Not a troll - but I still can't undertstand why all the interest about this show. It always seemed oriented towards geek-wannabes, not IT/technical folks
Seeing the problems that "ordinary people" have with software helps us geeks understand better what it takes to design good software.
Yes, that was to level the playing field... not to show which one was faster... because Apple could have used their own compiler and got faster results too... but the goal was to see which was faster... and then the G5 was indeed faster.
Using gcc on x86 and G5 doesn't in any way whatsoever "level the playing field", since they are NOT the same compiler. The only way to level the playing field is to use the best compiler available for each processor, so that the comparison is indeed comparing the best performance that is available on each.
Intel has been trying for years to advance the PC, but they keep getting held back by the mass-market nature of the platform. People would rather have older technology very cheaply than better technology that costs more.
With Apple, they've finally got a company that doesn't care about all that legacy PC crap. Apple will build the x86 machines that Intel has always wanted.
That's why Intel considers this to be such a big deal.
Will the promise of the same feature set and the same tools (for Windows, Mac and Linux) mean the future of cross-platform development is here?
No. If you write a Mac app using Cocoa, it's only going to run on OS X, regardless of what compiler and other tools you use to build it. If you write a Windows app using the Win32 API, it's only going to run on Windows, regardless of what compiler and other tools you use. Same with Linux.
Conversely, if you write a portable app (or, more realistically, a portable library to use in your non-portable apps), then it will be easy to make it work on different compilers and with different tools on the various platforms, so having the Intel tools everywhere doesn't help that much.
Heck, gcc is widely used now on OS X and Linux, and is readily available for Windows, yet you don't see a great flood of cross-platform development. The Intel tools won't change that.
Except that it doesn't work that way. Our patent system (flawed as it may be) works on rewarding patent to the first to invent, not the first to register for patent.
Right so far...
Since Apple can demonstrate that they were shipping product well before MSFT submitted their patent applications, this should be an easy appeal for Apple to win
...but now you are comparing Apple's invention date with Microsoft's filing date. We don't do that under first-to-invent. We compare Apple's invention date and Microsoft's invention date.
Microsoft's invention date is before Apple's ship date, so it is not as obvious as you think it is that Apple has an easy appeal here.
The key fact, that pretty much all the news stories have skipped, is that it doesn't look like the iPod actually infringes Microsoft's patent. Rather, Apple's attempt to broadly patent more than they've actually done (which is normal...you try to patent as much around what you did as you can) got wide enough to hit Microsoft patents, so Apple simply didn't get all the patents they wanted.
I guess the ultimate would be for the player to be built into a pair of in-ear headphones. Better yet, built the player into one half, and have it hook up to the other half wirelessly.
Make it so that the two halves can sense how far apart they are, and have it turn off or pause when they are either very close together, or farther apart than the width of your head. That would be a nice simple interface: put the headphones in and it starts, take them out and it stops.
If you could put a motion sensor in one, you could use a gesture-based interface. Pull it out and shake it to do shuffle play. Move it in a circle to change volume. Flick it up/down to skip forward, flick it left/right to skip backward.
So, a Segway's small enough to keep inside, but a bicycle isn't? Doesn't make a lot of sense, because the segway is larger in some dimensions than a non-folding bicycle, let alone a folding one.
The problem with a regular bike is the length. Try bringing your bike up an elevator, for example. It is a pain in the ass.
To see how a Segway fits in, watch the episode of Frasier where Niles has a Segway, and note how easily he was able to move on it through Frasier's apartment, and the cafe. A Segway will easily fit in most places that humans can walk in an office building or a business.
Being able to demonstrate that the street was two-way was significant because it showed that his story was plausible - not to mention calling into question the arresting officer's ability to observe a crime-in-progress
However, he didn't demonstrate that the street was two-way. Online map data is not 100% accurate when it comes to noting one-way streets. I think if I were the judge, I'd believe the officer over Google maps.
Oh, and by the way, why would you be using one inside?
Note that I didn't say you'd be riding the bike inside. They are big enough to be annoying to simply bring inside with you for storage, if you don't want to leave it outside where it can be stolen or vandalized.
