Good post (I agree with you), but you're wrong about one thing: "Auntie Mable and Joe Hicksberger won't switch to VOIP any time soon."
In some places, cable companies are starting to offer their own VoIP services. It's a great deal because you can get a package (TV + Internet + Long distance Phone) for a reasonable price. So lots of "Auntie Mable" types are starting to sign up for these things, without really knowing (or caring) that it's VoIP.
My mom, for instance, is about to make ths switch (finally upgrading to high-speed and figured the cost savings made sense), but when I told her her phone calls would be routed through the Internet, she didn't know!... and ultimately if the service is implemented properly, she'll never notice. (Yes they link you up to 911 services, etc.)
As others have pointed out, the hard drive manufacturers are following the proper convention, and in fact (if you look into the history), HD manufacturers have been using the "factor of 1000" convention since the very beginning (since the first magnetic platters, really).
The confusion is created because people designing memory (which is naturally layed-out in powers of 2) co-opted the SI prefixes (kilo, mega, giga, etc.) to describe sizes, but redefined them as "1024" (being a power of 2) instead. This is in complete contradiction to the well-established (and much older) SI unit conventions, where kilo, mega, etc. are always well-defined in terms of factors of 1000.
In order to cut down on the confusion, international bodies suggested that new prefixes ("kibibyte", "mebibyte" etc.... which mean "kilo-binary" and "mega-binary" and so on) be used when one is using the binary ("1024") convention. This suggestion was ratified by, and accepted by IEC, IEEE and NIST (U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology).
An excellent explanation, with pointers to the appropriate IEC and IEEE documents can be found on Wikipedia. Note that this convention was ratified in 1999! It's been over 7 years and people are still abusing the terminology!
As a scientist, I've always hated the confusion and ambiguity caused by using the SI prefixes to mean two different things. We have a proper convention in place, now it's time for people to use it constantly and consistently! The hard drive manufacturers are doing it the "right way"... it's time for others to follow suit. In particular, the operating system should be reporting sizes properly in "KiB" (kibibytes, 1024 bytes) or "kB" (kilobytes, 1000 bytes) consistently. I know that, for instance, Konqueror in KDE does this the right way... but I think Windows Explorer still does not.
As geeks on Slashdot we need to spread the word!... or at the very least not comit this age-old mistake.
I've collected together the "prediction" comments from TFA into a list. Take a look:
A World-Wide Web add-on, whereby category and file size can be assessed prior to file transfer, will be proposed.
Software that handles virtually all network functions via one seamless interface will emerge and begin to dominate the commercial Internet marketplace.
Internet access via ISDN will see a massive growth spurt.
A protocol will be developed for smaller interest groups to form larger common-interest federations.
UFOs will make contact with the Internet.
Cancelbot wars. As spamming and the spam-killing cancelbots become more widespread, people will find their Usenet News messages canceled by someone who simply doesn't like them. Cancelbot software will spread, as people begin editing out opposing views and unfriendly ideas.
More secrets. With more and more commerce being conducted through the Net, encryption will become necessary and common. Clipper will die, and something like PGP or ViaCrypt will be used by most people and businesses.
Two new standards; the first for dial-in users, the second for commerce. Whether it's a SLIP or PPP process that all access providers will adopt, we'll see easy access in easy-to-use products. A standard also will emerge for secure monetary transactions, using some form of encryption, that will make people comfortable sending credit-card information over the wire.
More bandwidth. A new transmission medium will be announced that offers a many-fold increase in speed and savings over the current offerings. An entirely new hardware technology will emerge that will eventually replace the T-3 and fiber-optic lines that carry much of the Net's traffic. Why? Because it must. The Net is overloaded as it is, and necessity has always been the mother of invention. Watch Bell Labs.
Smart searches. The first intelligent agent software packages will emerge, allowing Net users to ask for a specific piece of information like "What is the population of Fiji?" or "How far is Saturn from the Sun?" An agent will go out on the Net , find the information, and return it without the user knowing the source.
ISDN access will become a common standard for small office and home office access, allowing lots of new applications from conferencing to software distribution.
Return of the editors. The CB radio effect; too much noise from too many people; will drive more people to moderated lists and newsgroups.
Digital cash will bring home shopping and pay-per-view to the Internet, as well as new forms of asset protection, money laundering, and tax evasion.
Conflicts between local and global Internet jurisdictions will become more pronounced, especially over censorship issues. How will prosecutors in Tennessee go after posters from Denmark?
On-line politics will take off in a big way, with candidates for the 1996 presidential race making their positions available, soliciting funds, debating opponents, and forging postings from each other. Some campaign somewhere will get in trouble over dirty GIFs.
Cancelbot wars will erupt on some newsgroups. Some disbarred attorneys will unleash a doomsday bot that cancels every Usenet message that does not refer to their green card services.
I have one word for you: connectivity. As the nation unifies into a blob-like Web addict, the roar for faster connectivity will grow deafening. "An ISDN in every wall outlet, and a chicken in every pot!" to quote the precocious William Jennings Bryant.
What's truly amazing is how accurate they are, overall. (At least in spirit if not in exact details, which is understandable.) For instance:
2. Yes: web browser.
3., 9., 11. and 17. It's an obvious prediction, but bandwidth kept increasing as new technologies were implemented.
4. Not so much a 'protocol' but the internet has been adapted to do just that in many different ways.
Indeed. According to the RIAA's stats: http://www.riaa.com/news/newsletter/pdf/2005yrEndS tats.pdf (warning: PDF), the total industry is something on the order of 12 billion $US per year. How can they claim with a straight face that the *damages* are about 100 times greater than the size of the industry being damaged?
As you said, I hope this gets publicized because it really demonstrates how ridiculous the dollar value associated with infringement really is.
You're quite right: the solution he chose was non-optimal from the start. Why is he using desktop hardware to build a server? What has he used in the past? Why didn't he do more research? Clearly a 'professional' would not have made these mistakes. Obviously it is possible to deploy a properly functioning Windows server to do what the guy wanted to do.
