Something that might be very useful in the Linux Advocacy field, (assuming that Xandros really is that great), would be a live Xandros CD a la Knoppix. Because then, you can show off the spiffiness, ease of use, and general awesomeness of Xandros without your potential user being forced to commit to it by wiping the windows partition before they even see it. And no, screenshots do not suffice.
Of course, take note of the fact that that last "Civil War Widow" was born in 1906...
And her civil war vet husband was 81 when she married him at age 21... So although it is true that she does qualify as a civil war widow, she was born more than forty years after the end of the war...
As was mentioned in a comment to a previous story, patents are intended to spur innovation, not stifle it. Basically, in the old days of guilds and trade secrets and such, the only way to ever learn about what ideas were out there was to be in the trade. Patents were a way for the government to say "Here, if you tell everyone about your trade secret, so that they can innovate on it, then we will guarantee that noone will simply steal it. In fact, if they want to USE it (note: that means use as in use it unchanged, not use as in come up with other ideas based on it), they have to pay you."
Invalidating every patent would mean a return to the days when innventors and innovators just kept their mouths shut, because if they told anyone about their idea, somebody would steal it. So neither the inventor nor anyone else would benefit from the idea.
There might be a surge of innovation (although I doubt it... the patents don't prevent you from coming up with your own idea, they just prevent you from abusing someone else's.), but I doubt it would last.
That said, I do not think that our patent system is ideal. It is frequently exploited and used to stifle ideas and innovation. But at its best, it would promote creativity.
Of course, since we're on the topic of historical examples...
Just one or two off the top of my head:
Caesar. Julius Caesar was a temporary (did you get that) TEMPORARY security measure for the Roman republic. During times of war, a military dictator would be installed for a short period of time, I want to say on the order of a year, but I could be wrong, or it could be until the crisis was over, but anyway the point is that he was supposed to have a very short term, and then return control to the senate. well, good ole'boy Julius decided that power was sweet, and came and crossed the Rubicon to mount an attack on Rome. He took over control of the entire republic, disbanding the senate etc. Sure he didn't last long, I believe he was slain within about a month (or am I mixing that up with the play... hmmm not sure) but anyway, he was killed pretty quickly. Afterwards, however, another dictator took over, and the senate never was reestablished. The dictators became emperors, and the Roman republic became a rather totalitarian empire.
One case in which a temporary measure for extreme times didn't go away.
Also, there was this little matter over in East Europe, called the Bolshevik Revolution. A communist revolution is supposed to give power to the people. And I think we all know about how well that turned out.
I don't know this for sure, but I would be surprised if the command leadership were part of Lenin and Trotsky's original PR package. That was (probably) a temporary measure to get the fledgling government on its feet, until the rule by the people could really get going... right...
I'm not saying that security measures are inherently bad, or that the Patriot Act etc are definitely going to continue indefinitely, but it is certainly not Historical Fact that temporary security measures in extreme times always fade away quietly.
However, I think that most people, including historians who purport to have all the Facts, would agree that most of the things that you mentioned were not good things in and of themselves. They may have been made necessary by the extremity of the times, but that does not mean that they should be unopposed.
One side note. I think I recall that there were a large number of Middle Eastern people who were interned without charge immediately after 911 for several months at least in what was it ?Guantanamo Bay? Maybe? Ask John Ashcroft.
Try scientific programming. Thats what I did all summer, and it was great. Real problems that require real solutions to be worked out by computer.
Science is where programming got started. Yeah Yeah I know... cryptography... the Enigma machine... cryptography is where computers were invented, but science (Esp. Los Alamos after WWII) is where programming took off. And science is one place where programming will never die off. There will always be another problem to work out, and most of them in the future will require computers. Most of the easy problems in physics that have nice analytical solutions have been solved. The remaining problems are crazy difficult ones that have no analytic solution, so numerical methods (read computer programs) are used. And there will always be another physics problem. If we ever claim to have discovered everything, we will be wrong. period. (Don't believe me? Read up on Godel's Theorem...)
It is significantly easier and more efficient (no need to learn other programs and switch context) for the average office worker if the "source control system" is integrated into the application itself, for example, if you get actions like check-out/check-in/view history right in your File menu.
Actually, if you take that approach, then pretty soon, every app has its own internal source control system, with its own peculiarities and interface, and now your average office worker has to learn how each one works, and keep them all straight, and remember what doesn't work in this one, and what does work in this one, etc. etc. etc. Whereas if your company just uses one source control system, then your average office worker does have to learn that, but once its learned, its learned for every application you need it for, for ever (until the next release:-p)
they will have a significantly harder time breaking the system into pieces with stuff off of the Internet.
