Have you tried partnering with a (smallish) GSM operator? I imagine you could work out a deal where they supply one (or a few) custom placed cells if you buy enough contracts and/or just plain give them enough money. As long as the firm you work for is large enough (I assume it is from the other proposed solutions), it could be a workable system.
This way you would avoid all the hassles of having to learn how to be a mobile phone operator, dealing with the FCC etcetera.
Heck, I swear if you taught a kid some assembly on an X86, and they found it remotely fun, they will be hacking out FFT algorithms under three monthes.
I have found that you can get some excellent co-op time with a handfull of friends with the "tom clancy" series of games, particularly Ghost Recon and its expansions and the Rogue Spear series.
Due to the nature of the game there are several operations that are better performed in pairs (opening en clearing doors etc) and the choice in role/equipment makes everybody useful.
We usually play with 3-4 players, but your mileage may vary. Make sure you allow respaws because at least one idiot is bound to get killed in the first 60 seconds of the mission:-)
If any of you are wondering why asymmetrical cryptography requires larger keys than symmetrical cryptography, well, the answer is exceedingly simple.
Symmetrical cryptography does not depend on any specific properties of the numbers selected as the key of the cryptosystem. Therefore a 128 bit key can assume 2^128 different values and, as some other poster pointed out, there is not enough energy in the universe to overcome the background radiation as many times as it would take to count to 2^128, let alone try and brute force the cypher.
Asymmetric cryptography on the other hand derives its features from mathematical properties of some of the numbers used. For example, some systems require the a product of large prime numbers, or discrete logarithms etc. This means that, for example in RSA, you cannot use all of the 2^128 values of a 128 bit key.
Most systems in use today are so-called hybrid systems, using both asymmetric and symmetric cryptography. Since a cryptosystem is as strong as its weakest link, you need to increase the asymmetric keysize to be at least as difficult to break as the symmetric part. Given the current knowledge of factoring algorithms and the like, you need at least a1024 to 2048 bit RSA key to stack up against a 128 bit symmetrical key.
Academic types have developed systems based on cryptological primitives (such as one-way hash functions, digital signatures, cut-and-choose, public key cryptography) that satisfy all requirements you specify.
In fact, some protocols involve the goverment publishing a list of numbers after the election. The people can then perform some (non-invertible) operations on their private key and vote. If the number they obtain is listed, they can be sure their vote has been counted. The number of votes can also be checked to avoid stuffing.
For an overview of these protocols, pick up a copy of Bruce Schneier's "Applied Cryptography" and look at the literature references in the "Esoteric Protocols" chapter.
This does not change the fact that electoral offices everywhere would NEVER allow this to happen. Imagine aunt Lydia's vote did not get counted for some reason (including her not clicking the SUBMIT button), would they really want to hold another election in the name of democracy?
5) We have our own private version of this hydra actively infecting p2p users, and building one giant ddosnet.
Can you say "sue us please"?
No business financed with actual money of actual shareholders will ever open itself up for litigation in such a manner. The due-diligence folks would grill them.
The first stroke of the X is actually the escape character you also use for cutting and pasting. Since a lot of people kept doing the X with two strokes, they just assigned [escape][left/up to right/down] to the "X" character.
Man I wish their was a way to run these on more modern machines...
Funny you should mention that. I spent last saturday "nostalgia gaming" with a friend, and we got MoM to work on a P4 with XP professional. No sound though (though we did not really try, legacy drivers would probably sort it out), and you need to make sure the program gets allocated about 8 meg of emulated EMS (not XMS) memory in the properties tab.
Oh, and nothing says cheating like "node mastery".
If you are going to license indiscriminately, there's not much use in patenting.
Consider simply registering your method with a notary or similar. Then when you get challenged for patent infringement you can use your notarized testimony as prior art.
On the other hand, you might just as well go all the way and write a license that includes instant termination upon litigation. This is usually frowned upon in open source circles, but it is commonly used in industry to defend against suits and promote cross-licensing.
You have no right to reuse your own article excepted in printed paper form, yeah.
It might be me, but I see nothing of the kind in the license. What I do see however are the magic words "Ownership of Copyright remains with the authors", provided that when reproducing the contrubution the journal is acknowldged and referenced.
It is not entirely clear to me why the Authors should need to retain any "non-exclusive rights" since they are still the owners of the copyright. My guess is that they left it in from the previous version for clarity.
The restrictions on the reproduction of the original PDF and printed paper stem from the fact that the typesetting constitutes a derivative work by the Nature Publishing Group. You are however free to distribute your contribution to the paper (without nature's formatting, e.g. re-latexing it) in whatever way you please. As far as I can tell, it is completely unencumbered.
"This is a commercial application and will continue to be so as long as company is committed to developing and distributing it based on market demand, but in the event when software no longer supported and deemed as abandonware, full source will be released under GPL/GNU/LGPL/Whatever to give previous software owners/OSS crowd the option of making it un-obsolite"
The intention is honorable, but the wording could be clearer. For instance, who decides whether the company is committed enough? Or whether it's meeting demand? When it's insupported? Who deems it ``abandonware''?
