And if a perpetrator really disrupting a large number of channels, that makes it all the easier to identify them.
Well, sorta... (If they stay in one place long enough for triangulation to work)
But if there are many perpetrators (lots of software radios infected with a "virus"), then you essentially have a DDOS attack in the wireless domain... That would not be easy to circumvent nor detect. Especially if they are in a densely populated (wireless user) area.
Although the "software" in a wireless radio operates at a very low level compared to user applications, I'm sure someone will manage to screw this [security] up one day.
Luckily, your expert usage of English grammer re-assures me.
Apparently they are only upset at one (unnamed) American who has multiple throats, and they wish to shove each of these up the asses of an (unnamed) third party that consists of more than one person. Or it could be that this particular individual's throats also have asses... which makes the action somewhat circular...
Well, I don't have multiple throats, so my neck must be out of danger... But my ass might be the target of their threat.
Um... from whom, exactly? I'm pretty hesitant about it, and I can't imagine most ethics committees green-lighting anything of the sort.
That's quite simple. All one needs is an UNethical ethics committee!
In the recent past, I attended "ethics training" where I worked. The presentation stressed the importance of logging an accurate number of hours for each job/task performed. It cautioned us against unethical behavior such as cooking the numbers slightly or playing with hours worked (such as working 48 hrs one week and taking a day off the next week without logging it as such).
Guess what happened at the end of this training? We went a longer than expected. So the person in charge told us to only log something like 60 minutes for training instead of the 90+ minutes that actually occured. Most of the "training" was too thin to even be labeled superficial (they were really rushing). I even sent a wry email to the Director of Ethics. He saw nothing wrong.
(The "Ethics" department would have needed to financially support the extra time taken for the training. So it was easier for them to just shove off the burden on the individual departments receiving the training. In this company, accouting is extremely important.)
While the above isn't siginificant on a quantative scale, to me it is highly significant from a qualitative standpoint. They told us to do what they just finished telling us not to do and even defended why. And they are supposed to be setting the example...
And I'm getting tired of people using the word "optimum" without knowing what it means... "Optimum" in what sense? Lease-squares? Absolute Value? Fronobieus norm? There are also many instances where somthing that is "optimum" in one way just plain sucks because the criteria for comparision is poor.
The vast majority of federal debt instruments are held by the American government itself, states, private investors, pension funds, corporations, and the like. So we owe most of the national debt to ourselves.
Weird... [I am not an economist].
Weren't large parts of the debt paid off [at one time] during the Clinton era? If most of the debt is held within the US and the govt pays it off using tax money, then in effect the cooperations are profiting from those paying taxes [which may be the most difficult on the lower middle classes] as well as the initial expendatures that caused the debt. But in order for that to happen, the public had to pay for it through taxes... And those with large incomes are relatively unencumbered by taxes in the same way the lower-income familes are...
One part of me says this is just a normal process, but another part of me thinks that something in this really really stinks... In some sense, it seems that excessive spending ultimately negatively affects the poorer populations in more serious ways than the wealty...
As a PhD researcher into the evolution of organizational forms, I find the facile application of open source principles rather distressing - especially when they're used either to reinforce the notion that hierarchies (read: control and power) really are important, or to promote that people should work for free and donate their efforts to the "greater good" (read: more profits for the shareholders and more shite for the workers).
What do you mean that OSS reinforces hierarchies?
If anything it subverts them. For example, one wants to radically modify/adapt program X to some new environment. If program X is closed source, and written by Microsoft, then this programmer is forced to submit to the whims of Microsoft.
If program X is open-source, then the programmer has full control of how he can modify the program. He is not subject to the control of the cooperation.
Case in point: Look at how many hardware platforms run Linux -- this is technically possible with Windows (w/o the source), although in theory with the source one could do the same...
And when one considers licensing agreements/restrictions, the point only becomes clearer.
Now if a cooperation wishes to PROFIT from OSS, well the only way I see is to make the OSS component to not be the end-product, only an accessory to the real product. (e.g. a networking card company releases their *driver* as open-source). Most closed-source software of this type is very poorly maintained and often ridden with bugs. The public gets ripped off in this manner. With an OSS version, people can still extract some value/utility.... [Now it is arguable to whether or not the consumers should hold the companies to higher standards -- realistically I think the public is too dumb & complacent for this to happen...]
