More games is a good thing, but non-native application support for linux is the last thing we want.
Look what happened to IBM's OS/2 platform. The windows emulation was so good that native OS/2 applications were never written. And once Microsoft pulled the rug out from underneath IBM with Win32, OS/2 died.
If Linux is to thrive in the consumer market, then it must do so on its own merits. Settling for weak Microsoft emulation is a step backwards.
Nothing will replace native support. When native applications are written for a platform, others will decide to start porting to this popular platform. If they only see non-native support, then they won't bother.
Why would you put the effort of writing for two code bases if only one would suffice? You wouldn't; that's obvious. So we'll end up with a world of Windows applications and none for Linux.
This would be fine, if we could trust Microsoft not to change the Win32 API, but can we? They're going to have to switch to a Win64 API soon. Will we be able to catch up?
It'd be better not to tie Linux's future to shoddy emulation efforts. Even if it's not true "emulation" in that sense, it still is vulnerable to the sort of problems that regular emulation is: all Microsoft has to do is change a couple libraries and we're back out in the rain again.
Real Linux Support Now. Don't settle for anything less.
Governmental consolidation, like economic consolidation in the private sector, has its pros and cons. It can lead to greater economic stability as weaker players (like Netscape or Moldova) are weeded out of the market, but it can also lead to greater communication of pathogens like this.
How many of the EU's policies are to blame for this epidemic? It used to be that livestock diseases were a local phenomenon affecting only local expendable populations. But now, with the advent first of railroads and then trucks and planes, we're seeing diseases carried far beyond these bucolic borders and into the urban centers we ourselves inhabit.
So far, the EU hasn't taken any bold new steps to stem the tide, so what are we tolerating them for? They were supposed to stand for an image of a united Europe, but all they've managed to do is breed dissention and economic uncertainty with the collapse of the euro. How can we take a government seriously when its presidency exists on a rotating basis (to Sweden, of all places)? And what sort of united face have they put on the great animal and human suffering caused by this virus?
The foot-and-mouth epidemic is the great test the EU must face in order to have some sort of legitimacy on the world scene. If other countries see that the EU and Europe are vulnerable to biological warfare like this, then there's no telling what sort of military or terrorist actions they might decide to engage themselves in.
The future of Europe as an economic and political superpower is hinging on the cloven hooves of our ovine and bovine brethren.
We should keep it up as a monument
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Mir Deathwatch
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· Score: 3
Letting MIR crash into the Pacific isn't just irresponsible; it's unpatriotic. MIR was a monument to the great Socialist state. It was the last major project the Russian space agency participated in with any great fanfare or success.
And now we just want to deorbit it? To erase it from our memories? If we do not learn from history, then we will be doomed to repeat it. Our children will live in a world without a Russian space station orbiting above their heads. When they look out into the night sky, they won't see the work of MAN shining back at them. They'll only see the light from stars exploded billions of years ago, awash in the effusing glow of decaying atomic matter.
How much better it would've been for them to see the great Soviet empire whizzing overhead! Men died to build that great colossus. Countless dogs perished in orbit in order to test the effects of zero-g environments. Hundreds of manhours were spent in that endeavor, and we'll take it all down for what? So that we can free up a little bit more extraterrestrial realestate for a shiny new commercial satellite?
It reinforces the idea that space is to be a commercial enterprise and no longer one engaged in the pursuit of the common weal. What would Captain Kirk say about our worship of the dollar? What would he say about how we refuse to let this waystation remain on the outskirts of our fair planet just waiting for a new spirit or being to arrive and peer gently and softly at our pulsating ecosystems? The one thing the Soviets had right was their decrying of capitalism and the dammages it's wreaked on our terrestrial and extraterrestrial environments. Now, MIR will be gone, and nothing will remain in its stay.
I can't speak for Georgia Tech itself, but if it's like other institutions of higher learning, its library is a Federal Book depository. This means it has certain privileges like being qualified to house official copies of Federal documents. But it also means there are certain regulations and restrictions regarding access. One of those has to do with network access, which the new LAN setup sounds like it violates.
It makes sense to require unrestricted network access at the Congressional level, as is the case here. If people are denied access, then one of the fundamental tenets of western civilization is violated: the free access to and flow of information. Throughout history, libraries have been public institutions serving the public good by disseminating information previously guarded in the hands of the few. The Revolutionary war our nation was founded on was fought as much because of restrictive lending privileges at the Bodlean as because of the tyranny of mercantilism or Parliamentary taxation.