I'll stick with a bicycle which doesn't need to be charged, is faster, has much further practical range, is *MUCH* lighter weight (a good road bike will not be much over 20 lbs), and can be bought new for a fraction of the cost or at a yard sale for a few bucks.
...and is big enough to be annoying indoors. A key aspect of the Segway is that its footprint is not much larger than that of a walking human, so it can go in places that were designed for humans, not vehicles.
In equally exciting news, my Rogue on Azjol-nerub is probably 2 hours away from 60 and since Blizzard will undoubtedly fix this bug soon, I'll have to finance my epic mount the old fashioned way!
Look at the bright side--if you do it the old fashioned way, you'll get to keep playing. They keep logs, and will probably be able to retroactively figure out from the logs who used this exploit, and ban their accounts.
According to what I've read, Plan 9 is a very good OS. It takes Unix's "everything is a file" philosophy to another level
I think it's time to go the opposite direction, and have an OS where there aren't any files. Instead, everything is a process. Instead of files, you store data in processes, and you access it via IPC mechanisms. (This is not as inefficient as it sounds, because you could share code pages between most of these processes...the standard "data process" would be used for most things). Directories would then simply be processes that implement naming services to let you find the processes that have the data you want.
Your disks would be used entirely for swap space (and most processes would be swapped out most of the time).
Note that if you need to implement special access controls on a "file" in this system, it is simply a matter of having that "file" be a process that implements those controls.
If a special application needs a different API to access "files", no problem...you can provide processes that implement the API it needs for its "files". It's all user-mode code, and doesn't disturb anything else.
If the IPC mechanism you use to access data in these "file" processes is one that works over the network, then you automatically get transparent network storage.
The hard part here would be saving state when you power down. You need to save the state of hundres of thousands of processes. (OK, I suppose making it so your OS can efficiently handle hundreds of thousands of processes might also be a bit of a challenge!)
There was an interesting Asimov short story about a computer criminal. The punishment was he was conditioned to get sick if he used a computer, and then was given a credit card with a large limit, and released. The general population was told of this, and told to be kind and help him whenever he asked.
Since nearly everything involved computers, this left him very helpless. Restaurants had computers at the tables that you used to order, for example--so he could not get food at a restaurant unless he asked someone to order for him. Same for pretty much any purchase, or use of public transportation, and so on.
The idea behind this punishment (which was for one year) was to make him see how dependent society was on computers, and therefore how serious and bad a crime it was to do anything that threatened the security of or the public's confidence in computers.
Actually, this seems to be halfway to the Right Thing; you get rid of a non-portable extension to Java (good)
What's good about getting rid of non-portable extensions? Some people lke Java as a general-purpose programming language, and want to use it, even when they are doing non-portable things.
I don't see what's so unreasonable about it. If they're able to get the book first, they deserve any extra business they might get, because they've found a way to give customers what they want
If it worked that way, then shipping books would be a major hassle for publishers. A publisher whose books consistenty arrived at, say, Target, ahead of the small bookstores, would soon find the small bookstores not bothering to carry that publishers books. The publisher would have to carefully arrange shipping so all the stores got the books on the same day. This would be a nightmare for them.
It's much easier for them to ship the books normally, and tell the stores not to sell them until a certain date.
Also, the publisher wants to keep customers happy. If the books went on sale whenever they arrived at the stores, you'd have people rushing from store to store, following rumors of arrivals, and getting frustrated if they don't get there before they sell out. By making sure all the stores are stocked before any are allowed to sell, the publisher ensures that everyone who wants to get a book can easily do so.
And what the *hell* would motivate hundreds of thousands of users to change the default action that Microsoft recommends and keep a piece of crap like Claria?
Perhaps the same thing that motivates a large number of people to go to the Claria site and download Claria's software on purpose?
This is what makes anti-spyware applications difficult. Things like Claria's software do provide some useful functionality in exchange for their data gathering, and some people find that to be a worthwhile trade. They'd rather give up some information and get the software for "free", than pay money for software that doesn't gather information.
