program making it dual-function, "play or crack", or make it perform any other useful (even if completely unrelated) task besides cracking and you are DMCA-safe. With hardware cracks it's a bit harder. Say, an x-box mod chip should be usable (and marketed!) e.g. as transceiver, line buffer, power stabilizer, noise filter or any other "generic function" chip as well as the "mod chip", so you could use it not -only- for circumvention...
Actually, in a major part it depends on the mirrors. Specifically, on glass. Most of glass (at least the cheaper kind used in common mirrors) is infrared-opaque. Sure the spot will be lit brightly. So what, if all the light is in visible range, and no infrared ever gets there, dissipated in the mirrors? If they used mirrors i.e. from polished metal, that could work. Each such mirror can raise the temperature by a few degrees. This won't get you far beyond 100C and would hardly be able to set things ablaze, but could possibly melt a plastic bottle or explode an egg.
Put a switch on my box, where "Turbo" used to be - "DRM mode". Use it as signature of authenticity, as proof of safety. When "on", untrusted software won't run, spam-originated media won't display. When "off", I'm free to use any media/software I want.
There's a porn forum, where a "sponsor" offered "50 free movies to download". Actually what it meant there was 1 movie, DRM'd and 50 free views of that movie. As you can imagine, people who downloaded the file after the 50-shot license expired, weren't impressed.
DRM encoding is a lot of maths and a bit of I/O. No fancy gfx needed, no OS-specific thread stuff, #include, #include. That makes extremely easy to write the program portably. Then just compile it on all these platforms. Still not satisfied? Make it into a Java applet and include with the shop.
Whoa, your freedom ends where freedom of your neighbor begins. You are free not to read Meta tags. But if you create "potentially harmful" content, make it in such a way that the harm can be avoided. I may feel like testing nuclear weapons in my backyard and I treasure my ignorance about what radioactive neighbours around might find unhealthy.
As for "which rating" - well, the government should decide on one standard. If they don't, feel free to apply any you like.
Now waiting for YOUR favourites from the entries. Mine: -calculating surface of circle by counting the characters of ascii-arted one, -the letter from Char(lie) to Char(lotte).
- opt-in censorship list. Not opt-out/force-down-your-throat. Don't want porn? ask "no porn, please". - relatively efficient blocking mechanism - at ISP. Even if your kid is a script kiddie with total control over your computer, and you don't know a thing about it, the blocking happens at the ISP. Still, there are proxies, anonymizing etc, but it's better than "Would you please install that software that is supposed to stop you from accessing pages you shouldn't see?" - If you write "slippery" content, mark it as such. One meta tag more doesn't hurt and may help a lot.
Actually, THIS code is not only of National Security importance. It's of Global Security importance and NOT disclosing it may endanger whole planet. Sure disclosing it CAN endanger several of US businesses, therefore impacting the US economy -> National Security, but PLEASE set your priorities straight!
Actually, no. Not yet. Nothing to take on this feature really seriously.
That's probably why they've chosen Linux.
With free software community behind the project, soon there should be a plenty. Think "a box of Lego". Give it to a company expert and expect an analysis stating "This project isn't profitable enough". Give it to enthusiast kid and get some marvel made of it.
Lots of open source software just waiting to be modified to support the new feature (instead of begging manufacturers of the software to include it in new version...). There will be people actually interested in developing it - standard Open Source take: you get a new cool piece of hardware, you want to use it the way it suits you best so you write support for it, to use it yourself, then release the code. I guess this laptop is intended as a project to build a neat community of "hackers/modders" inventing new ways to use the cool feature. Something like TiVo - modding it is part of the fun.
Instead of asking "what software is positioned to take advantage?", ask "what software can we modify to take advantage?". That's what this thing is about.
I'd rather have 10 batteries that last 3 hours each than 1 that lasts 10 hours. The problem is they are NOT equivalent in prize/amphour. I've moved to accumulators though.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course.
What is cheaper? Replacing the custom 5-year-old application that Just Works(tm) and costed $200.000 to write, and is generating $200.000 revenue with something that May Not Work(tm), or moving over to a service that is maybe $500/month more expensive but doesn't require IE7?
And in the end, place 1-2 machines with SP2, IE7 and and that service access while keeping the rest of the net unchanged.
