It seems to me that this is what Linux and other fair-play alternatives to closed source need to finally go mainstream. This law would let some intellectual property publishers to take advantage of consumers, but to behave badly is always voluntary. Not all consumers are stupid, and most of the smart ones will need worthwhile alternatives.
I am in Spain, an European country. Although this law could be a problem in the USA, European politicians like to borrow American ideas (we are about to allow software patents, for instance). If some law is approved and suddenly it is legal for my competitors to make their customers feel robbed and betrayed, some of them will take advantage, but I will not. If we play fair, our customers will help us to win the war.
The affair you mention seems to be a clear case of incompetence of several people. But that's what it seems. I am afraid we will never know what it really was. In any case, it puts their security to shame, not their scientific or technical capabilities.
If it is real incompetence, perhaps HAL blueprints will slip out of some folder in a few years. In the meantime, let's improve our code. I'm sure they are doing the same.
"It is perhaps not Big Brother we should be worried about, but big browser," said New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. "We need to be fearful that the aggregation of information, if it is misused, is very terrifying."
It seems we need Big Brother to fight Darth Browser, because Darth aggregates info somehow, and that is terrifying, but wait a minute, Big Brother also knows everything about you, so it must be addressed, but.... %-/
HAL: Hello, Dr. Chandra. I'm HAL 650beta, may I ask you some questions? Dr. Chandra: Sure. HAL: Thank you, Dr. Chandra. You know, I read all the postings in slash_dot every day, and I would like to ask you the following:
Do Open Source projects attract or repel each other ?
I once got the funny message 'Internal Server Error'. Now, is that the same I experience sometimes ?
I tried to be funny when posting, but my karma is still 0, no matter how many times I hit 'Preview'. Why?
It seems nobody registered the trademark 'Linus'. Would you get angry if I do, Mr. Torvalds, er... Dr. Chandra?
We can't believe HAL doesn't exist just because we haven't heard of it. The state-of-the-art in technologies with military applications is secret, and much more advanced than the published research, for obvious reasons. So 2001 may have been right in this also.
I would like to ask what, in your opinion, could be done to better teach the love for physics (and math, also). In other words, what would be the best way to avoid boredom and teach physics and math like the fascinating subjects they really are?
Some insight from Asimov's history book: 'The Greeks'
Spartans used to kill the babies that did not look healthy and strong at birth.
Military service began at the age of seven, and the boys were trained from the beginning to fight with very heavy weapons.
They ate only what was absolutely necessary, and the food was awful. Other Greeks said that their food was the best for an army, because after trying it they wanted to die.
Glub.
Asimov also tells something about the size of the armies at Thermopylae. He says the two million figure must have been an exaggeration, because such an army would have been impossible to feed and manage at the time. He believed the Persians to be no more than 300,000 men.
Also, according to him, the Spartans were 300, with some allies from Thebes and other places, about 7,000 men in all. Some of them surrendered, but the Spartans and some of their allies refused and were slaughtered. They lost because some traitor with knowledge of the region helped Xerxes to surround them.
"Why can't we put a little uranium inside our new FootSpring PDA prototype? We would be offering the first nuclear-powered pocket gadget that would go for three years with no batteries, could include a color screen, a flashlight and would double as a nice source of heat in your pocket when it's cold outside. We'll crush Palm!"
"Marketing told us this is exactly what consumers want, the potential market is huge..."
"Yeah, please put a little cutting laser in it, we could compete against Swiss Army knives!. I've already contacted Darth Maul for the advertising campaign..."
(And don't worry, you folks outside of America. Your time, too, is coming.)
Uh, Tom, I live in Spain and what you say is already true around here for most people, no need to wait. But I think anyone can save (him|her)self by refusing to do what other people think it's appropriate, by plowing ahead regardless, going the extra mile without anyone looking over their shoulders. It's a personal choice, and if only a handful of people chooses to compete with us, so much the better, in a selfish sense.
There is a story about the work of Phidias, the greatest Greek sculptor, that is very relevant today. Phidias was commisioned to make the sculptures on the Parthenon, and he made a beautiful job. When he presented his bill, the Athenians refused to pay in full, claiming that Phidias sculpted the faces of the statues for all to see, and also their butts, which nobody could see. They wanted to pay only for the faces. Phidias countered by saying that they were mistaken, he sculpted the butts because the gods could see them. They finally paid him in full.