What are they honestly afraid of? It's not as though individuals will be flocking to the library to steal their bandwidth (which is their right, btw, under Federal law, as I mentioned). Are they afraid more vagrants will enter and disturb the delicate institutional framework they have worked so hard to erect and worked so passionately to defend from interlopers? I hardly think the incidence of homeless people traipsing in with their laptops will increase.
The article notes that he attends a public school. This raises an interesting conundrum.
A successful school is, by definition, one that succeeds in engaging its students in academic pursuits and gives them the intellectual growth they need to succeed in the world. But education takes time and effort, as everyone knows.
If education monopolizes a student's time to the exclusion of all other activities, then he won't be able to develop these new and exciting discoveries. He'll be proficient in the knowledge of yesteryear, but he won't be able to look ahead to the future; for his nose will be constantly buried in a book.
This is why it's imperative for schools not to spend too much of students' time on homework. A half hour of homework per night and three hours of enforced studyhall periods would go a long ways towards giving students the time and the environment to make these wonderful discoveries. Some will spend it doodling, as the article noted, but that's the price we pay for a sophisticated environmentally-holistic educational approach.
Public schools are already making great strides in giving our students these opportunities, but private schools lag far behind (and public schools are starting to join them). This is why it's more imperative than ever that we oppose school-voucher programs. Students must be kept in the environments where we're already seeing successes like Josh's.
When engineers sneer at computer science, I just chuckle to myself. Because I know something they don't know: they're just jealous.
Engineers are jealous of programmers. It's that simple. Programmers have an easy life, after all. I only work a few hours a day, get paid big bucks, and for what? For telling a machine what to do. For the act of mere speech. It's Rapunzel's tale incarnate: I spin words into gold.
Engineers have too many constraints; the standards are too high. When the Tacoma Narrows bridge fell down, heads rolled. But when a bug in the latest version of NT disables an aircraft carrier, Microsoft doesn't get blamed at all. Bugs are par for the course in our industry, and we have no intention of changing it. It means higher profits from fixes and lower expectations. How are engineers supposed to compete with those sorts of odds?
I admit I considered going into engineering when I started my college days, but I was quickly disuaded. The courses were too involved, whereas the CS courses were a breeze for anyone who didn't fail calculus. And I don't regret it at all, really.
Programmers might not get the satisfaction of building something useful and might not experience the artistic delight of design, but we at least don't have to work as hard. And when it comes to the bottom line, that's all that counts.
If you're good at what you do, then you don't have to worry about getting fired. If you're good at doing what you do, then you don't have to worry about being rehired. I'm good at what I do, so I'm not worried. It's not like I'm living under the sea.
Tight markets come and go. The fellows in charge decide they want it one way, and tomorrow they'll want it some other way. Yesterday, the craze was growing your workforce as fast as possible: just look at Yahoo and Amazon.com. Today, it's downsizing again. Tomorrow, it'll be back to growing the workforce. It's the circle of life.
If you're worried, then put your mind at ease. That is, if you're one of the few qualified employees. You have to be willing to put in long hours for not a lot of glory, and you have to be quick on your toes. If you want, my company is hiring. Be our guest.
And don't overlook training. Skills are important; they're what separates you from the rest of the pool. Learn that extra language. Study up on that extra system. You never know when you'll need it for the next great job. You never know when you'll run into that next great employer tomorrow. It's a small world after all.
Because that would preserve your little conception of the world -- your anthrocentric view of our universe, where we are king and all other species must bow down in subservience. But I know better. I have seen the light, and so shall you if I have my way.
We are not alone. I don't just mean because other people are around. I mean because there is something else out there, something bigger than you or me. And I don't mean some divine being, because that's beyond our rational scientific knowledge. I mean actual creatures, beings, who are out there and weigh at least four times as much as your average human, beings we have full knowledge of through their contacts here on earth.
And I'm not alone in this knowledge. There are others like me, but they've been censored by the government and told they're insane. Ha! Imagine that! Isn't it easier to label someone insane than to have to confront his insights and wisdom? Isn't it just so much easier. You can just laugh it off, but it's true. Every word of it. My friends have told me as much, and I should know, since I've had a few. It's all perfectly clear to me now.
Have I said too much already? I don't think so. It's my sworn duty as a partisan to show the whole world its folly now before we're annhialated. They have the technology, you know. We may have usb satellite modems, but they can communicate faster and further than we can even imagine. Picture the biggest distance you can imagine. They can communicate even further than that. Picture the fastest you can move. They can move faster than that and even steal your thoughts at the same time. They're not constrained by the same constraints that constrain you and me with constraints. They're more powerful than that, and I can't even tell you how much.
