One great example is Goldbach's Conjecture: All even numbers greater than 2 are the sum of two prime numbers.
One of my favorite math quotes: "If you can state a problem in mathematics that's unsolved and over 100 years old, it is probably a problem in number theory" - Erdos
That's not exact, but as best as I can find at the moment. Very true, too.
Defensive patents have been necessary for a very long time. The 19th century Shakers learned that the hard way when commercial companies started patenting medicines the Shakers had invented.
The scale has increased a bit, though: were those medicines worth billions of dollars anually? Not to mention the cluelessness in USPTO about technology, leading to oh-so-many patents with clear and obvious prior art. Hopefully they haven't always been as bad as they are.
I don't know much about MacOS internals or Apple's hardware, but, AFAIK, Macs _do_ support multiple processes, right? (Hopefully this is a rhetorical question). Even if MacOS doesn't support threading at all, you'll probably get fairly significant benefits from SMP. For instance, you can run the OS on one CPU and PageMaker or Photoshop can take the whole of the other one. It wouldn't be as efficient as a well-threaded OS and applications, but you'll still get significant gains. Also, in order to help development of SMP MacOS X, it would probably be helpful to actually _have some of the hardware around to test it on.
And last I checked, there is a well threaded and efficient OS for PowerPC and G3/G4.
I support them fully, especially if they could arrange some sort of patent-sharing arrangment with some of the big biotech companies. Of course, the idea that someone can _patent_ something which was for the most part created naturally (my "favorite" being the companies patenting human genes) is, IMHO, riduculous. BUT, that's the system, it's broken, and the only way to win out is use the system (so, copyleft and defensive patents).
I'll bet the Chinese govt is pretty worried about the Internet right now; I suspect that most media (newspapers, TV, radio) is tightly controlled and monitored. But the 'net allows information to travel from areas outside China (and thus Chinese control) into China - sort of like Radio Free Europe.
Of course, replace "China" is "Western World" and "government" with "mega-corps" and the statement is still true.
But I've heard all the hairy tales of installation in the pre v1.0 days. I guess it resonates with me the same way camping does.
Yeah, I heard OpenBSD was a real bitch to install, so I figured I would install it just to see (of course!). I was quite disapointed... besides the really horrible fdisk-like program, it was pretty simple. Though I got rid of it later that day as I could just not get my ethernet card (an cheap NE2000) to work right. Maybe I'll get an old Pentium and make a firewall or something with OpenBSD sometime...
That said, X is really showing its age. IMHO network transparency is neat but not necessary at all for 99.9% of users.
Yeah, it's really high-bandwidth (at least if you're on a modem). But as more and more homes get DSL/Cable and local LANs, the more useful GUI-over-the-network will be.
perhaps the solution is pure client-only rendering.
At the cost of reimplementing every GUI application? Ports of GTK+ and QT would handle most of it, but Netscape and other proprietary apps aren't going to deal well with X going away. Not to mention interoperability... I like being able to run emacs off a Solaris machine on the other side of the network. Also it'll be a lot of work. The Berlin project has been working on their stuff for, what, years now, and it'll be a while yet before anything real is running on it. Replacing X is a very long-term proposal (though Berlin looks really cool).
A "typical" desktop user doesn't even know what the heck telnet is, let alone find it a useful tool.
Most of them aren't that bad. I live with 3 people, majoring in History/History of Art, Economics, and IR. All of them at least know what telnet is (hell, one uses pine to check her email). DNS is another story.:)
Though I don't think Corel Linux, a distro seeminly designed for and marketed to, recent Windows users, is a good place to have stuff like that running by default.
Re:"Designed from the ground up for..."
on
AtheOS
·
· Score: 5
But what *IS* it with this idea that designing for a specific platform is anything but a short-sighted, ill-considered, idea?
