I made an amusing object in a development MUD once, It's property was that if you saw it (in the environment, or by inspecting another player), it would copy itself into your inventory and delete itself before being listed, unless you were inspecting your own inventory, in which case it would copy itself into the environment and delete itself from your inventory.
That is, normally an unlistable object would be impossible, because even if it returned no name, the MUD code would provide the name of the parent class (that is, if a 'Sword' name function returned an error, the player would see 'Unnamed Weapon') all the way up the 'Unnamed Object' base class, but by deleting itself, there was no parent class left.
Unfortunetly, I made a typo in the self-deletion code and it would occasionally delete the next object in the players inventory. (when the player received another object after the moving object, but before the object moved out of his inventory) but it would still make the copy of itself.
I recall a story of a math stutent getting a cease-and-desist letter, and losing his campus connection because of a file named 'matrix.xls'.
Don't forget 4'33, an audio track that is 273 seconds of silence, and well protected by copyright.
Honestly, if HBO gives every appearance of releasing 'Rome' to public networks, by having someone in their employ distributing a file that purports to be such, are they not in fact authorizing it's release?
That is, if you were to put out a sign next to a plate of free nearly-expired cheese, saying 'Free Cheese', and there happened to be another plate of fresh cheese that you intended to sell for profit that was unlabeled next to it; would you have any legitimate claim that someone who took cheese from the wrong, but indistinguishable plate, was stealing?
Imagine if the science textbook writer told the children to drink a prefectly safe liquid. But, in their classroom, the bottles were mis-labeled and several children die.
Should the writer have any liability? (Personally, I would never eat/drink ANYTHING near dangerous chemicals, suggesting it seems bad to me.)
The author of both books and software do not have control over the whole environment; just as bottles in a lab can be mislabeled, the operating system, or other applications might be incorrect.
Such as an SSH implementation with Null encryption, buffer overflows in the OS, or even a wire-tap device installed inside a keyboard to log keystrokes. Only if the same group has control over all the hardware and software on a system, can they really be confident in it's security.
The best lock in the world won't protect your house if you leave a key under the mat, same with passwords on post-its. And don't try suing McDonalds for getting food poisoning from a burger you left in your glovebox for a month.
Last week, near Seattle, I was taken out of my car at gunpoint, and spent the night in jail over a traffic incident in which noone was realisticly endangered, no cars touched anything they shouldn't have, and not more than 10 mph over the speed limit.
Apperently, trying to avoid having some nutjob deliberatly hit your car multiple times is 'Reckless Driving'
(Honestly, I can't fault the cops, from what they saw it was me that was swerving out of my lane, and I was probably too upset to drive after that anyway. God knows why someone in a newish Lexus would try and make a 12 year old dodge hit him; my only thought is maybe he couldn't make the payments, and wanted insurance to pay off the car.)
When I was installing FF on this linux box (Slackware/KDE) the first installation dialog said something like "Click 'Next' to continue", but the button was labeled 'Proceed', might not have been those exact words, and not exactly confusing, but it didn't inspire confidence.
Also in a scrolling text box within a page (such as this new comment form) the vertical line of pixels to the left of the 'thumb' of the scrollbar appears to be semi-random colors, it looks like it's getting a blit from the wrong place in memory. FF does this on both Windows and Linux... dosn't crash, so I don't think its accessing random/null memory, but it's something in the 'not good' category.
Would RT OS's be good for use in a heavy duty router? I would imagine IP/ATM packet routing would be best with the smallest possible latency, but you couldn't predict exactly when a packet will arrive over a specific interface. I'm thinking of something like a streaming video network (IP telephony, on-demand video, etc.), or even a gaming network, where lag means virtual death.
also, I imagine acheving low response times for interupts would be fairly easy on a multiple core system, if you just set aside all but one core for responding to interupts.
If I recall correctly, from years ago, there was an thing in the Windows NT HAL that allowed you to designate which CPU would handle interrupts...