But that's not exactly the point of the article, I think. This was a rather small-scale installation, and he (with whatever knowledge, skills and money he had available) found it *impossibly frustrating* to get a Windows server running, while it was quite straight-forward to get a Linux server running.
This 'small-time market' is huge in aggregate. There are thousands of small businesses, home businesses, stores, etc. that have need of some kind of server. They don't have the money/time/expertise to set up a professional Windows server... but amazingly they do have the ability to set up a Linux server! Why? Because FLOSS empowers the user, is community-based, and doesn't impose artificial restrictions.
I've had similar experiences. Some years ago I was setting up a small server for a lab (file sharing, web-hosting, etc.). We had no need of a 'professional' system so I just set it up myself. First with Windows (didn't work out very well) and then I scrapped the system and used Linux instead. Even with my limited (at the time) knowledge of Linux, I was able to get a powerful, functional, and stable server system (still running, has never crashed). It was certainly as professional as it needed to be for our purposes.
The point is that FLOSS empowers the 'little guy' to get something working without hassles, whereas proprietary solutions are usually focused on the 'big guys' and create artificial barriers to actually doing what you want to do!
First off, I'm a big supporter of the OLPC project. I think it's a fantastic idea that will do alot of good.
The UI they have created (see video) seems like a strange choice, however. It is a very simple and seemingly restrictive interface. It appears childish and maybe even somewhat insulting to the user. I thought that the OLPC was supposed to specifically encourage children to (1) truly learn how to use computers (not merely use them as applicances), and (2) encourage them to tinker/modify the system.
With regard to (1) it should be clear that providing a contrived UI specifically tailored to 'kid tasks' may be useful for the first week, but ultimately is a disservice to the children, as they are not learning about the true power and beauty of computers. They are not learning about modern computer capabilities or conventions if they are stuck in a primitive UI.
With regard to (2), my understanding was that Linux was chosen as the OS specifically because it allows for the students to modify, tinker, extent, and customize. The idea was that (unlike with a proprietary OS), they would be able to learn about the inner functions of computers and become truly interested and skilled with computer work. A simplistic UI that hides the true behind-the-scenes working of the computer hardly accomplishes this goal.
I may be mistaken about the UI. Perhaps what we see in the demonstration is an introductory UI that will be used by very young students (with a more normal GUI and system behind the scenes?... accessible to students if they have the desire/skill to use it?). Hopefully that simple UI can be switched to a 'real' UI and this will be done for all but the youngest students.
Kids are very smart... and I believe they would have little trouble dealing with a modern, full-featured UI and OS. So why the simplistic interface?
The subjects might feel guilty for "hurting" someone else, but that's about it.
Well you seem to think that this is minor, but it really isn't. In the original experiment, people were tricked into believing that they had nearly killed a real human being. In real life, people who are responsible for the death of another person (or for inflicting great suffering) frequently experience a variety of negative emotional effects. The guilt can be quite powerful, and has led some people to depression or suicide.
Of course, in the original experiment the people were eventually told "it's okay, it was just a simulation"... but they may still have felt a deep guilt for a short time, and were probably very emotionall conflicted during the experiment. I've watched some of the footage of the experiment, and it is quite interesting and somewhat scary at times. Some subjects end up begging to the "research authority" to let the experiment end, because they are worried about killing the actor. The anguish and concern in the subjects is quite obvious. (It is also quite scary how many of them continued zapping the actor, even after all their protests, simply because someone in a lab coat kept repeating "please continue with the experiment protocol".)
Though the pain was simulated, the emotional repercussions to the subjects were real. Some may have felt a guilt that continued well after the experiment. ("I know it was just an experiment... but if it had have been real I would have acted the same way... does that make me a bad person?")
This new twist on the experiment (where the subject can very easily tell that the pain they are 'inflicting' is virtual) is interesting. One would naturally assume that the emotional repercussions would be non-existant in such a case, yet this research shows that people nevertheless feel some amount of stress.
No, Linus very much agrees with the "quid pro quo" of the GPL. He believes that if you take his code and extend it, you should have to contribute back. He believes in sharing (even if he's not as concerned as RMS is about fundamental freedom). In the linked post Linus says:
"If people take our code, they'd better behave according to our rules. But we shouldn't have to behave according to the RIAA rules just because we _listen_ to their music. Similarly, nobody should be forced to behave according to our rules just because they _use_ our system."
Clearly Linus does like the GPL restricting those who would distribute code (whereas BSD causes no restrictions). The point Linus is trying to make is that we have to distinguish between limitations to distribution and limitations to the end user. The proposed patch would mostly have limited the end-user (making it annoying for them to run binary modules). Linus is saying that we shouldn't try to limit the freedom of the end-user with technical restrictions. But (as quoted above) he clearly does like the fact that the GPL forces people who "take the code" to "behave according to the rules."
Hence Linus would not be happy with a BSD license.
Very often people characterize Linus as 'not caring about the politics' or 'being a pragmatism not an idealist.' Yet if you read his post you see that he's very much thinking about rights and freedoms. He very much does care about the freedom issue. His stance just happens to be a bit different than others (RMS for instance).
Frequently I do not agree with Linus on issues, because his general view is to avoid meddling with things until absolutely necessary (whereas RMS, for instance, tries to think as far down the road as possible). However in this particular case Linus is dead right: putting code into the kernel for non-technical reasons, purely to limit the *end user* and specifically limit what they can do with their computer is very much "anti-computer-freedom" and should never be done.
So Linus is effectively saying "if we do this we limit the freedom of the end user, just like the RIAA is doing with DRM..." and he is quite right.
I'd also add that perhaps they are not trying to "give away hosting" for a bunch of independant little pages, but are trying to create a community. If you look at their demo (which is limited right now), it looks like they will be encouraging all the users to use a sort of "standard" wiki engine for all the content. I think the idea is to encourage people to generate content in a structured way.
Once done, the openserving top-page (or some other domain) can act as a neat aggregate of all of this, a portal to the various pages/projects. Perhaps this top-level page will have ads and this ad revenue is part of the business model. (Granted they make less money than if they take a cut of all ad revenue, but by letting users keep the ad-revenue for the sub-pages, they attract more users.)