You've surely got a point there. However, AtheOS seems to have a POSIX/Unix style API (at least the lower-level stuff). So applications are portable, even if the OS is not. It's one of the arguments Linus made back in the Minix vs Linux flamewars. I can't agree with it entirley (I like portability too), but there is, IMHO, some value to it.
If the GUI library were ported onto Xlib or something, developers would have few problems porting stuff to/from Unix. And keep in mind that even if a complete kernel rewrite were necessary to port to Alpha or PPC, applications should be totally portable. Consider Linux. Which would be harder to completely reimplement: the kernel and associated device drivers, or all of the applications living on top of it?
Re:I dunno about the Turner Diaries
on
Fahrenheit 451
·
· Score: 1
It might be interesting to see what the fuss is all about, but it probably isn't interesting enough to risk being profiled as a potential terrorist by the governments of the western world by purchasing it.
Personally, I would consider that to be the best part.:)
Well, no program exists to remove the letters S,P,A,M and then rot13 the remainder, so your average geek will probably not email you. It's just too much work.
IPC, as in, Interprocess Communictation? Sounds like a pretty weird book to me. [Yes, I know it's probably something else, but I couldn't resist asking]
FYI, the 89 and 91 are the same calculator, just with different cases (and the 91 comes with more software). They both run the same software. I use the 89 for engineeering, and it is schwank as a calculator.
I don't think so - the one I'm think of can do 3d graphing and things like that. Unless the 89 can do that to? My brother has one and I don't think I've ever seen him do anything like that...
The first machine I ever programmed was a TI-57 Programmable (with all of 50 program steps). It wasn't too bad. (Thinks, "I wonder if I can hack the worn-out battery pack and bring it back to life...")
I can't say I'm much of a BASIC fan. It's not horrible, Visual Basic horrible, more like, horrible, COBOL and FORTRAN horrible.:)
We used to have a TI-32 (I think that was the model name), basically a PC type thing, 128K of RAM or so, from the early 80s. I remember watching my Dad program stuff on it, little games and stuff for us. It was cool.
Please read the thread again. I was not talking about the point of copyright, I was talkking about the point that of the renewal fee idea.
I know, and I think that the a renewal fee is contradictory to the point of copyright. They should either be renewable without fee, or not renewable at all. The constitution says "for a limited time", not "for a limited time, which will depend on how much money you can cough up".
OK, so I need a new calculator. It appears that the 85 is an old model, no longer available. Anyone recommend a new one?
Really, they stopped making them? Ah, I feel so outdated.:)
Since I never use my calculator for calculations (just game playing and random stuff like that), I'm thinking about getting on of the StrongARM Palms. Be more fun to program on, too (as you know if you've ever programmed a TI).
The 89's are pretty nice, they have a lot more memory than the 8{2,3,5}. I like the 92 a lot too, though it's more of a small laptop than a calculator.
Besides, all of the major encryption standards were developed in the US, so the EU's decision will not really affect distribution of the well-known algorithms
All of the 'standards' (OpenPGP, SSL/TLS, S/MIME) have been published in RFCs. And documents describing almost every algorithm known are available online, either in RFCs, or the conference proceedings where they were first presented. Only code is restricted from export - textual descriptions are fine. And of course reference code for algorithms invented in Europe, Canada and other non-restrictive areas is available too.
Besides, I'll bet there are quite a few companies that would move encryption development overseas to take advantage of lax laws.
Some already have. RSADSI hired Eric A. Young (the guy who wrote SSLeay) to work on their SSL project in AU. The idea is that all of the coding, support, and sale is done outside the US, so it won't be 'tainted' by the export laws. That way they can sell it to anybody in the world, conviniently getting around US export laws.
Slashdot Mirror
One great example is Goldbach's Conjecture: All even numbers greater than 2 are the sum of two prime numbers.
One of my favorite math quotes: "If you can state a problem in mathematics that's unsolved and over 100 years old, it is probably a problem in number theory" - Erdos
That's not exact, but as best as I can find at the moment. Very true, too.
the deal will be called off after Disney demands that NASA put little mouse ears on all of the space suits.