This puts the anti-spyware application developer in a pickle. Remove stuff like Claria, to protect users who didn't realize what they were getting into (or don't even realize they have it), and then piss off people who actually asked for Claria's stuff? Or let Claria's stuff stay, and then fail to protect those who didn't want it?
Uhm...you seem to be suggesting that if publishing is cheap, it doesn't need protection. That's backwards. When publishing costs are high, there is less need for protection, because most of the profit from publishing comes soon after publication. When costs are high, by the time a copier gets his copies out, there isn't enough profit left for them.
Justice Breyer, back before he was on the Supreme Court, wrote an interesting article on this, arguing that publishing costs were high enough that we might not need copyright. This was before technology drove publishing costs way down.
There seem to be a lot of people who think "copyright was fine when it was a pain for me to copy stuff, but now that it's easy to copy stuff, we should get rid of copyright". They seem to think that the purpose of copyright law was to tell people they couldn't do what they weren't going to do anyway.
The question is under what circumstances the distributor of a product capable of both lawful and unlawful use is liable for acts of copyright infringement by third parties using the product. We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties.
Slashdot Mirror
So, the answer to the original question, then, would be that having a certification helps avoid getting a job under a stupid boss.
Seeing the problems that "ordinary people" have with software helps us geeks understand better what it takes to design good software.
Why would they want to make free competition for their other current and future games?
Using gcc on x86 and G5 doesn't in any way whatsoever "level the playing field", since they are NOT the same compiler. The only way to level the playing field is to use the best compiler available for each processor, so that the comparison is indeed comparing the best performance that is available on each.
With Apple, they've finally got a company that doesn't care about all that legacy PC crap. Apple will build the x86 machines that Intel has always wanted.
That's why Intel considers this to be such a big deal.
No. If you write a Mac app using Cocoa, it's only going to run on OS X, regardless of what compiler and other tools you use to build it. If you write a Windows app using the Win32 API, it's only going to run on Windows, regardless of what compiler and other tools you use. Same with Linux.
Conversely, if you write a portable app (or, more realistically, a portable library to use in your non-portable apps), then it will be easy to make it work on different compilers and with different tools on the various platforms, so having the Intel tools everywhere doesn't help that much.
Heck, gcc is widely used now on OS X and Linux, and is readily available for Windows, yet you don't see a great flood of cross-platform development. The Intel tools won't change that.
Right so far...
Since Apple can demonstrate that they were shipping product well before MSFT submitted their patent applications, this should be an easy appeal for Apple to win
Microsoft's invention date is before Apple's ship date, so it is not as obvious as you think it is that Apple has an easy appeal here.
The key fact, that pretty much all the news stories have skipped, is that it doesn't look like the iPod actually infringes Microsoft's patent. Rather, Apple's attempt to broadly patent more than they've actually done (which is normal...you try to patent as much around what you did as you can) got wide enough to hit Microsoft patents, so Apple simply didn't get all the patents they wanted.
His security stats come from MI2G. Google will tell you all you need to know about them.
So post your name, credit card number, expiration date, and billing address. That information wants to be free.
Make it so that the two halves can sense how far apart they are, and have it turn off or pause when they are either very close together, or farther apart than the width of your head. That would be a nice simple interface: put the headphones in and it starts, take them out and it stops.
If you could put a motion sensor in one, you could use a gesture-based interface. Pull it out and shake it to do shuffle play. Move it in a circle to change volume. Flick it up/down to skip forward, flick it left/right to skip backward.
The problem with a regular bike is the length. Try bringing your bike up an elevator, for example. It is a pain in the ass.
To see how a Segway fits in, watch the episode of Frasier where Niles has a Segway, and note how easily he was able to move on it through Frasier's apartment, and the cafe. A Segway will easily fit in most places that humans can walk in an office building or a business.
However, he didn't demonstrate that the street was two-way. Online map data is not 100% accurate when it comes to noting one-way streets. I think if I were the judge, I'd believe the officer over Google maps.