I think there are many ways that this can generate money, but most people always think in terms of "making the most money" instead of "making a reasonable amount of profit." (See story about Craigslist currently on slashdot front page, for instance.)
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I think there is a business model. Just because he is publically saying "I don't know yet" doesn't mean he doesn't have one (or probably several) ideas about how to make money. And the investors are probably thinking similarly.
I share your general skepticism, but the theory is not unreasonable. To suggest that electrons tunnel when an odorant molecule docks in a receptor site seems reasonable enough. Of course the question is whether the signal from such an event is sufficiently above the noise. TFA is specifically about some calculations that suggest that the tunnelling rate should be reasonably high (and, crucially, should be quite different with vs. without the odorant molecule).
You are right about the established body of literature that already explains much of the sense of smell. However I think it's worth keeping in mind that the two explanations are not mutually exclusive. It sounds like even the scientists in question are treating it like this is an either/or situation, but there's nothing impossible about smell involving a combination of shape-specific molecular recognition and electron-tunneling-specific molecular recognition. Perhaps some shape is the general measurement and then electronic effects provide secondary information.
In any case, it sounds like it is worth some further investigation. There are still many unanswered questions. However, like you, I won't be investing just yet!
He could have covered his points in 1/4 of the time and made them more accessible to the general public
I think it's worth keeping in mind that the speech we all listened to was an invited keynote address at the Plone Conference in Seattle. His audience was a bunch of free-software experts (Plone is a FLOSS content management system). Making his talk 'more general and accessible' would have bored the audience. The intention of the talk was to remind some free-software developers of the 'why' of free software, and to encourage them to 'keep at it' because they are part of something good and something that can really help the world.
So again, keeping in mind the context I think it was a very good speech and very well-targetted. Admitedly you can't just show this video to someone who has never heard of Free Sofware (there are too many obscure references, acronyms, etc.), but that wasn't the point. For many slashdotters, however, I imagine the content hits very close to home and was quite interesting. I enjoyed it, at any rate.
I have to agree with the various posts that a technological solution is not going to fix all your problems. Even with a good alarm system and all kinds of fancy automation and webcams, there are some things that only a real person living in the place (or checking on it regularly) will be able to notice.
That having been said, here are some links to Linux Journal articles about doing various home-automation stuff. Perhaps if you implement these, along with a good alarm, and some relatives/friends help, you can have the peace of mind you need:
I'm reading over the actual article right now. It seems that process is quite efficient. In the conclusion of the paper they note:
Currently, rHSA(wt) is manufactured in an industrial scale, which allows us to use
this zinc-protein photosensitizer in practical applications Thus the raw materials are cheap enough that one could imagine scaling this up significantly. Moreover since its behavior is catalytic, the protein isn't used up, so you wouldn't need to replace it very often.
With regard to efficiency, in the Abstract they also point out that their system is more efficient than the previous standard in organic photo-synthesis:
The efficiency of the photoproduction of H2 was greater than that of the system using the well-
known organic chromophore, tetrakis(1-methylpyridinium-4-yl)porphinatozinc(II ) (ZnTMPyP4+), under the
same conditions. Since the discovered system is a photosensitized catalyst, it effectively is a new kind of solar power. However it is one that directly generates H2 from incident light, without requiring one to harvest light energy as electricity, store it, and then use it to split water. So this discovery, coupled with cars/devices that run on H2 efficiently, seems like a viable idea. Of course we'll have to wait and see whether this really pans out, but from this paper it does indeed seem that this is a feasible way to harvest solar power (and store it as H2).
Indeed! I mostly agree with what you're saying. However it's worth keeping in mind what the objective of a given engineering project is. The goal of a building is to continue standing and house people. The goal of a bridge is to withstand the load of the traffic across it. Failure to do so costs lives.
However in software the priority is to get work done. When software crashes, people don't die. Money is lost, but that's about it. Even security flaws don't lead to deaths.
Find me some examples where ANY of this professionalism is exhibited in the software industry?
Although I'm not an expert, I'm fairly certain that a high level of code auditing does go on when it is required: for instance the software that runs air-traffic control systems, military systems, NASA, etc. In these cases lives are on the line and the standards of the software (with regard to reliability, etc.) are much higher. The fact is that it's not necessary to make commodity software rock-stable in the same way that it's not necessary to make a commodity chair able to withstand 20,000 lbs of weight. To over-engineer it would be unnecessary, and a failure won't kill anyone (just lost work or falling onto the floor).
Popular myth, but largly false. Glibc needs no new features at this point.
On this point I do concede and agree with you. Quite alot of software adds features unnecessarily, when the software would be much more useful to mature and stabilize the features it has. So really I am mostly in agreement with you, but I just wanted to point out that developers *do care*, but that they have limited time/energy/resources, and have to prioritize where to put that energy. In some cases it's best put in stabilizing and bug-fixing, but in other cases (I would argue) the user is better served by having access to features they need, albeit at a slight cost in stability. (And yes, I agree that much of the software commonly used nowadays veers much too far into the 'useless feature' land at the expense of a required level of stability/security.)
Software doesn't suck because people don't care. Workers doing their job may or may not care, but certainly the company has some stake in the success of the product (which is somewhat correlated to its quality), and will thus "care" to some degree. But certainly many open-source projects only exist because the people care. So it is not that, in my humble opinion.
It is all a matter of priorities and engineering. I'm sure every geek has thought of what you suggest at some point: "If only there were infinite time and we could really refine this code, we could make it *perfect*!" But the truth is that perfection is impossible, because it must meet conflicting demands. To be perfect it must be rock-stable yet somehow incorporate the latest features and be compatible with the latest and greatest protocols/software/etc. The only way to be compatible is to introduce new code, which inevitably has new bugs, and the cycle continues.
Your proposed "feature freeze" has probably been attempted on some projects, and probably with disastrous results. The problem is that a completely stable, bug-free piece of software that cannot interpoerate in a modern environment is worse than a somewhat bug-ridden piece of software that *does what I currently need it to do*!
