Here are some pictures showing the effects of the disruption, including a 6x or more increase in messaging over the "background chatter" on the Internet, and a description of what went wrong.
The randomly generated paper did not get into a CS conference... or even a "real" conference for that matter. WMSCI is, as far as I can tell, a money-making operation. Everyone in my department gets spammed from them (and the situation is the same elsewhere, hence Mazieres and Kohler's work).
Actually, if you read WMSCI's mission, it looks randomly generated too:
The purpose of WMSCI 2005 is to promote discussion and interaction between researchers and practitioners focused on disciplines as well as different areas.
So CS might have problems, but you cannot argue that based on WMSCI.
The article says the City Council "placed a 45-day moratorium Tuesday on the opening of any more of the establishments". This is significantly
different than what this Slashdot story implies --
that existing internet cafes would be shut down
for 45 days.
While it may not make sense to forbid the opening
of new cyber cafes, obviously it would be hugely more
harmful for a cafe to be shut down
for 45 days.
I largely agree: small group projects are great, if you get the right group.
I'm a CS major at Carnegie Mellon. I've had only a few group programming projects. In particular, there's an operating systems course here which is a big deal, with lots of big projects (a shell, a terminal driver, a kernel, and a filesystem). I felt that I really got a lot out of working with a partner on these projects. The most useful bit was discussing the entire design together. When we both agreed that a design was workable, we split up the coding and went at it. We each saw a lot of things that the other didn't see (design considerations, bugs, etc.).
I do wish I had an opportunity to work on more small-group projects like that. However, there are some considerations:
In a one-semester course, there isn't enough time to build a huge application. So, more than 2 people on a project probably isn't efficient.
If you're working with one other person, you really need to make sure that you have a good partner. And not just to get your A: if you're going to be working with someone for 10 or 100 hours, you need to work well with them in order to not go insane.
That said, even though I've only had a few group programming projects here at CMU, I think that my education -- combined with experience in internships -- has prepared me well.
Worm propagation is one of those n squared problems
Actually it's one of those exponential problems. If we start with one infected system and every infected computer infects n more computers in an hour, then on the tth hour, n^t new systems will be infected. For example, if n = 2, then after 24 hours, then 33,554,431 systems will be infected. Of course, in practice, we run out of uninfected vulnerable systems after a while.
It's not a computer game, but the card game
Set would
be great. It's completely visual, so literacy is
not a problem; it's easy to learn;
it's fast-paced and exciting;
and there are a lot of interesting math problems
and puzzles associated with it.
GNOME seems to have been slashdotted, and
Google doesn't have a cached copy of the article,
but they do have a cached copy of The GNOME Usability Project page,
so at least you can read a little about the
goals of the project. (After it starts loading,
you may have to press "stop" so it doesn't load
the images, which will come from GNOME's server.)
I think speed is an area that would improve
the useability of the Gnome GUI significantly.
This comment refers to the Gnome file manager
specifically, but applies to interfaces more
generally.
I have Gnome installed on my Linux box, but more
often than not, I use the command line to naviagte
through my directories. Why? Because it's faster. The Gnome file manager takes about 3-4
seconds to open a directory on my 350 MHz box.
If I'm trying to find a directory 4 layers deep, this adds up to annoyance.
Does that mean the command line is better?
Definitely not! I'm a Mac user and I love Apple's
interface. But in Mac OS, opening a folder is
instantaneous. I can find a file in Mac OS at
least as fast as I can using a command line.
What it comes down to is this:
In designing a user interface, there are
tradeoffs in speed vs. functionality. I would like to see more speed, specifically in the Gnome file manager. I'm quite willing to trade some
features for more speed, because without the
speed, the features aren't useful to me.
Does anyone know if
there is a lightweight, fast file browser out there?
"We want to establish a system in Afghanistan through which we can control
all those things that are wrong, obscene, immoral and against Islam," [Taliban Foreign
Minister Maulvi Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil] said.
I guess they aren't interested in things that are
wrong, immoral, and against Islam, but not obscene.
Yeah, "This is probably the best Linux laptop one can buy right now" is quite a loaded statement.
In fact there probably isn't one single best
Linux laptop: just like everything else, it depends on what you're going to use it for.
The iBook does have a number of advantages:
A sleek enclosure (if you like it)
Low price
It's a Mac. That's an advantage for
me and a lot of other people, because
I have Mac OS programs that I need to
use. I can use them in Mac-on-Linux or I can boot into Mac OS or (when I get it) Mac OS X.
It probably runs cooler than most Intel laptops
Also, several of the potential disadvantages
that were mentioned might not be relevant:
It's a new machine. Give it some time, and the sound drivers will be written.
