From the other, more pressing issues that we should be dealing with. For example:
The loss of democracy in the First World via electronic voting machines with secret, undisclosed code.
The problem of establishing peace in Iraq.
The attempted legitimization of torture by First World governments.
I could go on...
Anyway, Global Warming fanatics always bring up the negative aspects that it could produce, but not necessarily that it will. Indeed, anyone who is going to make 100 or 1000 year predictions on a few decades of data is foolish. We simply don't know. Regardless, does anyone ever bring up the possible benefits of global warming?
The arctic melts. This is good, because we will need the increase in arable land to feed the burgeoning population. How else would you feed 10 billion people? - more pesticides and genetically modified crops? Make the farmer the patent slave of the corporations?
Warmer climates require less energy for heating. It is more difficult to live without heat than air conditioning, so this will be a net positive for those living in the Northern and Southern areas of the globe, as they won't need to spend as much money on heating their homes. Even in Illinois, the cost of heating can get prohibitively expensive during the winter months.
Cross arctic passage from Russia to Canada - the reduced distance could open up an entirely untapped market. Furthermore, the reduced distance would reduce the amount of fuel required, and the cost of shipping. Russia could finally enter the global economy on the same footing as China.
And these are just a few. The real question shouldn't be "is GW happening?", but, "Is it a bad thing?". It could be that preventing global warming would leave us with a worldwide shortage of food a few centuries from now. How are you going to feed 10 billion people?
can't replace the existing 200 billion lines of code.
Sure you can. A 20 line Perl script would probably work just as well.
And you can't maintain 200 billion lines of COBOL, either.
But seriously, COBOL is so verbose that the 200 billion lines of COBOL could probably be replaced by 100 million lines of C++ or Java. And it would be more maintainable. COBOL exists to keep programmers employed; consider what it provides for the programmer:
Job Security: Everything is global - the programmer must keep the whole program, and all the programs called by it, and the programs that call it, in his head. Naturally, learning a complicated system takes time, meaning that the SYSTEM PROGRAMMER can't be replaced at the drop of a hat. If you fire him, you'll have to bring in EXPENSIVE CONSULTANTS until you can find the other programmer in your state who knows COBOL.
Ease of use: No pithy naming standards to follow (unless enforced by the organization). No need to limit the scope of procedures (Hey! - everything's global, so why not put it all in one subroutine! Yay!). No complaints about inadvertently modifying variables you shouldn't, no type checking (real programmers don't need it...) etc...
Big Money: You are one of the two available programmers in your state who know COBOL. The other one wants a second house in the Caymans, though you prefer the lakeside cottage in Wisconsin. Unless the company wants to hire EVEN MORE EXPENSIVE CONSULTANTS, they'll pay the salary to provide whichever house you choose.
Ability to use the CAPSLOCK without offending anyone. Just like you used to post on usenet!
Literacy skills: You'd never have to consider something complicated like "salary = (bonus + (hours * hourly_wage));" Instead, you have, in plain English: MULTIPLY HOURL-WAGE-IN-CENTS TIMES HOURS-LOGGED-FOR-THIS-EMPLOYEE-ONLY-NOT-INCLUDING- OVERTIME GIVING TEMPORARY-SALARY-FOR-THIS-WEEK. ADD TEMPORARY-SALARY-FOR-THIS-WEEK TO ONE-TIME-BONUS-FOR-SALARIED-EMPLOYEES-NOT-RECEIVIN G-PROFIT-SHARING.
MOVE BY NAME TMP-EMPLOYEE-SALARY-CALCULATION-WORKSHEET-STRUCTUR E TO FINAL-EMPLOYEE-SALARY-WORKSHEET.
But I jest, of course. The truth is, most businesses are so afraid of moving away from COBOL that they'd rather continue to shell out premium salaries than take the risk of a failed migration. Kind of like a lot of Windows users - they'd like to try Linux, but are afraid of change. Well, I suppose you get what you deserve.
The caveat to this system is that it would need some pretty heavy networking, even if optimised, and there could be latency issues. Still, I like this idea better than a mainframe.
And this caveat kills the deal. The problem has always been that networks simply can't compete with the throughput of native devices. Consider this:
Mainframe: 255 ESCON channels with 16MB/s (that's 128 Mbit/s) bandwidth each. Aggregate IO bandwith: 4.08 GB/s, sustained transfer rate.
PC: Ethernet - Even if you're lucky enough to use 1 Gbit/s cards and cabling and routers that can handle it, the aggregate throughput between nodes is 128 MB/s. That is, no matter how many nodes you have on your network, the aggregate IO bandwidth of a mainframe is 32 times that of a multiframe.
And we haven't even begun to discuss the fact that router latencies, packet collisions, etc, mean that you never actually get a 1 Gb/s DATA transfer rate. Typically, 2/3 of the bit bandwidth on a crowded network is consumed by collisions, media bits (Ethernet packet overhead), timeouts, etc...
One word: backups. A mainframe has one, centralized disk pack to backup.
Speaking of which, there's no concurrency issues with a mainframe - you needn't check every node in the network to see if a given record has been updated.