Here's an idea. stop me if its already been done:
I know its possible to create a chroot "sandbox" so that you can run stuff inside of it and not have to worry about screwing your system. would it be possible to create an application which would do this automatically, so that when you download something off the internet, you can easily run it in a sandbox without taking the time to create such a sandbox by hand? of course, then there's the issue of whether or not linux n00bs would actually know or care to use such a thing or not...
Much as I hate to admit it.... This does seem like a legitimate thing to patent. If it weren't Microsorft, I'd be cheering for the Patent Office actually doing something right for once.... That is IF there is no prior art. Which I have no idea about.
BTW- can I patent the recursive Fibonnacci algorithm??
Thanks for the clarification. As I read the article, I found myself thinking, hmmm I wonder what the other side of the story that I'm not reading is? now I know.
It doesn't sound to me like the seed he saved was the GMO. it sounds like the only GM crop in his field was in a roadside ditch, growing wild. maybe I'm misreading the article, but if thats the case, then your argument falls flat. otherwise, I'd tend to agree with you.
I also know you're joking, but ship-mounted lasers would not be particularly effective. I guess maybe as an anti-ship weapon, but as seen in a previous comment, range to horizon from 100' above sea-level (ie the top of a naval ship) is ~11 nautical miles. so, you could hit a 100' tall target (ie a comparable ship) ~22 nautical miles away. Whereas the rail gun has an effective range an entire order of magnitude higher.
Yes WWII... actually, the germans (and probably us as well) had guns in World War One (namely, the Paris Gun Thanks google;) with a range of up to 131 km (81.4 mi) (70.73 nautical miles) which, incidentally is farther than any of the guns you just mentioned.
But, on another note, I would conjecture that air support will probably not be doing the spotting. My guess is that satellites will do that job. Also, the projectiles are supposed to be guided by GPS.
Did you say the ERGM's effective range is approx. 41 NANOMETERS? surely not... Mind clarifying the jargon for someone who doesn't work for Raytheon? (although my father does)
for those who don't want to bother with NYTimes
"soul sucking registration" (or bugmenot.com;)
Cones, Curves, Shells, Towers: He Made Paper Jump to Life
By MARGARET WERTHEIM
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. - On the mantel of a quiet suburban home here stands a curious object resembling a small set of organ pipes nestled into a neat, white case. At first glance it does not seem possible that such a complex, curving form could have been folded from a single sheet of paper, and yet it was.
The construction is one of an astonishing collection of paper objects folded by Dr. David Huffman, a former professor of computer science at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a pioneer in computational origami, an emerging field with an improbable name but surprisingly practical applications.
Dr. Huffman died in 1999, but on a recent afternoon his daughter Elise Huffman showed a visitor a sampling of her father's enigmatic models. In contrast to traditional origami, where all folds are straight, Dr. Huffman developed structures based around curved folds, many calling to mind seedpods and seashells. It is as if paper has been imbued with life.
In another innovative approach, Dr. Huffman explored structures composed of repeating three-dimensional units - chains of cubes and rhomboids, and complex tesselations of triangular, pentagonal and star-shaped blocks. From the outside, one model appears to be just a rolled-up sheet of paper, but looking down the tube reveals a miniature spiral staircase. All this has been achieved with no cuts or glue, the one classic origami rule that Dr. Huffman seemed inclined to obey.
Derived from the Japanese ori, to fold, and gami, paper, origami has come a long way from cute little birds and decorative boxes. Mathematicians and scientists like Dr. Huffman have begun mapping the laws that underlie folding, converting words and concepts into algebraic rules. Computational origami, also known as technical folding, or origami sekkei, draws on fields that include computational geometry, number theory, coding theory and linear algebra. This weekend, paper folders from around the nation will gather at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York for the annual convention of Origami USA. At an adjacent conference on origami and education, Dr. Robert Lang, a leading computational origamist, will give a talk on mathematics and its application to origami design, including such real-world problems as folding airbags and space-based telescopes.
Dr. Lang, a laser physicist in Alamo, Calif., who trained at the California Institute of Technology, gave up that career 18 months ago to become a full-time folder. "Some people are peculiarly susceptible to the charms of origami," he said, "and somewhere along the way the ranks of the infected were joined by mathematicians." Dr. Lang is the author of a recent book on technical folding, "Origami Design Secrets: Mathematical Methods for an Ancient Art."
