The rate of spending was unsustainable; we simply could not afford it, no matter how useful the research outputs might have been. On a more prosaic level, once the Cold War posturing had been successfully implemented, the political benefits would be virtually zero - even if the science would be extremely valuable.
Postscript 'Type 3 programmatic' fonts contain executable Postscript code, which is Turing-complete. A correctly formed example could soak up CPU and memory if measures are not implemented to prevent this - I'm sure you will have seen the Postscript files which dynamically generate pretty pictures doing intensive calculations on a printer CPU. Of course, defects in the interpreter itself could be exploited, but as you say this applies to any functionality exposed to the outside world.
And on the Linux-situation, if Linux is better, it might have been able to prevent anything else but the user home-directory being destroyed.
This is the wrong way around. The home user directory is the only important directory. It doesn't matter if the system files get trashed. It does matter if the user's irreplacable photos, videos and other documents are lost forever.
"Polite", a virus for Microsoft Word, already did this back in the mid 90's! When you try to save a file the virus macro asks "Shall I infect the file?", and kindly refrains from doing so if you click say no.
The SourceForge Help Wanted page is also a good place to look. Most of the projects looking for help aren't really top-tier projects, but they'd be a good way of building up reputation when the GP later wants to go for the big name projects.
With open source, everyone has the authority to tell developers that their work "stinks" (though a more careful choice of words would be a good idea and be more productive!). The community is the QA department. If something sucks then it will sooner or later be fixed or replaced.
If something is broken, file a bug report. Mail the developers. Submit a patch. Talk about the problem on forums. Many options exist! If you really feel strongly enough about something and can't fix it yourself, hire someone to fix it for you and submit the patches back to the community.
There are others too that predate Win95, but suffice to say Win95 was not the first. Thankfully Microsoft did not also borrow the Arthur colour scheme!
I'm curious how many got into programming because of...
* "I wonder how this game works..." or
* "How do I remove the copy protection..."
* "How do I cheat...";-) The 6502 was a nice CPU where one person could not only memorize all the opcodes, but understand the whole machine. I quite agree. Maybe modern proto-geeks would do well to play with something like the XGameStation http://www.xgamestation.com/. Simple enough to understand every part, complex enough to do interesting things.
Much easier to remember the 6502 opcodes http://www.6502.org/tutorials/6502opcodes.html including the undocumented stuff than modern x86 http://developer.intel.com/design/pentiumii/manuals/243191.htm. And the memory sizes of computers of that era made it easy to poke around to find cheats.
Elite was first on the Acorn BBC Micro, not the Apple (though some of the code was developed on the earlier Acorn Atom).
You can download many Elite ports from the website of Ian Bell, one of the two authors: http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/. The Archimedes port was clearly the best, of course:)
Like Solios said, the point is to have less randomness, not more. The point is to make the game respond to the physical environment in which the gamer exists, unlike most games which are their own little universe. Mobile gaming platforms allow us to move our games through cities and public spaces, which are awash with life. Wireless network traffic is just one type of information with which a game designer can make the game dynamic to the gamer's surroundings, but it has the neat property that the necessary hardware is already available.
There was a game years back which used your computer's directory structure to generate game maps. I think the idea of this game was you were fighting viruses within your own computer or something like that, but it's unimportant. The point was that the game design was dynamic to factors beyond the 'game world'.
That is a virtuous policy and philosophy, but one which unfortunately is too often impossible to maintain in the face of impossible deadlines. Every design decision is a compromise. As there is no such thing as perfect security I don't believe we can ever be completely sure about the security of our data or systems; refusing to deliver until perfect security is implemented generally means nothing is ever delivered, and development projects are terminated by losing the contract rather than by achieving our unattainable goals.
Although the Java 1.6 JRE apparently doesn't work too well with Leopard at the moment http://www.theregister.com/2007/10/29/no_java_for_leopard/ . Probably not a big problem in the long run, just a temporary compatibility issue, but if Apple insist on doing their own thing with the JRE then they really need to make it work. Java 1.6 has been around for a while now, I'd rather have the option of forgoing the visual improvements in order to get my hands on a released and supported version of something that works!
