I had my own server broken into for the first time, wasn't a botnet but a bank of america style phishing site. I discovered it when trying to make a subdomain with the control panel didn't work right.. the provider said they cleaned some out but couldn't be sure and then in fact I found the servers myself, in/root and/tmp disguised as other files. I mailed yahoo and google since both had email addresses being used, and told the isp. Guess what? I got no response from google, and none from the isp (they totally suck too, I've been down for a month after being told to erase the disk and they upgraded me - to Fedora Core 2! - and are so incompetent it is not even usable anymore. So I'm changing to a better managed hosting company rsn.) I did get a thank you from Yahoo. But, the first one was clueless, ignoring the content of my letter. I got a second one from them saying thanks. But that they couldn't accept attachments. So couldn't send them the proof.
At any rate, what I did is erase the disk, restore from backup and some checked files, and lose a lot of time. There is probably little more you can do than simply report to one of the links below that you have a botnet address then as quickly as possible erase it.
I also found a number of commands changed in/bin however I couldn't tell if it was the crackers or the isp who did that. It was running out of date software, and though they failed lots of ftp login probes it looks like they got in through an out of use user's login somehow and promoted to root.
Moral of the story? If you use a managed hosting service, keep a FULL backup locally. Run tripwire or something similar, I will from now on. Use a hosting service that is not completely clueless. Do not try an upgrade or anything afterwards. Have a portable hard disk you can use - my ipod was very useful. The most annoying thing was having to spend lots of time on the phone with admins, and having my email and website hanging in the air. The answer is to immediately cut all your losses, get another system maybe on another provider. Possibly you could even do this with a local machine and dyndns temporarily but if you're busy the last thing you have time to do is mess with crooks. Best thing that came from it is I discovered several other hosting companies from friendly clients who helped me get my jobs done.
The Three Laws in Asimov's work involved robots who were close to human, and could weigh alternatives. The most powerful and most human, even superhuman robot (Daneel Olivaw IIRC) created a zeroeth law based on sheer altruism.
To attempt to apply these same laws to current machinery is sweet, even cute but somewhere they will I think end up being interpreted by humans and converted into either simplified "rules of engagement" limited to simplified logic and sensors, or simply into battle commands (i.e. the robotic system itself having no knowledge of rules constraining its behavior). It is also hard to make battlefield decisions even for humans, if I understand it well enough. For example there is the civilian flight that got shot down by an Aegis ship a few years ago. Rules of engagement will just allow predefined game logic to be inserted into systems so they can replay those rules faster than a human, but the computer won't be worrying about lives and hesitating, so the rules may even end up being nicer than a human commander might be.
Discussing the laws is not without merit, however it is a given that enemy forces will seek to subvert any technical application of them, for example placing "I am a human" IFF transmitters on weapons platforms, etc.
I believe there are semiautonomous weaponed robots in the North Korean DMZ, or there will be soon; I remember reading somewhere about that and seeing a photo or video (in the popular press/web). Basically the robot can identify and track at high speed movement of enemy personnel through foliage, home in on them and call for surrender and shoot. In fact it is not clear at all that a human is involved in this sequence, and certainly if you had such a system with a bunch of people attacking you the first thing you would do is tell it where you are and then to shoot everything else without compunction.
Laws of behavior may be more useful for forcing manufacturers not in defense to over-design safety into the system, to the extent that a minimal amount of intelligence might operate to keep the human safe even in situations that hadn't been forseen.
I'm skeptical about such laws being brought into defense because it would seem their first applications would be in 1) disabling weapons so they don't fire when they should, because a friendly might be in its range, which could in fact get the weapon owner killed, and 2) in passing judgements on command decisions made in the field or by generals outside the field. In other words the laws will be accepted as a gauge of ethics and even without requiring circuitry they can be applied to grade a commander or troop on its decision-making.
Probably the only useful part would be in putting them in some form into real autonomous killer robots that are being used now and in the future, so as to not kill unless forced to do so. It requires the robots to discount their own survivability but presumably a robot that does not love life is not hard to manufacture.
I don't Dvorak though have thought of it. Probably no point since I type a lot of Japanese, but I would consider just using it late at night. I find if I have to pull an allnighter my hands are a bucket of pain the next day (just bought some bandages at the Sports Authority and logged into a cafe for five hours to try another keyboard).
However I suppose the experience is probably similar to when I had to use French. (this is an RH9 machine so maybe newer OS's have better facilities.) My linux laptop is set for English and Japanese, so the keyboard is missing French characters. Had a lot of trouble figuring out how to get them in. Finally I ended up using a multilingual keymap switcher as a WindowMaker app box and a keymap from that gigantic X keymap site to check what the keys were supposed to be. French is wierd because a few keys are swapped (A and Z for example) and the numbers are all shift with their symbols not requiring shift. But after a while I memorized it and had little problem.
The main problem I see is once in a while I want to lean over the keyboard from a standing position obliquely and without seeing the keys its hard to know which one to peck.
I just went to a show called Willcom Forum in Tokyo on Friday. It featured maybe 30 companies selling products associated with Willcom's WinCE based phones with slide-out keyboards and touch screens. They are extremely neat, and sophisticated.. they can be used with VPNs, with RFID readers in stores, as Point of Purchase video displays in supermarkets, etc. etc. With the iPhone Mac OSX could go head to head with WinCE too. However phones are a huge tough market and I think it probably greatly dwarves the Mac buying community, I could be wrong. Many competitors but if they win it will be a big win for OSX and Apple.
Personally though I'm bummed because I was waiting to get a new Mac Book Pro with Leopard on it!! Darn! The idea of getting a cheap XP laptop instead for now went through my mind but I guess it will be upgradable, so will probably get it with the current version of Mac OSX sooner instead. I don't want to wait until October! Boo-hoo. Oh well, an Apple with money in the bank is much more friendlier to customers than the old kind. At least that is the theory..
There are an awful lot of posts here that disparage the people who have built and operated this system. To me it looked very much like the explanation for an aircraft accident. The easy failure modes are all known, so the really hard ones are left. In aircraft accidents, and it seems space accidents now too, a fatal result is generally the result of a number of seemingly disparate factors including system states, environmental state, and human impressions of what is going on.
