A prof at my school would handle uneven loads by requiring that we submit a detailed report of who did what. He would partially weigh the individual grades based on who did how much.
If he was mistaken, the group got together and talked to him and got it straightened out. His idea was that if you were really a slacker holding the group back, there was no way you could convince the group to argue to the prof that you deserved a higher grade.
I mean, don't we suffer from exactly the same problems with all text that's online? Google caches it all for Pete's sake! Isn't that making a copy? Isn't that making it easier to find? Aren't these exactly the same complaints people are making about the images?
Authors are losing control over their works which can be easily found and copied now they they're catelogued by search engines! Outrage!
But is it the Right Thing to ban or penalize this?
These are exactly the types of problems that we're coming up against now that copyright has been deemed a control mechanism. We've gone and screwed up the whole system to the point where it's going to be virtually unusable.
But personally, I just want to know who I can sue for "copying" text and images from my site when they visit it. I need the money.
Simple programs [...] run faster (because there are fewer machine instructions)
This can be true, but certainly isn't often the case. To optimize code for speed often involves contortions that do not clarify the code or make it simpler or easier to read.
Just pass laws to make it so that you can't change the way HTML looks on anyone's page. Only real jerks would dare change it from the rendering you desired, anyway.
We need to immediately form a congressional committee to spec out the One True Rendering Specification that all browsers must comply to. The browsers can use some technology the congressmen heard about called XML or Java or Microsoft Office or something that will use advanced technology to divine the layout that the HTML author had originally intended.
Writing, distributing, or talking about programs that change the rendering from the Specification will result not more than 327 years in prison, or the copyright lifetime of a work-for-hire, whichever is less.
Oh, and by the way, using Lynx is treasonous, so get up against the wall! How dare you change my content so that it's text-based instead of graphical!
I came to the conclusion some time ago that Palm OS is not much to look at from a programmer's perspective. It's technically inferior to any modern OS, and feels more like old Macs or Win3.1.
This isn't really surprising since it's meant to do really simple things like run Palm devices, and not meant to act as, say, a server.
This is generally fine, except it lacks things like modern memory protection that lead to crashes at times. There are also a number of assertions in the kernel that can fail and crash the system outright. ("Memory chunk overlocked" comes to mind.) It's just not a good OS for anything except the basics.
That's irksome now, but it's going to be unacceptable in the future. All of Palm's competitors are going to be offering much more solid platforms running much more complicated apps. They'll be cheap, too, since we're talking a significant time in the future.
Palm should:
Use a Linux (or other high-quality) core
Jack the amount of RAM
Add flash storage
Make a bigger screen (color, of course)
Put in the ARM chip (of course)
Write a Palm OS compatibility library for easy rebuilding of binaries
As for that last one, almost everyone I know bypasses the OS to do quick graphics...this obviously would break with the compatibility library. Oh well--that should be acceptible losses. (Another option might be to run an old-Palm emulator on the new Palm, but you'd need a pile of RAM for that.)
This is going to be quite a tightrope walk for Palm. I hope they work things out, but I'm not buying their stock, know what I'm saying?
The database field is a hard place to be. Infocom found this out when they tried to branch into it and failed, taking the company down with it.
Redhat is facing effectively impossible competition on the high-end (where people pay for the name) and quite good competition on the low end where we have PostgrSQL and MySQL.
I'll be interested to see them pull it off. They just made a profit! Don't blow it!
Once you purchase a magazine, you are allowed to draw little moustaches on all the people, modify text by crossing it out and writing over it. You're allowed to duplicate that work for personal use. You can change it. (You can't distribute the changed or unchanged work, except as defined by fair use.)
Whether your tool is a pencil or a web browser, you are allowed to make the change. Lynx renders your page, but it leaves the images out! Outrage! I'm modifying your page when I view it with Lynx! Are you mad? Of course not.
What's the difference between that, then, and me using IE to modify your page with other links? I am, like I said, allowed to draw moustaches on your page, and spindle and mutilate it as I see fit.
Why am I defending MS? Because the alternative most of you are advocating is too horrible to contemplate! You want there to be some limitation on how end users are allowed to render HTML! To hell with that shit! Can you even begin to imagine such regulation? Do you want to have to develop your open-source browser under government supervision?
You might wish Microsoft dead and buried, but let me offer you a piece of advice: don't put your head between them and the gun when you pull the trigger, Slick.
Or is there another set of software that does photo-stitching under Linux?
Just having purchased a new digital camera, I was disappointed to learn that there was a lack of software to do the stitching under un*x. I found links to Panorama Tools (huzzah!) but saw the site was down (no!)
Well, that'll teach the good professor to write software and not release it anonymously.
Seems like overkill, but some secure crypto algorithms are really easy to implement.
You could have a super-low voltage transmission (only powerful enough to reach 10cm or so) for key exchange when the user holds down a button on the bottom of the mouse. Once the key is exchanged between the mouse and base, it can be used to stream-encrypt the data.