I agree. Developing key skills in IT is important these days, but if our children are actually learning the skills rather than simply mindlessly parroting a list of 'click here' steps then it doesn't matter which platform is used.
When I was at school it was Acorn BBC Micros everywhere, and a few Acorn Archimedes sneaking in. Fantastic machines, although at the time none of us seemed to be too concerned about vendor lock-in to the Acorn Computers ecosystem! I used Acorn computers through high school, never touching a Microsoft box, and yet I don't seem to recall this being a problem later in life when working as a.NET developer.
A related issue which is often forgotten is what the role of computers in education actually is; what are we hoping to gain from their use? Is the aim that children learn about computers? Or is the aim that computers are merely a support tool for other learning? The two issues are perhaps linked, but are nevertheless fundamentally different. In the case of the latter, the choice of computing platform is entirely irrelevant.
It's hardly a waste if they would otherwise be idle, surely? The ability to write kernel drivers does not preclude the ability to write userspace code, and writing userspace code will not diminish the ability to write kernel code as and when it is needed.
It would be rather cool, provided that it can fall back to a non-P2P mechanism where performance would be unacceptable (e.g. corporate firewalls blocking all bittorrent traffic, ISP traffic shaping/throttling etc).
Although this would generally be a good thing to do, it doesn't help at all if the linked page changes. The URL remains the same, but the content has changed from that which was present at the time the blogger linked it.
It's true, and a real shame that ARM isn't more a more readily-available option for general purpose computing in the standard form factors. Low power consumption and low heat production would be fantastic if I wanted to put together a tiny, silent media centre-style PC. I guess there just isn't the demand for these things, which is a shame from an energy-efficiency view.
Iyonix http://www.iyonix.com/ sell an ARM-based personal computer, the heritage of which goes back to the ARM-based workstations manufactured by the now-defunct Acorn Computers back in the late 80s to mid 90s. Personally I think they are far too expensive for what you get, and as they use mostly bog-standard PC components I can't imagine they are terribly energy-efficient, but it's nice to have the option at least.
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The rate of spending was unsustainable; we simply could not afford it, no matter how useful the research outputs might have been. On a more prosaic level, once the Cold War posturing had been successfully implemented, the political benefits would be virtually zero - even if the science would be extremely valuable.
Yes, under the One Electron Universe hypothesis.
Postscript 'Type 3 programmatic' fonts contain executable Postscript code, which is Turing-complete. A correctly formed example could soak up CPU and memory if measures are not implemented to prevent this - I'm sure you will have seen the Postscript files which dynamically generate pretty pictures doing intensive calculations on a printer CPU. Of course, defects in the interpreter itself could be exploited, but as you say this applies to any functionality exposed to the outside world.
And on the Linux-situation, if Linux is better, it might have been able to prevent anything else but the user home-directory being destroyed.
This is the wrong way around. The home user directory is the only important directory. It doesn't matter if the system files get trashed. It does matter if the user's irreplacable photos, videos and other documents are lost forever.
Three hundred years isn't a long time, compared to how long the UK has been there
The United Kingdom was formed in May 1st 1707. This was 302 years ago, so actually your 300 years really is a long time compared to how long the UK has been here :)
Nor should you believe everything you read on paper.
"Polite", a virus for Microsoft Word, already did this back in the mid 90's! When you try to save a file the virus macro asks "Shall I infect the file?", and kindly refrains from doing so if you click say no.
The SourceForge Help Wanted page is also a good place to look. Most of the projects looking for help aren't really top-tier projects, but they'd be a good way of building up reputation when the GP later wants to go for the big name projects.
Maybe you were thinking of a Gibson Firebird?
Heck, I'd settle for eight fives!
It seems that Wes would himself prefer Robotron 2084 to Solitaire.
If something is broken, file a bug report. Mail the developers. Submit a patch. Talk about the problem on forums. Many options exist! If you really feel strongly enough about something and can't fix it yourself, hire someone to fix it for you and submit the patches back to the community.