Personally I think developers care enough. Part of the problem (as the book appears to point out) is that people accept/buy sub-standard products when viable (better!) alternatives exist. Boycotting is indeed useful in such cases.
But overall software design is hard, and it will always be an engineering challenge, where the final solution is never intended to be "perfect" but rather to satisfy some user requirement, while using a set amount of time and development effort. This is true of both commercial and open-source software.
Just my opinion, of course. I'm not an expert in software engineering.
As far as I know, modern satellites that operate in Earth's orbit (including military, commercial, and scientific) use solar panels as their energy source. Hence they have no nuclear material on-board. The only space payloads that include nuclear material are deep-space probes that NASA et al. send into space (Voyager, etc.), since they travel so far from the sun that solar energy becomes insufficient.
So there really I don't think that many payloads sent into orbit with nuclear material. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) In any case, I'm sure that the inherent engineering challenges/danger of sending things into space using contained, sustainted explosions (rocket) and using magnetic acceleration are comparable.
Personally I think this sounds like a worthy pursuit. If we can make sending payloads-to-space easier/cheaper it may open up whole new realms of technology/progress that we have not yet considered.
The tone of TFA confuses me. It's clearly anti-tesco (anti-big-business?), with phrases such as:
The supermarket chain may be saving the consumer hundreds of pounds (MS Office can cost in excess of £300), but it's already making more money than it presumably knows what to do with.
Huh? Since when do companies make more money than they know what to do with? The profits are reinvested and/or end up with investors. And since when is it a "bad thing" for a company to turn a profit.
I understand the anti-Wallmart argument where 'the little guy' is driven out of business, but TFA is describing how Tesco undercuts Microsoft and (see 'update' at the bottom) major media outlets. It is acting as if competition between massive multinational, multi-billion dollar companies is 'mean' and 'not fair.'
That, to me, makes no sense. Competition in any marketplace is typically good for the consumers since it keeps prices at a reasonable level, forces companies to innovate, and forces companies to compete for customers!
I wish Tesco plenty of success in their attempt to undercut software in this fashion. If they can use their brand-name to get people to realize that software needn't be so expensive (and moreover to realize that alternatives are viable), this is a net positive.
A few years back I was a teaching assistant in a class that used turnitin.com for one semester as a test. We told the students they had to upload their final lab reports both to us and submit it to turnitin.com. We also did a survey of the students at the end of the semester to gauge reactions. This was a university-level science lab course, with long lab reports.
The result? Well we stopped using turnitin after that one-semester test. Basically the help it provided was seen as being very minimal. The administration quickly saw that the extra effort and money required to use the service was not being returned in useful product.
The student reaction was surprisingly neutral, mind you. They did dislike being "treated like criminals" but overall they were not too concerned about IP rights or privacy rights or anything. They just dutifully used the service and didn't really care. However I rather doubt that it helped combat plagiarism.
At the end of the day it wasn't worth using it. Having a teacher actually read the material (which they will have to do anyway to grade it) is a much more effective way to catch plagiarism. What students may not realize is that teachers can nearly always pick out sentences that don't sound right or sound like they were written by someone else. Also, in this course we have mini-oral exams to test student knowledge. In practice it only takes a few minutes to orally assess a student's knowledge. If their understanding of the material greatly deviates from their lab report, it quickly becomes obvious and appropriate action can be taken.
The fact that turnitin blatantly violated the student's copyright is also true. They were never asked to sign any releases nor was it explained to them what would happen to the work they hand it. Overall I think turnitin.com is a failed idea: it is an attempt to use technology to solve a problem that the teachers are better at solving. Like I said: the teachers have to read and grade any work anyways... so let them detect plagiarism the old fashioned way.
As you, my first thought was "what about webmail?"... however the article says:
This is an academic exercise (obviously) so there will be no cheating allowed. No IM, text messaging or Web mail to substitute for e-mail.
I'm not sure why IM is considered cheating if you give up on email. (You can't IM someone you don't know out of the blue; most companies don't have IM addresses listed, etc.) If IM is 'cheating' then isn't the telephone cheating, too? What about IRC? Is that cheating?
As the author says it's purely academic. My problem with these 'what-ifs' is that because they are unusual, the only way to give a sensible answer is to know all the extraneous details that are left to the imagination. What are the repercussions of breaking the rule? What are the limitations? What are the rules? Is it cheating to put up messages on forum, then phone your friends and tell them to go reply? On the flip side, it's probably cheating to email people and ask "can you do a google search and tell me..." but is it cheating if you just email them the question? In this day and age, if you ask someone a question, they'll start with a web-search anyways.
If I had to decide, I'd also select the web. Email is one of many communication modes available today (and its functionality is easily emulated elsehow), but when it comes to information collection/dissemination, the web is really unique.
Now, why aren't flags raised when $30,000 is taken out of a bank account electronically from an unusual location? A phone call to the account holder would be nice.
I actually know someone who fell for a phishing email. The bank called him up the next day, and asked if he had authorized two $700.00 transfers to out-of-country accounts. He said "no." and they dutifully marked it as fraud. So apparently (some) banks do monitor transactions and flag anything that looks strange.
Similarly I've often had my credit card company call me to confirm transactions that appeared dubious. Often within hours of making an unusual purchase, they'll respond. The response time makes me suspect that they have computers watching transactions using heuristics to pick out unusual transactions.
So at least anecdotally, some banks are proactive enough to prevent phishing from generating losses for customers or themselves.
Yes the GPL specifically requires that distribution be allowed. I see what you're saying: in effect this means that any end-user can make the source public.
But it does not mean that the end-user (or the distributor) *has* to make the source public, and that's what I was getting at.
For instance, if you use GPL code internally in an organization, then you don't have to release the code outside the organization. Your internal users must have access to the source, but you don't *have* to release it to the outside world.
Similarly, company A can sell GPL software (+source) to company B. Neither company is required to release the source to the public. Company B has the right to release the source if they want to, but nothing about the GPL requires them to publish the source code (unless they start selling this software to others).