Strong key generation would be relatively easy--build up an entropy pool from mouse movements over time.
I should get a patent for this! They'd allow me to patent this stupid thing in a heartbeat!
Companies have the choice of protecting or relinquishing the intellectual property resulting from their research and
development consistent with their particular customer and business needs.
Mundie sets this up as a false dilemma. Don't forget you can choose both within your company!
One of the primary reasons patents exist is to encourage invention. Let me tell you: not many things have done more to encourage invention in the past decade than the Microsoft/Open Source/Linux/BSD/Whatever dynamic, and there has never been a patent fight.
Or, if you prefer, we could have these fights. I'm just waiting for someone to sue IBM for backing a project that violates someone's backwater patent.
If that doesn't have a chilling effect on the innovative nature of the open source community, I don't know what will. And that's contrary to the goals of the patent system.
Patents should benefit the general populace. If they do it by spurring innovation, so be it. But software patents don't do that, and only benefit the companies that file them.
If no one knows about the security flaw except the BIND folks, then no harm done. But the minute someone else thinks of the exploit, I want to know about it that instant, preferably sooner.
Now unless the BIND folks have some kind of double secret magical exploit detection powers that can instantly determine when an individual has figured it out, I'd just as soon hear from BIND right away when then know of the issue.
I think BIND is just trying to cover their asses (which is fine.) I mean, it really should be responsiblilty of the sysadmins to keep their sites up to date with the latest patches. If they don't, they're fired, right?
But what if someone uses this megahole to shut down the net? People (politicians, whoever) are going to look for someone to flay, and that someone is BIND.
That is, refuse to allow internet access to anyone until they get some compliant software. ("We tried Censorware 2.3 and it still allowed us to get to sex.com...we can't be compliant with it, so we're shutting down the net to not lose federal funds.")
If they all did this, even Horsehead McCain would have to fold against it.
Slashdot Mirror
Damn straight. That's why it's ok for me to pirate Windows; I was unlikely to purchase the software anyway, so Microsoft actually loses nothing.
Nitpick: pipe() doesn't create a named pipe. mkfifo() does. I don't know if that's a printo or what.
I don't know much about the Windows code, but it looks like it's not named, either. I hope not, or else we might have a different comparison here.
A prof at my school would handle uneven loads by requiring that we submit a detailed report of who did what. He would partially weigh the individual grades based on who did how much.
If he was mistaken, the group got together and talked to him and got it straightened out. His idea was that if you were really a slacker holding the group back, there was no way you could convince the group to argue to the prof that you deserved a higher grade.
I mean, don't we suffer from exactly the same problems with all text that's online? Google caches it all for Pete's sake! Isn't that making a copy? Isn't that making it easier to find? Aren't these exactly the same complaints people are making about the images?
Authors are losing control over their works which can be easily found and copied now they they're catelogued by search engines! Outrage!
But is it the Right Thing to ban or penalize this?
These are exactly the types of problems that we're coming up against now that copyright has been deemed a control mechanism. We've gone and screwed up the whole system to the point where it's going to be virtually unusable.
But personally, I just want to know who I can sue for "copying" text and images from my site when they visit it. I need the money.
This can be true, but certainly isn't often the case. To optimize code for speed often involves contortions that do not clarify the code or make it simpler or easier to read.
The real trick is making it fast and readable. :-)
Port it now! "No, you can't say those words!"
They just want to bust all these kids under the DMCA! Don't do it!
I know the developer said he didn't want to and couldn't afford the time. But in principal, he could if he wanted. It's GPL'd, after all.
:)
Naturally, the people with the closed-source TuxRacer wouldn't like it, but legally, I don't think they can stop it.
Instead, let's just all get along, ok?
We need to immediately form a congressional committee to spec out the One True Rendering Specification that all browsers must comply to. The browsers can use some technology the congressmen heard about called XML or Java or Microsoft Office or something that will use advanced technology to divine the layout that the HTML author had originally intended.
Writing, distributing, or talking about programs that change the rendering from the Specification will result not more than 327 years in prison, or the copyright lifetime of a work-for-hire, whichever is less.
Oh, and by the way, using Lynx is treasonous, so get up against the wall! How dare you change my content so that it's text-based instead of graphical!
Jerks!
This isn't really surprising since it's meant to do really simple things like run Palm devices, and not meant to act as, say, a server.
This is generally fine, except it lacks things like modern memory protection that lead to crashes at times. There are also a number of assertions in the kernel that can fail and crash the system outright. ("Memory chunk overlocked" comes to mind.) It's just not a good OS for anything except the basics.
That's irksome now, but it's going to be unacceptable in the future. All of Palm's competitors are going to be offering much more solid platforms running much more complicated apps. They'll be cheap, too, since we're talking a significant time in the future.
