The vast majority of people don't need high-spec machines (except perhaps to cope with the creeping bloat and associated slowdown that accompanies Microsoft installations that aren't regularly reinstalled). Google run their server farms on commodity hardware - if they can do it, well, what's your excuse again?
Your attitude can best be summarized as "We don't want any switchers!" You are part of a shrinking minority of free software users. I recommend you keep that in mind. Rather presumptuous (and incorrect) of you... My present employment heavily utilises MS tech and platforms, I have some MS boxen in my network at home, and still I do encourage others to switch to F/OSS. But if switching is a painful process, there's a reason for it. Personally I hope that people associate that pain with coming from a worse position, rather than moving to one, but I can appreciate that is not always the case.
Think about it in business terms - if you were Microsoft, would you want your users switching to other products/platforms? Hell no! Their vendor lock-in practices are bad, no question... but the fact that people in capitalist societies still use MS despite knowing perfectly well what they are getting themselves into is more their own fault than MS's. Take some personal responsibility for your own decisions. If you (as a Slashdot reader) know in advance it is likely to bite you in the ass, and yet you still use it, live with your choice. If you don't like the way it works, don't use it. It really is that simple.
Yeah, I work for a business with an owner that loves yes-men.
Verbally fellate the owner? Get promoted and get big raises.
Take action, make a difference, make the company money? Get back-stabbed by the people that fellate the owner, find yourself written up by HR, and find your honesty and integrity trampled by divisiveness and greed.
Wanna guess who's looking for a new job while barely clinging to sanity? I'd hope it is the yes-men who are finally sick of choking on the boss' pole, because all the useful and talented staff left long ago.
And if he was at one time running Windows and purchasing this software, but at a later date replaces the PC and switches OS's? He should've thought about that before buying Microsoft in the first place. I'm quite happy to bash Microsoft when it is warranted, but c'mon... we all know their modus operandi here. You dance with the devil, you're gonna get burned. You can't blame them for his choice.
If you're working in an environment like that, why wouldn't you want to get out anyway?
Every place I've worked (so far), I have in fact been rewarded for coming up with better alternatives to the boss's suggestions, and I've never once been punished for disagreement. Thing is, you have to earn their respect before you can do that...
Hmm. Someone tells lies about you that might damage your reputation or livelihood. You want them to stop. Do you
a.) send someone to break their kneecaps b.) smear shit all over their car c.) call them lies back and sleep with their sister d.) follow the legal remedy that has been established for centuries and appeal for relief against the harmful action?
Oh that's right. Except in America, the right thing to do is (b). e) send CowboyNeal to break their kneecaps, shit on their car, sleep with their sister, and relieve himself with a harmful action. In that order.
Its not even an oxymoron. An oxymoron is two words put together with opposet meanings, like: Dodge Ram, Bitter Sweet, or Windows Stability. or Military Intelligence... or Bush Administration... or Microsoft Works... etc...
That's much better than just sitting here on that cosmic bullseye known as "Earth" waiting for the next cataclysmic event to take us out for good. Well, a moving target is harder to hit. But then, in space the concept of moving depends entirely on your frame of reference...
if your Sudoku solver is good enough to solve any grid in polynomial time, please show the rest of us, as you've just cracked every encryption scheme invented to date. Wrong.
First, none of the encryption schemes I know are NP complete. Wrong yourself. I'll try to put this in terms even you can understand...
NP means a solution can be verified in polynomial time. All practical encryption algorithms fall into this domain, otherwise nobody would ever be able to decrypt the data. You could've found this out with even a trivial amount of effort.
NP-complete means that a particular problem is in NP, and is also NP hard. In terms even you will hopefully understand, NP-complete problems are the hardest class of problems in NP, by definition.