It may seem that I'm nitpicking here, but alot of people get scared off by the GPL because they mistakenly believe that they "have" to distribute the source. There's nothing illegal or immoral about using a custom GPL solution internal to a company, and you will not be required to let your competitors "see" your custom changes to the code...
[RMS] believes all software should be freely available to be modified by the public.
That's a mis-characterization of Richard Stallman's viewpoint. He doesn't believe that all software source code should be available to the public. Rather, he believes that all source code should be available to the end user. There is an important difference.
'Free' software is not about creating a gigantic repository of source code. It's about each user having the freedom to modify the computer software they are using. A group of users can keep a piece of software (and associated source code) hidden from the public quite easily. The point RMS is trying to make is that it is inneficient, artificial and even immoral to restrict the user of software from viewing/modifying the internals of said software.
Of course when software is intended for public consumption, then under the FSF ideal the source code will be available to the public (and indeed we end up with repositories like sourceforge). But to comply with the GPL you don't need to post your code on a public server: you need only make it available to the users.
But in what way are the powers of law enforcement different between searching physical property with a warrant vs. digital files?
Indeed, and that's exactly why the proposed law is a bad thing. Every unnecessary law removes some freedom, imposes some burden, is prone to some misuse and may ultimately lead to unintended consequences. As hard as it is to get a law passed, it is a million times harder to have a law removed, and becomes exponentially harder with time.
It's such an important point that I'll say it again: every unnecessary law is bad. The law can already get warrants to perform whatever searches and forensics they want. This includes confiscating a hard drive and brute-forcing an encryption key. Do we need another law that forces a suspect to work for the forensic team, by providing them with useful clues and decryption keys? No, we don't.
I think that is a good idea... but if I were you, I would ask a friend (who the elderly gentelman in question has never met) to go and ask. He/she should simply pretend/imply that they live "nearby"... the fact that the man has never met this person will make him think twice. He's probably not evil at the core, and he's only trying to get back at certain people. If he suddenly realizes that he's annoying others, he will probably stop.
This new friend could be someone a bit older than all of you, in which case he may sympathize with them more and stop this particular annoying behavior.
Alternately, you might get a friendly and attractive female to go and do the asking. It's amazing how frequently that can resolve a situation with a grumpy old man. I've seen it work more than once.
Slashdot Mirror
Good post (I agree with you), but you're wrong about one thing:
... and ultimately if the service is implemented properly, she'll never notice. (Yes they link you up to 911 services, etc.)
"Auntie Mable and Joe Hicksberger won't switch to VOIP any time soon."
In some places, cable companies are starting to offer their own VoIP services. It's a great deal because you can get a package (TV + Internet + Long distance Phone) for a reasonable price. So lots of "Auntie Mable" types are starting to sign up for these things, without really knowing (or caring) that it's VoIP.
My mom, for instance, is about to make ths switch (finally upgrading to high-speed and figured the cost savings made sense), but when I told her her phone calls would be routed through the Internet, she didn't know!
VoIP is actually ready for mass consumption.
As others have pointed out, the hard drive manufacturers are following the proper convention, and in fact (if you look into the history), HD manufacturers have been using the "factor of 1000" convention since the very beginning (since the first magnetic platters, really).
... which mean "kilo-binary" and "mega-binary" and so on) be used when one is using the binary ("1024") convention. This suggestion was ratified by, and accepted by IEC, IEEE and NIST (U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology).
The confusion is created because people designing memory (which is naturally layed-out in powers of 2) co-opted the SI prefixes (kilo, mega, giga, etc.) to describe sizes, but redefined them as "1024" (being a power of 2) instead. This is in complete contradiction to the well-established (and much older) SI unit conventions, where kilo, mega, etc. are always well-defined in terms of factors of 1000.
In order to cut down on the confusion, international bodies suggested that new prefixes ("kibibyte", "mebibyte" etc.
An excellent explanation, with pointers to the appropriate IEC and IEEE documents can be found on Wikipedia. Note that this convention was ratified in 1999! It's been over 7 years and people are still abusing the terminology!
As a scientist, I've always hated the confusion and ambiguity caused by using the SI prefixes to mean two different things. We have a proper convention in place, now it's time for people to use it constantly and consistently! The hard drive manufacturers are doing it the "right way"... it's time for others to follow suit. In particular, the operating system should be reporting sizes properly in "KiB" (kibibytes, 1024 bytes) or "kB" (kilobytes, 1000 bytes) consistently. I know that, for instance, Konqueror in KDE does this the right way... but I think Windows Explorer still does not.
As geeks on Slashdot we need to spread the word!... or at the very least not comit this age-old mistake.
What's truly amazing is how accurate they are, overall. (At least in spirit if not in exact details, which is understandable.) For instance:
Indeed. According to the RIAA's stats: http://www.riaa.com/news/newsletter/pdf/2005yrEndS tats.pdf (warning: PDF), the total industry is something on the order of 12 billion $US per year. How can they claim with a straight face that the *damages* are about 100 times greater than the size of the industry being damaged?
As you said, I hope this gets publicized because it really demonstrates how ridiculous the dollar value associated with infringement really is.
You're quite right: the solution he chose was non-optimal from the start. Why is he using desktop hardware to build a server? What has he used in the past? Why didn't he do more research? Clearly a 'professional' would not have made these mistakes. Obviously it is possible to deploy a properly functioning Windows server to do what the guy wanted to do.
But that's not exactly the point of the article, I think. This was a rather small-scale installation, and he (with whatever knowledge, skills and money he had available) found it *impossibly frustrating* to get a Windows server running, while it was quite straight-forward to get a Linux server running.
This 'small-time market' is huge in aggregate. There are thousands of small businesses, home businesses, stores, etc. that have need of some kind of server. They don't have the money/time/expertise to set up a professional Windows server... but amazingly they do have the ability to set up a Linux server! Why? Because FLOSS empowers the user, is community-based, and doesn't impose artificial restrictions.
I've had similar experiences. Some years ago I was setting up a small server for a lab (file sharing, web-hosting, etc.). We had no need of a 'professional' system so I just set it up myself. First with Windows (didn't work out very well) and then I scrapped the system and used Linux instead. Even with my limited (at the time) knowledge of Linux, I was able to get a powerful, functional, and stable server system (still running, has never crashed). It was certainly as professional as it needed to be for our purposes.
