Re:obligatory paranoia against the "State"?
on
Reverse Graffiti
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· Score: 1
You make a good point; the whole issue is a muddled mix of agendas. The city is not at odds with the artistic integrity of the art, and could care less about the irony of the technique. The city of Leeds is uncomfortable with public property being transformed into advertising. If this artist offered to completely clean the structure, I doubt there would be an objection from anyone.
I rather enjoy being able to walk around my town without every wall, buildling, or car glare at me with a "clever" advertisement.
I know what you're talking about, and you're right: new books are about new software.
Your point about web hosts is also true; it's difficult to find a PHP5 webhost. It takes guts to run a RC on production servers! However, you can be certain that soon enough PHP5 will become as ubiquitous as 4.
Anyways, just judging by the review, it seems like this book's intended readers are enterprise programmers: people who will leverage more control over their development platform than the average webmaster.
I ran Slackware on my PC for years, but have recently switched to a Powerbook. I'd like to run Linux, and I've investigated dual-booting with either Debian or Gentoo.
I'm having trouble finding good resources, though these people seem to have made some progress... last November.
I've had a difficult time finding a current PPC port of Slackware. Has anyone experimented with building a Slackware base system on a G4 from some other distro, or had any luck with some other approach?
Yeah, the same has occurred to me. The population density of your average dorm is large enough to have a decent userbase. File sharing, IRC, Message Board... students might enjoy using a WiFi Intranet because it would be geographically exclusive, and there would be enough people on it to make it interesting. And, like you say, it could operate under the school's nose.
Each of these languages was designed to meet someone's needs. None of them would be popular if someone, somewhere, didn't have a problem that for whatever reason any of these scripts remedied. Voting "the best" doesn't seem to have any meaning when you don't define the circumstances or the problem to be solved.
For instance, when I look at ways to make a website dynamic, I like PHP. I'm familiar with the syntax and my web host supports it. Someone with a slightly different background or web host might choose Perl. Apples and oranges.
You're right, the Abrams was not designed for urban combat. The most lightly armored part of the tank is the top. There's even less armor there than on the hull. This makes the tank susceptible to RPGs fired from rooftops.
M1's are also huge; when patrolling roads, they tear up pavement and will not fit through some streets in densely populated areas. They pose a danger to civilian passerby and vehicles.
This "electric armor" sounds like a fantastic idea, but I have a feeling it will be too heavy to equip a HMMWV. It could probably work wonders for the roofs of M1's though.
Absolutely dead on. Function is beauty when it comes to something that feature filled. The only problem I can see with the unit, that is related to aesthetics, is the usability factor. I can't tell from the pictures how intuitive its interface will be. Even slight interface problems can really be annoying with devices that have few human inputs.
What I'm waiting for is a breakthrough in the way energy is stored; current batteries suck. Though the current generation of Bluetooth stuff is really nice, I don't think we're going to see the true mindbending utility of it all until someone figures out how to make a better battery. I've seen promising technologies featured on Slashdot and elsewhere, but nothing mindblowing.
The wireless standards are here, but if currently if people aren't chained to wires they're chained to chargers.
The primary limitation on even arbitrarily sophisticated nanotechnology which could prevent a runaway grey goo reaction is the lack of a sufficient source of energy. A nanomachine wouldn't be able to get much energy out of eating inorganic matter such as rocks because, aside from a few exceptions (coal, for example) it's mostly well-oxidized and sitting in a free-energy minimum. Wikipedia
It would seem that nature's methods of self-replication work best.
...but the great thing about Linux is that if you're willing to put in the time, and forgo Xfree, you can get the latest software to run on amazingly old hardware. Though it took a long time, I've gotten Slackware 9.1 with the 2.6 kernel to run smoothly on a 486. I was up and running Apache and Samba in no time. This thing had 12 megs of RAM!
I have a hunch that the mainstream distros post memory minimums in anticipation of running every daemon known to man, with the window manager tweaked out with all bells and whistles.
I see what you mean, and you're right: mp3 players that don't contain "outrageous" amounts of music are probably not on the RIAA's radar.