Basically, OSS can be a good "check" to "balance" the apathy of the masses. In some sense, the employees of a company are going to screw the public either way. With OSS, the public has another option.
If your house isn't the bottleneck, than as soon as the "bottleneck" is removed by upgrades, then what eventually becomes your house? [Hint: it will be last to receive the upgrades]...
Which is cheaper? 1) Install fiber to 100 existing homes [requiring digging,etc]? 2) Upgrading the line that runs between a neighborhood and another station, ONCE?
What if it isn't even fiber? What if it just means replacing a device near each customer versus replacing equipment on the main lines between subdivisions? Imagine the labor required...
And in a neighborhood of 100, what if only 20 houses are even using the service at a level where upgrades would benfit them? Is it cost-effective to upgrade the whole neighborhood? Maybe in the long run, but they have shareholders and quarterly earnings reports to worry about... Telecom companies are going to want to do things as cheaply as possible...
Besides, we likely either talking about the PHONE company or the CABLE company.... So discussing sensibility is just plain silly.
Personally, I think we're getting to the point where any increases in bandwidth are going to be largely unnecessary. There is talk of TV over DSL... Technical challenges make this largely unfeasible. Business and legal challenges make this extremely difficult. It seems like a whole lot of effort to find another way to stream crappy shows & services over a different set of wires.
Most users don't really need the full bandwith availabe in their DSL/cable modems... I think they just thing that "high-speed" internet is really fast because they are using a connection with ~50ms latency versus 200-500ms latency (dial-up modem).
I don't see how video telephony is ever going to take off really big. (Relatively few people use webcams extensively). There are social advantages to not being *visible* to the remote party (such as when one is not dressed, clean shaven, tired, etc).
Audio? Well, there is plenty of bandwith available currently for that. I think it will be long time before we see streaming "5.1" surround sound audio, and even longer before it is cheap [due to economic reasons]. I suspect even this wouldn't require much more bandwidth due to the correlation among the channels.
So why again should every house get the latest and greatest connection, **right now**? To me, I don't see any reason.
You managed to post the exact same thing twice and get modded up both times.... Nice job!
OTOH, I wonder how long the patents on the HaloLight lasted.... Perhaps this is why we are seeing it again just now? [I haven't seen a Sylvania TV recently....]
I once saw similar things at our local computer show -- burned CDs in jewel cases with photocopied covers for Windows/Office software.. And they were real cheap [~$20].
I don't like Microsoft's activation stuff. And I've even read stories where people have to go out and buy new copies of Office/Windows because their motherboard died and windows detected the change. I suspect the Windows Update site is exchanging more info than what they claim.
On the other hand, I have no sympathy for thes bastards selling phony stuff as the real thing and profiting off of it.
While everything has not been yet invented, I'd wager that virtually all technologies that could be combined in a novel way have already been patented.
Which means I'd going to have some grey or white hairs before the The Next Big Thing can emerge without a flurry of lawsuits. Until then, the only innovations will be in marketing and sales tactics.
$100 may be a year or two of hard saving for an average family in some countries. $1000 is for most of them completely out of reach.
Even if they could save and spend $100 on a laptop. (Which to many would be like $1000-$10000 to westeners), consider this:
Many developing countries are subject to "load shedding" (planned power outages). In India, I have noticed the following:
Most high-tech equipment (computers, cash registers, etc), has a voltage adjustment/conditioner box on it. (Most people in the US probably have never seen one, these are not UPSes).
Power outages are quite frequent (almost daily) and can last for a couple of hours
So I would think that $100 laptop better be pretty robust against power fluctuations. (These people aren't able to buy a new one everytime another breaks). Repair might be an option [I believe I saw an SMT station in a place that advertised "cell phone repair" -- I was quite shocked!], but I'm not sure how affordable that would be.
Cell phones appear plentiful in India, but I have a feeling it is still their wealthy "few" (relative to the rest of the population) supporting them. Most of their population is contained in rural villages -- which may not be able to (financially) support wireless internet.