The point is that FLOSS empowers the 'little guy' to get something working without hassles, whereas proprietary solutions are usually focused on the 'big guys' and create artificial barriers to actually doing what you want to do!
First off, I'm a big supporter of the OLPC project. I think it's a fantastic idea that will do alot of good.
... accessible to students if they have the desire/skill to use it?). Hopefully that simple UI can be switched to a 'real' UI and this will be done for all but the youngest students.
The UI they have created (see video) seems like a strange choice, however. It is a very simple and seemingly restrictive interface. It appears childish and maybe even somewhat insulting to the user. I thought that the OLPC was supposed to specifically encourage children to (1) truly learn how to use computers (not merely use them as applicances), and (2) encourage them to tinker/modify the system.
With regard to (1) it should be clear that providing a contrived UI specifically tailored to 'kid tasks' may be useful for the first week, but ultimately is a disservice to the children, as they are not learning about the true power and beauty of computers. They are not learning about modern computer capabilities or conventions if they are stuck in a primitive UI.
With regard to (2), my understanding was that Linux was chosen as the OS specifically because it allows for the students to modify, tinker, extent, and customize. The idea was that (unlike with a proprietary OS), they would be able to learn about the inner functions of computers and become truly interested and skilled with computer work. A simplistic UI that hides the true behind-the-scenes working of the computer hardly accomplishes this goal.
I may be mistaken about the UI. Perhaps what we see in the demonstration is an introductory UI that will be used by very young students (with a more normal GUI and system behind the scenes?
Kids are very smart... and I believe they would have little trouble dealing with a modern, full-featured UI and OS. So why the simplistic interface?
Of course, in the original experiment the people were eventually told "it's okay, it was just a simulation"... but they may still have felt a deep guilt for a short time, and were probably very emotionall conflicted during the experiment. I've watched some of the footage of the experiment, and it is quite interesting and somewhat scary at times. Some subjects end up begging to the "research authority" to let the experiment end, because they are worried about killing the actor. The anguish and concern in the subjects is quite obvious. (It is also quite scary how many of them continued zapping the actor, even after all their protests, simply because someone in a lab coat kept repeating "please continue with the experiment protocol".)
Though the pain was simulated, the emotional repercussions to the subjects were real. Some may have felt a guilt that continued well after the experiment. ("I know it was just an experiment... but if it had have been real I would have acted the same way... does that make me a bad person?")
This new twist on the experiment (where the subject can very easily tell that the pain they are 'inflicting' is virtual) is interesting. One would naturally assume that the emotional repercussions would be non-existant in such a case, yet this research shows that people nevertheless feel some amount of stress.
"If people take our code, they'd better behave according to our rules. But we shouldn't have to behave according to the RIAA rules just because we _listen_ to their music. Similarly, nobody should be forced to behave according to our rules just because they _use_ our system."
Clearly Linus does like the GPL restricting those who would distribute code (whereas BSD causes no restrictions). The point Linus is trying to make is that we have to distinguish between limitations to distribution and limitations to the end user. The proposed patch would mostly have limited the end-user (making it annoying for them to run binary modules). Linus is saying that we shouldn't try to limit the freedom of the end-user with technical restrictions. But (as quoted above) he clearly does like the fact that the GPL forces people who "take the code" to "behave according to the rules."
Hence Linus would not be happy with a BSD license.
Very often people characterize Linus as 'not caring about the politics' or 'being a pragmatism not an idealist.' Yet if you read his post you see that he's very much thinking about rights and freedoms. He very much does care about the freedom issue. His stance just happens to be a bit different than others (RMS for instance).
Frequently I do not agree with Linus on issues, because his general view is to avoid meddling with things until absolutely necessary (whereas RMS, for instance, tries to think as far down the road as possible). However in this particular case Linus is dead right: putting code into the kernel for non-technical reasons, purely to limit the *end user* and specifically limit what they can do with their computer is very much "anti-computer-freedom" and should never be done.
So Linus is effectively saying "if we do this we limit the freedom of the end user, just like the RIAA is doing with DRM..." and he is quite right.
Very good point.
I'd also add that perhaps they are not trying to "give away hosting" for a bunch of independant little pages, but are trying to create a community. If you look at their demo (which is limited right now), it looks like they will be encouraging all the users to use a sort of "standard" wiki engine for all the content. I think the idea is to encourage people to generate content in a structured way.
Once done, the openserving top-page (or some other domain) can act as a neat aggregate of all of this, a portal to the various pages/projects. Perhaps this top-level page will have ads and this ad revenue is part of the business model. (Granted they make less money than if they take a cut of all ad revenue, but by letting users keep the ad-revenue for the sub-pages, they attract more users.)
I think there are many ways that this can generate money, but most people always think in terms of "making the most money" instead of "making a reasonable amount of profit." (See story about Craigslist currently on slashdot front page, for instance.)
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I think there is a business model. Just because he is publically saying "I don't know yet" doesn't mean he doesn't have one (or probably several) ideas about how to make money. And the investors are probably thinking similarly.
I share your general skepticism, but the theory is not unreasonable. To suggest that electrons tunnel when an odorant molecule docks in a receptor site seems reasonable enough. Of course the question is whether the signal from such an event is sufficiently above the noise. TFA is specifically about some calculations that suggest that the tunnelling rate should be reasonably high (and, crucially, should be quite different with vs. without the odorant molecule).
You are right about the established body of literature that already explains much of the sense of smell. However I think it's worth keeping in mind that the two explanations are not mutually exclusive. It sounds like even the scientists in question are treating it like this is an either/or situation, but there's nothing impossible about smell involving a combination of shape-specific molecular recognition and electron-tunneling-specific molecular recognition. Perhaps some shape is the general measurement and then electronic effects provide secondary information.
In any case, it sounds like it is worth some further investigation. There are still many unanswered questions. However, like you, I won't be investing just yet!