Palm should:
As for that last one, almost everyone I know bypasses the OS to do quick graphics...this obviously would break with the compatibility library. Oh well--that should be acceptible losses. (Another option might be to run an old-Palm emulator on the new Palm, but you'd need a pile of RAM for that.)
This is going to be quite a tightrope walk for Palm. I hope they work things out, but I'm not buying their stock, know what I'm saying?
For you, it probably doesn't need to be. But some of us want realtime streaming video on our handhelds. :)
The database field is a hard place to be. Infocom found this out when they tried to branch into it and failed, taking the company down with it.
Redhat is facing effectively impossible competition on the high-end (where people pay for the name) and quite good competition on the low end where we have PostgrSQL and MySQL.
I'll be interested to see them pull it off. They just made a profit! Don't blow it!
Could the DMCA be bent somehow so that using a digital VCR to further edit out commercials would be counted as using a circumvention device?
What if the signal was encrypted and the TV was provided by the cable company and did the decryption?
If cable companies were providing all other VCR functionality for you, they could argue that having your own VCR had no non-infringing uses...
Whether your tool is a pencil or a web browser, you are allowed to make the change. Lynx renders your page, but it leaves the images out! Outrage! I'm modifying your page when I view it with Lynx! Are you mad? Of course not.
What's the difference between that, then, and me using IE to modify your page with other links? I am, like I said, allowed to draw moustaches on your page, and spindle and mutilate it as I see fit.
Why am I defending MS? Because the alternative most of you are advocating is too horrible to contemplate! You want there to be some limitation on how end users are allowed to render HTML! To hell with that shit! Can you even begin to imagine such regulation? Do you want to have to develop your open-source browser under government supervision?
You might wish Microsoft dead and buried, but let me offer you a piece of advice: don't put your head between them and the gun when you pull the trigger, Slick.
Or is there another set of software that does photo-stitching under Linux?
Just having purchased a new digital camera, I was disappointed to learn that there was a lack of software to do the stitching under un*x. I found links to Panorama Tools (huzzah!) but saw the site was down (no!)
Well, that'll teach the good professor to write software and not release it anonymously.
Seems like overkill, but some secure crypto algorithms are really easy to implement.
You could have a super-low voltage transmission (only powerful enough to reach 10cm or so) for key exchange when the user holds down a button on the bottom of the mouse. Once the key is exchanged between the mouse and base, it can be used to stream-encrypt the data.
Strong key generation would be relatively easy--build up an entropy pool from mouse movements over time.
I should get a patent for this! They'd allow me to patent this stupid thing in a heartbeat!
Mundie sets this up as a false dilemma. Don't forget you can choose both within your company!
Anything that lasts 20 years on the Internet and is then "revised" to be pretty much the same as it ever was, is a good design indeed.
Hats off!
I must be, or else I wouldn't have been the only other person to think this up on my own years ago when I was in college.
Curse me for not patenting this obviously non-obvious technique! Using a hash to detect changes! Oh my GOD THAT'S SO FUCKING BRILLIANT!
I think I just came.
If CERT wants to go private and charge $2500 to $70,000 for timely alerts, then the US Government should sign up at $70,000.
Since the government current pays CERT $3,500,000 each year, I say that entitles us taxpayers to FREE UP-TO-DATE alerts.
CERT can't have it both ways. They can piss off if they want to use my tax dollars and give me nothing in return.
I have a pre-order in for next 7.X with walnut creek--will they still be doing that distribution?
One of the primary reasons patents exist is to encourage invention. Let me tell you: not many things have done more to encourage invention in the past decade than the Microsoft/Open Source/Linux/BSD/Whatever dynamic, and there has never been a patent fight.
Or, if you prefer, we could have these fights. I'm just waiting for someone to sue IBM for backing a project that violates someone's backwater patent.
If that doesn't have a chilling effect on the innovative nature of the open source community, I don't know what will. And that's contrary to the goals of the patent system.
Patents should benefit the general populace. If they do it by spurring innovation, so be it. But software patents don't do that, and only benefit the companies that file them.
If no one knows about the security flaw except the BIND folks, then no harm done. But the minute someone else thinks of the exploit, I want to know about it that instant, preferably sooner.
Now unless the BIND folks have some kind of double secret magical exploit detection powers that can instantly determine when an individual has figured it out, I'd just as soon hear from BIND right away when then know of the issue.
I think BIND is just trying to cover their asses (which is fine.) I mean, it really should be responsiblilty of the sysadmins to keep their sites up to date with the latest patches. If they don't, they're fired, right?
But what if someone uses this megahole to shut down the net? People (politicians, whoever) are going to look for someone to flay, and that someone is BIND.
If they all did this, even Horsehead McCain would have to fold against it.
I'm for smaller government, but my priority is on civil rights. In the latter regard, Gore and Bush both fail, but Bush moreso.
In the end, I vote Libertarian; it's small on government and big on civil rights.
Finally, I don't actually believe that Bush is a "smaller government" man than Gore is. Do you?