[Hopefully someone more knowledgable than me can add/subtract on some of these points]
But I can say this: Bringing computers to developing countries is not going to improve education [much]. Computers in education have been a dismal failure in the US. (e.g. classroom learning). [My english skills are not any better for having played "WordMunchers" on an Apple/IIe] For example, my arithmetic skills would be much better if I didn't rely on matlab to correctly multiply 5x5 matricies... My symbolic manipulation skills would be better if I didn't occasionally fall back to Mathematica, etc, etc....
What computers WILL do is cause powerful social change. It will allow people to widen their horizons (if willing) without travel. It will allow them to better see what is going on in other parts of their country & world. They will be able to discuss philosophical issues with people outside their village, etc.
On the other hand, I'm not sure if governments really want the above. These kind of social transformations could have a destabilitizing effect. I would think more aware people would be less tolerant of corruption & other government excesses.
Re:Glad to see menu editing has been fixed
on
Gnome 2.14 Released
·
· Score: 1
That is one thing that has always pissed me off.
If someone took a window manager like IceWM (very light-weight and does allow menu editing), and added the ability to put files/folders on the "desktop" [I like to put active stuff there], that would be my window manager.
Great...Hopefully they fixed some bugs too...
on
Gnome 2.14 Released
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
Like the way wnck-applet ties up my system every few days.
I re-worked my personal website to use XML for all the page data and XSLT to render the pages into HTML. I have both static and dynamic pages. I tried to keep all formatting out of my XML files with the exceptions of things like "bold", "underline", etc.... PHP scripts generate XML which is rendered to HTML in the same way.... I was thinking that eventually, I could add the ability to export the current page as a PDF, etc...
Well, it didn't quite turn out as well as I hoped. I had to re-implement many things in XSLT like the bold, underline, and paragraph tags [which was a pain]. Occasionally, I find in my PHP dynamic pages that I didn't properly escape/convert to entities some piece of text. Which causes the dynamic page to die before anything shows up (XML parser error). [Yes this is a design error, but the lack of integratation here causes many practical problems].
I feel what is really needed is tighter type control in something like PHP, so that I would be incapable of concatenating unclean text with XML data...
[Perhaps I should have built the dynamic XML files up using the DOM functions -- but this seems like a real pain.]
Sony is either going to astound the analysts with one of the most successful product launches ever, or go out in a blaze of glory that may cripple the company.
Personally, I would prefer the latter. Companies don't deserve to stay in business after doing grossly illegal and unethical actions [Sony DRM], regardless of how they settle the lawsuits.
On a similar note, the car companies seem to get away with far worse, with little/no reprimand. (Ford Fiesta anyone? Why does Ford still exist?)
Only fools would pay for $1200/license to use somebody's pre-packaged open-source software.
If you have more than one license, you could easily hire someone full-time to do upgrades on your servers and use a free linux distribution like Fedora or Gentoo. (Or even consider the *BSDs). Plus you get someone you can immediately contact in the case of a problem (rather than a phone number).
I realize you are probably concened with uptime and availablity (and hence pay for the enterprise editions), but what kind of stuff are you really doing? A simple web or sql server can be handled very easily by a half-way competent admin. Yes it may be vitually important, but it if it is simple, then why bother with Redhat?
And if it isn't so simple, then do you really want Redhat holding the gonads of your operations? What are they going to do for you that a dedicated employee wouldn't?
Yes, but with faster hardware always on the horizon, is there a real push for highly optimized software for 3D games?
Or would they prefer to be first to market at the expensive of a bit slower (fps) game? After all, if they don't push too hard to make the software run fast/efficiently, it will push the hardware companies to advertise/sell faster cards.... And when one gets a faster video card, they tend to want to try it on as many games as possible....
Slashdot Mirror
Then again, 512k should be enough memory for anyone, and there will never be a market for more than five computers in the US.
I thought 512k wasn't necessarily enough memory.... Some people might want to use 640k.
And if a perpetrator really disrupting a large number of channels, that makes it all the easier to identify them.
Well, sorta... (If they stay in one place long enough for triangulation to work)
But if there are many perpetrators (lots of software radios infected with a "virus"), then you essentially have a DDOS attack in the wireless domain... That would not be easy to circumvent nor detect. Especially if they are in a densely populated (wireless user) area.