In one major aircraft accident I know a lot about, the (Airbus) jet crashed in part because it ended up being a tug of war between a human pilot and a robot autopilot that should have been disengaged, causing and up and down roller coaster ride. There were lots of other distracting things that were maybe wrong or maybe not, but a key part was the difficulty in knowing what state the machine was in.
It was a similar situation with this accident, it seems, and though the misuse of metric units caused another recent accident it appears that these incidents have elements in common. They are also made more probable it strikes me by funding pressures and also in the way that operating these systems involves radical commands while the systems also lack enough power to be self-aware enough to preserve themselves.
I am not going to do any more guessing because the people involved can probably figure it out themselves, and it seems that these combined factor accidents at least are not costing human lives, while they are adding to knowledge about how not to make the accident the next time.
In that regard my hope is that some of the money being spent on Mars can be used to improve autonomous robotic systems to reduce accidents both on Mars and on Earth.
Great! Thank you very much. Last I'd heard he had set up a project to figure out what might be useful in those new circuits. Sounds like he's come a long way and is using FPGAs. Interesting.
Consider the findings of that (sorry forget the name) scientist who was working on biologically evolved electronic circuits. He discovered the bizarre circuits that resulted were sometimes more efficient than human-designed onces, but very hard to figure out. In particular he discovered the circuits sometimes made use of electromagnetic coupling to other parts of the circuit that didn't seem to do anything, and also found they sometimes only worked in narrow temperature ranges.
Considering the amount of time evolution has had, it would be amazing if quantum effects were not in fact part of efficient biological circuits.
Possibly things that for which their purpose is not currently known will in fact prove to have some kind of quantum, electromagnetic or other type of effect that is not immediately apparent but critical to operation.
It is interesting that this was shown at 50 kelvin. Perhaps photosynthesis does not require moving parts and this is why photosynthesis was the first process shown to require quantum effects for its efficiency. We now need ways (if there can be any) to study systems at the temperatures of life, at least low temperature life. For example there is that mold that was found growing outside of the Russian space station IIRC.
One question I have, which just shows how little I understand physics, is about how this "searchig for the most efficient path" actually works. Presumably it is also the basis of quantum computing. That is, if we were in a many worlds continuum then most worlds would pick the inefficient paths, so presumably the naming "many worlds" doesn't really reflect the theory, plus there is a mechanism involved that seeks a most stable ground state (which in plants somehow comes about from picking the most efficient energy absorption path). Since this is important to the life of the organism it suggests and anti-entropic bias..? If someone can explain what different paths exist and how the most efficient one is selected works I'd appreciate it. Very cool stuff!
If the mirror was cooled lower still it supposedly would exhibit quantum effects, TFA says. Would this mean the mirror could interfere with itself, like in the single photon double slit experiment? How could this create more sensitive mirrors for the LIGO?
I have a fresh box of XP/Office I bought through a friend at Microsoft for cheap. Still haven't had an opportunity to use it yet, though!
I will install this in parallels on the new Mac I'll buy. Probably also install it on its windows partition just in case I need Windows drivers for some app.
I know the U.S. government loves Microsoft and all, but it seems to me there must be something wrong with a company that is both a convicted monopolist and a key part of the corporate infrastructure being able to force a switch to a new OS like this so quickly, especially when the new one involves massive changes and massive headaches. I know they must like the idea of being able to get everyone to buy Vista but this is ridiculous and only insane people think it is normal conduct. Every new MS product release since Windows 2000 has included one sort of a scam or another that overshadowed any technical merits of the upgrade.
IIRC different displays may have different order of R,G,B component pixels which may require a reversed antialiasing pattern (as if the screen was flipped upside-down). Though the effect is subtle it also shows a red and/or blue fringe. Though that may not be what you are talking about.
Interesting how they mentioned this is like the Wright Brothers in terms of being very early in its development.
It sounds like it could work underwater maybe.
It looks like it is made for silicon wafer size engineering, microdrones.
I wonder about the linear speed and turning too. Would it be bad to put wings on it? Is that just a propellor and not a turbine like in the Avrocar? Would a turbine be better, and would tilting it naturally turn the machine's direction through gyroscopic precession?
If you put a rocket on one side, would it stay stable?
Could some kind of electrostatics (perhaps wires suspended above the disk parallel to it) help increase air flow by physically drawing it past the surface? Thinking of the "lifter" models.
If it was rising through a charged fluid you might think it could be leveraged. Usable in high atmosphere?
Is its rate of rise limited by the weight of the cowling it needs as a surface?
Does it use rare earth magnets like in engines inside electric car wheels?
Would a spiral ramp-shaped body like Da Vinci's early helicopter design actually work with a fan on top?
Would another fan help in maintaining stability and speed direction changes, like with helicopters tail blades?
Thank you for your very thoughtful and considerate response. And.. it's good to know you have a sense of humor (it seemed to be peeking out at the end perhaps).
Well, I also am uncomfortable when I (once in a blue moon) see a license that discriminates against a given social group (like the military or whatever). However it is possible that many more people write GPL code because they feel they have a minimal shield that puts them on even footing with commercial interests who would otherwise just plunder code as they can with BSD. Hackers do not want to give their code to Microsoft, and enjoy the feeling of having a sandbox of their own.
That is, the gift culture that was prevalent when I started out on the Net anyway and as evidenced by the open relay MIT used to run for example (and their open courseware project as another), has perhaps shrunk to end up only in BSD. If so that is a great shame. However I do not see how to put everything back in Pandora's box again. It certainly seems to reduce the amount of code usable by a developer to that which is compatible in licensing, and it may seem more hard-hearted to you. However I think that without anyone intentionally wanting to hurt BSD at all (what's the point? a bizarre idea) for the above reasons BSD developers are at a disadvantage.
The only solutions to this are to either accept that, or to make sincere efforts to contact individual GPL code authors and request licensing for BSD as well. Guess who is the biggest obstacle to that? Guys like de Radt. I don't know him personally and I can't tell what his feeling about that exchange is now in hindsight, but his tirade seems to be one of those childish things hackers do a lot. Maybe being "childish" is what lets people write free code, it is an honest, nice-feeling and satisfying thing after all. But there is a definite difference between altruism, stubbornness, and craziness. BSD needs someone who is a bit calmer. I had no idea using BSD also required hysteria about non-BSD code but if so then maybe get someone who is from the outside, not so freaked out, and who is able to understand how GPL authors feel. Otherwise I don't see how you will get them to relinquish their rights.