Yeah, a multiframe is a nice idea, but it just doesn't work for the IO intensive workloads of business.
And the interesting thing is that it will always be this way. The maximum throughput of a bus is inversely related to the length of the conduit. The internal busses of computers, whose max length is typically measured in centimeters, and typically have 16,32, or 64 data lines, will always be able to outperform the network type busses. For example, USB has one "data line". Ethernet has 4. EIDE has 16, and PCI 32. It comes down to a simple matter of math and physics, and no amount of technological progress will change this.
I would go farther than that and say that writing a correct program in any language is not trivial. While it is true that certain languages (like Java) limit the kinds of errors a programmer can make, they do nothing to limit the number of errors a programmer can make.
While I understand there are some languages more appropriate for solving certain types of problems, making a language programmer-proof is never a worthy goal. Usually, the attempt to make a "better COBOL" ends up evolving like this:
Researcher notices that programmers have difficulty understanding concept X (i.e. pairing free() and malloc). Researcher notices that many programmers create bugs because of their misunderstanding.
Naively, researcher thinks of better way(TM) to solve same problem (i.e. Garbage Collection). Researcher creates a new (language | library | program) which solves said problem. True, the solution encompasses only a subset of the original functionality, but the researcher feels the trade-off is worth the reduced functionality because it solves a very common set of bugs.
New programmers learn to use researcher's solution. Instead of learning what is really going on under the scenes, they learn the new API/paradigm.
Now, the new generation of programmers are one step farther removed from understanding how computers work. Due to lack of understanding, they create new kinds of problems (i.e. - creating an object/class instance for everything, even when unnecessary).
Researcher notices that programmers have difficulty understanding concept Y (i.e. Garbage Collection). Researcher notices that many programmers create bugs because of their misunderstanding....
Repeat ad infinitum. Oh - and don't forget to have the researcher collect his paycheck for delaying the real solution to the problem.
There's no silver bullet to solve stupidity, or lack of rigor, or any of the several management "problems" which lead to bad code. It seems that whenever a different paradigm is introduced with the explicit purpose of reducing programming mistakes, it always backfires. Witness COBOL, for example. Instead of making things easier for programmers, it created a mess of unmaintainable spaghetti code - as it was marketted not to the experienced, knowledgeable programmer - but rather, to businesses with the implicit assumption that secretaries would be writing code.
I think the problem is that some in the research community believe have a holier than thou complex when it comes to writing code. They assume programming errors can be eliminated by proper choice of language. In reality, the language used is the least relevant. My experience has led me to believe these are the top sources of program errors:
Unrealistic schedules. Programmers are trained to do fast, now, and do it right, later. Problem is, later never comes. The poor programmer finds himself writing lousy code first as a matter of choice - to meet deadlines - and later as a matter of habit, having forgotten the importance of doing things right.
Unrealistic designs - for example, requirements which go beyond what the language/programming environment is actually capable of doing.
Inadequate/faulty design - designs that are incomplete, contradictory, or just plain wrong. Said designs force the programmer to make decisions beyond their level of understanding, with the attendant errors.
Unrealistic management - i.e., outsourcing critical business programming overseas to programmers with no knowledge of the business or the implicit requirements of the project.
Programming is a skill, not a commodity. It requires knowledge, rigor, and discipline. We'll all be better off when business wakes up and recognizes this.
One of the last things I did was to make the board check for an SD card at startup, and boot from that. Failing to find a card, it would then default to the flash. (More or less like the original PC's would boot floppy by default, then HD). I don't think these scripts made it into the releases, but it wouldn't be too hard to do.
Um, it uses a Texas Instruments DM320, not an Intel StrongARM.
Ask someone who knows...
on
Neuros OSD Review
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· Score: 3, Informative
Neuros bought most of the video codecs and Linux BSP from a third party. How do I know? - I was an engineer for said third party, and wrote/developed a few of the modules for this platform. In fact, I'm intimately familiar with the video and audio playback code.
That said, I have a few comments:
The sound and video often get very out of sync and sometimes the video judders, or slows to get back to where it should be...[emphasis added]
First of all, I had not observed this at all when using a pristine source. We did recognize that our coping mechanisms would produce a similar result if the incoming source had missing frames or audio, etc...
In fact A/V sync was one of the enduring problems on which I worked during my tenure. Suffice to say, we chose to gradually pull audio and video back in sync when sync was lost because our clients complained that the alternative appeared too jittery. Unlike other vendors, we could present acceptable quality playback with as much as 1/4 of the frames missing from the input stream. Most other encoders/decoders would produce a noticeable, annoying frame-jitter whenever there was a loss of either audio or video.
But, aside from that, here are some more things the article failed to mention:
The processor is a TI DM320. The ARM 9 can run at ~200 MHz, and the DSP at ~100.
The DSP, not the ARM, does the video encoding/decoding. The DSP or the ARM may be used for audio playback, depending on the codec used.
Typical ARM CPU usage during playback is less than 50%. When audio is done on the DSP, you can easily attain less than 10% CPU on the ARM. The DSP does the overwhelming majority of the work on this platform.