Although the "software" in a wireless radio operates at a very low level compared to user applications, I'm sure someone will manage to screw this [security] up one day.
Whew! You had me scared for a second.
Luckily, your expert usage of English grammer re-assures me.
Apparently they are only upset at one (unnamed) American who has multiple throats, and they wish to shove each of these up the asses of an (unnamed) third party that consists of more than one person. Or it could be that this particular individual's throats also have asses... which makes the action somewhat circular...
Well, I don't have multiple throats, so my neck must be out of danger... But my ass might be the target of their threat.
Ah, aren't there many academic papers on PageRank?
I recently attended a seminar where they explained exactly how it worked.
Um... from whom, exactly? I'm pretty hesitant about it, and I can't imagine most ethics committees green-lighting anything of the sort.
That's quite simple. All one needs is an UNethical ethics committee!
In the recent past, I attended "ethics training" where I worked. The presentation stressed the importance of logging an accurate number of hours for each job/task performed. It cautioned us against unethical behavior such as cooking the numbers slightly or playing with hours worked (such as working 48 hrs one week and taking a day off the next week without logging it as such).
Guess what happened at the end of this training? We went a longer than expected. So the person in charge told us to only log something like 60 minutes for training instead of the 90+ minutes that actually occured. Most of the "training" was too thin to even be labeled superficial (they were really rushing). I even sent a wry email to the Director of Ethics. He saw nothing wrong.
(The "Ethics" department would have needed to financially support the extra time taken for the training. So it was easier for them to just shove off the burden on the individual departments receiving the training. In this company, accouting is extremely important.)
While the above isn't siginificant on a quantative scale, to me it is highly significant from a qualitative standpoint. They told us to do what they just finished telling us not to do and even defended why. And they are supposed to be setting the example...
My vote would be the bag or the box...
Many "gamers" seem more about appearance than skills/capabilities... The computer-age equivalent of the "ricers"
[neon lights, clear windows, colorful cases, etc, etc]
And I'm getting tired of people using the word "optimum" without knowing what it means... "Optimum" in what sense? Lease-squares? Absolute Value? Fronobieus norm? There are also many instances where somthing that is "optimum" in one way just plain sucks because the criteria for comparision is poor.
The vast majority of federal debt instruments are held by the American government itself, states, private investors, pension funds, corporations, and the like. So we owe most of the national debt to ourselves.
Weird... [I am not an economist].
Weren't large parts of the debt paid off [at one time] during the Clinton era? If most of the debt is held within the US and the govt pays it off using tax money, then in effect the cooperations are profiting from those paying taxes [which may be the most difficult on the lower middle classes] as well as the initial expendatures that caused the debt. But in order for that to happen, the public had to pay for it through taxes... And those with large incomes are relatively unencumbered by taxes in the same way the lower-income familes are...
One part of me says this is just a normal process, but another part of me thinks that something in this really really stinks... In some sense, it seems that excessive spending ultimately negatively affects the poorer populations in more serious ways than the wealty...
I think not.
As a PhD researcher into the evolution of organizational forms, I find the facile application of open source principles rather distressing - especially when they're used either to reinforce the notion that hierarchies (read: control and power) really are important, or to promote that people should work for free and donate their efforts to the "greater good" (read: more profits for the shareholders and more shite for the workers).
What do you mean that OSS reinforces hierarchies?
If anything it subverts them. For example, one wants to radically modify/adapt program X to some new environment. If program X is closed source, and written by Microsoft, then this programmer is forced to submit to the whims of Microsoft.
If program X is open-source, then the programmer has full control of how he can modify the program. He is not subject to the control of the cooperation.
Case in point: Look at how many hardware platforms run Linux -- this is technically possible with Windows (w/o the source), although in theory with the source one could do the same...
And when one considers licensing agreements/restrictions, the point only becomes clearer.