BSD after all is a fabulous thing, and I personally think the "gift culture" is great. In fact I think I would feel more bound to return something to the world without strings attached, i.e. BSD licensed, if I used it, in comparison to using GPL software. Also I have to say, I have made a living using code under the Perl Artistic License (well maybe it is GPL too now) and that is also I think a wonderful thing. On the other hand linux would not be where it is with the GPL I'm pretty sure, and it wouldn't be able to hold its own against cynical commercial interests. Also GPL is a safe harbour for example there is the Firebird database, the GPL if I am not mistaken enabled the developers to become independent of a somewhat nasty commercial interest.
Sorry I don't what to tell you right now, I just feel obligated to respond sincerely to you. Personally I am a private businessperson and a developer, and I have also given many years of free time to NPO work (mostly web site development for Cambodian projects), or in an anti-earthquake project and other things. I felt I had to do something with my skills along those lines. The gift culture as you say is still alive, though the freeness of software is harder for many people to understand. I think people now find the GPL to be timely and romantic, and conversely companies do not really seem to want to play fair if you read the news.
I don't know exactly why people use the GPL but I think part of it is to feel they are part of something more powerful than themselves, and part of course is because of all that GPL code. It strikes a balance for them. Probably many people would like to release things without thinking about licenses and such, and maybe BSD can take on some proactive projects to introduce them to that world. Maybe if you start with them young.. very yo
Er, yes. Apology for mixing metaphors of dinosaur and fish in an ecosystem. Anyway their strategy has worked for them until now, it just appears that strategy may not be survivable in the 21st century.
Well.. I am no lover of Stallman, and I am a lover of the Mac which I believe uses BSD. But I also love the GPL and if a small intrepid team wants to work on open hardware despite being thwarted by manufacturers, I see nothing wrong with requiring manufacturers to have to pay them to use their work.
Which of the two clauses in the quoted line do you disagree with? Is BSD not the key channel? I could be mistaken, not having much direct knowledge of it. Or do you think I am wrong for thinking that the hardware detectives of the bcw group are to be lauded for their work while the "guy who went off in a huff" (sorry I forget his name) just seems to have seen something he liked and wanted to hack on it. Nothing wrong with that, but his effort is nothing like the effort spent by the bcw gang. The BSD developer should contact bcw, say he was sorry for any misunderstanding and the ranting De Radt slugged at them, and ask what they think would be possible in BSD licensing. I am not a legal expert but it would seem that even if there are parts they just don't want to divulge, it would still be legally acceptable to completely rewrite those sections of code but based on the understanding of the hardware provided by bcw, correct?
At any rate you can see I certainly would not have to ask these questions if it was obvious where the line is drawn. Maybe there is a faq somewhere. Unless this perception is addressed, it seems BSD may have inferior hardware support (again my own impression though I don't have direct experience).
One thing I can say is that I believe Macs have trouble supporting all hardware, which is why I would get a Windows partition on a mac book pro if/when I buy one. I would have no trouble with some of that money going to supporting development of open hardware drivers. But wouldn't drivers be licensed separately from the OS anyway? I'd like to know more about where the insanity is you mention. Certainly I have no interest in destroying BSD. However you appear to believe the BSD license is the only ethical open source license. Am I correct?
Use of ODF will keep more money in California and less flowing to Washington state.
Governments are responsible for guaranteeing archives, minimizing expenses, and reducing barriers, therefore ODF is best choice for them.
These days a monetary figure can be assigned what it costs Microsoft in negative PR, lobbying and advertising this anti-ODF campaign. They could make more money by instead becoming the main proponent of ODF and other open standards, and developing commercial SDKs to develop software for all platforms based on truly open standards.
Microsoft also is harmed by the effects of its embrace and extend campaign. Not only in hatred by potential developers, but also because of the monetary cost of running the campaign, and the chaos and reduced size of the market it causes.
Microsoft could support independent developers by allowing them to rent SDKs and code of other participating vendors, and allowing developers to pay in part by product royalties. By creating a new ecosystem in this way Microsoft can become the facilitator and also own part of the ecosystem's code base, increasing market size and opportunities. It may even by quick footwork, honesty, sincerity and trust building be able to draw in most of the industry for niche products (say an open standards based tax form creation and submission infrastructure).
Microsoft is a dinosaur walking on treacherous ground. It has depended on a cynical and unethical strategy relying on bloatware, hatchetwork, lobbying, FUD, legal games, discounts, etc. By reversing 180 degrees its current orientation, away from FUD and Embrace/Extend, it will gain amazingly broad new horizons for profit, reducing risk and not incidentally creating new reasons for people to stick with Office.
Microsoft also resembles Sony quite a lot, which is not good for Microsoft. Both companies are impossible to make a deal with, they either try to buy you or destroy you. Both companies are utterly cynical and untrusted. Both companies are a bucket of fragmented interests, their strengths wasted on their habits of looking inward at other divisions and not at their customers. Both dream of huge profits from Hollywood, which is silly (see next point).
Both Microsoft and Sony have ignored George Lucas' comments that Hollywood does not make a profit in theaters, which is why he wants to go into TV. They also ignore that the movie industry is not as profitable as it would seem, due to the huge number of flops (since they are filled with cynical crap creators too), is an unsteady earner which also translates to risk, and is the driving force behind DRM which has set the electronics industry back 15 years and spurs development of alternate delivery systems that they cannot control as well (piracy has a tiny effect on actual profit now but has risen to equal the pornography industry in driving creative programmers to invent creative, new systems). Additionally both Microsoft and Sony have a bizarre interest in supporting only the biggest players despite contemporary media distribution systems' being so much more supportive of the medium to long tail, i.e. smaller bands/producers.
