AOL used to be just as evil as microsoft, with no redeeming features. If they actualy take on microsoft and go anywhere with it, I might forgive them for their sins. That's a big IF, though, as so far they've built up a big armada and havn't let it sail. Netscape and winamp could take over the desktop market and leave Microsoft with MS Office, the one product they seem to actualy be able to make. So when does the armda set sail for Redmond?
This is the first use of lisp that I've seen that used it in an environment where performance was the main goal. This seems like what I've always been told any "reasonable person" would use C for. Is it common that lisp is used in mission-critical high volume computing? Or was the point in using lisp the fare-searching algorithm? My lisp knowledge is limited to one semester of scheme, so I'm pretty ignorant.
While it's debatably true that software is not impossible to get right (It's impossible to prove a program works, so there is always posibility that it doesn't) it is a fact of life that there is a point of dimishing returns. The software used for the space shuttle missions is one of the examples of the "most perfect" complex software in existance, and it hasn't been immune to bugs(bugs that would have been caught by redundant systems I would hope). The only reason that the software is so bug-free is that it is literaly mission critical. A data center had better keep backups offsite somewhere. NASA's backup for Endavor is called Columbia. (Actualy at this point we're out of backups, so we'd better not loose one.)
Yes there should be some accountability, especialy if you're going to charge money for software. I'm not sure about free software. I always get ticked off when buying $350 pieces of software that have "no waranty expressed or implied". However, if i required a "bug free" piece of software, I'd have to pay thousands of dollars for the same thing, and it still wouldn't be "bug free". Apperently Microsoft has found the best price/performance ratio for windows, and it turns out that price is more important than performance.
Ah, my favorite christmas present...
on
Emigrating DVD's?
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I got a DVD player for christmas, and of course picked one that made changing the regions very easy. So far, I highly recomend the Daewoo 9000n. Dolby 5.1 decoding on board, progressive scan composite out, digital audio out, and user upgradable firmware. The one thing I havn't tested is PAL on NTSC, and havn't heard any reports for or against. For $150 on amazon, it's the best deal around as far as I'm concerned. Once you get over the legal issues involved, head ove to http://www.nerd-out.com/forum/ for all the information on picking out a DVD player and how to upgrade it.
This isn't actualy that odd, considering the minor variations in a URL. I often use this technique when I'm going to a web page that I'm not too familiar with. Plenty of sites use.orgs or.nets that you'd never guess the first try, so it's usualy easier to just type it in the name and hit the I'm feeling lucky link. One click, no add impressions at all.
I can't really add too much usefull information, but I would question the usefullness of using real PDA's instead of a simulator. I just finished taking a basic computer architecture class from Patterson of Patterson & Hennesy and we used spim as a simulator. If you are trying to learn assembly language, the debugging tools availabel in a simulator are going to be far better, and I suspect any real development(And hence learning) are going to occur with the simulator, and the uploading and running on the PDA will be something you do at the end of the lab as a neat trick. That being said, it'd be a cool neat trick.
But is it ready? Mozilla is coming along nicely(I use it on some machines, not others) but it's not perfect yet. It's usable, but unfortunately it just isn't as stable/responsive as IE. If people have mozilla forced down their throats by The Powers That Be, they'll hate it if only for the reason that it's not what they're used to. I'm all for anyone who wants to adopting mozilla, but it's foolish to try and take over the world with a browser that hasn't reached a 1.0 release yet. I admit to useing Mozilla on windows for idealogical reasons, not because it's the best browser out there. (But it'd better damn well be soon)
Do you ever get the feeling that if we just let G. Dubbya hang a few "lasers" off the ISS let him point them at caves where "terrorists" live the space station could have an unlimited budget?
That being said, I'd agreee with the poster who pointed out that the ISS is a huge expenditure compared to what we could do with many smaller projects, but I think it's necessary to have big prjects that are the culimination of the technology that's being devised. Classes that don't have final exams are always considered slacker classes because people don't have a goal to work towards, and the same thing could be said for space projects.
Well, he also owns his own business and is his own boss. He also has the rights to any future profits that his company may make. If the network is up and he feels like taking the day off, he can. Being one's own boss is priceless, especialy when his busienss has definite growth potential. And of course he can be the first in line to sell his company for thousands per cutomer once wireless becomes the Next Big Thing again.
And, more importantly, he probably has the busienss T1 terminiated in his house.
I hope the Vogons stick with contstruction instead of moving into the passenger transportation field. A starliner run by Vogons would be worse todays airlines...