I was thinking about this recently, thinking that if I had complete control over a dual core system, I would have all 'long' processes run on one CPU, with infrequent context switches for best efficency, while the other CPU would get all the 'short' execution time threads, for interupts and such. particularly in respect of the per-core memory cache. that way, receiving a network packet, moving the mouse, etc. would not interrupt things like video encoding/decoding, etc. but would still be quick... of coarse, each thread would have to be labeled for the scheduler to assign them appropriatly, but I think the real gains would be in keeping the cache consistant, the device drivers memory would always be in one core, and the long processes memory would remain on it's core. When I used a 2 cpu system to recalculate a large numerical database (2 gigabytes of pure numbers, back on a P-Pro 200x2 system with a whopping 256 megs of ram) The windows CPU meter would continutally switch which CPU was doing the non-multithreaded calculations. But I suppose that helped distribute the CPU heat evenly at least.
Using an off-the-shelf undelete utility or such to find evidence of wrongdoing may be sufficent in order to fire or investigate someone, but any competent laywer would rip that 'evidence' to shreds.
To get a serious felony conviction, evidence has to meet defined standards. For example, recently many DUI's got tossed out in my area because the officers did not properly document the temperature of the equipment.
All evidence needs a documented, trusted, chain of custody. If you suspect an employee of storing kiddie porn on a company computer, and you do anything with that computer before the police get it, the evidence loses a lot of value.
Proper forensic software; just like Breathalyzers, DNA/Fingerprint equipment, and anything else used to collect/store potential evidence needs to be known and trusted, and used by certified forensic folks, because it's not a mad scramble to get as much data as possible, it's an attempt to prove a crime was commited beyond a reasonable doubt.
As an example, it would be difficult to convict someone for having a few peices of child porn in their cache... how many of you have goatse somewhere on your hard drive, does that mean you willfully went there? But if hundreds of photographs are stored in a deliberate fashion, you might have something.
The feds have a nice little chip, weighing under 1 ounce that goes inside of an existing keyboard attached to the wires leading to the PC that logs keystrokes to a buffer for later retrieval. Handy for getting passwords to encrypted drives and such.
Lets take, as a random example, from amazon, 'The Matrix' (I havn't looked it up before writing this)
The movie itself on DVD: $14.97
The Matrix: Original Motion Picture Score [SOUNDTRACK]: $16.98
So, just the music part of the audio, not even the spoken words of the actors costs $2.01 more than the Digital Video, Audio in Dolby 5.1, Bonus Features, and all, of the DVD version.
Audio CD albums should generally be sold for $5 in little cheap cardboard sleeves
At the current insane prices I have bought 1 boxed set of CD's for $20 in the last year. If they cut their prices to $5 I would probably buy at least 1 CD a week. It's pretty simple, at 1/5 the profit per disc, but selling 50 times as many discs, profits multiply by 10.
Music stores would have much higher sales volume and albums would go 'gold' and 'platinum' a lot quicker. The main problem I forsee is the waste produced by making CD's more disposable, but that could be solved by a good recycling program.
As handy as iTunes might be, there is a good quote; "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes"; a truckload of CD's heading to the music store is a more efficent than pumping bits through the internet.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe it's traditionally called a 'nibble'
Psst, SCO, I hear the RIAA is running Linux servers to spam P2P music networks, and not paying you license fees.
Psst, RIAA, I hear SCO is licensing Linux servers capable of sharing music files, and not paying you license fees.
I made an amusing object in a development MUD once, It's property was that if you saw it (in the environment, or by inspecting another player), it would copy itself into your inventory and delete itself before being listed, unless you were inspecting your own inventory, in which case it would copy itself into the environment and delete itself from your inventory.
That is, normally an unlistable object would be impossible, because even if it returned no name, the MUD code would provide the name of the parent class (that is, if a 'Sword' name function returned an error, the player would see 'Unnamed Weapon') all the way up the 'Unnamed Object' base class, but by deleting itself, there was no parent class left.
Unfortunetly, I made a typo in the self-deletion code and it would occasionally delete the next object in the players inventory. (when the player received another object after the moving object, but before the object moved out of his inventory) but it would still make the copy of itself.
oops.
