Yep. You know those fancy encryption schemes that stop the evil criminal soviet fraudsters stealing your credit card numbers? They're based on the fact that, while finding out the product of two primes is easy, finding those two primes again from the given product is harder than it looks for big primes. A 'public key' is the product of two suitably large primes, and a 'private key' is those two primes.
Of course, we're still only on 256-bit encryption right now. Should be a while until however-many-bits-this-prime-needs-bit encryption will pass into common use.
Depends what type of socialism you're talking about. Some types advocate heavy taxes and such on big business (eg, my particular stand), wheras others are more laissez-faire (eg, socio-anarchism), and of course there are the models that don't have private propery. Lumping everything vaguely welfare under the red flag is a fallacy, and that's not even touching on the more exotic left-wing principles.
I read the article shortly before it appeared on/., and was irritated to find that it makes no mention of the FSF or Richard Stallman at all, despite making the point that software patents are bad and are stifling creativity. How to take action against such a great threat must surely be an important part of any critical article, yet the author makes no effort to do any such thing.
Other than that, though, it was a good read, covering more than just software patents, and is a good attention-raiser for this important topic. Maybe the mainstream media will finally wake up to the very real threat IP poses...
Yay, now I'm going to move to Kansas and get my kids to learn about the FSM!
Wait, what do you mean they're not teaching about His Noodliness? I thought the purpose of this exercise was to expose schoolkids to other theories! Now we see the religious oppression inherent in the system!
OT, but I must rise to the dangling pro-gun-nut bait, no matter what hooks are in it.
An eye for an eye leaves the world blind - ever heard that quote? These women need to protect themselves, but why with a gun? If they're being maltreated, the obvious action is to tell the police. If the police don't want anything to do with it, sell the story to the tabloids - that'll get them interested alright. Carrying a gun around is not a valid solution to all life's problems!
Yep. Take a look at Gmail - there are a LOT of.py files running around in there. Not to mention that the original web crawler/indexer (the one that started their meteoric rise) was written in Python...
Python isn't 'pure' OO - it can do functional programming as well with only minor irritations (ie, the lack of genuine anonymous functions - lambda in Python doesn't cut it!). That's why you have to include the brackets in a function call, because otherwise you're just referencing the function itself, as in:
2045 seems a bit soon - after all, we can still get pretty detailed information on the mainframes of the 1950s. Also, CDs are a -very- well known format, and have been for the past 10-15 years at least, so they'll hardly be marked down as insignificant. Now, the formats on said CD could be more problematic, but 8/16-bit Unicode or ASCII are again very well known protocols and text written in them should survive. If my descendants can't figure out how to read a popular hard storage medium or what's on it, I don't want them to have my family fortune.
Off Topic, but I find it hilarious that the first 6 comments all focus on the 'No details are emitted' phrase. And I was going to make a snide reference to it as well, but I'd prefer to be modded 'Off Topic' rather than 'Redundant', since at least I have something (slightly) useful to say.
C'mon. This has been around for years. Has noone ever happened to turn on a packet sniffer or something while CoolWebSearch was active and seen some dodgy traffic? And CWS is pretty well known. I'd bet it's been deconstructed at least once. And if someone's taken the time to reverse-engineer it, I'm sure they'd look through the code they got back, and notice that there were some socket writing subroutines.
That's not the point. It's actually possible for you to install Linux on a Windows machine and have it dual boot, but good luck trying to put Windows on a Linux box and have it work the way you want it to. Unless, of course, you were actually looking to make your Linux setup unuseable...
You'd think that, wouldn't you? I'm not saying that HP are putting in wifi cards that won't work with Linux, but what I am saying is don't take it for granted that any manufacturer will look too deeply into anything.
Maybe not most teenagers generally, but most teenagers who are likely to encounter this competition (ie, surf the web) will probably have at least a vague concept of 1984. Even if it is only from reality TV.
Fun while it lasted. Now let's go remember the better days of the franchise. So anyone up for taking down some more old enterprises (pun 100% intended) that have gone on for far too long as well? The prequels to Star Wars should never have been.
People have tried having multimedia phones before. 3G hasn't been as successful as the companies hoped. Who actually buys a mobile to watch low-quality video clips on? Chances are, these mobile phones will cost vastly more than an ipod, and maybe have other disadvantages. Plus you've got the 'ew, windows' effect on some people to contend with.
You could have a manual meta-check on all the positives to make sure they aren't anything vital. Computers don't make mistakes, they just don't think like we do so sometimes it's necessary to sort through it all.
Yet another example of buereocracy getting in the way of everyday things. It's basically a lose-lose situation - they can't keep on accumilating email, but they can't delete it either for fear of losing anything important. So the solution? Just add a little disclaimer: "Any email stored in this system is liable to be deleted at any time. By using this system you agree unconditianally to this." Voila. No more problem.
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The Camel-Platypus. What else could represent such a wonderful book and fusion of methodologies?
Yep. You know those fancy encryption schemes that stop the evil criminal soviet fraudsters stealing your credit card numbers? They're based on the fact that, while finding out the product of two primes is easy, finding those two primes again from the given product is harder than it looks for big primes. A 'public key' is the product of two suitably large primes, and a 'private key' is those two primes.