Now if a cooperation wishes to PROFIT from OSS, well the only way I see is to make the OSS component to not be the end-product, only an accessory to the real product. (e.g. a networking card company releases their *driver* as open-source). Most closed-source software of this type is very poorly maintained and often ridden with bugs. The public gets ripped off in this manner. With an OSS version, people can still extract some value/utility.... [Now it is arguable to whether or not the consumers should hold the companies to higher standards -- realistically I think the public is too dumb & complacent for this to happen...]
Basically, OSS can be a good "check" to "balance" the apathy of the masses. In some sense, the employees of a company are going to screw the public either way. With OSS, the public has another option.
Ah, this doesn't make a whole lot of sense...
...
If your house isn't the bottleneck, than as soon as the "bottleneck" is removed by upgrades, then what eventually becomes your house? [Hint: it will be last to receive the upgrades]
Which is cheaper? 1) Install fiber to 100 existing homes [requiring digging,etc]? 2) Upgrading the line that runs between a neighborhood and another station, ONCE?
What if it isn't even fiber? What if it just means replacing a device near each customer versus replacing equipment on the main lines between subdivisions? Imagine the labor required...
And in a neighborhood of 100, what if only 20 houses are even using the service at a level where upgrades would benfit them? Is it cost-effective to upgrade the whole neighborhood? Maybe in the long run, but they have shareholders and quarterly earnings reports to worry about... Telecom companies are going to want to do things as cheaply as possible...
Besides, we likely either talking about the PHONE company or the CABLE company.... So discussing sensibility is just plain silly.
Personally, I think we're getting to the point where any increases in bandwidth are going to be largely unnecessary. There is talk of TV over DSL... Technical challenges make this largely unfeasible. Business and legal challenges make this extremely difficult. It seems like a whole lot of effort to find another way to stream crappy shows & services over a different set of wires.
Most users don't really need the full bandwith availabe in their DSL/cable modems... I think they just thing that "high-speed" internet is really fast because they are using a connection with ~50ms latency versus 200-500ms latency (dial-up modem).
I don't see how video telephony is ever going to take off really big. (Relatively few people use webcams extensively). There are social advantages to not being *visible* to the remote party (such as when one is not dressed, clean shaven, tired, etc).
Audio? Well, there is plenty of bandwith available currently for that. I think it will be long time before we see streaming "5.1" surround sound audio, and even longer before it is cheap [due to economic reasons]. I suspect even this wouldn't require much more bandwidth due to the correlation among the channels.
So why again should every house get the latest and greatest connection, **right now**? To me, I don't see any reason.
Well, that wasn't what I was thinking....
You forgot over $8 TRILLION in public debt - $30,000 for EVERY man, woman, and child in the US.
Hmm.... The national debt seems comparable to the total value of all SUVs/4x4 trucks in the US...
Are you thinking what I'm thinking?
You managed to post the exact same thing twice and get modded up both times.... Nice job!
OTOH, I wonder how long the patents on the HaloLight lasted.... Perhaps this is why we are seeing it again just now? [I haven't seen a Sylvania TV recently....]
I once saw similar things at our local computer show -- burned CDs in jewel cases with photocopied covers for Windows/Office software.. And they were real cheap [~$20].
I don't like Microsoft's activation stuff. And I've even read stories where people have to go out and buy new copies of Office/Windows because their motherboard died and windows detected the change. I suspect the Windows Update site is exchanging more info than what they claim.
On the other hand, I have no sympathy for thes bastards selling phony stuff as the real thing and profiting off of it.
While everything has not been yet invented, I'd wager that virtually all technologies that could be combined in a novel way have already been patented.
Which means I'd going to have some grey or white hairs before the The Next Big Thing can emerge without a flurry of lawsuits. Until then, the only innovations will be in marketing and sales tactics.
I guess it's not gambling when the brokers (bookies) directly profit from the gamblers (traders) by playing with the bid/ask prices (odds) ....
Wait just a damn minute...
$100 may be a year or two of hard saving for an average family in some countries. $1000 is for most of them completely out of reach.
Even if they could save and spend $100 on a laptop. (Which to many would be like $1000-$10000 to westeners), consider this:
Many developing countries are subject to "load shedding" (planned power outages). In India, I have noticed the following:
So I would think that $100 laptop better be pretty robust against power fluctuations. (These people aren't able to buy a new one everytime another breaks). Repair might be an option [I believe I saw an SMT station in a place that advertised "cell phone repair" -- I was quite shocked!], but I'm not sure how affordable that would be.