Most computational origamists are driven by sheer curiosity and the aesthetic pleasure of these structures, but their work is also finding application in fields like astronomy and protein folding, and even automobile safety. These days when Dr. Lang is not inventing new models using a specialized origami software package he has developed, he acts as an origami consultant. He has helped a German manufacturer design folding patterns for airbags and advised astronomers on how to fold up a huge flat-screen lens for a telescope based in space.
Dr. Lang has been studying Dr. Huffman's models and research notes, and is amazed at what he has found. Although Dr. Huffman is a legend in the tiny world of origami sekkei, few people have seen his work. During his life he published only one paper on the subject. Dr. Huffman worked on his foldings from the early 1970's, and over the years, said Dr. Lang, "he anticipated a great deal of what other people have since rediscovered or are only now discovering. At least half of what he did is
You go too far by saying that Automatic/Forced patching is the _only_ way to make discovery worthwhile.
It might be the only practical way, or the only realistic way, but the fact is, there are other conceivable ways. For example, every user might spontaneously decide to install the patch.
And here's something to chew on: what happens when the automated patch server is compromised, and a deliberate security hole is auto/force installed on every machine? That would seem to me to be a pretty grave danger, esp. if the fact that the server was compromised is not caught quickly and fixed to repatch systems to remove the bug. and given the rate of worm spread, quickly means you have just a few minutes to discover and correct the problem, because the hacker undoubtedly has an exploit for his custom hole just sitting and waiting to use.
These people are not geeks my friend. Sadly, you seem to have encountered the rare, but highly dangerous wannabeus geekus. I would advise you to vacate the area immediately, as they frequently attack without any warning whatsoever, spraying their deadly stupidius maximus poison directly into one ear, where is promptly destroys all brain tissue it comes into contact with, and flows out the other ear. Run. Run fast. Run hard. and whatever you do, DON'T LOOK BACK.
yeah... because somehow it costs the university to give him his degree... if they were gonna keep him around for tuition money, then they might as well just go ahead and give him the degree...
Think before you post.
Slashdot Mirror
Something that might be very useful in the Linux Advocacy field, (assuming that Xandros really is that great), would be a live Xandros CD a la Knoppix. Because then, you can show off the spiffiness, ease of use, and general awesomeness of Xandros without your potential user being forced to commit to it by wiping the windows partition before they even see it. And no, screenshots do not suffice.
No one is trying to get YOU to switch to Xandros.
We are trying to get Windoze (l)users to switch to Linux. Thus, all the claims that it works as easily as Windoze, and better to boot.
Of course, take note of the fact that that last "Civil War Widow" was born in 1906...
And her civil war vet husband was 81 when she married him at age 21... So although it is true that she does qualify as a civil war widow, she was born more than forty years after the end of the war...
As was mentioned in a comment to a previous story, patents are intended to spur innovation, not stifle it. Basically, in the old days of guilds and trade secrets and such, the only way to ever learn about what ideas were out there was to be in the trade. Patents were a way for the government to say "Here, if you tell everyone about your trade secret, so that they can innovate on it, then we will guarantee that noone will simply steal it. In fact, if they want to USE it (note: that means use as in use it unchanged, not use as in come up with other ideas based on it), they have to pay you."
Invalidating every patent would mean a return to the days when innventors and innovators just kept their mouths shut, because if they told anyone about their idea, somebody would steal it. So neither the inventor nor anyone else would benefit from the idea.
There might be a surge of innovation (although I doubt it... the patents don't prevent you from coming up with your own idea, they just prevent you from abusing someone else's.), but I doubt it would last.
That said, I do not think that our patent system is ideal. It is frequently exploited and used to stifle ideas and innovation. But at its best, it would promote creativity.
Of course, since we're on the topic of historical examples...
Just one or two off the top of my head:
Caesar. Julius Caesar was a temporary (did you get that) TEMPORARY security measure for the Roman republic. During times of war, a military dictator would be installed for a short period of time, I want to say on the order of a year, but I could be wrong, or it could be until the crisis was over, but anyway the point is that he was supposed to have a very short term, and then return control to the senate. well, good ole'boy Julius decided that power was sweet, and came and crossed the Rubicon to mount an attack on Rome. He took over control of the entire republic, disbanding the senate etc. Sure he didn't last long, I believe he was slain within about a month (or am I mixing that up with the play... hmmm not sure) but anyway, he was killed pretty quickly. Afterwards, however, another dictator took over, and the senate never was reestablished. The dictators became emperors, and the Roman republic became a rather totalitarian empire.
One case in which a temporary measure for extreme times didn't go away.