Personally, I think much could be gained by using concrete and verifiable criteria, such as "at least a major/minor/mainenance release in a twelve month period" or "the company's website being unavailable for a period of 30 consecutive days".
Just be careful, because weaseling out of such an agreement will not be quite as easy as it would be with a more abstract one.
Probably something about mini-robots with X10 cameras digging up Nazi gold in the Philippines.
I think it is going to be hard.
on
Shareware and Unix?
·
· Score: 5, Informative
If you want to actually make money from your programs, I believe it might take quite a large effort. You are going to operate in a world where most software can be had for free. It is rather hard to beat that price.
Furthermore, people are really used to not paying for software. If you want them to register you'll have to be very annoying about it (risk losing users/customers due to percieved harassment), implement some technological countermeasure (also very irritating, and potentially useless against technologically sophisticated people) or just be nice and hope for the best (with the risk of people not really noticing/caring caring that your application is not BSD/GPL licensed.)
You best bet is probably giving registered users small benefits and services that others do not. How you would implement this exactly depends on your line of business.
Just remember not to piss off your userbase with too many nags/copy protections/long serials/spyware etc.
Good to see that a major publication realised the threat that collaborative efforts would pose to its business model in the long run, and decided to take pro-active steps to decrease the discontent among its contributors.
I think it is a wonderful example not only for other journals (Nature is pretty much The Jounal, and if Nature can do it, other publishers are going to seriously consider it), but also for other industries that, when new developments threaten their business model, react in ways that are much more defensive and, ultimately, irritating for all concerned.
The reason many open source projects copy proprietary software, and copy it well, is because there is a clear roadmap. All the developers can see what it is that they need to create, and that overcomes the lack of elaborate design documents.
Excellently put. I agree completely.
On the other hand I also feel there are a few Open Source projects that, after years struggling meet the current state of the art in that particular type of application, have finally caught up with it and even surpassed it. A shining example of this would be Mozilla. For years it was a huge pile of bloat, barely useable. Now it is a stable and relatively fast browser, feature-complete by even the most rigid modern standards (at least on Windows, for linux there are still a few crucial plugins missing) and provides features that i sorely miss when, for one reason or the other, I end up using IE.
The point I'm trying to make is that much is dependent on maturity. Maturity of the code that makes up the application, but also of the team that develops it and of the community of users as a whole. And I have the distinct feeling that this maturity has been rapidly increasing that last few months.
Open Source development models do not prevent innovation. They merely provide unusual challenges. Only now are we starting to learn how to deal with those challenges effectively, especially in the arena of desktop/user software.
Somewhere where end users could make observations about OSS applications, and perhaps other users could vote or comment on them.
Most projects's site actually have room for user feedback and discussion, usually in the form of forums and/or mailing lists.
The problem is that most users do not bother.
I develop and maintain a few small utilities on sf.net, and on roughly a thousand downloads all i have received are two bug reports. I am sure there are plenty of people that are looking for some specific features in my programs, but when they see they are not supported i suppose they just go "oh, well" and look elsewhere. It does not even cross their minds that they could tell me, or even enter a feature request in the tracker directly.
I guess we could try to lower the treshold a bit more (e.g. with big flashing "REQUEST A FEATURE" buttons on the main page), but eventually we cannot force users to do anything.
Slashdot Mirror
Why do I have the feeling i have been reading the parent post staring through a letterbox with my head rotated 90 degress?
I imagine you could work out a deal where they supply one (or a few) custom placed cells if you buy enough contracts and/or just plain give them enough money. As long as the firm you work for is large enough (I assume it is from the other proposed solutions), it could be a workable system.
This way you would avoid all the hassles of having to learn how to be a mobile phone operator, dealing with the FCC etcetera.
Did you speak to my mother lately?
Due to the nature of the game there are several operations that are better performed in pairs (opening en clearing doors etc) and the choice in role/equipment makes everybody useful.
We usually play with 3-4 players, but your mileage may vary. Make sure you allow respaws because at least one idiot is bound to get killed in the first 60 seconds of the mission :-)
Lose != win
Loose != tight
Is it too much to ask to see someone get it right for a change?
That bloody page freezes my mozilla-xft solid.
Symmetrical cryptography does not depend on any specific properties of the numbers selected as the key of the cryptosystem. Therefore a 128 bit key can assume 2^128 different values and, as some other poster pointed out, there is not enough energy in the universe to overcome the background radiation as many times as it would take to count to 2^128, let alone try and brute force the cypher.
Asymmetric cryptography on the other hand derives its features from mathematical properties of some of the numbers used. For example, some systems require the a product of large prime numbers, or discrete logarithms etc. This means that, for example in RSA, you cannot use all of the 2^128 values of a 128 bit key.
Most systems in use today are so-called hybrid systems, using both asymmetric and symmetric cryptography. Since a cryptosystem is as strong as its weakest link, you need to increase the asymmetric keysize to be at least as difficult to break as the symmetric part. Given the current knowledge of factoring algorithms and the like, you need at least a1024 to 2048 bit RSA key to stack up against a 128 bit symmetrical key.
I always seem to get them mixed up with other electrons. I should find a way to put sticky labels on them or something.