Note that I didn't say you'd be riding the bike inside. They are big enough to be annoying to simply bring inside with you for storage, if you don't want to leave it outside where it can be stolen or vandalized.
Look at the bright side--if you do it the old fashioned way, you'll get to keep playing. They keep logs, and will probably be able to retroactively figure out from the logs who used this exploit, and ban their accounts.
Huh? Here are some episodes from the last season.
- Leela's Homeworld
- Less Than Hero
- Jurassic Bark
- The Why of Fry
- Where No Fan Has Gone Before
- The Sting
- The Farnsworth Parabox
- The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings
These are some of the best episodes of the whole series.I think it's time to go the opposite direction, and have an OS where there aren't any files. Instead, everything is a process. Instead of files, you store data in processes, and you access it via IPC mechanisms. (This is not as inefficient as it sounds, because you could share code pages between most of these processes...the standard "data process" would be used for most things). Directories would then simply be processes that implement naming services to let you find the processes that have the data you want.
Your disks would be used entirely for swap space (and most processes would be swapped out most of the time).
Note that if you need to implement special access controls on a "file" in this system, it is simply a matter of having that "file" be a process that implements those controls.
If a special application needs a different API to access "files", no problem...you can provide processes that implement the API it needs for its "files". It's all user-mode code, and doesn't disturb anything else.
If the IPC mechanism you use to access data in these "file" processes is one that works over the network, then you automatically get transparent network storage.
The hard part here would be saving state when you power down. You need to save the state of hundres of thousands of processes. (OK, I suppose making it so your OS can efficiently handle hundreds of thousands of processes might also be a bit of a challenge!)
The story is "A Perfect Fit", available in the Asimov collection "Winds of Change".
Since nearly everything involved computers, this left him very helpless. Restaurants had computers at the tables that you used to order, for example--so he could not get food at a restaurant unless he asked someone to order for him. Same for pretty much any purchase, or use of public transportation, and so on.
The idea behind this punishment (which was for one year) was to make him see how dependent society was on computers, and therefore how serious and bad a crime it was to do anything that threatened the security of or the public's confidence in computers.
What's good about getting rid of non-portable extensions? Some people lke Java as a general-purpose programming language, and want to use it, even when they are doing non-portable things.
According to the story, you can still file by paper, so you can use their service without having to use Windows.
If it worked that way, then shipping books would be a major hassle for publishers. A publisher whose books consistenty arrived at, say, Target, ahead of the small bookstores, would soon find the small bookstores not bothering to carry that publishers books. The publisher would have to carefully arrange shipping so all the stores got the books on the same day. This would be a nightmare for them.
It's much easier for them to ship the books normally, and tell the stores not to sell them until a certain date.
Also, the publisher wants to keep customers happy. If the books went on sale whenever they arrived at the stores, you'd have people rushing from store to store, following rumors of arrivals, and getting frustrated if they don't get there before they sell out. By making sure all the stores are stocked before any are allowed to sell, the publisher ensures that everyone who wants to get a book can easily do so.
Perhaps the same thing that motivates a large number of people to go to the Claria site and download Claria's software on purpose?
This is what makes anti-spyware applications difficult. Things like Claria's software do provide some useful functionality in exchange for their data gathering, and some people find that to be a worthwhile trade. They'd rather give up some information and get the software for "free", than pay money for software that doesn't gather information.
This puts the anti-spyware application developer in a pickle. Remove stuff like Claria, to protect users who didn't realize what they were getting into (or don't even realize they have it), and then piss off people who actually asked for Claria's stuff? Or let Claria's stuff stay, and then fail to protect those who didn't want it?
Justice Breyer, back before he was on the Supreme Court, wrote an interesting article on this, arguing that publishing costs were high enough that we might not need copyright. This was before technology drove publishing costs way down.
There seem to be a lot of people who think "copyright was fine when it was a pain for me to copy stuff, but now that it's easy to copy stuff, we should get rid of copyright". They seem to think that the purpose of copyright law was to tell people they couldn't do what they weren't going to do anyway.