They're out there. We can hide, but they'll find us sooner or later. And the longer we wait, the longer we have before they find us. We have to be very quiet, or else they'll find us sooner. And then they'll know what we've been doing and what we've been thinking and what we've been eating and where we've been going and what we've been doing and what we've been saying about them. Don't think they don't care that we're talking about them behind their backs, because they care. They might not be like you and me, but they're still no dopes. They have pride and they're very sensitive about it. Not at all insensitive like you and I are told we are. They care what others think, and if they're bothered by what we're doing or saying or thinking then they just up and take care of it.
We can't wait forever, you know. Or at least I hope you know now, now that I've explained it to you. You have to tell everyone you know. It's the only way we can survive.
The slow upstream speed is reason enough to avoid using satellite modems, but even more sinister is the potential for eavesdropping.
When you use a standard phone connection, it's virtually impossible for someone to eavesdrop. A physical interception of the wires must be made, and that is usually detectable. That's the nature of actual hug-a-by connections. This is why wireless hookups are almost never used in classified or high-risk situations.
But with a satellite modem, you're broadcasting your signal to the entire universe. Anyone can intercept part of your signal and reconstruct the entire whole. Anyone with another satellite has you at his mercy. Worse still, your signal doesn't just stop at its intended destination (the intended satellite) -- it travels out into the rest of the universe as a stream of electromagnetic radiation, to distant galaxies, and beyond. Years from in the future, someone can intercept that signal (just as we currently intercept the light from distant quasars billions of years after it was emitted) and know what your surfing habits. It's both an invasion of your privacy as a consumer and it sets a shaky precedent for how distant alien races will perceive the entire body of humanity. Satellite modems will surely bring the wrath of alien conquerers down upon our lush green planet.
Technical decisions alone shouldn't govern which technologies we employ. They have strong and strict social implications and background conditions that must be attended to. Keep that in mind when you think to purchase a satellite-modem service.
I'm happy to hear this news, but what's going to happen to the UK now?
Corporations are still going to get their patents, whatever the government has to say about it. If the UK won't grant it, then they'll just take their business elsewhere. The UK has been an attractive location for high-tech development because of the pound's strength against the euro, and because of Britain's efficient network of rails supporting the industries that support high tech. But a shaky legal situation could undermine investor confidence and shatter these hard-won benefits.
I can't emphasize it enough: you can't fight big business with government. Governments are just another type of business and know how to look after their own. Businesses have a stronger voice than citizens because of corporate finances, and mark my words, this isn't the last we'll hear about this issue. The UK doesn't have a constitution, so all it will take is another act of parliament tomorrow to turn the tables on intellectual property yet again.
Still, it's nice to see the UK serving as a role model for others, a role normally enjoyed by France. With luck, business-model and software patents everywhere will be abolished.
IBM also made the ppc gekko processor in Nintendo's gamecube, so they're not new to the game-console embedded-processor market.
It just goes to show that whoever strikes gold, it's the fellows selling the picks and shovels who really make a bundle. No one is sure which of the big console players will dominate the market in five years, but whoever it is, IBM will be selling their processors. That's a winning strategy by anyone's standard.
The comparison to a Ferrari is particularly ironic, imho. The Ferrari, as a massively expensive sports car, is not just a high-performance vehicle. It's also a status symbol. An expensive entrenched status symbol.
It won't be enough for electric cars to perform better than internal-combustion cars. We've had cleaner alternatives to gasoline for years now, and most have flopped. Part of that has to do with the economics of scale and the relative abundance of petroleum on our planet (more available and cheaper than milk), but part of that also has to do with image.
The dragracer is an important ideographic image in American culture. He is defined by his sleek car and fast speeds, but he is also defined by the clouds of smoke that trail behind him as he burns rubber. Will a "clean" electric car cast the same fiery clouds of masculine brimstone in his wake? Will manufacturers be able to overcome the perceived impotence of electric vehicles?
The trend has sadly been away from fuel efficiency. SUVs and diesel trucks hog the roads. Unless electric cars are fundamentally cheaper or better performance-wise, they will flop for sure. And it'll be years before the prices come down out of the stratosphere.
It goes without saying that TCP is one of the fundamental protocols billions of dollars of internet infrastructure and other businesses rely on. If it could happen to TCP, then which other protocols are vulnerable to similar problems? What security holes lurk in SMB, for example? Will we ever know?