What I had in mind when I posted originally was an 40gb iPod with an 802.11 or Ethernet adapter that allowed comparitively high-speed transfer of files without a computer from device to device. I personally would find such a device enormously useful. I'm also surprised that aside from laptops and PDAs, there are no devices on the market that have this feature.
This setup partially eliminates both the computer and the Internet from the filesharing equation. Though the Internet is what enables music swapping, it's also a medium that the average consumer may be weary of using to share because of the slew of RIAA lawsuits.
Basically, device-to-device sharing would empower listeners, bypassing the Internet - an RIAA element of control. Sharing would go on behind the scenes. The whole scenario is technically similar to the one you point out when you visit your friend's house: moving data by hand to friends, in large amounts, untraceably.
Of course, I don't really know what the RIAA does or does not care about. I also have no real idea what kind of influence the RIAA and similar entities actually exert on the hardware industry.
Though the Diva Gem use of bluetooth is interesting, I'm intrigued by another possible use of wireless: transfer of music files at the player level.
Do there exist portable music players that allow either transfer or broadcast of music files to other devices within a certain radius, through Bluetooth, WiFi, or some other means?
I can recall an earlier Slashdot story which talked about iPod users swapping headphones with eachother. The propensity for people to do this could be enabled by adding a swap or broadcast feature to players themselves.
Needless to say, this feature is begging for RIAA harassment.
"Listen to atmospheric noise (and extraterrestrial radiaton!) on any AM or FM radio! Just tune to static and start dancing."
"See extraterrestrial radiation! Stare at the sky!"
... a Compaq Presario with a P4, if I remember correctly. As a novice user, he was pleased. The Xandros interface, a modified flavor of KDE, is remarkably familiar looking from the Windows standpoint. It also uses the Plastik KDE theme as the default window decoration, which is pretty fancy. Though the interface is clean and consistent there are no breakthrough usability innovations that I can remember.
I think the only hardware that gave him trouble was a PCMCIA WiFi adapter. Though wifi chipsets have consistently given Linux trouble because of closed-source drivers, it didn't help that this particular card was a Microsoft...
Slashdot Mirror
You make a good point; the whole issue is a muddled mix of agendas. The city is not at odds with the artistic integrity of the art, and could care less about the irony of the technique. The city of Leeds is uncomfortable with public property being transformed into advertising. If this artist offered to completely clean the structure, I doubt there would be an objection from anyone.
I rather enjoy being able to walk around my town without every wall, buildling, or car glare at me with a "clever" advertisement.
I know what you're talking about, and you're right: new books are about new software.
Your point about web hosts is also true; it's difficult to find a PHP5 webhost. It takes guts to run a RC on production servers! However, you can be certain that soon enough PHP5 will become as ubiquitous as 4.
Anyways, just judging by the review, it seems like this book's intended readers are enterprise programmers: people who will leverage more control over their development platform than the average webmaster.
I ran Slackware on my PC for years, but have recently switched to a Powerbook. I'd like to run Linux, and I've investigated dual-booting with either Debian or Gentoo.
I'm having trouble finding good resources, though these people seem to have made some progress... last November.
I've had a difficult time finding a current PPC port of Slackware. Has anyone experimented with building a Slackware base system on a G4 from some other distro, or had any luck with some other approach?
Yeah, the same has occurred to me. The population density of your average dorm is large enough to have a decent userbase. File sharing, IRC, Message Board... students might enjoy using a WiFi Intranet because it would be geographically exclusive, and there would be enough people on it to make it interesting. And, like you say, it could operate under the school's nose.
Each of these languages was designed to meet someone's needs. None of them would be popular if someone, somewhere, didn't have a problem that for whatever reason any of these scripts remedied. Voting "the best" doesn't seem to have any meaning when you don't define the circumstances or the problem to be solved.
For instance, when I look at ways to make a website dynamic, I like PHP. I'm familiar with the syntax and my web host supports it. Someone with a slightly different background or web host might choose Perl. Apples and oranges.
You're right, the Abrams was not designed for urban combat. The most lightly armored part of the tank is the top. There's even less armor there than on the hull. This makes the tank susceptible to RPGs fired from rooftops.
M1's are also huge; when patrolling roads, they tear up pavement and will not fit through some streets in densely populated areas. They pose a danger to civilian passerby and vehicles.