Also, there was this little matter over in East Europe, called the Bolshevik Revolution. A communist revolution is supposed to give power to the people. And I think we all know about how well that turned out.
I don't know this for sure, but I would be surprised if the command leadership were part of Lenin and Trotsky's original PR package. That was (probably) a temporary measure to get the fledgling government on its feet, until the rule by the people could really get going... right...
I'm not saying that security measures are inherently bad, or that the Patriot Act etc are definitely going to continue indefinitely, but it is certainly not Historical Fact that temporary security measures in extreme times always fade away quietly.
However, I think that most people, including historians who purport to have all the Facts, would agree that most of the things that you mentioned were not good things in and of themselves. They may have been made necessary by the extremity of the times, but that does not mean that they should be unopposed.
One side note. I think I recall that there were a large number of Middle Eastern people who were interned without charge immediately after 911 for several months at least in what was it ?Guantanamo Bay? Maybe? Ask John Ashcroft.
Try scientific programming. Thats what I did all summer, and it was great. Real problems that require real solutions to be worked out by computer.
Science is where programming got started. Yeah Yeah I know... cryptography... the Enigma machine... cryptography is where computers were invented, but science (Esp. Los Alamos after WWII) is where programming took off. And science is one place where programming will never die off. There will always be another problem to work out, and most of them in the future will require computers. Most of the easy problems in physics that have nice analytical solutions have been solved. The remaining problems are crazy difficult ones that have no analytic solution, so numerical methods (read computer programs) are used. And there will always be another physics problem. If we ever claim to have discovered everything, we will be wrong. period. (Don't believe me? Read up on Godel's Theorem...)
Hell, I have trouble understanding how the microwave works!
hmmmm... Microwave.... Microsoft....
Just a thought.
There's nothing wrong with infinite series...
Sum from i = 0 to infinity of Turtle_i = Earth
It is significantly easier and more efficient (no need to learn other programs and switch context) for the average office worker if the "source control system" is integrated into the application itself, for example, if you get actions like check-out/check-in/view history right in your File menu.
:-p)
Actually, if you take that approach, then pretty soon, every app has its own internal source control system, with its own peculiarities and interface, and now your average office worker has to learn how each one works, and keep them all straight, and remember what doesn't work in this one, and what does work in this one, etc. etc. etc. Whereas if your company just uses one source control system, then your average office worker does have to learn that, but once its learned, its learned for every application you need it for, for ever (until the next release
you mean spanish for chicken?
they will have a significantly harder time breaking the system into pieces with stuff off of the Internet.
Here's an idea. stop me if its already been done:
I know its possible to create a chroot "sandbox" so that you can run stuff inside of it and not have to worry about screwing your system. would it be possible to create an application which would do this automatically, so that when you download something off the internet, you can easily run it in a sandbox without taking the time to create such a sandbox by hand? of course, then there's the issue of whether or not linux n00bs would actually know or care to use such a thing or not...
Much as I hate to admit it.... This does seem like a legitimate thing to patent. If it weren't Microsorft, I'd be cheering for the Patent Office actually doing something right for once.... That is IF there is no prior art. Which I have no idea about.
BTW- can I patent the recursive Fibonnacci algorithm??
Thanks for the clarification. As I read the article, I found myself thinking, hmmm I wonder what the other side of the story that I'm not reading is? now I know.
It doesn't sound to me like the seed he saved was the GMO. it sounds like the only GM crop in his field was in a roadside ditch, growing wild. maybe I'm misreading the article, but if thats the case, then your argument falls flat. otherwise, I'd tend to agree with you.
I also know you're joking, but ship-mounted lasers would not be particularly effective. I guess maybe as an anti-ship weapon, but as seen in a previous comment, range to horizon from 100' above sea-level (ie the top of a naval ship) is ~11 nautical miles. so, you could hit a 100' tall target (ie a comparable ship) ~22 nautical miles away. Whereas the rail gun has an effective range an entire order of magnitude higher.
Sorry, I couldn't resist
Yes WWII... actually, the germans (and probably us as well) had guns in World War One (namely, the Paris Gun Thanks google ;) with a range of up to 131 km (81.4 mi) (70.73 nautical miles) which, incidentally is farther than any of the guns you just mentioned.
But, on another note, I would conjecture that air support will probably not be doing the spotting. My guess is that satellites will do that job. Also, the projectiles are supposed to be guided by GPS.