Even Linux 2.1.53 had a massive TCP/IP-stack hole, so we know we're not invulnerable. This isn't just a problem for others.
Retro games are more popular than you'd think
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Leisure Suit Unix
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· Score: 5
My first reaction is to wonder why someone would be so happy about the porting of such old games to linux, when they've been played so much on other platforms. But retro games are more popular than you'd think.
The hobbyist mentality of the average linux user is quite compatible with the emulator mentality -- just look at the popularity of MAME and other emulation software on Linux and the BSDs. Both operating systems are suited to people who would rather relive what once worked than senselessly reinvent themselves.
There is a lot of money to be made in pandering to people's nostaligias, as any record company or movie executive would tell you. Combo packs of old games have been a staple of the game market for years. Bringing them to a new platform and one which is dominated by people who loved the original is the next logical step.
I'd explain it myself, but this page does a pretty good job, and I'd hate to duplicate efforts. It's an important function in number theory, particularly concerning prime numbers.
If you haven't read Cryptonomicon yet, I heartily recommend you do so. It's three quarters of a good novel, and the last quarter has enough twists in it that you can overlook the cheese and the fanboy religious overtones.
You can read the prologue online and decide for yourself. Try before you buy, and see some of the zeta functions Stephenson is talking about.
This is amusing, to be sure, but it underlines just how much people are letting the internet change their economic outlooks and their entire careers. Four years ago, the internet was going to change the world. Today, the world is much the same as it was twenty years ago, though with neater toys and perhaps fewer suits.
If you're changing how you're going about getting a new job, then you're crazy. You should be asking the same questions and demanding the same benefits/compensation today that you would've twenty years ago (adjusted for inflation, of course). Gone are the days of microserfdom with an eye to fabulous options. If they're not paying you cash and good dental, then look elsewhere.
I'm happy to say I rode the internet wave by staying by the sidelines. I had a lot less excitement than some of my buddies, but now I can say I'm the better for it. I'm several years further along in my career than they were, and now they have to scramble to make up for lost time. I don't envy them at all.
Part of the liscense may be held invalid while the other parts are upheld (including language disclaiming such a possibility). If the violator can get the restrictive parts invalidated while retaining the part about free use, then he's doing pretty well for himself.
For example, back when Steve Job's Next was marketing the objective c language as used in nextstep and openstep, he based their objective-c compiler on a modified version of gcc (which is under the GPL). Jobs didn't want to release the source for the objective-c changes, but after much legal wrangling, he decided that he didn't have much of a legal leg to stand on.
There have been no official court decisions or cases, yet (despite many hints by RMS that one is on the horizon). This is itself an implicit suggestion that the legal case against violations would be pretty good.
If we keep mirroring the database, then we'll never be fully under their thumb. Download a copy from one of the existing mirrors, and keep the movement alive.
If you're still not sure why you should oppose the UCITA, Cem Kaner has a good essay you should read. This is not just another bad law. This is the bad law of the decade, which could cripple consumer choice in the software industry and throw the brakes on the biggest economic boom we've had in years (powered by those tech companies, which will suffer because of the UCITA).
Write your congressperson and get some Federal legislation to preempt the UCITA. And more importantly, write your own state representative, because the only way to defeat will probably be on a state-by-state basis.
I'm as wary as the next guy of the NSA's actions, and their secretive behaviors don't seem to jive with the spirit of the GPL. But since they're going to use an operating system and not release all their modifications (though so far, they've supposedly done so with SE Linux), they might as well do it with Linux.
If they find some fundamental flaws with Linux generally, they'll still release fixes, albeit anonymously. Anyone remember how they fixed DES against an exploit not publicly known until many years after the fix? Same thing.
And while we might not like the NSA, we can't pretend we'd rather they be open to all the exploits that plague other operating systems. Attack them at the Congressional level, but don't compromise our national integrity by attacking them at the client level.
Who's their targetted audience?
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Paper Phones
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· Score: 2
Payphones and disposable phonecards are already ubiquitous. A disposable cellphone might add something in convenience, but why would you bother?
Everyone who wants a cellphone pretty much already has one. A disposable cellphone isn't any cheaper -- in fact, it's more expensive per unit, just as phonecards are more expensive per minute than good home long-distance plans. You're paying for the convenience.
So anyone who doesn't already own a cellphone because of the expense isn't going to be able to afford this any better. So, they'll have to be selling to people based on its convenience. That means tourists and criminals, and I'm not sure which one is worse.
Slashdot Mirror
More games is a good thing, but non-native application support for linux is the last thing we want.