Second, even if P = NP were true, there are provably exponential problems. Encryption schemes are thought to be exponential, and therefore harder than NP (but none has been proved to be). Thought by who? Provide references. Yes there are provably exponential problems, and problems that lie outside the domain of NP. But encryption is not one of them. If you cannot decrypt the data in polynomial time your encryption scheme is effectively useless, and you may as well just scramble the bits randomly.
Seriously, do a little research before you post this garbage. Some of us actually teach this stuff for a living.
People usually use "linear" in terms of node or edge number, not depth.
If you use nodes visited, it is linear. Think before you post. You have an exponential number of nodes. Worst case is you have to visit them all. How is that possibly linear?
all a Sudoku puzzle is, at it's core, is a depth first search. Which is not an algorithm that runs in polynomial time. It is a DFS of all (legal, remaining) permutations, which is an exponential number.
even on a moderately fast PC a DFS is fast enough to get a solution to a Sudoku puzzle in the blink of an eye. Regardless of how easy a 9x9 grid seems, Sudoku is still at its core an NP Complete (PDF warning) problem. Why is it therefore any less valid than any other NP complete problem? Travelling Salesman is also pretty easy with less than 10 nodes... likewise you can feasibly crack any encryption scheme by brute-force if you constrain it to have a tiny key size. It's all about scale.
The beauty is, if you solve any NPC problem you solve them all, by definition. So, Mr. Smarty Pants, if your Sudoku solver is good enough to solve any grid in polynomial time, please show the rest of us, as you've just cracked every encryption scheme invented to date.
The maddening problem of Ogg Theora having a.ogg extension also is, of course, another conversation altogether.. OK, I'll bite... Vorbis is the name of the actual codec, Ogg is the name of the file container. Microsoft do the same thing with ASF, and Apple with Quicktime files. AVI and MP4 are some more examples of codec-independent container files too.
Why would they stake out the victim? Why not stake out the offenders - they're already half staked out anyway. The offenders may not even have had a specific victim in mind and be working it as a "crime of opportunity". You've probably already got half a dozen organisations passively tracking your movements to varying degrees without your knowing about it. As long as the cops aren't completely incompetent they could do it without the offenders noticing or risking public safety. Hell, even catching the guys physically meeting at whatever pre-defined place they discussed before the act would be enough to prove intent, no physical bait required. But I'd hate to see us start down the slippery slope where someone getting a decade in the gulag just for talking shite. The appropriate response to "Dude, I just f***ed your sister" is a smack in the head, not a decade in jail.
If the cops can't handle that situation, then give them the money, technology, training and manpower they need. Creating hundreds of new crimes year after year (many of which seem aimed more at diminishing civil liberties than protecting the public) and expecting the existing resources to handle the increased workload is the wrong way to go about it. I'd rather my taxes paid for another cop than another politician.
Slashdot Mirror
A problem easily solved if the flatulent astronaut is outnumbered. Just hold him down and put his helmet on, thus sealing his space-suit...
Anyone care to come up with a term for a masochistic space dutch oven?
...or, it's caused by actual water on the road.
The vast majority of people don't need high-spec machines (except perhaps to cope with the creeping bloat and associated slowdown that accompanies Microsoft installations that aren't regularly reinstalled). Google run their server farms on commodity hardware - if they can do it, well, what's your excuse again?
Insert obligatory PS3 grill and George Forman iGrill here...
Exactly. Give them a particularly nasty lab-developed strain of bird flu, then fly them into Tibet or Taiwan. What are the odds?
Two words: bird flu.
Think about it in business terms - if you were Microsoft, would you want your users switching to other products/platforms? Hell no! Their vendor lock-in practices are bad, no question... but the fact that people in capitalist societies still use MS despite knowing perfectly well what they are getting themselves into is more their own fault than MS's. Take some personal responsibility for your own decisions. If you (as a Slashdot reader) know in advance it is likely to bite you in the ass, and yet you still use it, live with your choice. If you don't like the way it works, don't use it. It really is that simple.