For day-to-day patrolling, the Army relies mostly HMMWVs. The HMMWV, or "Humvee," can also be "up-armored" with a kit.
This "electric armor" sounds like a fantastic idea, but I have a feeling it will be too heavy to equip a HMMWV. It could probably work wonders for the roofs of M1's though.
Absolutely dead on. Function is beauty when it comes to something that feature filled. The only problem I can see with the unit, that is related to aesthetics, is the usability factor. I can't tell from the pictures how intuitive its interface will be. Even slight interface problems can really be annoying with devices that have few human inputs.
What I'm waiting for is a breakthrough in the way energy is stored; current batteries suck. Though the current generation of Bluetooth stuff is really nice, I don't think we're going to see the true mindbending utility of it all until someone figures out how to make a better battery. I've seen promising technologies featured on Slashdot and elsewhere, but nothing mindblowing.
The wireless standards are here, but if currently if people aren't chained to wires they're chained to chargers.
The primary limitation on even arbitrarily sophisticated nanotechnology which could prevent a runaway grey goo reaction is the lack of a sufficient source of energy. A nanomachine wouldn't be able to get much energy out of eating inorganic matter such as rocks because, aside from a few exceptions (coal, for example) it's mostly well-oxidized and sitting in a free-energy minimum.
Wikipedia
It would seem that nature's methods of self-replication work best.
Prey had a really dumb ending anyway :(
...but the great thing about Linux is that if you're willing to put in the time, and forgo Xfree, you can get the latest software to run on amazingly old hardware. Though it took a long time, I've gotten Slackware 9.1 with the 2.6 kernel to run smoothly on a 486. I was up and running Apache and Samba in no time. This thing had 12 megs of RAM!
I have a hunch that the mainstream distros post memory minimums in anticipation of running every daemon known to man, with the window manager tweaked out with all bells and whistles.
I see what you mean, and you're right: mp3 players that don't contain "outrageous" amounts of music are probably not on the RIAA's radar.
What I had in mind when I posted originally was an 40gb iPod with an 802.11 or Ethernet adapter that allowed comparitively high-speed transfer of files without a computer from device to device. I personally would find such a device enormously useful. I'm also surprised that aside from laptops and PDAs, there are no devices on the market that have this feature.
This setup partially eliminates both the computer and the Internet from the filesharing equation. Though the Internet is what enables music swapping, it's also a medium that the average consumer may be weary of using to share because of the slew of RIAA lawsuits.
Basically, device-to-device sharing would empower listeners, bypassing the Internet - an RIAA element of control. Sharing would go on behind the scenes. The whole scenario is technically similar to the one you point out when you visit your friend's house: moving data by hand to friends, in large amounts, untraceably.
Of course, I don't really know what the RIAA does or does not care about. I also have no real idea what kind of influence the RIAA and similar entities actually exert on the hardware industry.
Though the Diva Gem use of bluetooth is interesting, I'm intrigued by another possible use of wireless: transfer of music files at the player level.
Do there exist portable music players that allow either transfer or broadcast of music files to other devices within a certain radius, through Bluetooth, WiFi, or some other means?
I can recall an earlier Slashdot story which talked about iPod users swapping headphones with eachother. The propensity for people to do this could be enabled by adding a swap or broadcast feature to players themselves.
Needless to say, this feature is begging for RIAA harassment.
"Listen to atmospheric noise (and extraterrestrial radiaton!) on any AM or FM radio! Just tune to static and start dancing." "See extraterrestrial radiation! Stare at the sky!"
Hm, you're right. My blind hatred of all things Microsoft must run deeper than my memory :(
... a Compaq Presario with a P4, if I remember correctly. As a novice user, he was pleased. The Xandros interface, a modified flavor of KDE, is remarkably familiar looking from the Windows standpoint. It also uses the Plastik KDE theme as the default window decoration, which is pretty fancy. Though the interface is clean and consistent there are no breakthrough usability innovations that I can remember. I think the only hardware that gave him trouble was a PCMCIA WiFi adapter. Though wifi chipsets have consistently given Linux trouble because of closed-source drivers, it didn't help that this particular card was a Microsoft...