Look what happened to IBM's OS/2 platform. The windows emulation was so good that native OS/2 applications were never written. And once Microsoft pulled the rug out from underneath IBM with Win32, OS/2 died.
If Linux is to thrive in the consumer market, then it must do so on its own merits. Settling for weak Microsoft emulation is a step backwards.
Nothing will replace native support. When native applications are written for a platform, others will decide to start porting to this popular platform. If they only see non-native support, then they won't bother.
Why would you put the effort of writing for two code bases if only one would suffice? You wouldn't; that's obvious. So we'll end up with a world of Windows applications and none for Linux.
This would be fine, if we could trust Microsoft not to change the Win32 API, but can we? They're going to have to switch to a Win64 API soon. Will we be able to catch up?
It'd be better not to tie Linux's future to shoddy emulation efforts. Even if it's not true "emulation" in that sense, it still is vulnerable to the sort of problems that regular emulation is: all Microsoft has to do is change a couple libraries and we're back out in the rain again.
Real Linux Support Now. Don't settle for anything less.
Governmental consolidation, like economic consolidation in the private sector, has its pros and cons. It can lead to greater economic stability as weaker players (like Netscape or Moldova) are weeded out of the market, but it can also lead to greater communication of pathogens like this.
How many of the EU's policies are to blame for this epidemic? It used to be that livestock diseases were a local phenomenon affecting only local expendable populations. But now, with the advent first of railroads and then trucks and planes, we're seeing diseases carried far beyond these bucolic borders and into the urban centers we ourselves inhabit.
So far, the EU hasn't taken any bold new steps to stem the tide, so what are we tolerating them for? They were supposed to stand for an image of a united Europe, but all they've managed to do is breed dissention and economic uncertainty with the collapse of the euro. How can we take a government seriously when its presidency exists on a rotating basis (to Sweden, of all places)? And what sort of united face have they put on the great animal and human suffering caused by this virus?
The foot-and-mouth epidemic is the great test the EU must face in order to have some sort of legitimacy on the world scene. If other countries see that the EU and Europe are vulnerable to biological warfare like this, then there's no telling what sort of military or terrorist actions they might decide to engage themselves in.
The future of Europe as an economic and political superpower is hinging on the cloven hooves of our ovine and bovine brethren.
Letting MIR crash into the Pacific isn't just irresponsible; it's unpatriotic. MIR was a monument to the great Socialist state. It was the last major project the Russian space agency participated in with any great fanfare or success.
And now we just want to deorbit it? To erase it from our memories? If we do not learn from history, then we will be doomed to repeat it. Our children will live in a world without a Russian space station orbiting above their heads. When they look out into the night sky, they won't see the work of MAN shining back at them. They'll only see the light from stars exploded billions of years ago, awash in the effusing glow of decaying atomic matter.
How much better it would've been for them to see the great Soviet empire whizzing overhead! Men died to build that great colossus. Countless dogs perished in orbit in order to test the effects of zero-g environments. Hundreds of manhours were spent in that endeavor, and we'll take it all down for what? So that we can free up a little bit more extraterrestrial realestate for a shiny new commercial satellite?
It reinforces the idea that space is to be a commercial enterprise and no longer one engaged in the pursuit of the common weal. What would Captain Kirk say about our worship of the dollar? What would he say about how we refuse to let this waystation remain on the outskirts of our fair planet just waiting for a new spirit or being to arrive and peer gently and softly at our pulsating ecosystems? The one thing the Soviets had right was their decrying of capitalism and the dammages it's wreaked on our terrestrial and extraterrestrial environments. Now, MIR will be gone, and nothing will remain in its stay.
This is a sad day.
I can't speak for Georgia Tech itself, but if it's like other institutions of higher learning, its library is a Federal Book depository. This means it has certain privileges like being qualified to house official copies of Federal documents. But it also means there are certain regulations and restrictions regarding access. One of those has to do with network access, which the new LAN setup sounds like it violates.
It makes sense to require unrestricted network access at the Congressional level, as is the case here. If people are denied access, then one of the fundamental tenets of western civilization is violated: the free access to and flow of information. Throughout history, libraries have been public institutions serving the public good by disseminating information previously guarded in the hands of the few. The Revolutionary war our nation was founded on was fought as much because of restrictive lending privileges at the Bodlean as because of the tyranny of mercantilism or Parliamentary taxation.