No one said DVD didn't work: he just didn't try it yet. I've gotten DVD working on my AGP G4 running LinuxPPC without problems. (It's a bit slow for me, but my box is only 350 MHz.)
The G4 Cube and the iMac are fanless and therefore very quiet. Apple's
laptops are fanless too. So I guess the minitower
G4's are the only Macs with fans these days.
That's one of the benefits you get from those
expensive Macs.
...that this law stops only stops the forwarded
messages that we find useful, and expressly permits chain mail forwards! After all, if it
says "forward this message to 1000 people within
the next hour", that's clearly permission for
the content to be forwarded to others.
This is unbelieveably sad and completely backward.
I could possibly see an argument for being able
to copyright an email message -- for a subscription-based newsletter for instance -- but come on people,
optimize for the friggin' common case!
If the sender doesn't want you to forward the
message they should have to say so explicitly.
Man, kids these days TP the houses of those losers who hand out apples instead of candy. They'd probably light
fire to your propane tank for handing them a linux CD.
If pollution (for example) is a concern, why not pass laws or regulations that affect polluters (like the very
successful-even-the-Green-like it Emissions trading program) instead of trying to twist the tax code to do something that
its not very good at doing?
The emissions trading program is good, and is
actually very similar to taxing pollution, except
that companies are essentially paid to not pollute
rather than having to pay to pollute. (Correct
me if I'm wrong on that one.) I think having
companies pay is better. Also, contrary to what
you say, I think taxation would be very
good at solving this problem, and furthermore
it can solve more general problems than just
pollution. As a computer programmer, I like
things that can solve more general problems.:-)
For a counterexample of how this doesn't work very well, look at the luxury taxes that were implemented in (I want to say
'94, might have been '96). Hey, we want to tax those who buy yachts and luxary cars. Result: Pretty much the elimination of
the entire American yacht industry, elimination of thousands of jobs, and most likely a negative revenue inflow.
That's not a counterexample. A luxury yacht is
not a bad thing: its production and sale does not negatively affect
anyone in society. Thus luxury taxes are unrelated to the issue of taxing things that
are bad for society.
Also, Nader claims he wants to tax certain things. For instance he mentions "sprawl". I take it that means urban sprawl. I will
admit many of those areas are butt ugly, but who gets taxed? The parent company who bought the land and planned the buildout? The builder? The city or county officials who approved it? The homeowner?
Presumably the parent company who bought the land
and planned the buildout would be taxed. Some
or all of that cost would probably get passed on
to the person who buys the house, encouraging
people to buy houses that don't contribute to
urban sprawl, or houses that aren't built on
wetlands, or whatever was being taxed.
Polluters get taxed? Who? Me and my car which is the only option available to me based upon size, use and price? Or me,
because I drive a car and there is no mass transportation that works for my needs? Or GM/Chrysler/Ford/etc for only
providing internal combustion engine transportation? Is location a factor here? In many Northeast burgs, there is a variety of
train, bus, and other mass transportation that the folks in Montana simply don't have. Who gets penalized?
These are all good questions. Personally, I would
say that it would make the most sense to tax gas.
Thus everyone gets taxed proportionally to the
amount that they pollute. This encourages people
to buy more fuel-efficient cars, or drive less,
which is exactly what we want.
Me, I'm voting for Bush, since I think we all deserve a tax break, not just those of us who engage in whatever behavior the
government wants to encourage....
Here is an excellent justification for, as Nader puts it,
taxing the activities that we don't like.
Those "activities that we don't like" are, more
specifically, activities that negatively affect
society as a whole. By taxing them, the taxpayer repays
society for the harm caused, and the taxpayer is also encouraged to cause less harm.
Take pollution for example. A company that
pollutes is harming shared public resources --
air, water, land, etc. -- and is directly or
indirectly causing harm to thousands or millions
of people. Taxing that company proportional to
the amout of pollution its factories emit will
generate revenue which can be used by the
government to help the environment, and will
encourage the company to pollute as little as
possible.
I think it's an excellent system that fits in
with a free market very well.
...and now you've made it available for LinuxPPC!
Wahoo. I downloaded it and ran it without problem. Looks like a very nice browser, too!
Thanks for taking the time to support LinuxPPC.
...but not for Alpha, Sparc, or (in my case)
PowerPC. I guess they don't have any alternative-platform test boxes, or they don't
want to deal with the (probably minimal)
cross-platform issues right now, which I can
understand. Too bad the source isn't available so we could help them
out with that.:-)
On the other hand, even though it's of no use to
me, I have to give them points for including a
statically linked binary -- no need to install
Qt only to try out their browser for an hour or
so.
I guess they can't hack it themselves. Look what you get when you click on one of the unmarked buttons:
Instructions:
Review your chosen company name, slogan, and button names (Note: Your choices can be
edited later using our online Website Manager tool). If you would like to make changes
now, click the Previous button above.