Did you say the ERGM's effective range is approx. 41 NANOMETERS? surely not... Mind clarifying the jargon for someone who doesn't work for Raytheon? (although my father does)
for those who don't want to bother with NYTimes "soul sucking registration" (or bugmenot.com ;)
Cones, Curves, Shells, Towers: He Made Paper Jump to Life
By MARGARET WERTHEIM
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. - On the mantel of a quiet suburban home here stands a curious object resembling a small set of organ pipes nestled into a neat, white case. At first glance it does not seem possible that such a complex, curving form could have been folded from a single sheet of paper, and yet it was.
The construction is one of an astonishing collection of paper objects folded by Dr. David Huffman, a former professor of computer science at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a pioneer in computational origami, an emerging field with an improbable name but surprisingly practical applications.
Dr. Huffman died in 1999, but on a recent afternoon his daughter Elise Huffman showed a visitor a sampling of her father's enigmatic models. In contrast to traditional origami, where all folds are straight, Dr. Huffman developed structures based around curved folds, many calling to mind seedpods and seashells. It is as if paper has been imbued with life.
In another innovative approach, Dr. Huffman explored structures composed of repeating three-dimensional units - chains of cubes and rhomboids, and complex tesselations of triangular, pentagonal and star-shaped blocks. From the outside, one model appears to be just a rolled-up sheet of paper, but looking down the tube reveals a miniature spiral staircase. All this has been achieved with no cuts or glue, the one classic origami rule that Dr. Huffman seemed inclined to obey.
Derived from the Japanese ori, to fold, and gami, paper, origami has come a long way from cute little birds and decorative boxes. Mathematicians and scientists like Dr. Huffman have begun mapping the laws that underlie folding, converting words and concepts into algebraic rules. Computational origami, also known as technical folding, or origami sekkei, draws on fields that include computational geometry, number theory, coding theory and linear algebra. This weekend, paper folders from around the nation will gather at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York for the annual convention of Origami USA. At an adjacent conference on origami and education, Dr. Robert Lang, a leading computational origamist, will give a talk on mathematics and its application to origami design, including such real-world problems as folding airbags and space-based telescopes.
Dr. Lang, a laser physicist in Alamo, Calif., who trained at the California Institute of Technology, gave up that career 18 months ago to become a full-time folder. "Some people are peculiarly susceptible to the charms of origami," he said, "and somewhere along the way the ranks of the infected were joined by mathematicians." Dr. Lang is the author of a recent book on technical folding, "Origami Design Secrets: Mathematical Methods for an Ancient Art."
Most computational origamists are driven by sheer curiosity and the aesthetic pleasure of these structures, but their work is also finding application in fields like astronomy and protein folding, and even automobile safety. These days when Dr. Lang is not inventing new models using a specialized origami software package he has developed, he acts as an origami consultant. He has helped a German manufacturer design folding patterns for airbags and advised astronomers on how to fold up a huge flat-screen lens for a telescope based in space.
Dr. Lang has been studying Dr. Huffman's models and research notes, and is amazed at what he has found. Although Dr. Huffman is a legend in the tiny world of origami sekkei, few people have seen his work. During his life he published only one paper on the subject. Dr. Huffman worked on his foldings from the early 1970's, and over the years, said Dr. Lang, "he anticipated a great deal of what other people have since rediscovered or are only now discovering. At least half of what he did is
Very good point about that balance...
"Your right to swing your arm stops at the end of my nose" -- I don't know who said that, other than my father, but I think it applies.
You go too far by saying that Automatic/Forced patching is the _only_ way to make discovery worthwhile.
It might be the only practical way, or the only realistic way, but the fact is, there are other conceivable ways. For example, every user might spontaneously decide to install the patch.
And here's something to chew on: what happens when the automated patch server is compromised, and a deliberate security hole is auto/force installed on every machine? That would seem to me to be a pretty grave danger, esp. if the fact that the server was compromised is not caught quickly and fixed to repatch systems to remove the bug. and given the rate of worm spread, quickly means you have just a few minutes to discover and correct the problem, because the hacker undoubtedly has an exploit for his custom hole just sitting and waiting to use.
How about BogoMIPS?
These people are not geeks my friend. Sadly, you seem to have encountered the rare, but highly dangerous wannabeus geekus. I would advise you to vacate the area immediately, as they frequently attack without any warning whatsoever, spraying their deadly stupidius maximus poison directly into one ear, where is promptly destroys all brain tissue it comes into contact with, and flows out the other ear. Run. Run fast. Run hard. and whatever you do, DON'T LOOK BACK.
yeah... because somehow it costs the university to give him his degree... if they were gonna keep him around for tuition money, then they might as well just go ahead and give him the degree... Think before you post.