14. Microsoft would like to be punished by Shiandra, dominatrix of the night. We request she use her shackles and branding iron.
;)
I protest this suggested solution, because it's not fair that just MS get's such... err... punishment.
NT Times?
:)
Probably right. I actually caught myself writing NT Times in the body too, but didn't notice the subject.
Here's an article about the subject in the NY Times.
Defensive patents have been necessary for a very long time. The 19th century Shakers learned that the hard way when commercial companies started patenting medicines the Shakers had invented.
The scale has increased a bit, though: were those medicines worth billions of dollars anually? Not to mention the cluelessness in USPTO about technology, leading to oh-so-many patents with clear and obvious prior art. Hopefully they haven't always been as bad as they are.
I don't know much about MacOS internals or Apple's hardware, but, AFAIK, Macs _do_ support multiple processes, right? (Hopefully this is a rhetorical question). Even if MacOS doesn't support threading at all, you'll probably get fairly significant benefits from SMP. For instance, you can run the OS on one CPU and PageMaker or Photoshop can take the whole of the other one. It wouldn't be as efficient as a well-threaded OS and applications, but you'll still get significant gains. Also, in order to help development of SMP MacOS X, it would probably be helpful to actually _have some of the hardware around to test it on.
And last I checked, there is a well threaded and efficient OS for PowerPC and G3/G4.
I support them fully, especially if they could arrange some sort of patent-sharing arrangment with some of the big biotech companies. Of course, the idea that someone can _patent_ something which was for the most part created naturally (my "favorite" being the companies patenting human genes) is, IMHO, riduculous. BUT, that's the system, it's broken, and the only way to win out is use the system (so, copyleft and defensive patents).
I'll bet the Chinese govt is pretty worried about the Internet right now; I suspect that most media (newspapers, TV, radio) is tightly controlled and monitored. But the 'net allows information to travel from areas outside China (and thus Chinese control) into China - sort of like Radio Free Europe.
Of course, replace "China" is "Western World" and "government" with "mega-corps" and the statement is still true.
But I've heard all the hairy tales of installation in the pre v1.0 days. I guess it resonates with me the same way camping does.
Yeah, I heard OpenBSD was a real bitch to install, so I figured I would install it just to see (of course!). I was quite disapointed... besides the really horrible fdisk-like program, it was pretty simple. Though I got rid of it later that day as I could just not get my ethernet card (an cheap NE2000) to work right. Maybe I'll get an old Pentium and make a firewall or something with OpenBSD sometime...
That said, X is really showing its age. IMHO network transparency is neat but not necessary at all for 99.9% of users.
Yeah, it's really high-bandwidth (at least if you're on a modem). But as more and more homes get DSL/Cable and local LANs, the more useful GUI-over-the-network will be.
perhaps the solution is pure client-only rendering.
At the cost of reimplementing every GUI application? Ports of GTK+ and QT would handle most of it, but Netscape and other proprietary apps aren't going to deal well with X going away. Not to mention interoperability... I like being able to run emacs off a Solaris machine on the other side of the network. Also it'll be a lot of work. The Berlin project has been working on their stuff for, what, years now, and it'll be a while yet before anything real is running on it. Replacing X is a very long-term proposal (though Berlin looks really cool).
A "typical" desktop user doesn't even know what the heck telnet is, let alone find it a useful tool.
:)
Most of them aren't that bad. I live with 3 people, majoring in History/History of Art, Economics, and IR. All of them at least know what telnet is (hell, one uses pine to check her email). DNS is another story.
Though I don't think Corel Linux, a distro seeminly designed for and marketed to, recent Windows users, is a good place to have stuff like that running by default.
But what *IS* it with this idea that designing for a specific platform is anything but a short-sighted, ill-considered, idea?