Upon purchasing, you will be able to add your own text and images into each page of this
website using the Website Manager. Best of all, the Website Manager requires no
technical knowledge. Adding your information to this website is as easy as typing an
e-mail.
I used to have a Sparc 5 running Solaris, and it
was a great underlying OS -- never crashed on me. But after I switched to
LinuxPPC
on a G4, I noticed a big difference in how convenient it was to install software. Not only
does Solaris not come with as wide an array of
software preinstalled (c compiler, a nice window
manager, etc.), but it's not as easily available
on the net in package form. And when compiling
software myself I usually ran into more problems.
There are Solaris package archives available,
such as the Solaris Package Archive and Freeware4Sun, and Freeware for Solaris. And if you really want
to get something compiled and running, you can
do it. But overall, my Linux software
install experience has been much more convenient.
On the other hand, if I were in the high-end-server market rather than the geek
market, there would probably be many apps I could
run better, more conveniently, or only on Solaris.
And I guess that's the market Sun is mostly going
after.
Another issue is that Solaris is more bloated
(in terms of disk usage) than other free Unixes,
in my experience.
This hypothetical situation is of no signifcance whatsoever (other than proving ones self-righteousness in a condescending, sarcastic,
ineffectual manner).
My comment was intended to be humorous and to make
a point, but I don't think I made myself very clear. You're absolutely right, letting minors
see "SANTA CLAUS DOES NOT EXIST"
would be completely legal. But I think a lot of the time, a major determining
factor is public opinion as well as law (although
the two are related).
A lot of people are offended by porn, and some are not, but it's illegal to
show porn to minors. You seem to be offended
by my comment (unless I misinterpreted your comment), as would a lot of other people
(that was the point). Thankfully my comment
is legal for minors to see.:-) So where do we draw the line? What determines what's legal
to show to children? Or, what should
determine it? That's a question about the
law itself, rather than about how to deal with
the law, which was what this story was originally dealing
with.
Slashdot Mirror
Here are some pictures showing the effects of the disruption, including a 6x or more increase in messaging over the "background chatter" on the Internet, and a description of what went wrong.
Actually, if you read WMSCI's mission, it looks randomly generated too:
So CS might have problems, but you cannot argue that based on WMSCI.
Technically, the phone powers Windows, not the other way around. When they make software that produces energy, let me know.
While it may not make sense to forbid the opening of new cyber cafes, obviously it would be hugely more harmful for a cafe to be shut down for 45 days.
I'm a CS major at Carnegie Mellon. I've had only a few group programming projects. In particular, there's an operating systems course here which is a big deal, with lots of big projects (a shell, a terminal driver, a kernel, and a filesystem). I felt that I really got a lot out of working with a partner on these projects. The most useful bit was discussing the entire design together. When we both agreed that a design was workable, we split up the coding and went at it. We each saw a lot of things that the other didn't see (design considerations, bugs, etc.).
I do wish I had an opportunity to work on more small-group projects like that. However, there are some considerations:
That said, even though I've only had a few group programming projects here at CMU, I think that my education -- combined with experience in internships -- has prepared me well.
It's not a computer game, but the card game Set would be great. It's completely visual, so literacy is not a problem; it's easy to learn; it's fast-paced and exciting; and there are a lot of interesting math problems and puzzles associated with it.
Now I won't be able to unmount a disc without paying a license fee!
Is there a mirror anywhere else?
I have Gnome installed on my Linux box, but more often than not, I use the command line to naviagte through my directories. Why? Because it's faster. The Gnome file manager takes about 3-4 seconds to open a directory on my 350 MHz box. If I'm trying to find a directory 4 layers deep, this adds up to annoyance.
Does that mean the command line is better? Definitely not! I'm a Mac user and I love Apple's interface. But in Mac OS, opening a folder is instantaneous. I can find a file in Mac OS at least as fast as I can using a command line.
What it comes down to is this: In designing a user interface, there are tradeoffs in speed vs. functionality. I would like to see more speed, specifically in the Gnome file manager. I'm quite willing to trade some features for more speed, because without the speed, the features aren't useful to me.
Does anyone know if there is a lightweight, fast file browser out there?
An investment, of course! Buy low, sell high!
I guess they aren't interested in things that are wrong, immoral, and against Islam, but not obscene.
Here's another story on the situation from the BBC.
The iBook does have a number of advantages:
- A sleek enclosure (if you like it)
- Low price
- It's a Mac. That's an advantage for
me and a lot of other people, because
I have Mac OS programs that I need to
use. I can use them in Mac-on-Linux or I can boot into Mac OS or (when I get it) Mac OS X.