He could have covered his points in 1/4 of the time and made them more accessible to the general public
I think it's worth keeping in mind that the speech we all listened to was an invited keynote address at the Plone Conference in Seattle. His audience was a bunch of free-software experts (Plone is a FLOSS content management system). Making his talk 'more general and accessible' would have bored the audience. The intention of the talk was to remind some free-software developers of the 'why' of free software, and to encourage them to 'keep at it' because they are part of something good and something that can really help the world.
So again, keeping in mind the context I think it was a very good speech and very well-targetted. Admitedly you can't just show this video to someone who has never heard of Free Sofware (there are too many obscure references, acronyms, etc.), but that wasn't the point. For many slashdotters, however, I imagine the content hits very close to home and was quite interesting. I enjoyed it, at any rate.
I have to agree with the various posts that a technological solution is not going to fix all your problems. Even with a good alarm system and all kinds of fancy automation and webcams, there are some things that only a real person living in the place (or checking on it regularly) will be able to notice.
That having been said, here are some links to Linux Journal articles about doing various home-automation stuff. Perhaps if you implement these, along with a good alarm, and some relatives/friends help, you can have the peace of mind you need:
Home Automation using Python:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8513
Remote Temperature Monitoring:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8780
Automated Temperature Control:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9091
Currently, rHSA(wt) is manufactured in an industrial scale, which allows us to use this zinc-protein photosensitizer in practical applications Thus the raw materials are cheap enough that one could imagine scaling this up significantly. Moreover since its behavior is catalytic, the protein isn't used up, so you wouldn't need to replace it very often.
With regard to efficiency, in the Abstract they also point out that their system is more efficient than the previous standard in organic photo-synthesis:
The efficiency of the photoproduction of H2 was greater than that of the system using the well- known organic chromophore, tetrakis(1-methylpyridinium-4-yl)porphinatozinc(I
Thanks for making my point.
Indeed! I mostly agree with what you're saying. However it's worth keeping in mind what the objective of a given engineering project is. The goal of a building is to continue standing and house people. The goal of a bridge is to withstand the load of the traffic across it. Failure to do so costs lives.
However in software the priority is to get work done. When software crashes, people don't die. Money is lost, but that's about it. Even security flaws don't lead to deaths.
Find me some examples where ANY of this professionalism is exhibited in the software industry?
Although I'm not an expert, I'm fairly certain that a high level of code auditing does go on when it is required: for instance the software that runs air-traffic control systems, military systems, NASA, etc. In these cases lives are on the line and the standards of the software (with regard to reliability, etc.) are much higher. The fact is that it's not necessary to make commodity software rock-stable in the same way that it's not necessary to make a commodity chair able to withstand 20,000 lbs of weight. To over-engineer it would be unnecessary, and a failure won't kill anyone (just lost work or falling onto the floor).
Popular myth, but largly false. Glibc needs no new features at this point.
On this point I do concede and agree with you. Quite alot of software adds features unnecessarily, when the software would be much more useful to mature and stabilize the features it has. So really I am mostly in agreement with you, but I just wanted to point out that developers *do care*, but that they have limited time/energy/resources, and have to prioritize where to put that energy. In some cases it's best put in stabilizing and bug-fixing, but in other cases (I would argue) the user is better served by having access to features they need, albeit at a slight cost in stability. (And yes, I agree that much of the software commonly used nowadays veers much too far into the 'useless feature' land at the expense of a required level of stability/security.)
I'm afraid I don't agree with your explanation.
Software doesn't suck because people don't care. Workers doing their job may or may not care, but certainly the company has some stake in the success of the product (which is somewhat correlated to its quality), and will thus "care" to some degree. But certainly many open-source projects only exist because the people care. So it is not that, in my humble opinion.
It is all a matter of priorities and engineering. I'm sure every geek has thought of what you suggest at some point: "If only there were infinite time and we could really refine this code, we could make it *perfect*!" But the truth is that perfection is impossible, because it must meet conflicting demands. To be perfect it must be rock-stable yet somehow incorporate the latest features and be compatible with the latest and greatest protocols/software/etc. The only way to be compatible is to introduce new code, which inevitably has new bugs, and the cycle continues.
Your proposed "feature freeze" has probably been attempted on some projects, and probably with disastrous results. The problem is that a completely stable, bug-free piece of software that cannot interpoerate in a modern environment is worse than a somewhat bug-ridden piece of software that *does what I currently need it to do*!
Personally I think developers care enough. Part of the problem (as the book appears to point out) is that people accept/buy sub-standard products when viable (better!) alternatives exist. Boycotting is indeed useful in such cases.
But overall software design is hard, and it will always be an engineering challenge, where the final solution is never intended to be "perfect" but rather to satisfy some user requirement, while using a set amount of time and development effort. This is true of both commercial and open-source software.
Just my opinion, of course. I'm not an expert in software engineering.
As far as I know, modern satellites that operate in Earth's orbit (including military, commercial, and scientific) use solar panels as their energy source. Hence they have no nuclear material on-board. The only space payloads that include nuclear material are deep-space probes that NASA et al. send into space (Voyager, etc.), since they travel so far from the sun that solar energy becomes insufficient.
So there really I don't think that many payloads sent into orbit with nuclear material. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) In any case, I'm sure that the inherent engineering challenges/danger of sending things into space using contained, sustainted explosions (rocket) and using magnetic acceleration are comparable.
Personally I think this sounds like a worthy pursuit. If we can make sending payloads-to-space easier/cheaper it may open up whole new realms of technology/progress that we have not yet considered.
Huh? Since when do companies make more money than they know what to do with? The profits are reinvested and/or end up with investors. And since when is it a "bad thing" for a company to turn a profit.
I understand the anti-Wallmart argument where 'the little guy' is driven out of business, but TFA is describing how Tesco undercuts Microsoft and (see 'update' at the bottom) major media outlets. It is acting as if competition between massive multinational, multi-billion dollar companies is 'mean' and 'not fair.'
That, to me, makes no sense. Competition in any marketplace is typically good for the consumers since it keeps prices at a reasonable level, forces companies to innovate, and forces companies to compete for customers!