Phidias strived for perfection, and only the gods could see it. He surely was a damn good 'élitist'. And still inspiring, milleniums later.
Remember hard disks, and what was told about them a long time ago: 'Don't worry about that mechanical crap, we'll have ultrafast RAM storage in no time, and there is Moore's Law to prove it!'
What happened? Analog kept improving. And RAM mass storage do exist, but almost nobody can afford them.
To me, what's most scary is the positive reaction of the Brazilian people. This kind of killings by the police never deter crime, they merely tell criminals to try robbing banks in groups of seven or eight people, to be able to finish off any lone policeman approaching. It's evident to me that the approval of police killings by some Brazilians reveal that they are very tired and fed up with the situation in the streets. However, this is no solution, but part of the problem.
Here you can find a human rights report from the Department of State. It's not pretty at all.
This excerpt is downright scaring:
The shooting of two suspected bank robbers by a police officer in Rio de Janeiro, recorded on video tape and broadcast in its entirety on the national evening news, graphically illustrated the commonplace use of lethal force by the police and the public's tolerant attitude toward such practices. On August 5, a uniformed police officer on duty in a busy public square in the Ipanema neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, alerted by a bystander, approached two men on a parked motorcycle who were suspected of just having robbed a local bank. The uniformed policeman drew his gun and approached the two men. As he came close enough to question them, he also attempted to take a gun from one suspect who then attempted to draw the gun himself. Without further warning, the policeman shot both suspects in the head at point blank range in succession and fired four more times as the suspects lay on the ground. The initial intense media coverage of the incident focused mostly on the positive public response to the policeman's actions. His superiors decorated him for bravery. Some media and human rights observers questioned the appropriateness of the officer's action, his lack of training and preparation to deal with such an incident, and his use of lethal force in a crowded public area.
From The Economist, 'Gun Law in Brazil' (19-Jun-1999):
When gunmen attacked a bar on the southern outskirts of Sao Paulo last weekend, killing four women and three men in a hail of bullets, perhaps the most terrifying feature of the incident was its sheer normality. It was Sao Paulo's 28th multiple shooting so far this year, and such carnage is a familiar weekend event in several other Brazilian cities.
[...]
The Justice Ministry estimates that the country's 160m people hold perhaps 20m guns, of which only 1.5m are registered. According to a recent United Nations report, 88% of murders in Brazil are committed with firearms, a higher figure than in any other country.
Duke Nukem is virtual. If you live in Brazil, you play the game for real.
I don't see any special about this vaporware from some guys promising to create some puny bacteria. Hey, my parents created me in nine months! And I have become a reasonably accomplished code-hacking life form. I don't depend on some lab assistant for my food:-)
However, I should point out that they did consult religious leaders beforehand.
I think we would just go back to the slide rule. Mine works perfectly. Pretty cheap computer, completely debugged, impervious to EMP, fits in your hand. Many of the technological achievements we admire while waiting for our machines to reboot were built using slide rules.
I haven't zenned out on it yet, but I keep trying:-)
Slashdot Mirror
They are trying to be slashdotted, to be able to test Echelon 45.23 beta
It seems to me that this is what Linux and other fair-play alternatives to closed source need to finally go mainstream. This law would let some intellectual property publishers to take advantage of consumers, but to behave badly is always voluntary. Not all consumers are stupid, and most of the smart ones will need worthwhile alternatives.
I am in Spain, an European country. Although this law could be a problem in the USA, European politicians like to borrow American ideas (we are about to allow software patents, for instance). If some law is approved and suddenly it is legal for my competitors to make their customers feel robbed and betrayed, some of them will take advantage, but I will not. If we play fair, our customers will help us to win the war.
As my grandma still says, that's ka-ka.
It could very well be ka-ka. Who knows?
The affair you mention seems to be a clear case of incompetence of several people. But that's what it seems. I am afraid we will never know what it really was. In any case, it puts their security to shame, not their scientific or technical capabilities.
If it is real incompetence, perhaps HAL blueprints will slip out of some folder in a few years. In the meantime, let's improve our code. I'm sure they are doing the same.