- It probably runs cooler than most Intel laptops
Also, several of the potential disadvantages that were mentioned might not be relevant:The G4 Cube and the iMac are fanless and therefore very quiet. Apple's laptops are fanless too. So I guess the minitower G4's are the only Macs with fans these days. That's one of the benefits you get from those expensive Macs.
This is unbelieveably sad and completely backward. I could possibly see an argument for being able to copyright an email message -- for a subscription-based newsletter for instance -- but come on people, optimize for the friggin' common case! If the sender doesn't want you to forward the message they should have to say so explicitly.
Imagine what they'd do if you gave them AOL CDs.
The emissions trading program is good, and is actually very similar to taxing pollution, except that companies are essentially paid to not pollute rather than having to pay to pollute. (Correct me if I'm wrong on that one.) I think having companies pay is better. Also, contrary to what you say, I think taxation would be very good at solving this problem, and furthermore it can solve more general problems than just pollution. As a computer programmer, I like things that can solve more general problems. :-)
For a counterexample of how this doesn't work very well, look at the luxury taxes that were implemented in (I want to say '94, might have been '96). Hey, we want to tax those who buy yachts and luxary cars. Result: Pretty much the elimination of the entire American yacht industry, elimination of thousands of jobs, and most likely a negative revenue inflow.
That's not a counterexample. A luxury yacht is not a bad thing: its production and sale does not negatively affect anyone in society. Thus luxury taxes are unrelated to the issue of taxing things that are bad for society.
Presumably the parent company who bought the land and planned the buildout would be taxed. Some or all of that cost would probably get passed on to the person who buys the house, encouraging people to buy houses that don't contribute to urban sprawl, or houses that aren't built on wetlands, or whatever was being taxed.
Polluters get taxed? Who? Me and my car which is the only option available to me based upon size, use and price? Or me, because I drive a car and there is no mass transportation that works for my needs? Or GM/Chrysler/Ford/etc for only providing internal combustion engine transportation? Is location a factor here? In many Northeast burgs, there is a variety of train, bus, and other mass transportation that the folks in Montana simply don't have. Who gets penalized?
These are all good questions. Personally, I would say that it would make the most sense to tax gas. Thus everyone gets taxed proportionally to the amount that they pollute. This encourages people to buy more fuel-efficient cars, or drive less, which is exactly what we want.
Here is an excellent justification for, as Nader puts it, taxing the activities that we don't like. Those "activities that we don't like" are, more specifically, activities that negatively affect society as a whole. By taxing them, the taxpayer repays society for the harm caused, and the taxpayer is also encouraged to cause less harm.
Take pollution for example. A company that pollutes is harming shared public resources -- air, water, land, etc. -- and is directly or indirectly causing harm to thousands or millions of people. Taxing that company proportional to the amout of pollution its factories emit will generate revenue which can be used by the government to help the environment, and will encourage the company to pollute as little as possible.
I think it's an excellent system that fits in with a free market very well.
...and now you've made it available for LinuxPPC! Wahoo. I downloaded it and ran it without problem. Looks like a very nice browser, too! Thanks for taking the time to support LinuxPPC.
On the other hand, even though it's of no use to me, I have to give them points for including a statically linked binary -- no need to install Qt only to try out their browser for an hour or so.
Review your chosen company name, slogan, and button names (Note: Your choices can be edited later using our online Website Manager tool). If you would like to make changes now, click the Previous button above.
Upon purchasing, you will be able to add your own text and images into each page of this website using the Website Manager. Best of all, the Website Manager requires no technical knowledge. Adding your information to this website is as easy as typing an e-mail.
There are Solaris package archives available, such as the Solaris Package Archive and Freeware4Sun, and Freeware for Solaris. And if you really want to get something compiled and running, you can do it. But overall, my Linux software install experience has been much more convenient.
On the other hand, if I were in the high-end-server market rather than the geek market, there would probably be many apps I could run better, more conveniently, or only on Solaris. And I guess that's the market Sun is mostly going after.
Another issue is that Solaris is more bloated (in terms of disk usage) than other free Unixes, in my experience.
My comment was intended to be humorous and to make a point, but I don't think I made myself very clear. You're absolutely right, letting minors see "SANTA CLAUS DOES NOT EXIST" would be completely legal. But I think a lot of the time, a major determining factor is public opinion as well as law (although the two are related).
A lot of people are offended by porn, and some are not, but it's illegal to show porn to minors. You seem to be offended by my comment (unless I misinterpreted your comment), as would a lot of other people (that was the point). Thankfully my comment is legal for minors to see. :-) So where do we draw the line? What determines what's legal
to show to children? Or, what should
determine it? That's a question about the
law itself, rather than about how to deal with
the law, which was what this story was originally dealing
with.