I recall a story of a math stutent getting a cease-and-desist letter, and losing his campus connection because of a file named 'matrix.xls'.
Don't forget 4'33, an audio track that is 273 seconds of silence, and well protected by copyright.
Honestly, if HBO gives every appearance of releasing 'Rome' to public networks, by having someone in their employ distributing a file that purports to be such, are they not in fact authorizing it's release?
That is, if you were to put out a sign next to a plate of free nearly-expired cheese, saying 'Free Cheese', and there happened to be another plate of fresh cheese that you intended to sell for profit that was unlabeled next to it; would you have any legitimate claim that someone who took cheese from the wrong, but indistinguishable plate, was stealing?
The feds could Eminent Domain the mayor, police chief, city council etc's house for Google executives to live in.
Since they would be paying higher income taxes, and if would keep Google from relocating to Canada.
At least not since Micheal Jackson's legal problems started.
Imagine if the science textbook writer told the children to drink a prefectly safe liquid. But, in their classroom, the bottles were mis-labeled and several children die.
Should the writer have any liability? (Personally, I would never eat/drink ANYTHING near dangerous chemicals, suggesting it seems bad to me.)
The author of both books and software do not have control over the whole environment; just as bottles in a lab can be mislabeled, the operating system, or other applications might be incorrect.
Such as an SSH implementation with Null encryption, buffer overflows in the OS, or even a wire-tap device installed inside a keyboard to log keystrokes. Only if the same group has control over all the hardware and software on a system, can they really be confident in it's security.
The best lock in the world won't protect your house if you leave a key under the mat, same with passwords on post-its. And don't try suing McDonalds for getting food poisoning from a burger you left in your glovebox for a month.
Somewhat off topic, but you should always have a radio (battery or hand crank charge...) in your home for emergency information.
pulled him over out of my view, don't know beyond that.
Last week, near Seattle, I was taken out of my car at gunpoint, and spent the night in jail over a traffic incident in which noone was realisticly endangered, no cars touched anything they shouldn't have, and not more than 10 mph over the speed limit.
Apperently, trying to avoid having some nutjob deliberatly hit your car multiple times is 'Reckless Driving'
(Honestly, I can't fault the cops, from what they saw it was me that was swerving out of my lane, and I was probably too upset to drive after that anyway. God knows why someone in a newish Lexus would try and make a 12 year old dodge hit him; my only thought is maybe he couldn't make the payments, and wanted insurance to pay off the car.)
Imagine, you are blind.
and you want to read a book.
wait for the book on tape? braille edition? have someone read it to you? how about having someTHING read it to you.
wave the device over the book/legal document/postal mail; it automatically scans, merges, converts to machine readable text, then text-to-speach.
and heck, have it translate languages at the same time. both written and spoken.
Is that you don't have to shave before driving to work in the morning.
what about Pi being basically irrational? does his ideas have any affect of figuring the dimension of curved objects, or just polygons?
When I was installing FF on this linux box (Slackware/KDE) the first installation dialog said something like "Click 'Next' to continue", but the button was labeled 'Proceed', might not have been those exact words, and not exactly confusing, but it didn't inspire confidence.
Also in a scrolling text box within a page (such as this new comment form) the vertical line of pixels to the left of the 'thumb' of the scrollbar appears to be semi-random colors, it looks like it's getting a blit from the wrong place in memory. FF does this on both Windows and Linux... dosn't crash, so I don't think its accessing random/null memory, but it's something in the 'not good' category.
I can't see a for-profit website, such as /. depending upon a service from another orginization without a contract of some kind.
/. would have no recourse.
What if Coral logs privacy violating data?, what if Coral is hacked to goatse every page?
Dell caused Katrina.
Would RT OS's be good for use in a heavy duty router? I would imagine IP/ATM packet routing would be best with the smallest possible latency, but you couldn't predict exactly when a packet will arrive over a specific interface. I'm thinking of something like a streaming video network (IP telephony, on-demand video, etc.), or even a gaming network, where lag means virtual death.
also, I imagine acheving low response times for interupts would be fairly easy on a multiple core system, if you just set aside all but one core for responding to interupts.