Cell phones appear plentiful in India, but I have a feeling it is still their wealthy "few" (relative to the rest of the population) supporting them. Most of their population is contained in rural villages -- which may not be able to (financially) support wireless internet.
[Hopefully someone more knowledgable than me can add/subtract on some of these points]
But I can say this: Bringing computers to developing countries is not going to improve education [much]. Computers in education have been a dismal failure in the US. (e.g. classroom learning). [My english skills are not any better for having played "WordMunchers" on an Apple/IIe] For example, my arithmetic skills would be much better if I didn't rely on matlab to correctly multiply 5x5 matricies... My symbolic manipulation skills would be better if I didn't occasionally fall back to Mathematica, etc, etc....
What computers WILL do is cause powerful social change. It will allow people to widen their horizons (if willing) without travel. It will allow them to better see what is going on in other parts of their country & world. They will be able to discuss philosophical issues with people outside their village, etc.
On the other hand, I'm not sure if governments really want the above. These kind of social transformations could have a destabilitizing effect. I would think more aware people would be less tolerant of corruption & other government excesses.
That is one thing that has always pissed me off.
If someone took a window manager like IceWM (very light-weight and does allow menu editing), and added the ability to put files/folders on the "desktop" [I like to put active stuff there], that would be my window manager.
Like the way wnck-applet ties up my system every few days.
Ah well, I guess I could always go back to icewm.
True.
I re-worked my personal website to use XML for all the page data and XSLT to render the pages into HTML. I have both static and dynamic pages. I tried to keep all formatting out of my XML files with the exceptions of things like "bold", "underline", etc.... PHP scripts generate XML which is rendered to HTML in the same way.... I was thinking that eventually, I could add the ability to export the current page as a PDF, etc...
Well, it didn't quite turn out as well as I hoped. I had to re-implement many things in XSLT like the bold, underline, and paragraph tags [which was a pain]. Occasionally, I find in my PHP dynamic pages that I didn't properly escape/convert to entities some piece of text. Which causes the dynamic page to die before anything shows up (XML parser error). [Yes this is a design error, but the lack of integratation here causes many practical problems].
I feel what is really needed is tighter type control in something like PHP, so that I would be incapable of concatenating unclean text with XML data...
[Perhaps I should have built the dynamic XML files up using the DOM functions -- but this seems like a real pain.]
Sony is either going to astound the analysts with one of the most successful product launches ever, or go out in a blaze of glory that may cripple the company.
Personally, I would prefer the latter. Companies don't deserve to stay in business after doing grossly illegal and unethical actions [Sony DRM], regardless of how they settle the lawsuits.
On a similar note, the car companies seem to get away with far worse, with little/no reprimand. (Ford Fiesta anyone? Why does Ford still exist?)
Your post causes me to imagine a scene of 100 people wearing black suits, racing lawn mowers across the white house lawn...
On the other hand, do these races allow the public to enjoy their freedoms?
Without that one, the robot can make a good cause for plausible denialiability [sp].
Only fools would pay for $1200/license to use somebody's pre-packaged open-source software.
If you have more than one license, you could easily hire someone full-time to do upgrades on your servers and use a free linux distribution like Fedora or Gentoo. (Or even consider the *BSDs). Plus you get someone you can immediately contact in the case of a problem (rather than a phone number).
I realize you are probably concened with uptime and availablity (and hence pay for the enterprise editions), but what kind of stuff are you really doing? A simple web or sql server can be handled very easily by a half-way competent admin. Yes it may be vitually important, but it if it is simple, then why bother with Redhat?
And if it isn't so simple, then do you really want Redhat holding the gonads of your operations? What are they going to do for you that a dedicated employee wouldn't?
Yes, but with faster hardware always on the horizon, is there a real push for highly optimized software for 3D games?
Or would they prefer to be first to market at the expensive of a bit slower (fps) game? After all, if they don't push too hard to make the software run fast/efficiently, it will push the hardware companies to advertise/sell faster cards.... And when one gets a faster video card, they tend to want to try it on as many games as possible....