I read the article, but it wasn't too clear what exactly would be. There isn't much in the way of dust for the thing to run into I would think. There isn't water to condense on the lense either. Would this be dust that the probe has brought along with it for the ride that happened to settle on the wrong part?
I've had very little experience with embedded processors, but generaly embeded processors are expected to get their work done, at whatever rate is required. If the processor can do the task that it's being imbedded for, any extra speed is wasted. So define your problem, and find the cheapest way to get it accomplished.
Once example of this is a parking garage system i've had the bad fortune to work on a couple of times. It consists of multiple 486's running linux. (these things have uptimes measured in years) Each machine spits out tickets or calculates times/rates or reads monthly-pass cards, and none of them need anything more than a 486, even the one with the wireless link to the accounting system, as changing the microsecconds to nanosecconds that they take to do their task wouldn't help anyone...
They just seem to be uping the ante here by filing a lawsuit. It's a fairly common tactic to use durring/preceding negotiations for companies to get the upper hand in negotiations. We all know that if you sue someone they're guilty, right?
The interesting thing about this article is not that they're selling a fuel cell based car, it's that they seem to have come up with a way to actualy power the fuel cell. For years we have been talking about hydrogen powered fuel cells "that's only byproduct is air and water", while ignoring the large amounts of energy needed to extract the most abundant elemet from the universe. Traditional hydrogen generation uses energy that (surprise) comes mostly from fossil fuels. If they've found a way to use borax instead of fossil fuels, I'll be very impressed.
Unless they've altered the laws of physics, it will still take energy to do this "recharging" of borax that the article talks about, but hopefully this can be more effient than todays batteries, and will at least provide an alternative to oil that does not pollute the air.
After reading this discussion i've come to the conclusion that someone needs to bring up a bit more of the difference bwteen backuping data and archiving. As Many people have pointed out(quite validly) raid is great. As many other people have pointed out, raid sucks. Raid was designed to keep a server running and remove the single point of faliure problem, not as a true backup solution.
With a real archiving solution, all files that have been on the computer at some point should be stored. When you find that you deleted a file two months ago that you really could use right now, a mirrored hard drive will be worth as much as an aol CD in helping you restore. A proper backup must have removable redundant media.
A proper backup should leave a trail of compleete backups in some form that isn't ever going to get deleted. With tapes, this involved keeping yearly/monthly/daily tapes seperatly. With DCD/CD, media is cheap enough to not reuse, luckily. With removable hard drives, on the other hand, for a proper auditable backup trail(When did the hacker break in and steal the cc numbers anyway?) it will take 23 hard drives by my count to cover the year.
This admitedly is a bit more through than the orginial question, but it seems like the discussion has progressed pased the orginal question.
My personal system (once it's finished) will be to reformat all workstations with a 750 megabye user data portion. Everything else should replacable, or backed up by whoever wants it. Mp3's are replacable... Documents/financial information/code is not.
This of course leaves out anyone who actualy generates large amounts of data. If you truly generate large amounts of data, you shouldn't be reading slashdot for how to archive it.
While I agree that most of these "customers" are clueless, they aren't all clueless. Brick-and-mortar stores serve at least one purpose, that is nearly instant availablitiy. When I'm being payed $30 an hour and need something now, I'll pay the $35 they want for a NIC. Why? Because in the end it's a better deal.
I guess this is cool, but every time I read Yes Another Article About Electronic Paper I get the feeling that it's going to be even longer before I can touch the stuff and take out my electronic pen and write on it. Someday maybe, but this seems to be about the same distance off as quantum computing...
You're ignoring the fact that businesses have to deal with other businesses. While it may be possible(though expensive, considering administration and user training) to switch an entire organization to Your-Favorite-Office-Replacement, it is impossible to make all of your subcontractors/suppliers/clients switch, and for that reason there has to be some intermediary between the Wonderfull-World-of-Open-Source and the Evil Empire. Could this be solved with a 1 Windows/Office machine per 10-20 people? Probably. Would it be worth it? Probably not, as you've doubled your user training requirements, and you've multiplied your hardware costs by 1.1 or 1.2. Yes some people need Excel, but it's not what's holding up world domination.
Re:Fast CPUs might be bad.
on
CPU Wars
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· Score: 1
Have you ever tried to render slashdot on a 386? I won't say it can't be done, but it won't be a fun wait. An old pentium 120 running opera is nearly unbearable. So for your sake, I hope you're happy with lynx.