Take the example of Sony which constantly releases expensive hardware that is lower in quality than the Sony name used to signify and that only works with Sony products. Sony gets its lunch eaten so often, it is its own worst enemy. Microsoft and Sony both share a very similar conceit, inflated self-importance, cynicism, misguided goals, and disparagement of both vendors and customers. Unfortunately they both have corporate cultures that are so strongly biased in this way that the cultures actually warp otherwise sound minds, witness what Mhyrvold has to show for his work there. Since even scientists are swayed by bizarre corporate cultures, the corporation consistently generates failures, seeks to recoup them with grandiose schemes, and in the end needs to draw in new blood from the outside in an attempt to solve the unsolvable.
Sure, but it might be intelligent to spend more money on teachers and texts, or even on language learning equipment, even if the state has a financial problem. Your suggestion is one possibility but it assumes they already have enough of an education budget. Unfortunately TFA does prove that they don't know how to spend an increase so maybe your choice is the safest.
It is time for people to ask the PR departments of each of the companies behind these front organizations why their company thinks they can ethically do, even through a proxy, what HP did or worse?
The word pretexting itself does not express the sheer anger at the wire fraud that Sony and their coinvestors are attempting to buy with the grubby con-men they have on salary at the RIAA and MPAA.
Listening from far away, it seems that asking about this on the mailing list is fair. Maybe some people wished it was done person to person, but that judgement cannot except in some insane person's head (like Mr. De Radt) equate to being inhuman, which we usually reserve for someone who does much worse things.
In fact Buesch was quite level-headed about it even when De Radt threw all kinds of crap at him and then other people on the mailing list jumped on board too. Considering that BSD is the key channel for the GPL work to find its way into manufacturer's machinery, I'd say the authors (who by the way deserve that title quite a lot more than the guy who went off in a huff) could stand to have been a little angrier in tone and still be within their rights.
It looks in fact like it was Theo de Radt's fault alone for blowing it up into a huge problem and he is solely responsible for the BSD guy to quit his attempt to import the GPL code.
Theo should have said the very first time, "OMG I'm sorry we'll pull the code, and I'll contact the developer and get right on it with you. Thanks for being understanding."
This is clear proof to the world not that anyone is inhuman. It does suggest that De Radt is unfit for whatever leadership position he has, and should resign, or at least get someone else to be in charge of similar issues in the future.
Perhaps someone could write some guidelines to BSD people concerning what is appropriate in terms of "paraphrasing" other code or making use of someone else's reverse engineering. It seems other people could fall into a similar problem and they better hope De Radt is not online that day.
Yes this is moronic. They should spend the money on teachers and texts.
On the other hand, even supposing they have plenty of money they still made a bad choice.
Based on my experience with a new video iPod I received as a present:
Very hard to use for text. Bad navigational control, no paging, tiny font, must split in tiny chunks with max of IIRC 8MB total, can't display HTML. Even if they hacked Mac OSX into them, hardware wise it is a very bad choice for education.
Not robust. Synching while using as hd, often get persistent errors that suggest need to reformat.
For target age group, forcing kids to listen to lectures in class probably more effective than expecting them to synch and listen themselves. Though perhaps a library of video interviews by professionals/experts could be very cool! Aim at adults and get them to buy the hardware themselves! Spend the money on content/software (esp. free software programming) and not on hardware, doh!
There is a very effective way to use tech in language, and I've been there. Middlebury's summer intensive language program had fabulous IIRC Tandenberg tape recorders you use in a tiny room of your own, with headset/mic and volume controls so you can superimpose your voice on that of the language drill prof on tape. By pressing revers very often you can (I did successfully) build a very good accent. Also Cornell University's Dept. of Modern Languages had similar tape recorders. So you want something with robust hardware buttons like that. maybe a linear slide is okay but the circular one on the video ipod is extremely difficult to use to back up to a place you want to be a few seconds ago, due to both physical configuration and gooiness. Having it digital instead of tape makes no difference with this screen size, though with larger screen you could show frames ever 1 sec into the past and click on one for example. Also power drainage a problem. Also there are cheaper, very tiny mp3 players that work fine with no moving parts or scratch-sensitive coating either.
If they went for a cheap ipod shuffle that is just totally dumb. just shuffle again if you hit a lecture.
http://ecafe.com/nye96.html: Electronic Cafe Telebrations (see the rest of ecafe site). The Electronic Cafe was a pioneer in using ISDN modems with special synching to allow music jams with remotely based musicians, piping video and audio into cafe club spaces.
1994-95 Revisited
Zapped Taps(tm)/Alfred Desio Performed in 4 Cities Live
On Saturday, May 20, 1995, Zapped Taps(tm)/Alfred Desio , performed live at the Electronic Cafe in Santa Monica, at the Dairy Center for the Arts in conjunction with the Boulder Creek Festival in Boulder Colorado, at the World Trade Center in New York, and at the Electronic Cafe in Austin Texas. This was possible because of a ISDN wide band hook up. For Alfred Desio, based in Los Angeles, this began with a phone call from Dorinda Dercar, a tapper now residing in Boulder. She wanted the secret of how Desio creates electronic tap sounds, which she had first heard and seen in the film Tap, for which Alfred Desio was the consultant whose technology made it happen. After many calls and faxes, the two performed an interactive duet, she in Boulder and he in Santa Monica. Other artists on the program included Edwin Torres and Virtual Presence in New York, and music and comedy combining forces from the four cities.
LA C & D and Youth Activities
Even with these exciting technology events, a primary focus last season was still the special programs developed for the schools by both Louise Reichlin & Dancers and Zapped Taps/Alfred Desio. Reichlin's group added several weeks in Ventura and Orange County in addition to forty-one schools in the LA Unified, ranging from north in Sylmar to south in San Pedro in a season running from July 31, 1994 to June 7, 1995. Performances in schools are ones we will always strive to maintain. No advanced computer project can ever match the inspiration that springs from both sides of the footlights during our interactive programs that include repertory of four of our dances interspersed with audience participation so the students begin to understand that dance is something they can do and use in their own lives. That same season Alfred also spent two weeks in small towns in central California with a new school program using his Zapped Taps pulling together both dance and science in his approach.
For information about these pages please contact Louise Reichlin at louisehr@usc.edu or call (213)385-1171.