If I recall correctly, from years ago, there was an thing in the Windows NT HAL that allowed you to designate which CPU would handle interrupts...
I was thinking about this recently, thinking that if I had complete control over a dual core system, I would have all 'long' processes run on one CPU, with infrequent context switches for best efficency, while the other CPU would get all the 'short' execution time threads, for interupts and such. particularly in respect of the per-core memory cache. that way, receiving a network packet, moving the mouse, etc. would not interrupt things like video encoding/decoding, etc. but would still be quick... of coarse, each thread would have to be labeled for the scheduler to assign them appropriatly, but I think the real gains would be in keeping the cache consistant, the device drivers memory would always be in one core, and the long processes memory would remain on it's core. When I used a 2 cpu system to recalculate a large numerical database (2 gigabytes of pure numbers, back on a P-Pro 200x2 system with a whopping 256 megs of ram) The windows CPU meter would continutally switch which CPU was doing the non-multithreaded calculations. But I suppose that helped distribute the CPU heat evenly at least.
Does RMS have a trademark on "RMS"?
)
'cause I'm using that TLA as well...
(http://www.speakeasy.org/~rms/kelet20050815l.jpg
I'd be careful about who you tell about those, isn't ammonia used to make methanphetamines?
to bad you can't set up a server emulator, even though Blizzard has no servers in your area, because it's against US law...
oh, wait...
Do they pray to Laser Jesus?
I'm so very happy that Slashdot dosn't support embedding images in comments right now.
(ewww)
Eventually, Google will try to index itself, and become self-aware.
Results 1 - 10 of about 79,100 for "Sarah Conner". (0.08 seconds)
Using an off-the-shelf undelete utility or such to find evidence of wrongdoing may be sufficent in order to fire or investigate someone, but any competent laywer would rip that 'evidence' to shreds.
To get a serious felony conviction, evidence has to meet defined standards. For example, recently many DUI's got tossed out in my area because the officers did not properly document the temperature of the equipment.
All evidence needs a documented, trusted, chain of custody. If you suspect an employee of storing kiddie porn on a company computer, and you do anything with that computer before the police get it, the evidence loses a lot of value.
Proper forensic software; just like Breathalyzers, DNA/Fingerprint equipment, and anything else used to collect/store potential evidence needs to be known and trusted, and used by certified forensic folks, because it's not a mad scramble to get as much data as possible, it's an attempt to prove a crime was commited beyond a reasonable doubt.
As an example, it would be difficult to convict someone for having a few peices of child porn in their cache... how many of you have goatse somewhere on your hard drive, does that mean you willfully went there? But if hundreds of photographs are stored in a deliberate fashion, you might have something.
The feds have a nice little chip, weighing under 1 ounce that goes inside of an existing keyboard attached to the wires leading to the PC that logs keystrokes to a buffer for later retrieval. Handy for getting passwords to encrypted drives and such.
Lets take, as a random example, from amazon, 'The Matrix' (I havn't looked it up before writing this)
The movie itself on DVD: $14.97
The Matrix: Original Motion Picture Score [SOUNDTRACK]: $16.98
So, just the music part of the audio, not even the spoken words of the actors costs $2.01 more than the Digital Video, Audio in Dolby 5.1, Bonus Features, and all, of the DVD version.
Audio CD albums should generally be sold for $5 in little cheap cardboard sleeves
At the current insane prices I have bought 1 boxed set of CD's for $20 in the last year. If they cut their prices to $5 I would probably buy at least 1 CD a week. It's pretty simple, at 1/5 the profit per disc, but selling 50 times as many discs, profits multiply by 10.
Music stores would have much higher sales volume and albums would go 'gold' and 'platinum' a lot quicker. The main problem I forsee is the waste produced by making CD's more disposable, but that could be solved by a good recycling program.
As handy as iTunes might be, there is a good quote; "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes"; a truckload of CD's heading to the music store is a more efficent than pumping bits through the internet.