I know I should not have trusted you with those documents!
Shells out when i click the link to page two. Version 1.2b with XFT.
In fact, some protocols involve the goverment publishing a list of numbers after the election. The people can then perform some (non-invertible) operations on their private key and vote. If the number they obtain is listed, they can be sure their vote has been counted. The number of votes can also be checked to avoid stuffing.
For an overview of these protocols, pick up a copy of Bruce Schneier's "Applied Cryptography" and look at the literature references in the "Esoteric Protocols" chapter.
This does not change the fact that electoral offices everywhere would NEVER allow this to happen. Imagine aunt Lydia's vote did not get counted for some reason (including her not clicking the SUBMIT button), would they really want to hold another election in the name of democracy?
Current nForce2 boards have no IGP.
I was just exercising my suspension of disbelief there :-)
Can you say "sue us please"?
No business financed with actual money of actual shareholders will ever open itself up for litigation in such a manner. The due-diligence folks would grill them.
The first stroke of the X is actually the escape character you also use for cutting and pasting. Since a lot of people kept doing the X with two strokes, they just assigned [escape][left/up to right/down] to the "X" character.
Funny you should mention that. I spent last saturday "nostalgia gaming" with a friend, and we got MoM to work on a P4 with XP professional. No sound though (though we did not really try, legacy drivers would probably sort it out), and you need to make sure the program gets allocated about 8 meg of emulated EMS (not XMS) memory in the properties tab.
Oh, and nothing says cheating like "node mastery".
On the other hand, you might just as well go all the way and write a license that includes instant termination upon litigation. This is usually frowned upon in open source circles, but it is commonly used in industry to defend against suits and promote cross-licensing.
It might be me, but I see nothing of the kind in the license. What I do see however are the magic words "Ownership of Copyright remains with the authors", provided that when reproducing the contrubution the journal is acknowldged and referenced.
It is not entirely clear to me why the Authors should need to retain any "non-exclusive rights" since they are still the owners of the copyright. My guess is that they left it in from the previous version for clarity.
The restrictions on the reproduction of the original PDF and printed paper stem from the fact that the typesetting constitutes a derivative work by the Nature Publishing Group. You are however free to distribute your contribution to the paper (without nature's formatting, e.g. re-latexing it) in whatever way you please. As far as I can tell, it is completely unencumbered.
Scary? Well, not really a lot more than the other offerings.
The intention is honorable, but the wording could be clearer. For instance, who decides whether the company is committed enough? Or whether it's meeting demand? When it's insupported? Who deems it ``abandonware''?
Personally, I think much could be gained by using concrete and verifiable criteria, such as "at least a major/minor/mainenance release in a twelve month period" or "the company's website being unavailable for a period of 30 consecutive days".
Just be careful, because weaseling out of such an agreement will not be quite as easy as it would be with a more abstract one.
Probably something about mini-robots with X10 cameras digging up Nazi gold in the Philippines.
Furthermore, people are really used to not paying for software. If you want them to register you'll have to be very annoying about it (risk losing users/customers due to percieved harassment), implement some technological countermeasure (also very irritating, and potentially useless against technologically sophisticated people) or just be nice and hope for the best (with the risk of people not really noticing/caring caring that your application is not BSD/GPL licensed.)
You best bet is probably giving registered users small benefits and services that others do not. How you would implement this exactly depends on your line of business.
Just remember not to piss off your userbase with too many nags/copy protections/long serials/spyware etc.
I think it is a wonderful example not only for other journals (Nature is pretty much The Jounal, and if Nature can do it, other publishers are going to seriously consider it), but also for other industries that, when new developments threaten their business model, react in ways that are much more defensive and, ultimately, irritating for all concerned.
Excellently put. I agree completely.
On the other hand I also feel there are a few Open Source projects that, after years struggling meet the current state of the art in that particular type of application, have finally caught up with it and even surpassed it. A shining example of this would be Mozilla. For years it was a huge pile of bloat, barely useable. Now it is a stable and relatively fast browser, feature-complete by even the most rigid modern standards (at least on Windows, for linux there are still a few crucial plugins missing) and provides features that i sorely miss when, for one reason or the other, I end up using IE.
The point I'm trying to make is that much is dependent on maturity. Maturity of the code that makes up the application, but also of the team that develops it and of the community of users as a whole. And I have the distinct feeling that this maturity has been rapidly increasing that last few months.
Open Source development models do not prevent innovation. They merely provide unusual challenges. Only now are we starting to learn how to deal with those challenges effectively, especially in the arena of desktop/user software.
Most projects's site actually have room for user feedback and discussion, usually in the form of forums and/or mailing lists. The problem is that most users do not bother.
I develop and maintain a few small utilities on sf.net, and on roughly a thousand downloads all i have received are two bug reports. I am sure there are plenty of people that are looking for some specific features in my programs, but when they see they are not supported i suppose they just go "oh, well" and look elsewhere. It does not even cross their minds that they could tell me, or even enter a feature request in the tracker directly.
I guess we could try to lower the treshold a bit more (e.g. with big flashing "REQUEST A FEATURE" buttons on the main page), but eventually we cannot force users to do anything.