Return to Southern California Dance and Directory (home page)
Even a separate computer is useful just to show docs. Considering everyone from McDonalds to Goldman Sacchs usees multiple monitors it's hard to imagine them saying no, unless money is really tight. Or if you are not so productive anyway. Perhaps you could bring it up when you make a goal or achievement. Depends on your job but maybe being able to see a debugger while testing, or being able to monitor real time interaction is important. Say I need this because of X and show how you use the programs but how 1 screen is keeping you all bound up. Of course if you don't really need it then you won't be so convincing perhaps.. I know developers who get these huge CRTs or whatever and then use this crazy ultra fine resolution, so they can see a lot of lines at once. It hurts the eyes!! How about mentioning collaboration? Other people can't see what you are pointing to when the letters are so small, maybe you can show how you currently use very small letters in your programming style but it is getting hard on the eyes.
Well sorry, I wrote a long post but decided it is too close to my own business. Anyway these guys are just getting started, or else they have tunnel vision. All they need to do is talk to people who have already done the market research and have seen lower tech systems actually now working and drawing money. I'd be really surprised if they don't have some successes, the question is probably how to do so while maintaining flexibility for the future. FWIW the market already exists in Japan and I've been thinking Zudeo could be an interesting tool to develop it.
I had an early Apple ][ that came with Integer Basic (couldn't do floating point numbers) and then bought an extra 16 KB language card to run Pascal and Applesoft floating point basic. Started with a green screen monitor and color Taxan monitor later, 2 5 1/4" floppy drives.
Anyway, the system could only show a couple colors IIRC, green and violet. However, two other colors could be shown by IIRC setting a high bit which would shift the byte being displayed slightly to the side, if I am right about how it really worked, with the effect that you could get two other colors (IIRC a yellow-orange and blue).
Anyway if you treat all colors displayed as white then you realize you actually have double the horizontal resolution. This was exploited (in a good sense) to draw extremely fine lines. It was a while ago so I can't remember if it was someone else or me who discovered it, I just remember seeing it. Anybody else with this experience please post.
Incidentally there is an emulator called Catakig that might give a hint.
Another feature I found myself was that you could write to display memory with a 6502 assembly program fast enough to make wild zigzaggy colored lines in a richer visual display than you could normally see on an Apple ][, by coinciding nearly with the raster scan frequency. Also one game I know used the disk drive to play a rhythm, the sound of dragging the head all the way to the disk edge being a funny snorting kind of sound.
Slashdot Mirror
I had my own server broken into for the first time, wasn't a botnet but a bank of america style phishing site. I discovered it when trying to make a subdomain with the control panel didn't work right.. the provider said they cleaned some out but couldn't be sure and then in fact I found the servers myself, in /root and /tmp disguised as other files. I mailed yahoo and google since both had email addresses being used, and told the isp. Guess what? I got no response from google, and none from the isp (they totally suck too, I've been down for a month after being told to erase the disk and they upgraded me - to Fedora Core 2! - and are so incompetent it is not even usable anymore. So I'm changing to a better managed hosting company rsn.)
/bin however I couldn't tell if it was the crackers or the isp who did that. It was running out of date software, and though they failed lots of ftp login probes it looks like they got in through an out of use user's login somehow and promoted to root.
I did get a thank you from Yahoo. But, the first one was clueless, ignoring the content of my letter. I got a second one from them saying thanks. But that they couldn't accept attachments. So couldn't send them the proof.
At any rate, what I did is erase the disk, restore from backup and some checked files, and lose a lot of time. There is probably little more you can do than simply report to one of the links below that you have a botnet address then as quickly as possible erase it.
I also found a number of commands changed in
Moral of the story? If you use a managed hosting service, keep a FULL backup locally. Run tripwire or something similar, I will from now on. Use a hosting service that is not completely clueless. Do not try an upgrade or anything afterwards. Have a portable hard disk you can use - my ipod was very useful. The most annoying thing was having to spend lots of time on the phone with admins, and having my email and website hanging in the air. The answer is to immediately cut all your losses, get another system maybe on another provider. Possibly you could even do this with a local machine and dyndns temporarily but if you're busy the last thing you have time to do is mess with crooks. Best thing that came from it is I discovered several other hosting companies from friendly clients who helped me get my jobs done.
Wow! Thanks, that's a fabulous idea. And I just started working with the government of Quebec too..! Will try it. Merci!
The Three Laws in Asimov's work involved robots who were close to human, and could weigh alternatives. The most powerful and most human, even superhuman robot (Daneel Olivaw IIRC) created a zeroeth law based on sheer altruism.
To attempt to apply these same laws to current machinery is sweet, even cute but somewhere they will I think end up being interpreted by humans and converted into either simplified "rules of engagement" limited to simplified logic and sensors, or simply into battle commands (i.e. the robotic system itself having no knowledge of rules constraining its behavior). It is also hard to make battlefield decisions even for humans, if I understand it well enough. For example there is the civilian flight that got shot down by an Aegis ship a few years ago. Rules of engagement will just allow predefined game logic to be inserted into systems so they can replay those rules faster than a human, but the computer won't be worrying about lives and hesitating, so the rules may even end up being nicer than a human commander might be.
Discussing the laws is not without merit, however it is a given that enemy forces will seek to subvert any technical application of them, for example placing "I am a human" IFF transmitters on weapons platforms, etc.
I believe there are semiautonomous weaponed robots in the North Korean DMZ, or there will be soon; I remember reading somewhere about that and seeing a photo or video (in the popular press/web). Basically the robot can identify and track at high speed movement of enemy personnel through foliage, home in on them and call for surrender and shoot. In fact it is not clear at all that a human is involved in this sequence, and certainly if you had such a system with a bunch of people attacking you the first thing you would do is tell it where you are and then to shoot everything else without compunction.
Laws of behavior may be more useful for forcing manufacturers not in defense to over-design safety into the system, to the extent that a minimal amount of intelligence might operate to keep the human safe even in situations that hadn't been forseen.
I'm skeptical about such laws being brought into defense because it would seem their first applications would be in 1) disabling weapons so they don't fire when they should, because a friendly might be in its range, which could in fact get the weapon owner killed, and 2) in passing judgements on command decisions made in the field or by generals outside the field. In other words the laws will be accepted as a gauge of ethics and even without requiring circuitry they can be applied to grade a commander or troop on its decision-making.
Probably the only useful part would be in putting them in some form into real autonomous killer robots that are being used now and in the future, so as to not kill unless forced to do so. It requires the robots to discount their own survivability but presumably a robot that does not love life is not hard to manufacture.