Verbally fellate the owner? Get promoted and get big raises.
Take action, make a difference, make the company money? Get back-stabbed by the people that fellate the owner, find yourself written up by HR, and find your honesty and integrity trampled by divisiveness and greed.
Wanna guess who's looking for a new job while barely clinging to sanity? I'd hope it is the yes-men who are finally sick of choking on the boss' pole, because all the useful and talented staff left long ago.
If you're working in an environment like that, why wouldn't you want to get out anyway?
Every place I've worked (so far), I have in fact been rewarded for coming up with better alternatives to the boss's suggestions, and I've never once been punished for disagreement. Thing is, you have to earn their respect before you can do that...
a.) send someone to break their kneecaps
b.) smear shit all over their car
c.) call them lies back and sleep with their sister
d.) follow the legal remedy that has been established for centuries and appeal for relief against the harmful action?
Oh that's right. Except in America, the right thing to do is (b). e) send CowboyNeal to break their kneecaps, shit on their car, sleep with their sister, and relieve himself with a harmful action. In that order.
or Bush Administration...
or Microsoft Works...
etc...
Sorry... iDontGetIt.
If he's our last hope, I think I'll root for the asteroid...
First, none of the encryption schemes I know are NP complete. Wrong yourself. I'll try to put this in terms even you can understand...
NP means a solution can be verified in polynomial time. All practical encryption algorithms fall into this domain, otherwise nobody would ever be able to decrypt the data. You could've found this out with even a trivial amount of effort.
NP-complete means that a particular problem is in NP, and is also NP hard. In terms even you will hopefully understand, NP-complete problems are the hardest class of problems in NP, by definition. Second, even if P = NP were true, there are provably exponential problems. Encryption schemes are thought to be exponential, and therefore harder than NP (but none has been proved to be). Thought by who? Provide references. Yes there are provably exponential problems, and problems that lie outside the domain of NP. But encryption is not one of them. If you cannot decrypt the data in polynomial time your encryption scheme is effectively useless, and you may as well just scramble the bits randomly.
Seriously, do a little research before you post this garbage. Some of us actually teach this stuff for a living.
If you use nodes visited, it is linear. Think before you post. You have an exponential number of nodes. Worst case is you have to visit them all. How is that possibly linear?
The beauty is, if you solve any NPC problem you solve them all, by definition. So, Mr. Smarty Pants, if your Sudoku solver is good enough to solve any grid in polynomial time, please show the rest of us, as you've just cracked every encryption scheme invented to date.
Yeah, I didn't think so.
Sure... the analog hole, any DRM cracking, etc. etc. Bottom like is, if you can see it once, you can steal it - it's just a question of effort.
I think you've just found the loophole that the big ISPs will be using to avoid this, while the little guys go out of business.
Two words: proxy cache. If that's the way it is, the least you could do is set it up so the same file is never downloaded twice.
Seems like a "blamecanada" tag actually is appropriate, at least if this sets a precedent...
Why would they stake out the victim? Why not stake out the offenders - they're already half staked out anyway. The offenders may not even have had a specific victim in mind and be working it as a "crime of opportunity". You've probably already got half a dozen organisations passively tracking your movements to varying degrees without your knowing about it. As long as the cops aren't completely incompetent they could do it without the offenders noticing or risking public safety. Hell, even catching the guys physically meeting at whatever pre-defined place they discussed before the act would be enough to prove intent, no physical bait required. But I'd hate to see us start down the slippery slope where someone getting a decade in the gulag just for talking shite. The appropriate response to "Dude, I just f***ed your sister" is a smack in the head, not a decade in jail.
If the cops can't handle that situation, then give them the money, technology, training and manpower they need. Creating hundreds of new crimes year after year (many of which seem aimed more at diminishing civil liberties than protecting the public) and expecting the existing resources to handle the increased workload is the wrong way to go about it. I'd rather my taxes paid for another cop than another politician.