You've surely got a point there. However, AtheOS seems to have a POSIX/Unix style API (at least the lower-level stuff). So applications are portable, even if the OS is not. It's one of the arguments Linus made back in the Minix vs Linux flamewars. I can't agree with it entirley (I like portability too), but there is, IMHO, some value to it.
If the GUI library were ported onto Xlib or something, developers would have few problems porting stuff to/from Unix. And keep in mind that even if a complete kernel rewrite were necessary to port to Alpha or PPC, applications should be totally portable. Consider Linux. Which would be harder to completely reimplement: the kernel and associated device drivers, or all of the applications living on top of it?
It might be interesting to see what the fuss is all about, but it probably isn't interesting enough to risk being profiled as a potential terrorist by the governments of the western world by purchasing it.
:)
Personally, I would consider that to be the best part.
Well, no program exists to remove the letters S,P,A,M and then rot13 the remainder, so your average geek will probably not email you. It's just too much work.
Happy now?
#!/bin/sh
echo $* | tr -d [:upper:] | rot13
"Spacehounds of IPC"
IPC, as in, Interprocess Communictation? Sounds like a pretty weird book to me. [Yes, I know it's probably something else, but I couldn't resist asking]
I'll have proof of the alien civilization on Mars! Now the conspiracy can't `sanitize` the evidence! I've got them now!
FYI, the 89 and 91 are the same calculator, just with different cases (and the 91 comes with more software). They both run the same software. I use the 89 for engineeering, and it is schwank as a calculator.
I don't think so - the one I'm think of can do 3d graphing and things like that. Unless the 89 can do that to? My brother has one and I don't think I've ever seen him do anything like that...
The first machine I ever programmed was a TI-57 Programmable (with all of 50 program steps). It wasn't too bad. (Thinks, "I wonder if I can hack the worn-out battery pack and bring it back to life...")
:)
I can't say I'm much of a BASIC fan. It's not horrible, Visual Basic horrible, more like, horrible, COBOL and FORTRAN horrible.
We used to have a TI-32 (I think that was the model name), basically a PC type thing, 128K of RAM or so, from the early 80s. I remember watching my Dad program stuff on it, little games and stuff for us. It was cool.
Please read the thread again. I was not talking about the point of copyright, I was talkking about the point that of the renewal fee idea.
I know, and I think that the a renewal fee is contradictory to the point of copyright. They should either be renewable without fee, or not renewable at all. The constitution says "for a limited time", not "for a limited time, which will depend on how much money you can cough up".
OK, so I need a new calculator. It appears that the 85 is an old model, no longer available. Anyone recommend a new one?
:)
Really, they stopped making them? Ah, I feel so outdated.
Since I never use my calculator for calculations (just game playing and random stuff like that), I'm thinking about getting on of the StrongARM Palms. Be more fun to program on, too (as you know if you've ever programmed a TI).
The 89's are pretty nice, they have a lot more memory than the 8{2,3,5}. I like the 92 a lot too, though it's more of a small laptop than a calculator.
No color, very low resolution. You might as well look at ASCII-art pr0n.
Besides, all of the major encryption standards were developed in the US, so the EU's decision will not really affect distribution of the well-known algorithms
All of the 'standards' (OpenPGP, SSL/TLS, S/MIME) have been published in RFCs. And documents describing almost every algorithm known are available online, either in RFCs, or the conference proceedings where they were first presented. Only code is restricted from export - textual descriptions are fine. And of course reference code for algorithms invented in Europe, Canada and other non-restrictive areas is available too.
'But the European Union does not make their policies dependent on the opinion of the United States.'
Sounds like a "Fuck you, US, and stop telling us what to do" to me.
Besides, I'll bet there are quite a few companies that would move encryption development overseas to take advantage of lax laws.
Some already have. RSADSI hired Eric A. Young (the guy who wrote SSLeay) to work on their SSL project in AU. The idea is that all of the coding, support, and sale is done outside the US, so it won't be 'tainted' by the export laws. That way they can sell it to anybody in the world, conviniently getting around US export laws.