There are others too that predate Win95, but suffice to say Win95 was not the first. Thankfully Microsoft did not also borrow the Arthur colour scheme!
Elite was first on the Acorn BBC Micro, not the Apple (though some of the code was developed on the earlier Acorn Atom). You can download many Elite ports from the website of Ian Bell, one of the two authors: http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/. The Archimedes port was clearly the best, of course :)
Like Solios said, the point is to have less randomness, not more. The point is to make the game respond to the physical environment in which the gamer exists, unlike most games which are their own little universe. Mobile gaming platforms allow us to move our games through cities and public spaces, which are awash with life. Wireless network traffic is just one type of information with which a game designer can make the game dynamic to the gamer's surroundings, but it has the neat property that the necessary hardware is already available.
There was a game years back which used your computer's directory structure to generate game maps. I think the idea of this game was you were fighting viruses within your own computer or something like that, but it's unimportant. The point was that the game design was dynamic to factors beyond the 'game world'.
That is a virtuous policy and philosophy, but one which unfortunately is too often impossible to maintain in the face of impossible deadlines. Every design decision is a compromise. As there is no such thing as perfect security I don't believe we can ever be completely sure about the security of our data or systems; refusing to deliver until perfect security is implemented generally means nothing is ever delivered, and development projects are terminated by losing the contract rather than by achieving our unattainable goals.
Although the Java 1.6 JRE apparently doesn't work too well with Leopard at the moment http://www.theregister.com/2007/10/29/no_java_for_leopard/ . Probably not a big problem in the long run, just a temporary compatibility issue, but if Apple insist on doing their own thing with the JRE then they really need to make it work. Java 1.6 has been around for a while now, I'd rather have the option of forgoing the visual improvements in order to get my hands on a released and supported version of something that works!
I agree. Developing key skills in IT is important these days, but if our children are actually learning the skills rather than simply mindlessly parroting a list of 'click here' steps then it doesn't matter which platform is used. When I was at school it was Acorn BBC Micros everywhere, and a few Acorn Archimedes sneaking in. Fantastic machines, although at the time none of us seemed to be too concerned about vendor lock-in to the Acorn Computers ecosystem! I used Acorn computers through high school, never touching a Microsoft box, and yet I don't seem to recall this being a problem later in life when working as a .NET developer.
A related issue which is often forgotten is what the role of computers in education actually is; what are we hoping to gain from their use? Is the aim that children learn about computers? Or is the aim that computers are merely a support tool for other learning? The two issues are perhaps linked, but are nevertheless fundamentally different. In the case of the latter, the choice of computing platform is entirely irrelevant.
It's hardly a waste if they would otherwise be idle, surely? The ability to write kernel drivers does not preclude the ability to write userspace code, and writing userspace code will not diminish the ability to write kernel code as and when it is needed.
It would be rather cool, provided that it can fall back to a non-P2P mechanism where performance would be unacceptable (e.g. corporate firewalls blocking all bittorrent traffic, ISP traffic shaping/throttling etc).
Although this would generally be a good thing to do, it doesn't help at all if the linked page changes. The URL remains the same, but the content has changed from that which was present at the time the blogger linked it.
It's true, and a real shame that ARM isn't more a more readily-available option for general purpose computing in the standard form factors. Low power consumption and low heat production would be fantastic if I wanted to put together a tiny, silent media centre-style PC. I guess there just isn't the demand for these things, which is a shame from an energy-efficiency view. Iyonix http://www.iyonix.com/ sell an ARM-based personal computer, the heritage of which goes back to the ARM-based workstations manufactured by the now-defunct Acorn Computers back in the late 80s to mid 90s. Personally I think they are far too expensive for what you get, and as they use mostly bog-standard PC components I can't imagine they are terribly energy-efficient, but it's nice to have the option at least.
OpenOffice.org Calc would be a good place to start
JIRA is nice, but I'm not sure it satisfies the poster's open source requirements. AFAIK, the source code is only available to 'commercial users' http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/docs/v2.6.1 /building.html which I assume requires a paid-for commercial licence http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/pricing.jsp . I guess it depends on one's definition of 'open source' as to whether this is sufficiently open.