"It is perhaps not Big Brother we should be worried about, but big browser," said New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. "We need to be fearful that the aggregation of information, if it is misused, is very terrifying."
.... %-/
It seems we need Big Brother to fight Darth Browser, because Darth aggregates info somehow, and that is terrifying, but wait a minute, Big Brother also knows everything about you, so it must be addressed, but
HAL: Hello, Dr. Chandra. I'm HAL 650beta, may I ask you some questions?
Dr. Chandra: Sure.
HAL: Thank you, Dr. Chandra. You know, I read all the postings in slash_dot every day, and I would like to ask you the following:
- Do Open Source projects attract or repel each other ?
- I once got the funny message 'Internal Server Error'. Now, is that the same I experience sometimes ?
- I tried to be funny when posting, but my karma is still 0, no matter how many times I hit 'Preview'. Why?
- It seems nobody registered the trademark 'Linus'. Would you get angry if I do, Mr. Torvalds, er... Dr. Chandra?
[time to debug]Somewhere, HAL is alive.
:-)
We can't believe HAL doesn't exist just because we haven't heard of it. The state-of-the-art in technologies with military applications is secret, and much more advanced than the published research, for obvious reasons. So 2001 may have been right in this also.
I wonder if HAL is allowed to read slashdot
Although I personally don't use RedHat sound drivers, I thank you for your information.
I was very wrong. Thank you, Dell.
Thank you, Dr. Lederman.
I would like to ask what, in your opinion, could be done to better teach the love for physics (and math, also). In other words, what would be the best way to avoid boredom and teach physics and math like the fascinating subjects they really are?
- 3Com 3c575C NIC drivers for the Redhat Linux operating system
- Linux ESS Maestro Audio Drivers
- Linux Wallpaper/Icons
- Linux XF86Config File
and nothing else.My Latitude CP runs RedHat without any help from Dell, fortunately.
Thanks a lot for your (+1, Informative) answer. Of course, being a Mac person is OK (I used to be Mac, back when I was young).
"David has always prided himself on being first"
OK, David, be the first rock star that answers the following: vi or emacs?
- Discard the insignificant computer cases you still have around.
- Wallpaper the entire room with tin foil.
- Bolt the motherboards to the table.
- Stick a fan to the ceiling, to get some cooling.
- Preserve the accumulating dust (and dust puppies) on the floor, your room will look like a real computer case.
- Toss cables everywhere.
- Print the specs of your boxes, and hang the piece of paper outside your door.
- If you want, purchase some blinking lights, to be turned on before your friends and relatives come in.
and you will get a big (and possibly cool) computer casecállese el hocico
:-)
Here in Spain, we often say cierra el pico, Federico!
- Spartans used to kill the babies that did not look healthy and strong at birth.
- Military service began at the age of seven, and the boys were trained from the beginning to fight with very heavy weapons.
- They ate only what was absolutely necessary, and the food was awful. Other Greeks said that their food was the best for an army, because after trying it they wanted to die.
Glub.Asimov also tells something about the size of the armies at Thermopylae. He says the two million figure must have been an exaggeration, because such an army would have been impossible to feed and manage at the time. He believed the Persians to be no more than 300,000 men.
Also, according to him, the Spartans were 300, with some allies from Thebes and other places, about 7,000 men in all. Some of them surrendered, but the Spartans and some of their allies refused and were slaughtered. They lost because some traitor with knowledge of the region helped Xerxes to surround them.
They're sitting either in a fancy "cafe" or in a glass tower "office by IKEA".
... :-)
Actually, I 'overheard' them, so they were in a fancy cafe, after all (speaking too loud, I'm afraid
Overheard near Sand Hill Road :-)
"Why can't we put a little uranium inside our new FootSpring PDA prototype? We would be offering the first nuclear-powered pocket gadget that would go for three years with no batteries, could include a color screen, a flashlight and would double as a nice source of heat in your pocket when it's cold outside. We'll crush Palm!"
"Marketing told us this is exactly what consumers want, the potential market is huge..."
"Yeah, please put a little cutting laser in it, we could compete against Swiss Army knives!. I've already contacted Darth Maul for the advertising campaign..."