What are they honestly afraid of? It's not as though individuals will be flocking to the library to steal their bandwidth (which is their right, btw, under Federal law, as I mentioned). Are they afraid more vagrants will enter and disturb the delicate institutional framework they have worked so hard to erect and worked so passionately to defend from interlopers? I hardly think the incidence of homeless people traipsing in with their laptops will increase.
The article notes that he attends a public school. This raises an interesting conundrum.
A successful school is, by definition, one that succeeds in engaging its students in academic pursuits and gives them the intellectual growth they need to succeed in the world. But education takes time and effort, as everyone knows.
If education monopolizes a student's time to the exclusion of all other activities, then he won't be able to develop these new and exciting discoveries. He'll be proficient in the knowledge of yesteryear, but he won't be able to look ahead to the future; for his nose will be constantly buried in a book.
This is why it's imperative for schools not to spend too much of students' time on homework. A half hour of homework per night and three hours of enforced studyhall periods would go a long ways towards giving students the time and the environment to make these wonderful discoveries. Some will spend it doodling, as the article noted, but that's the price we pay for a sophisticated environmentally-holistic educational approach.
Public schools are already making great strides in giving our students these opportunities, but private schools lag far behind (and public schools are starting to join them). This is why it's more imperative than ever that we oppose school-voucher programs. Students must be kept in the environments where we're already seeing successes like Josh's.
When engineers sneer at computer science, I just chuckle to myself. Because I know something they don't know: they're just jealous.
Engineers are jealous of programmers. It's that simple. Programmers have an easy life, after all. I only work a few hours a day, get paid big bucks, and for what? For telling a machine what to do. For the act of mere speech. It's Rapunzel's tale incarnate: I spin words into gold.
Engineers have too many constraints; the standards are too high. When the Tacoma Narrows bridge fell down, heads rolled. But when a bug in the latest version of NT disables an aircraft carrier, Microsoft doesn't get blamed at all. Bugs are par for the course in our industry, and we have no intention of changing it. It means higher profits from fixes and lower expectations. How are engineers supposed to compete with those sorts of odds?
I admit I considered going into engineering when I started my college days, but I was quickly disuaded. The courses were too involved, whereas the CS courses were a breeze for anyone who didn't fail calculus. And I don't regret it at all, really.
Programmers might not get the satisfaction of building something useful and might not experience the artistic delight of design, but we at least don't have to work as hard. And when it comes to the bottom line, that's all that counts.
If you're good at what you do, then you don't have to worry about getting fired. If you're good at doing what you do, then you don't have to worry about being rehired. I'm good at what I do, so I'm not worried. It's not like I'm living under the sea.
Tight markets come and go. The fellows in charge decide they want it one way, and tomorrow they'll want it some other way. Yesterday, the craze was growing your workforce as fast as possible: just look at Yahoo and Amazon.com. Today, it's downsizing again. Tomorrow, it'll be back to growing the workforce. It's the circle of life.
If you're worried, then put your mind at ease. That is, if you're one of the few qualified employees. You have to be willing to put in long hours for not a lot of glory, and you have to be quick on your toes. If you want, my company is hiring. Be our guest.
And don't overlook training. Skills are important; they're what separates you from the rest of the pool. Learn that extra language. Study up on that extra system. You never know when you'll need it for the next great job. You never know when you'll run into that next great employer tomorrow. It's a small world after all.
Because that would preserve your little conception of the world -- your anthrocentric view of our universe, where we are king and all other species must bow down in subservience. But I know better. I have seen the light, and so shall you if I have my way.
We are not alone. I don't just mean because other people are around. I mean because there is something else out there, something bigger than you or me. And I don't mean some divine being, because that's beyond our rational scientific knowledge. I mean actual creatures, beings, who are out there and weigh at least four times as much as your average human, beings we have full knowledge of through their contacts here on earth.
And I'm not alone in this knowledge. There are others like me, but they've been censored by the government and told they're insane. Ha! Imagine that! Isn't it easier to label someone insane than to have to confront his insights and wisdom? Isn't it just so much easier. You can just laugh it off, but it's true. Every word of it. My friends have told me as much, and I should know, since I've had a few. It's all perfectly clear to me now.
Have I said too much already? I don't think so. It's my sworn duty as a partisan to show the whole world its folly now before we're annhialated. They have the technology, you know. We may have usb satellite modems, but they can communicate faster and further than we can even imagine. Picture the biggest distance you can imagine. They can communicate even further than that. Picture the fastest you can move. They can move faster than that and even steal your thoughts at the same time. They're not constrained by the same constraints that constrain you and me with constraints. They're more powerful than that, and I can't even tell you how much.