I don't Dvorak though have thought of it. Probably no point since I type a lot of Japanese, but I would consider just using it late at night. I find if I have to pull an allnighter my hands are a bucket of pain the next day (just bought some bandages at the Sports Authority and logged into a cafe for five hours to try another keyboard).
However I suppose the experience is probably similar to when I had to use French. (this is an RH9 machine so maybe newer OS's have better facilities.) My linux laptop is set for English and Japanese, so the keyboard is missing French characters. Had a lot of trouble figuring out how to get them in. Finally I ended up using a multilingual keymap switcher as a WindowMaker app box and a keymap from that gigantic X keymap site to check what the keys were supposed to be. French is wierd because a few keys are swapped (A and Z for example) and the numbers are all shift with their symbols not requiring shift. But after a while I memorized it and had little problem.
The main problem I see is once in a while I want to lean over the keyboard from a standing position obliquely and without seeing the keys its hard to know which one to peck.
I just went to a show called Willcom Forum in Tokyo on Friday. It featured maybe 30 companies selling products associated with Willcom's WinCE based phones with slide-out keyboards and touch screens. They are extremely neat, and sophisticated.. they can be used with VPNs, with RFID readers in stores, as Point of Purchase video displays in supermarkets, etc. etc. With the iPhone Mac OSX could go head to head with WinCE too. However phones are a huge tough market and I think it probably greatly dwarves the Mac buying community, I could be wrong. Many competitors but if they win it will be a big win for OSX and Apple.
Personally though I'm bummed because I was waiting to get a new Mac Book Pro with Leopard on it!! Darn! The idea of getting a cheap XP laptop instead for now went through my mind but I guess it will be upgradable, so will probably get it with the current version of Mac OSX sooner instead. I don't want to wait until October! Boo-hoo. Oh well, an Apple with money in the bank is much more friendlier to customers than the old kind. At least that is the theory..
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There are an awful lot of posts here that disparage the people who have built and operated this system. To me it looked very much like the explanation for an aircraft accident. The easy failure modes are all known, so the really hard ones are left. In aircraft accidents, and it seems space accidents now too, a fatal result is generally the result of a number of seemingly disparate factors including system states, environmental state, and human impressions of what is going on.
In one major aircraft accident I know a lot about, the (Airbus) jet crashed in part because it ended up being a tug of war between a human pilot and a robot autopilot that should have been disengaged, causing and up and down roller coaster ride. There were lots of other distracting things that were maybe wrong or maybe not, but a key part was the difficulty in knowing what state the machine was in.
It was a similar situation with this accident, it seems, and though the misuse of metric units caused another recent accident it appears that these incidents have elements in common. They are also made more probable it strikes me by funding pressures and also in the way that operating these systems involves radical commands while the systems also lack enough power to be self-aware enough to preserve themselves.
I am not going to do any more guessing because the people involved can probably figure it out themselves, and it seems that these combined factor accidents at least are not costing human lives, while they are adding to knowledge about how not to make the accident the next time.
In that regard my hope is that some of the money being spent on Mars can be used to improve autonomous robotic systems to reduce accidents both on Mars and on Earth.
Great! Thank you very much. Last I'd heard he had set up a project to figure out what might be useful in those new circuits. Sounds like he's come a long way and is using FPGAs. Interesting.
Consider the findings of that (sorry forget the name) scientist who was working on biologically evolved electronic circuits. He discovered the bizarre circuits that resulted were sometimes more efficient than human-designed onces, but very hard to figure out. In particular he discovered the circuits sometimes made use of electromagnetic coupling to other parts of the circuit that didn't seem to do anything, and also found they sometimes only worked in narrow temperature ranges.
Considering the amount of time evolution has had, it would be amazing if quantum effects were not in fact part of efficient biological circuits.
Possibly things that for which their purpose is not currently known will in fact prove to have some kind of quantum, electromagnetic or other type of effect that is not immediately apparent but critical to operation.
It is interesting that this was shown at 50 kelvin. Perhaps photosynthesis does not require moving parts and this is why photosynthesis was the first process shown to require quantum effects for its efficiency. We now need ways (if there can be any) to study systems at the temperatures of life, at least low temperature life. For example there is that mold that was found growing outside of the Russian space station IIRC.
One question I have, which just shows how little I understand physics, is about how this "searchig for the most efficient path" actually works. Presumably it is also the basis of quantum computing. That is, if we were in a many worlds continuum then most worlds would pick the inefficient paths, so presumably the naming "many worlds" doesn't really reflect the theory, plus there is a mechanism involved that seeks a most stable ground state (which in plants somehow comes about from picking the most efficient energy absorption path). Since this is important to the life of the organism it suggests and anti-entropic bias..? If someone can explain what different paths exist and how the most efficient one is selected works I'd appreciate it. Very cool stuff!
If the mirror was cooled lower still it supposedly would exhibit quantum effects, TFA says. Would this mean the mirror could interfere with itself, like in the single photon double slit experiment? How could this create more sensitive mirrors for the LIGO?
I have a fresh box of XP/Office I bought through a friend at Microsoft for cheap. Still haven't had an opportunity to use it yet, though!
I will install this in parallels on the new Mac I'll buy. Probably also install it on its windows partition just in case I need Windows drivers for some app.
I know the U.S. government loves Microsoft and all, but it seems to me there must be something wrong with a company that is both a convicted monopolist and a key part of the corporate infrastructure being able to force a switch to a new OS like this so quickly, especially when the new one involves massive changes and massive headaches. I know they must like the idea of being able to get everyone to buy Vista but this is ridiculous and only insane people think it is normal conduct. Every new MS product release since Windows 2000 has included one sort of a scam or another that overshadowed any technical merits of the upgrade.
IIRC different displays may have different order of R,G,B component pixels which may require a reversed antialiasing pattern (as if the screen was flipped upside-down). Though the effect is subtle it also shows a red and/or blue fringe. Though that may not be what you are talking about.
Interesting how they mentioned this is like the Wright Brothers in terms of being very early in its development.
It sounds like it could work underwater maybe.
It looks like it is made for silicon wafer size engineering, microdrones.