Of course, we're still only on 256-bit encryption right now. Should be a while until however-many-bits-this-prime-needs-bit encryption will pass into common use.
Depends what type of socialism you're talking about. Some types advocate heavy taxes and such on big business (eg, my particular stand), wheras others are more laissez-faire (eg, socio-anarchism), and of course there are the models that don't have private propery. Lumping everything vaguely welfare under the red flag is a fallacy, and that's not even touching on the more exotic left-wing principles.
I read the article shortly before it appeared on /., and was irritated to find that it makes no mention of the FSF or Richard Stallman at all, despite making the point that software patents are bad and are stifling creativity. How to take action against such a great threat must surely be an important part of any critical article, yet the author makes no effort to do any such thing.
Other than that, though, it was a good read, covering more than just software patents, and is a good attention-raiser for this important topic. Maybe the mainstream media will finally wake up to the very real threat IP poses...
Yay, now I'm going to move to Kansas and get my kids to learn about the FSM!
Wait, what do you mean they're not teaching about His Noodliness? I thought the purpose of this exercise was to expose schoolkids to other theories! Now we see the religious oppression inherent in the system!
If there's one thing you can never have too much of, it's features*.
*Not true: creature feep is an evil, evil disease. Take note, kiddies!
OT, but I must rise to the dangling pro-gun-nut bait, no matter what hooks are in it. An eye for an eye leaves the world blind - ever heard that quote? These women need to protect themselves, but why with a gun? If they're being maltreated, the obvious action is to tell the police. If the police don't want anything to do with it, sell the story to the tabloids - that'll get them interested alright. Carrying a gun around is not a valid solution to all life's problems!
My +3 staff is bigger than your +3 staff!
Yep. Take a look at Gmail - there are a LOT of .py files running around in there. Not to mention that the original web crawler/indexer (the one that started their meteoric rise) was written in Python...
Python isn't 'pure' OO - it can do functional programming as well with only minor irritations (ie, the lack of genuine anonymous functions - lambda in Python doesn't cut it!). That's why you have to include the brackets in a function call, because otherwise you're just referencing the function itself, as in:
def foo():
print 'Foo!'
def bar():
print 'Bar!'
return bar
baz = foo
qig = foo()
Functions are first-class objects as well - end this class war!
2045 seems a bit soon - after all, we can still get pretty detailed information on the mainframes of the 1950s. Also, CDs are a -very- well known format, and have been for the past 10-15 years at least, so they'll hardly be marked down as insignificant. Now, the formats on said CD could be more problematic, but 8/16-bit Unicode or ASCII are again very well known protocols and text written in them should survive. If my descendants can't figure out how to read a popular hard storage medium or what's on it, I don't want them to have my family fortune.
Off Topic, but I find it hilarious that the first 6 comments all focus on the 'No details are emitted' phrase. And I was going to make a snide reference to it as well, but I'd prefer to be modded 'Off Topic' rather than 'Redundant', since at least I have something (slightly) useful to say.
I just use them as low-cost frisbees.
Note the 'almost' in the parent post. Besides, you forgot about the power-hungry flashing neon lights and sirens in the case mod!
Q: How do you know when you've achieved Lisp Enlightenment? A: When the parenthesis vanish.
C'mon. This has been around for years. Has noone ever happened to turn on a packet sniffer or something while CoolWebSearch was active and seen some dodgy traffic? And CWS is pretty well known. I'd bet it's been deconstructed at least once. And if someone's taken the time to reverse-engineer it, I'm sure they'd look through the code they got back, and notice that there were some socket writing subroutines.
That's not the point. It's actually possible for you to install Linux on a Windows machine and have it dual boot, but good luck trying to put Windows on a Linux box and have it work the way you want it to. Unless, of course, you were actually looking to make your Linux setup unuseable...
Shh, don't give the patentors any ideas...
You'd think that, wouldn't you? I'm not saying that HP are putting in wifi cards that won't work with Linux, but what I am saying is don't take it for granted that any manufacturer will look too deeply into anything.
Maybe not most teenagers generally, but most teenagers who are likely to encounter this competition (ie, surf the web) will probably have at least a vague concept of 1984. Even if it is only from reality TV.
Fun while it lasted. Now let's go remember the better days of the franchise. So anyone up for taking down some more old enterprises (pun 100% intended) that have gone on for far too long as well? The prequels to Star Wars should never have been.
People have tried having multimedia phones before. 3G hasn't been as successful as the companies hoped. Who actually buys a mobile to watch low-quality video clips on? Chances are, these mobile phones will cost vastly more than an ipod, and maybe have other disadvantages. Plus you've got the 'ew, windows' effect on some people to contend with.
You could have a manual meta-check on all the positives to make sure they aren't anything vital. Computers don't make mistakes, they just don't think like we do so sometimes it's necessary to sort through it all.
Yet another example of buereocracy getting in the way of everyday things. It's basically a lose-lose situation - they can't keep on accumilating email, but they can't delete it either for fear of losing anything important. So the solution? Just add a little disclaimer: "Any email stored in this system is liable to be deleted at any time. By using this system you agree unconditianally to this." Voila. No more problem.
Hmm, I think I'll take an extra portion of 50 Cent, some D12, and maybe some Boybands in there too. Oh yeah, and an extra large drink.