Typing this from NT4 machine. I could move over to Win2k with custom apps that are installed here, but that would cost quite a bit of lost time, and no real gain. Moving over to XP SP2 would only result in halved performance of the machine, and would require re-purchasing all the special software in XP-compilant versions, costing equivalent of about 2 years of revenue generated by it.
The security is handled by the firewall (external) and secure usage habits. The system stability is unmatched. (sorry to say that, my personal Gentoo box has more problems than this one). With Cygwin I have all the power tools I need. And if it would happen (didn't) that some customer sends data in a format that can't be handled by any software that runs on NT4, I'd just go to a neighbour room, load it up on XP and export to something I can import locally.
"A major journal will receive ten times more papers than it can publish."
and
"Peer reviewers and authors are not paid. This gives them little incentive to do things either on time or in the way they are asked. Someone has to nicely chase them and organise them and help them.
Please, make your mind! Do you get too many articles and have to employ extra people to read them all, or too few articles and employ extra people to "chase the authors nicely"?
How long between the neutrino and the photon waves do you estimate? Once in space they both run at speed of light, so only the period inside the star would matter... difference of speed of light in void and speed of light in plasma doesn't seem to be VERY big...
...with the small detail that the wave travels at speed of light and there's nothing that would hint us that it's going to happen. If you were given 10 minute warning to reach shelter, that wouldn't be a problem. But you're not. You're on the day side - you're fried. On the night side - well, if the warning (at night, when most people sleep) reaches you fast enough, you can get to shelters before wind and rain from the radioactive side of the planet reaches you. Then live in the post-nuclear world where half of the planet is dead and the other contaminated.
The stunt hack was cool. Having a baloon with your logo to inflate in the middle of a foodball pitch, in the middle of the match, was cool.
What would be coool?
Distributing tee-shirts with MIT and Caltech written in funny ink, "MIT" vanishing, "Caltech" appearing shortly after being worn (so the most hardcore MIT fanatics would find themself wearing shirts advertizing Caltech). Have "Caltech" written on the square by having many of you walk casually in pattern, with some paint on shoes, so where more people walk, there's more of the paint (sand, brick dust, coal?) left, building the sign.
Actually, the Tomb of the Unknown Tool is somewhere 2 floors down in the cellars, so no, these are the palms that accompanied "The Other institute"...
This is news? The only people who would care about this are Sci or Eng students.
:P
Including former and wannabe Sci or Eng students, you get 95% of the Slashdot population
Yes, but it's a narrow subcategory - it's a single theorem, single problem. Like an automated testing device that is technically capable (or can't, because it's broken) test a number of devices, including itself. You're never sure if the result is valid if you use it for testing itself. But if you can use other, proven (even if way less efficient and working in much narrower area) techniques to test that device, proving it works okay, you can test anything using it.
(seems people from Microsoft, the "Get the facts" campaign, don't quite get that idea...)
Sooner or later someone will come up with code that can proof itself and the code that proofs theorems...
uh.
no.
I think there's a flaw in that conception.
Everything can be illegal today :)
The question isn't if the actual author will be sued in the US. It's if somebody in the US did the same thing, would they have their asses sued?
Even better...
Hens aren't particularly bright animals, so they are quite convenient target of research - rarely some obscure unknown "feature" of the brain gets in the way. So a lot of research was made.
Hen's NI has weasels hard-coded as natural enemy. Seeing a weasel is a signal to panic and run. But the researchers were testing just "how exactly" is the recognition of a weasel coded. Not too exactly, it shows. Simplifying the model, they got to a point where the "weasel" was just a black ellipse cut out from paper, with two brighter spots in one end. It triggers the panic reaction in hens.
Now there's another signal a hen recognises: chirp of the chicken. The signal tells the hen to search for the chicken and to nurse it. The sound must be pretty exact recording, but may be emitted by quite arbitrary object to trigger the reaction.
Then they got the idea of making the "weasel" cutout to emit the chirp.
The hen just stands, watching the object and completely ignores the world around. It can be pushed, it can be stabbed, it's not reacting, just standing there, only basic functions like ballancing on the legs working, but all senses are blocked - until quite a while after one of the signals is removed. Essentially, they just crashed the hen's firmware...
Actually, there's a neat hole in DMCA. It says the -solemn- purpose of your work must be to circumvent protection. Integrate mini-tetris in your crack program making it dual-function, "play or crack", or make it perform any other useful (even if completely unrelated) task besides cracking and you are DMCA-safe.