"Good, we have enough for our IPO. Stop writing!"
(And don't worry, you folks outside of America. Your time, too, is coming.)
Uh, Tom, I live in Spain and what you say is already true around here for most people, no need to wait. But I think anyone can save (him|her)self by refusing to do what other people think it's appropriate, by plowing ahead regardless, going the extra mile without anyone looking over their shoulders. It's a personal choice, and if only a handful of people chooses to compete with us, so much the better, in a selfish sense.
There is a story about the work of Phidias, the greatest Greek sculptor, that is very relevant today. Phidias was commisioned to make the sculptures on the Parthenon, and he made a beautiful job. When he presented his bill, the Athenians refused to pay in full, claiming that Phidias sculpted the faces of the statues for all to see, and also their butts, which nobody could see. They wanted to pay only for the faces. Phidias countered by saying that they were mistaken, he sculpted the butts because the gods could see them. They finally paid him in full.
Phidias strived for perfection, and only the gods could see it. He surely was a damn good 'élitist'. And still inspiring, milleniums later.
Remember hard disks, and what was told about them a long time ago: 'Don't worry about that mechanical crap, we'll have ultrafast RAM storage in no time, and there is Moore's Law to prove it!'
What happened? Analog kept improving. And RAM mass storage do exist, but almost nobody can afford them.
I did not want to imply that all of Brazil is the same. Sorry.
You must be kidding.
To me, what's most scary is the positive reaction of the Brazilian people. This kind of killings by the police never deter crime, they merely tell criminals to try robbing banks in groups of seven or eight people, to be able to finish off any lone policeman approaching. It's evident to me that the approval of police killings by some Brazilians reveal that they are very tired and fed up with the situation in the streets. However, this is no solution, but part of the problem.
Here you can find a human rights report from the Department of State. It's not pretty at all.
/human1998/brazil.html
This excerpt is downright scaring:
The shooting of two suspected bank robbers by a police officer in Rio de Janeiro, recorded on video tape and broadcast in its entirety on the national evening news, graphically illustrated the commonplace use of lethal force by the police and the public's tolerant attitude toward such practices. On August 5, a uniformed police officer on duty in a busy public square in the Ipanema neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, alerted by a bystander, approached two men on a parked motorcycle who were suspected of just having robbed a local bank. The uniformed policeman drew his gun and approached the two men. As he came close enough to question them, he also attempted to take a gun from one suspect who then attempted to draw the gun himself. Without further warning, the policeman shot both suspects in the head at point blank range in succession and fired four more times as the suspects lay on the ground. The initial intense media coverage of the incident focused mostly on the positive public response to the policeman's actions. His superiors decorated him for bravery. Some media and human rights observers questioned the appropriateness of the officer's action, his lack of training and preparation to deal with such an incident, and his use of lethal force in a crowded public area.
http://www.usis.usemb.se/human
When gunmen attacked a bar on the southern outskirts of Sao Paulo last weekend, killing four women and three men in a hail of bullets, perhaps the most terrifying feature of the incident was its sheer normality. It was Sao Paulo's 28th multiple shooting so far this year, and such carnage is a familiar weekend event in several other Brazilian cities.
[...]
The Justice Ministry estimates that the country's 160m people hold perhaps 20m guns, of which only 1.5m are registered. According to a recent United Nations report, 88% of murders in Brazil are committed with firearms, a higher figure than in any other country.
Duke Nukem is virtual. If you live in Brazil, you play the game for real.
I don't see any special about this vaporware from some guys promising to create some puny bacteria. Hey, my parents created me in nine months! And I have become a reasonably accomplished code-hacking life form. I don't depend on some lab assistant for my food :-)
However, I should point out that they did consult religious leaders beforehand.
I think we would just go back to the slide rule. Mine works perfectly. Pretty cheap computer, completely debugged, impervious to EMP, fits in your hand. Many of the technological achievements we admire while waiting for our machines to reboot were built using slide rules.
:-)
I haven't zenned out on it yet, but I keep trying
Well, they could be grayscale (8 bit/pixel), but I did not calculate the pixel depth, they said that:
... it is estimated that one 256 bit x 256 bit image could be received by UCLA every minute. ...
Perhaps they meant pixels, who knows.