I wonder about the linear speed and turning too. Would it be bad to put wings on it? Is that just a propellor and not a turbine like in the Avrocar? Would a turbine be better, and would tilting it naturally turn the machine's direction through gyroscopic precession?
If you put a rocket on one side, would it stay stable?
Could some kind of electrostatics (perhaps wires suspended above the disk parallel to it) help increase air flow by physically drawing it past the surface? Thinking of the "lifter" models.
If it was rising through a charged fluid you might think it could be leveraged. Usable in high atmosphere?
Is its rate of rise limited by the weight of the cowling it needs as a surface?
Does it use rare earth magnets like in engines inside electric car wheels?
Would a spiral ramp-shaped body like Da Vinci's early helicopter design actually work with a fan on top?
Would another fan help in maintaining stability and speed direction changes, like with helicopters tail blades?
Thank you for your very thoughtful and considerate response. And.. it's good to know you have a sense of humor (it seemed to be peeking out at the end perhaps).
Well, I also am uncomfortable when I (once in a blue moon) see a license that discriminates against a given social group (like the military or whatever). However it is possible that many more people write GPL code because they feel they have a minimal shield that puts them on even footing with commercial interests who would otherwise just plunder code as they can with BSD. Hackers do not want to give their code to Microsoft, and enjoy the feeling of having a sandbox of their own.
That is, the gift culture that was prevalent when I started out on the Net anyway and as evidenced by the open relay MIT used to run for example (and their open courseware project as another), has perhaps shrunk to end up only in BSD. If so that is a great shame. However I do not see how to put everything back in Pandora's box again. It certainly seems to reduce the amount of code usable by a developer to that which is compatible in licensing, and it may seem more hard-hearted to you. However I think that without anyone intentionally wanting to hurt BSD at all (what's the point? a bizarre idea) for the above reasons BSD developers are at a disadvantage.
The only solutions to this are to either accept that, or to make sincere efforts to contact individual GPL code authors and request licensing for BSD as well. Guess who is the biggest obstacle to that? Guys like de Radt. I don't know him personally and I can't tell what his feeling about that exchange is now in hindsight, but his tirade seems to be one of those childish things hackers do a lot. Maybe being "childish" is what lets people write free code, it is an honest, nice-feeling and satisfying thing after all. But there is a definite difference between altruism, stubbornness, and craziness. BSD needs someone who is a bit calmer. I had no idea using BSD also required hysteria about non-BSD code but if so then maybe get someone who is from the outside, not so freaked out, and who is able to understand how GPL authors feel. Otherwise I don't see how you will get them to relinquish their rights.
BSD after all is a fabulous thing, and I personally think the "gift culture" is great. In fact I think I would feel more bound to return something to the world without strings attached, i.e. BSD licensed, if I used it, in comparison to using GPL software. Also I have to say, I have made a living using code under the Perl Artistic License (well maybe it is GPL too now) and that is also I think a wonderful thing. On the other hand linux would not be where it is with the GPL I'm pretty sure, and it wouldn't be able to hold its own against cynical commercial interests. Also GPL is a safe harbour for example there is the Firebird database, the GPL if I am not mistaken enabled the developers to become independent of a somewhat nasty commercial interest.
Sorry I don't what to tell you right now, I just feel obligated to respond sincerely to you. Personally I am a private businessperson and a developer, and I have also given many years of free time to NPO work (mostly web site development for Cambodian projects), or in an anti-earthquake project and other things. I felt I had to do something with my skills along those lines. The gift culture as you say is still alive, though the freeness of software is harder for many people to understand. I think people now find the GPL to be timely and romantic, and conversely companies do not really seem to want to play fair if you read the news.
I don't know exactly why people use the GPL but I think part of it is to feel they are part of something more powerful than themselves, and part of course is because of all that GPL code. It strikes a balance for them. Probably many people would like to release things without thinking about licenses and such, and maybe BSD can take on some proactive projects to introduce them to that world. Maybe if you start with them young.. very yo
Er, yes. Apology for mixing metaphors of dinosaur and fish in an ecosystem. Anyway their strategy has worked for them until now, it just appears that strategy may not be survivable in the 21st century.
Well.. I am no lover of Stallman, and I am a lover of the Mac which I believe uses BSD. But I also love the GPL and if a small intrepid team wants to work on open hardware despite being thwarted by manufacturers, I see nothing wrong with requiring manufacturers to have to pay them to use their work.
Which of the two clauses in the quoted line do you disagree with? Is BSD not the key channel? I could be mistaken, not having much direct knowledge of it. Or do you think I am wrong for thinking that the hardware detectives of the bcw group are to be lauded for their work while the "guy who went off in a huff" (sorry I forget his name) just seems to have seen something he liked and wanted to hack on it. Nothing wrong with that, but his effort is nothing like the effort spent by the bcw gang. The BSD developer should contact bcw, say he was sorry for any misunderstanding and the ranting De Radt slugged at them, and ask what they think would be possible in BSD licensing. I am not a legal expert but it would seem that even if there are parts they just don't want to divulge, it would still be legally acceptable to completely rewrite those sections of code but based on the understanding of the hardware provided by bcw, correct?
At any rate you can see I certainly would not have to ask these questions if it was obvious where the line is drawn. Maybe there is a faq somewhere. Unless this perception is addressed, it seems BSD may have inferior hardware support (again my own impression though I don't have direct experience).
One thing I can say is that I believe Macs have trouble supporting all hardware, which is why I would get a Windows partition on a mac book pro if/when I buy one. I would have no trouble with some of that money going to supporting development of open hardware drivers. But wouldn't drivers be licensed separately from the OS anyway? I'd like to know more about where the insanity is you mention. Certainly I have no interest in destroying BSD. However you appear to believe the BSD license is the only ethical open source license. Am I correct?
Sure, but it might be intelligent to spend more money on teachers and texts, or even on language learning equipment, even if the state has a financial problem. Your suggestion is one possibility but it assumes they already have enough of an education budget. Unfortunately TFA does prove that they don't know how to spend an increase so maybe your choice is the safest.
It is time for people to ask the PR departments of each of the companies behind these front organizations why their company thinks they can ethically do, even through a proxy, what HP did or worse?