With hardware cracks it's a bit harder. Say, an x-box mod chip should be usable (and marketed!) e.g. as transceiver, line buffer, power stabilizer, noise filter or any other "generic function" chip as well as the "mod chip", so you could use it not -only- for circumvention...
I bet Google Gulps are good with vodka. Shit, anything is good with vodka.
/.*/ with vodka.
/.*/, not /.+/ Actually '' with vodka is quite a decent choice.)
Definitely, overstatement. At least before first 2 glasses of
Whiskey and soda is spoiling two good things. -- Wright, I think.
(yes,
Yeah, and disguise it as a completely harmless power plant.
Actually, in a major part it depends on the mirrors. Specifically, on glass. Most of glass (at least the cheaper kind used in common mirrors) is infrared-opaque. Sure the spot will be lit brightly. So what, if all the light is in visible range, and no infrared ever gets there, dissipated in the mirrors?
If they used mirrors i.e. from polished metal, that could work. Each such mirror can raise the temperature by a few degrees. This won't get you far beyond 100C and would hardly be able to set things ablaze, but could possibly melt a plastic bottle or explode an egg.
Put a switch on my box, where "Turbo" used to be - "DRM mode". Use it as signature of authenticity, as proof of safety. When "on", untrusted software won't run, spam-originated media won't display. When "off", I'm free to use any media/software I want.
There's a porn forum, where a "sponsor" offered "50 free movies to download". Actually what it meant there was 1 movie, DRM'd and 50 free views of that movie.
As you can imagine, people who downloaded the file after the 50-shot license expired, weren't impressed.
DRM encoding is a lot of maths and a bit of I/O. No fancy gfx needed, no OS-specific thread stuff, #include, #include. That makes extremely easy to write the program portably. Then just compile it on all these platforms.
Still not satisfied? Make it into a Java applet and include with the shop.
Essentially, they got down to the level of Superman comics?
Whoa, your freedom ends where freedom of your neighbor begins.
You are free not to read Meta tags. But if you create "potentially harmful" content, make it in such a way that the harm can be avoided. I may feel like testing nuclear weapons in my backyard and I treasure my ignorance about what radioactive neighbours around might find unhealthy.
As for "which rating" - well, the government should decide on one standard. If they don't, feel free to apply any you like.
Now waiting for YOUR favourites from the entries.
Mine:
-calculating surface of circle by counting the characters of ascii-arted one,
-the letter from Char(lie) to Char(lotte).
- opt-in censorship list. Not opt-out/force-down-your-throat. Don't want porn? ask "no porn, please".
- relatively efficient blocking mechanism - at ISP. Even if your kid is a script kiddie with total control over your computer, and you don't know a thing about it, the blocking happens at the ISP. Still, there are proxies, anonymizing etc, but it's better than "Would you please install that software that is supposed to stop you from accessing pages you shouldn't see?"
- If you write "slippery" content, mark it as such. One meta tag more doesn't hurt and may help a lot.
Actually, THIS code is not only of National Security importance. It's of Global Security importance and NOT disclosing it may endanger whole planet. Sure disclosing it CAN endanger several of US businesses, therefore impacting the US economy -> National Security, but PLEASE set your priorities straight!
...till someone writes a Firefox extension to exploit the z-index: CSS parameter for rendering HTML in 3D :)
Actually, no. Not yet. Nothing to take on this feature really seriously.
That's probably why they've chosen Linux.
With free software community behind the project, soon there should be a plenty. Think "a box of Lego". Give it to a company expert and expect an analysis stating "This project isn't profitable enough". Give it to enthusiast kid and get some marvel made of it.
Lots of open source software just waiting to be modified to support the new feature (instead of begging manufacturers of the software to include it in new version...). There will be people actually interested in developing it - standard Open Source take: you get a new cool piece of hardware, you want to use it the way it suits you best so you write support for it, to use it yourself, then release the code. I guess this laptop is intended as a project to build a neat community of "hackers/modders" inventing new ways to use the cool feature. Something like TiVo - modding it is part of the fun.
Instead of asking "what software is positioned to take advantage?", ask "what software can we modify to take advantage?". That's what this thing is about.
I'd rather have 10 batteries that last 3 hours each than 1 that lasts 10 hours. The problem is they are NOT equivalent in prize/amphour.
I've moved to accumulators though.