I wish Tesco plenty of success in their attempt to undercut software in this fashion. If they can use their brand-name to get people to realize that software needn't be so expensive (and moreover to realize that alternatives are viable), this is a net positive.
A few years back I was a teaching assistant in a class that used turnitin.com for one semester as a test. We told the students they had to upload their final lab reports both to us and submit it to turnitin.com. We also did a survey of the students at the end of the semester to gauge reactions. This was a university-level science lab course, with long lab reports.
The result? Well we stopped using turnitin after that one-semester test. Basically the help it provided was seen as being very minimal. The administration quickly saw that the extra effort and money required to use the service was not being returned in useful product.
The student reaction was surprisingly neutral, mind you. They did dislike being "treated like criminals" but overall they were not too concerned about IP rights or privacy rights or anything. They just dutifully used the service and didn't really care. However I rather doubt that it helped combat plagiarism.
At the end of the day it wasn't worth using it. Having a teacher actually read the material (which they will have to do anyway to grade it) is a much more effective way to catch plagiarism. What students may not realize is that teachers can nearly always pick out sentences that don't sound right or sound like they were written by someone else. Also, in this course we have mini-oral exams to test student knowledge. In practice it only takes a few minutes to orally assess a student's knowledge. If their understanding of the material greatly deviates from their lab report, it quickly becomes obvious and appropriate action can be taken.
The fact that turnitin blatantly violated the student's copyright is also true. They were never asked to sign any releases nor was it explained to them what would happen to the work they hand it. Overall I think turnitin.com is a failed idea: it is an attempt to use technology to solve a problem that the teachers are better at solving. Like I said: the teachers have to read and grade any work anyways... so let them detect plagiarism the old fashioned way.
I'm not sure why IM is considered cheating if you give up on email. (You can't IM someone you don't know out of the blue; most companies don't have IM addresses listed, etc.) If IM is 'cheating' then isn't the telephone cheating, too? What about IRC? Is that cheating?
As the author says it's purely academic. My problem with these 'what-ifs' is that because they are unusual, the only way to give a sensible answer is to know all the extraneous details that are left to the imagination. What are the repercussions of breaking the rule? What are the limitations? What are the rules? Is it cheating to put up messages on forum, then phone your friends and tell them to go reply? On the flip side, it's probably cheating to email people and ask "can you do a google search and tell me..." but is it cheating if you just email them the question? In this day and age, if you ask someone a question, they'll start with a web-search anyways.
If I had to decide, I'd also select the web. Email is one of many communication modes available today (and its functionality is easily emulated elsehow), but when it comes to information collection/dissemination, the web is really unique.
Now, why aren't flags raised when $30,000 is taken out of a bank account electronically from an unusual location? A phone call to the account holder would be nice.
I actually know someone who fell for a phishing email. The bank called him up the next day, and asked if he had authorized two $700.00 transfers to out-of-country accounts. He said "no." and they dutifully marked it as fraud. So apparently (some) banks do monitor transactions and flag anything that looks strange.
Similarly I've often had my credit card company call me to confirm transactions that appeared dubious. Often within hours of making an unusual purchase, they'll respond. The response time makes me suspect that they have computers watching transactions using heuristics to pick out unusual transactions.
So at least anecdotally, some banks are proactive enough to prevent phishing from generating losses for customers or themselves.
Yes the GPL specifically requires that distribution be allowed. I see what you're saying: in effect this means that any end-user can make the source public.
But it does not mean that the end-user (or the distributor) *has* to make the source public, and that's what I was getting at.
For instance, if you use GPL code internally in an organization, then you don't have to release the code outside the organization. Your internal users must have access to the source, but you don't *have* to release it to the outside world.
Similarly, company A can sell GPL software (+source) to company B. Neither company is required to release the source to the public. Company B has the right to release the source if they want to, but nothing about the GPL requires them to publish the source code (unless they start selling this software to others).
It may seem that I'm nitpicking here, but alot of people get scared off by the GPL because they mistakenly believe that they "have" to distribute the source. There's nothing illegal or immoral about using a custom GPL solution internal to a company, and you will not be required to let your competitors "see" your custom changes to the code...
That's a mis-characterization of Richard Stallman's viewpoint. He doesn't believe that all software source code should be available to the public. Rather, he believes that all source code should be available to the end user. There is an important difference.
'Free' software is not about creating a gigantic repository of source code. It's about each user having the freedom to modify the computer software they are using. A group of users can keep a piece of software (and associated source code) hidden from the public quite easily. The point RMS is trying to make is that it is inneficient, artificial and even immoral to restrict the user of software from viewing/modifying the internals of said software.
Of course when software is intended for public consumption, then under the FSF ideal the source code will be available to the public (and indeed we end up with repositories like sourceforge). But to comply with the GPL you don't need to post your code on a public server: you need only make it available to the users.
But in what way are the powers of law enforcement different between searching physical property with a warrant vs. digital files?
Indeed, and that's exactly why the proposed law is a bad thing. Every unnecessary law removes some freedom, imposes some burden, is prone to some misuse and may ultimately lead to unintended consequences. As hard as it is to get a law passed, it is a million times harder to have a law removed, and becomes exponentially harder with time.
It's such an important point that I'll say it again: every unnecessary law is bad. The law can already get warrants to perform whatever searches and forensics they want. This includes confiscating a hard drive and brute-forcing an encryption key. Do we need another law that forces a suspect to work for the forensic team, by providing them with useful clues and decryption keys? No, we don't.
I think that is a good idea... but if I were you, I would ask a friend (who the elderly gentelman in question has never met) to go and ask. He/she should simply pretend/imply that they live "nearby"... the fact that the man has never met this person will make him think twice. He's probably not evil at the core, and he's only trying to get back at certain people. If he suddenly realizes that he's annoying others, he will probably stop.
This new friend could be someone a bit older than all of you, in which case he may sympathize with them more and stop this particular annoying behavior.
Alternately, you might get a friendly and attractive female to go and do the asking. It's amazing how frequently that can resolve a situation with a grumpy old man. I've seen it work more than once.