Slashdot Mirror
AOL used to be just as evil as microsoft, with no redeeming features. If they actualy take on microsoft and go anywhere with it, I might forgive them for their sins. That's a big IF, though, as so far they've built up a big armada and havn't let it sail. Netscape and winamp could take over the desktop market and leave Microsoft with MS Office, the one product they seem to actualy be able to make. So when does the armda set sail for Redmond?
This is the first use of lisp that I've seen that used it in an environment where performance was the main goal. This seems like what I've always been told any "reasonable person" would use C for. Is it common that lisp is used in mission-critical high volume computing? Or was the point in using lisp the fare-searching algorithm? My lisp knowledge is limited to one semester of scheme, so I'm pretty ignorant.
While it's debatably true that software is not impossible to get right (It's impossible to prove a program works, so there is always posibility that it doesn't) it is a fact of life that there is a point of dimishing returns. The software used for the space shuttle missions is one of the examples of the "most perfect" complex software in existance, and it hasn't been immune to bugs(bugs that would have been caught by redundant systems I would hope). The only reason that the software is so bug-free is that it is literaly mission critical. A data center had better keep backups offsite somewhere. NASA's backup for Endavor is called Columbia. (Actualy at this point we're out of backups, so we'd better not loose one.)
Yes there should be some accountability, especialy if you're going to charge money for software. I'm not sure about free software. I always get ticked off when buying $350 pieces of software that have "no waranty expressed or implied". However, if i required a "bug free" piece of software, I'd have to pay thousands of dollars for the same thing, and it still wouldn't be "bug free". Apperently Microsoft has found the best price/performance ratio for windows, and it turns out that price is more important than performance.
I got a DVD player for christmas, and of course picked one that made changing the regions very easy. So far, I highly recomend the Daewoo 9000n. Dolby 5.1 decoding on board, progressive scan composite out, digital audio out, and user upgradable firmware. The one thing I havn't tested is PAL on NTSC, and havn't heard any reports for or against. For $150 on amazon, it's the best deal around as far as I'm concerned. Once you get over the legal issues involved, head ove to http://www.nerd-out.com/forum/ for all the information on picking out a DVD player and how to upgrade it.
This isn't actualy that odd, considering the minor variations in a URL. I often use this technique when I'm going to a web page that I'm not too familiar with. Plenty of sites use .orgs or .nets that you'd never guess the first try, so it's usualy easier to just type it in the name and hit the I'm feeling lucky link. One click, no add impressions at all.
I can't really add too much usefull information, but I would question the usefullness of using real PDA's instead of a simulator. I just finished taking a basic computer architecture class from Patterson of Patterson & Hennesy and we used spim as a simulator. If you are trying to learn assembly language, the debugging tools availabel in a simulator are going to be far better, and I suspect any real development(And hence learning) are going to occur with the simulator, and the uploading and running on the PDA will be something you do at the end of the lab as a neat trick. That being said, it'd be a cool neat trick.
Because I only wish I could be an idealist 100% of the time.
But is it ready? Mozilla is coming along nicely(I use it on some machines, not others) but it's not perfect yet. It's usable, but unfortunately it just isn't as stable/responsive as IE. If people have mozilla forced down their throats by The Powers That Be, they'll hate it if only for the reason that it's not what they're used to. I'm all for anyone who wants to adopting mozilla, but it's foolish to try and take over the world with a browser that hasn't reached a 1.0 release yet. I admit to useing Mozilla on windows for idealogical reasons, not because it's the best browser out there. (But it'd better damn well be soon)
Do you ever get the feeling that if we just let G. Dubbya hang a few "lasers" off the ISS let him point them at caves where "terrorists" live the space station could have an unlimited budget?
That being said, I'd agreee with the poster who pointed out that the ISS is a huge expenditure compared to what we could do with many smaller projects, but I think it's necessary to have big prjects that are the culimination of the technology that's being devised. Classes that don't have final exams are always considered slacker classes because people don't have a goal to work towards, and the same thing could be said for space projects.
Well, he also owns his own business and is his own boss. He also has the rights to any future profits that his company may make. If the network is up and he feels like taking the day off, he can. Being one's own boss is priceless, especialy when his busienss has definite growth potential. And of course he can be the first in line to sell his company for thousands per cutomer once wireless becomes the Next Big Thing again.
And, more importantly, he probably has the busienss T1 terminiated in his house.
I hope the Vogons stick with contstruction instead of moving into the passenger transportation field. A starliner run by Vogons would be worse todays airlines...