The word pretexting itself does not express the sheer anger at the wire fraud that Sony and their coinvestors are attempting to buy with the grubby con-men they have on salary at the RIAA and MPAA.
Listening from far away, it seems that asking about this on the mailing list is fair. Maybe some people wished it was done person to person, but that judgement cannot except in some insane person's head (like Mr. De Radt) equate to being inhuman, which we usually reserve for someone who does much worse things.
In fact Buesch was quite level-headed about it even when De Radt threw all kinds of crap at him and then other people on the mailing list jumped on board too. Considering that BSD is the key channel for the GPL work to find its way into manufacturer's machinery, I'd say the authors (who by the way deserve that title quite a lot more than the guy who went off in a huff) could stand to have been a little angrier in tone and still be within their rights.
It looks in fact like it was Theo de Radt's fault alone for blowing it up into a huge problem and he is solely responsible for the BSD guy to quit his attempt to import the GPL code.
Theo should have said the very first time, "OMG I'm sorry we'll pull the code, and I'll contact the developer and get right on it with you. Thanks for being understanding."
This is clear proof to the world not that anyone is inhuman. It does suggest that De Radt is unfit for whatever leadership position he has, and should resign, or at least get someone else to be in charge of similar issues in the future.
Perhaps someone could write some guidelines to BSD people concerning what is appropriate in terms of "paraphrasing" other code or making use of someone else's reverse engineering. It seems other people could fall into a similar problem and they better hope De Radt is not online that day.
Are you sure it wasn't full duplex?
Both musicians could hear both sides I thought.
On the other hand, even supposing they have plenty of money they still made a bad choice.
Based on my experience with a new video iPod I received as a present:
Two refs here.
. html
http://ecafe.com/nye96.html: Electronic Cafe Telebrations (see the rest of ecafe site). The Electronic Cafe was a pioneer in using ISDN modems with special synching to allow music jams with remotely based musicians, piping video and audio into cafe club spaces.
Also, Google: electronic cafe isdn history
This event happened in May, before the September date specified.
http://www.usc.edu/dept/dance/p9a_earlier_seasons
1994-95 Revisited
Zapped Taps(tm)/Alfred Desio Performed in 4 Cities Live
On Saturday, May 20, 1995, Zapped Taps(tm)/Alfred Desio , performed live at the Electronic Cafe in Santa Monica, at the Dairy Center for the Arts in conjunction with the Boulder Creek Festival in Boulder Colorado, at the World Trade Center in New York, and at the Electronic Cafe in Austin Texas. This was possible because of a ISDN wide band hook up. For Alfred Desio, based in Los Angeles, this began with a phone call from Dorinda Dercar, a tapper now residing in Boulder. She wanted the secret of how Desio creates electronic tap sounds, which she had first heard and seen in the film Tap, for which Alfred Desio was the consultant whose technology made it happen. After many calls and faxes, the two performed an interactive duet, she in Boulder and he in Santa Monica. Other artists on the program included Edwin Torres and Virtual Presence in New York, and music and comedy combining forces from the four cities.
LA C & D and Youth Activities
Even with these exciting technology events, a primary focus last season was still the special programs developed for the schools by both Louise Reichlin & Dancers and Zapped Taps/Alfred Desio. Reichlin's group added several weeks in Ventura and Orange County in addition to forty-one schools in the LA Unified, ranging from north in Sylmar to south in San Pedro in a season running from July 31, 1994 to June 7, 1995. Performances in schools are ones we will always strive to maintain. No advanced computer project can ever match the inspiration that springs from both sides of the footlights during our interactive programs that include repertory of four of our dances interspersed with audience participation so the students begin to understand that dance is something they can do and use in their own lives. That same season Alfred also spent two weeks in small towns in central California with a new school program using his Zapped Taps pulling together both dance and science in his approach.
For information about these pages please contact Louise Reichlin at louisehr@usc.edu or call (213)385-1171.
Return to Southern California Dance and Directory (home page)
Even a separate computer is useful just to show docs.
Considering everyone from McDonalds to Goldman Sacchs usees multiple monitors it's hard to imagine them saying no, unless money is really tight. Or if you are not so productive anyway.
Perhaps you could bring it up when you make a goal or achievement.
Depends on your job but maybe being able to see a debugger while testing, or being able to monitor real time interaction is important. Say I need this because of X and show how you use the programs but how 1 screen is keeping you all bound up.
Of course if you don't really need it then you won't be so convincing perhaps.. I know developers who get these huge CRTs or whatever and then use this crazy ultra fine resolution, so they can see a lot of lines at once. It hurts the eyes!! How about mentioning collaboration? Other people can't see what you are pointing to when the letters are so small, maybe you can show how you currently use very small letters in your programming style but it is getting hard on the eyes.
Well sorry, I wrote a long post but decided it is too close to my own business. Anyway these guys are just getting started, or else they have tunnel vision. All they need to do is talk to people who have already done the market research and have seen lower tech systems actually now working and drawing money. I'd be really surprised if they don't have some successes, the question is probably how to do so while maintaining flexibility for the future. FWIW the market already exists in Japan and I've been thinking Zudeo could be an interesting tool to develop it.
I had an early Apple ][ that came with Integer Basic (couldn't do floating point numbers) and then bought an extra 16 KB language card to run Pascal and Applesoft floating point basic. Started with a green screen monitor and color Taxan monitor later, 2 5 1/4" floppy drives.
Anyway, the system could only show a couple colors IIRC, green and violet. However, two other colors could be shown by IIRC setting a high bit which would shift the byte being displayed slightly to the side, if I am right about how it really worked, with the effect that you could get two other colors (IIRC a yellow-orange and blue).
Anyway if you treat all colors displayed as white then you realize you actually have double the horizontal resolution. This was exploited (in a good sense) to draw extremely fine lines. It was a while ago so I can't remember if it was someone else or me who discovered it, I just remember seeing it. Anybody else with this experience please post.
Incidentally there is an emulator called Catakig that might give a hint.
Another feature I found myself was that you could write to display memory with a 6502 assembly program fast enough to make wild zigzaggy colored lines in a richer visual display than you could normally see on an Apple ][, by coinciding nearly with the raster scan frequency. Also one game I know used the disk drive to play a rhythm, the sound of dragging the head all the way to the disk edge being a funny snorting kind of sound.