They're out there. We can hide, but they'll find us sooner or later. And the longer we wait, the longer we have before they find us. We have to be very quiet, or else they'll find us sooner. And then they'll know what we've been doing and what we've been thinking and what we've been eating and where we've been going and what we've been doing and what we've been saying about them. Don't think they don't care that we're talking about them behind their backs, because they care. They might not be like you and me, but they're still no dopes. They have pride and they're very sensitive about it. Not at all insensitive like you and I are told we are. They care what others think, and if they're bothered by what we're doing or saying or thinking then they just up and take care of it.
We can't wait forever, you know. Or at least I hope you know now, now that I've explained it to you. You have to tell everyone you know. It's the only way we can survive.
The slow upstream speed is reason enough to avoid using satellite modems, but even more sinister is the potential for eavesdropping.
When you use a standard phone connection, it's virtually impossible for someone to eavesdrop. A physical interception of the wires must be made, and that is usually detectable. That's the nature of actual hug-a-by connections. This is why wireless hookups are almost never used in classified or high-risk situations.
But with a satellite modem, you're broadcasting your signal to the entire universe. Anyone can intercept part of your signal and reconstruct the entire whole. Anyone with another satellite has you at his mercy. Worse still, your signal doesn't just stop at its intended destination (the intended satellite) -- it travels out into the rest of the universe as a stream of electromagnetic radiation, to distant galaxies, and beyond. Years from in the future, someone can intercept that signal (just as we currently intercept the light from distant quasars billions of years after it was emitted) and know what your surfing habits. It's both an invasion of your privacy as a consumer and it sets a shaky precedent for how distant alien races will perceive the entire body of humanity. Satellite modems will surely bring the wrath of alien conquerers down upon our lush green planet.
Technical decisions alone shouldn't govern which technologies we employ. They have strong and strict social implications and background conditions that must be attended to. Keep that in mind when you think to purchase a satellite-modem service.
I'm happy to hear this news, but what's going to happen to the UK now?
Corporations are still going to get their patents, whatever the government has to say about it. If the UK won't grant it, then they'll just take their business elsewhere. The UK has been an attractive location for high-tech development because of the pound's strength against the euro, and because of Britain's efficient network of rails supporting the industries that support high tech. But a shaky legal situation could undermine investor confidence and shatter these hard-won benefits.
I can't emphasize it enough: you can't fight big business with government. Governments are just another type of business and know how to look after their own. Businesses have a stronger voice than citizens because of corporate finances, and mark my words, this isn't the last we'll hear about this issue. The UK doesn't have a constitution, so all it will take is another act of parliament tomorrow to turn the tables on intellectual property yet again.
Still, it's nice to see the UK serving as a role model for others, a role normally enjoyed by France. With luck, business-model and software patents everywhere will be abolished.
IBM also made the ppc gekko processor in Nintendo's gamecube, so they're not new to the game-console embedded-processor market.
It just goes to show that whoever strikes gold, it's the fellows selling the picks and shovels who really make a bundle. No one is sure which of the big console players will dominate the market in five years, but whoever it is, IBM will be selling their processors. That's a winning strategy by anyone's standard.
The comparison to a Ferrari is particularly ironic, imho. The Ferrari, as a massively expensive sports car, is not just a high-performance vehicle. It's also a status symbol. An expensive entrenched status symbol.
It won't be enough for electric cars to perform better than internal-combustion cars. We've had cleaner alternatives to gasoline for years now, and most have flopped. Part of that has to do with the economics of scale and the relative abundance of petroleum on our planet (more available and cheaper than milk), but part of that also has to do with image.
The dragracer is an important ideographic image in American culture. He is defined by his sleek car and fast speeds, but he is also defined by the clouds of smoke that trail behind him as he burns rubber. Will a "clean" electric car cast the same fiery clouds of masculine brimstone in his wake? Will manufacturers be able to overcome the perceived impotence of electric vehicles?
The trend has sadly been away from fuel efficiency. SUVs and diesel trucks hog the roads. Unless electric cars are fundamentally cheaper or better performance-wise, they will flop for sure. And it'll be years before the prices come down out of the stratosphere.
It goes without saying that TCP is one of the fundamental protocols billions of dollars of internet infrastructure and other businesses rely on. If it could happen to TCP, then which other protocols are vulnerable to similar problems? What security holes lurk in SMB, for example? Will we ever know?
Even Linux 2.1.53 had a massive TCP/IP-stack hole, so we know we're not invulnerable. This isn't just a problem for others.