I read the article, but it wasn't too clear what exactly would be. There isn't much in the way of dust for the thing to run into I would think. There isn't water to condense on the lense either. Would this be dust that the probe has brought along with it for the ride that happened to settle on the wrong part?
I've had very little experience with embedded processors, but generaly embeded processors are expected to get their work done, at whatever rate is required. If the processor can do the task that it's being imbedded for, any extra speed is wasted. So define your problem, and find the cheapest way to get it accomplished.
Once example of this is a parking garage system i've had the bad fortune to work on a couple of times. It consists of multiple 486's running linux. (these things have uptimes measured in years) Each machine spits out tickets or calculates times/rates or reads monthly-pass cards, and none of them need anything more than a 486, even the one with the wireless link to the accounting system, as changing the microsecconds to nanosecconds that they take to do their task wouldn't help anyone...
Your calculations don't take into account the amount you can do with one line of perl, let alone several of them...
They just seem to be uping the ante here by filing a lawsuit. It's a fairly common tactic to use durring/preceding negotiations for companies to get the upper hand in negotiations. We all know that if you sue someone they're guilty, right?
The interesting thing about this article is not that they're selling a fuel cell based car, it's that they seem to have come up with a way to actualy power the fuel cell. For years we have been talking about hydrogen powered fuel cells "that's only byproduct is air and water", while ignoring the large amounts of energy needed to extract the most abundant elemet from the universe. Traditional hydrogen generation uses energy that (surprise) comes mostly from fossil fuels. If they've found a way to use borax instead of fossil fuels, I'll be very impressed.
Unless they've altered the laws of physics, it will still take energy to do this "recharging" of borax that the article talks about, but hopefully this can be more effient than todays batteries, and will at least provide an alternative to oil that does not pollute the air.
After reading this discussion i've come to the conclusion that someone needs to bring up a bit more of the difference bwteen backuping data and archiving. As Many people have pointed out(quite validly) raid is great. As many other people have pointed out, raid sucks. Raid was designed to keep a server running and remove the single point of faliure problem, not as a true backup solution.
With a real archiving solution, all files that have been on the computer at some point should be stored. When you find that you deleted a file two months ago that you really could use right now, a mirrored hard drive will be worth as much as an aol CD in helping you restore. A proper backup must have removable redundant media.
A proper backup should leave a trail of compleete backups in some form that isn't ever going to get deleted. With tapes, this involved keeping yearly/monthly/daily tapes seperatly. With DCD/CD, media is cheap enough to not reuse, luckily. With removable hard drives, on the other hand, for a proper auditable backup trail(When did the hacker break in and steal the cc numbers anyway?) it will take 23 hard drives by my count to cover the year.
This admitedly is a bit more through than the orginial question, but it seems like the discussion has progressed pased the orginal question.
My personal system (once it's finished) will be to reformat all workstations with a 750 megabye user data portion. Everything else should replacable, or backed up by whoever wants it. Mp3's are replacable... Documents/financial information/code is not.
This of course leaves out anyone who actualy generates large amounts of data. If you truly generate large amounts of data, you shouldn't be reading slashdot for how to archive it.
While I agree that most of these "customers" are clueless, they aren't all clueless. Brick-and-mortar stores serve at least one purpose, that is nearly instant availablitiy. When I'm being payed $30 an hour and need something now, I'll pay the $35 they want for a NIC. Why? Because in the end it's a better deal.
I guess this is cool, but every time I read Yes Another Article About Electronic Paper I get the feeling that it's going to be even longer before I can touch the stuff and take out my electronic pen and write on it. Someday maybe, but this seems to be about the same distance off as quantum computing...
You're ignoring the fact that businesses have to deal with other businesses. While it may be possible(though expensive, considering administration and user training) to switch an entire organization to Your-Favorite-Office-Replacement, it is impossible to make all of your subcontractors/suppliers/clients switch, and for that reason there has to be some intermediary between the Wonderfull-World-of-Open-Source and the Evil Empire. Could this be solved with a 1 Windows/Office machine per 10-20 people? Probably. Would it be worth it? Probably not, as you've doubled your user training requirements, and you've multiplied your hardware costs by 1.1 or 1.2. Yes some people need Excel, but it's not what's holding up world domination.
Have you ever tried to render slashdot on a 386? I won't say it can't be done, but it won't be a fun wait. An old pentium 120 running opera is nearly unbearable. So for your sake, I hope you're happy with lynx.