My first reaction is to wonder why someone would be so happy about the porting of such old games to linux, when they've been played so much on other platforms. But retro games are more popular than you'd think.
The hobbyist mentality of the average linux user is quite compatible with the emulator mentality -- just look at the popularity of MAME and other emulation software on Linux and the BSDs. Both operating systems are suited to people who would rather relive what once worked than senselessly reinvent themselves.
There is a lot of money to be made in pandering to people's nostaligias, as any record company or movie executive would tell you. Combo packs of old games have been a staple of the game market for years. Bringing them to a new platform and one which is dominated by people who loved the original is the next logical step.
I'd explain it myself, but this page does a pretty good job, and I'd hate to duplicate efforts. It's an important function in number theory, particularly concerning prime numbers.
If you haven't read Cryptonomicon yet, I heartily recommend you do so. It's three quarters of a good novel, and the last quarter has enough twists in it that you can overlook the cheese and the fanboy religious overtones.
You can read the prologue online and decide for yourself. Try before you buy, and see some of the zeta functions Stephenson is talking about.
This is amusing, to be sure, but it underlines just how much people are letting the internet change their economic outlooks and their entire careers. Four years ago, the internet was going to change the world. Today, the world is much the same as it was twenty years ago, though with neater toys and perhaps fewer suits.
If you're changing how you're going about getting a new job, then you're crazy. You should be asking the same questions and demanding the same benefits/compensation today that you would've twenty years ago (adjusted for inflation, of course). Gone are the days of microserfdom with an eye to fabulous options. If they're not paying you cash and good dental, then look elsewhere.
I'm happy to say I rode the internet wave by staying by the sidelines. I had a lot less excitement than some of my buddies, but now I can say I'm the better for it. I'm several years further along in my career than they were, and now they have to scramble to make up for lost time. I don't envy them at all.
Part of the liscense may be held invalid while the other parts are upheld (including language disclaiming such a possibility). If the violator can get the restrictive parts invalidated while retaining the part about free use, then he's doing pretty well for himself.
Stallman discussed the Next wrangling (among other things) in this email. It's an informative read.
For example, back when Steve Job's Next was marketing the objective c language as used in nextstep and openstep, he based their objective-c compiler on a modified version of gcc (which is under the GPL). Jobs didn't want to release the source for the objective-c changes, but after much legal wrangling, he decided that he didn't have much of a legal leg to stand on.
There have been no official court decisions or cases, yet (despite many hints by RMS that one is on the horizon). This is itself an implicit suggestion that the legal case against violations would be pretty good.
If we keep mirroring the database, then we'll never be fully under their thumb. Download a copy from one of the existing mirrors, and keep the movement alive.
- On the one hand, Linux is still a buzzword and there are people who'll buy a linux device just for the sake of it or hoping to play with its innards.
- On the other hand, tv/net appliances are not a market linux geeks are likely to consume in.
It's nice to see embedded linux getting some work, but does this have any effects broader than mere novelty value (as far as we're concerned)?If you're still not sure why you should oppose the UCITA, Cem Kaner has a good essay you should read. This is not just another bad law. This is the bad law of the decade, which could cripple consumer choice in the software industry and throw the brakes on the biggest economic boom we've had in years (powered by those tech companies, which will suffer because of the UCITA).
Write your congressperson and get some Federal legislation to preempt the UCITA. And more importantly, write your own state representative, because the only way to defeat will probably be on a state-by-state basis.
I'm as wary as the next guy of the NSA's actions, and their secretive behaviors don't seem to jive with the spirit of the GPL. But since they're going to use an operating system and not release all their modifications (though so far, they've supposedly done so with SE Linux), they might as well do it with Linux.
If they find some fundamental flaws with Linux generally, they'll still release fixes, albeit anonymously. Anyone remember how they fixed DES against an exploit not publicly known until many years after the fix? Same thing.
And while we might not like the NSA, we can't pretend we'd rather they be open to all the exploits that plague other operating systems. Attack them at the Congressional level, but don't compromise our national integrity by attacking them at the client level.
Payphones and disposable phonecards are already ubiquitous. A disposable cellphone might add something in convenience, but why would you bother?
Everyone who wants a cellphone pretty much already has one. A disposable cellphone isn't any cheaper -- in fact, it's more expensive per unit, just as phonecards are more expensive per minute than good home long-distance plans. You're paying for the convenience.
So anyone who doesn't already own a cellphone because of the expense isn't going to be able to afford this any better. So, they'll have to be selling to people based on its convenience. That means tourists and criminals, and I'm not sure which one is worse.