We ported MicroWindows to this platform. Though it might not be in the BSP, you can definitely run it on the Neuros if you have the time to port it.
It has 64MB of SDRAM. The address space of the processor allows for up to 256 MB to be installed, if anyone is interested.
Likewise, you can replace the 4MB flash memory with a larger one, if you'd like. Typically, there is about 256MB of address space per chip select.
You should be able to get X up and running on this platform. Some of our past clients used GTK on this same platform.
If you are interested in debugging, telnet to the board and look at the/proc directory. Several of our modules will list interesting statistics on video and audio performance such as: Number of dropped/delayed/skipped frames, audio/video sync difference, number of frames, number of interrupts, etc...
The platform does support IDE drives. Someone willing to get out a soldering iron and tinker could very easily add tivo-like video recording to this device. But why would you do that when...
The device is designed to be used with USB hard drives. The reason why an HD isn't included is because the usage model is that of a user plugging in an external USB HD, and encoding to that. That way, you can expand the recording capacity of the device without cracking open the case as above...
Hope this helps.
I do feel some connection to this project because I did a lot of work on this platform. Truth be told, I'm thinking of buying one just for sentimental reasons; unfortunately, my company didn't hand out samples. I do know quite a bit about the BSP, and would be happy to answer any questions regarding the platform that I can.
So, if I understand this right: The executive branch believes it has a right to read our email, because we have no "Constitutional" expectation of privacy, but the White House can refuse to turn over emails to Congress, because, alas, email is private?
So, I guess the Constitution gets interpreted differently when the subject of an investigation is the President. Hmmm....
I'm one of those users you'd probably be on the fence about.
Granted, I don't install every toolbar and stupid web-widget available. That said, I routinely need to run software which IT doesn't have the time to approve and install. Fortunately, I'm usually able to install it myself, and know enough about the machine not to screw it up.
However, users like me aren't your problem. In fact, I'd go farther and say that users like the ones you describe aren't the real problem, either.
Your problem is with the Windows OS model:
It encourages people to install even questionable programs by making it nearly effortless to do so.
It actively hides things such as network and disk space utilization from the user.
The Windows Explorer model hides important details from the user by default. The consequence is that users don't need to know, and seldom understand, how their computer works. Thus, they remain unqualified to take an active part in the security of their machines and the network.
It provides multiple vectors for security compromises - Secure the OS, and the email client becomes a virus vector. Secure the email client, and the mandatory web browser becomes a vector. Unlike the UNIX model, in Windows, any installed program can compromise the security of the entire machine, and sometimes the entire network.
Windows security is default allow, explicit deny - while MS has improved this in the recent past, their most recent gaffes in IE 7 and the exploit code in Word demonstrate that, as a company, they are still clueless about security.
That even Microsoft itself has allowed its security certificates to lapse in the past, I don't think this is going to mean much. As soon as the address bar goes white when getting updates from microsoft.com, people will start to ignore it.
Besides, the user sophisticated enough to notice the difference probably won't care - by now, he's already got a set of favorite bargain sites, and when their address bar stays white, he'll just assume they're too cheap to buy the MS cert. After all, how *do* they undercut the competition?
And I'm guessing that most people - if they notice at all - will not be any more cautious. After all, that's what they bought anti-virus for, right? I'd be willing to bet that the average user believes AV software protects them from everything bad that could happen when using a computer.
Kind of odd - my sister is a graduate student in Biology. A few years ago, I set up Open Office on her computer.
A few months ago, I got a call. She had a little extra money, and decided to buy MS Office from the school bookstore - thinking that she'd finally moved out of the "I'm poor so I need free software" stage. She installed it - and now she calls me, asking me why it doesn't do automatic word completion. I told her, that's just something Microsoft doesn't do. Now she thinks MS is stupid. Of course, she uses Power Point because OO.org never did achieve full compatibility, but she's a little bit wiser about the state of software than she used to be.
She doesn't care what she runs, as long as it works. Same for my other sister - she used a RedHat based laptop for several semesters because she didn't have the money for Windows. I never received any support calls from her until the laptop finally died (hardware failure).
Do you know why geeks install pirated copies of Windows? It's the only way they can get the Hot Chick(TM) to call them back...
When the federal government stops using Microsoft Windows. There hasn't been a Windows release to date that didn't include some back door for a Terrorist Hacker(TM). If they were so serious about security that they won't publish this report, you'd think they would have at least considered the security of their own computer systems.
Or, more likely, it has nothing to do with national security, and everything to do with corporate protectionism.
Maybe the real intent of this campaign is to keep Canadian citizens distracted from the real issues facing their country. Or perhaps to see just many rights people are willing to surrender in the name of fighting _____________.
I still don't understand the concept behind making images illegal. Granted, someone who wants to look at this kind of stuff might have a really messed up sense of morality, and probably reality as well, but I don't see how this is a legal issue before there is an actual victim. I would think that the kind of depravity which would cause someone to seek out such images would be better handled by the Church than the law, as it seems to me that this is more of a spiritual and emotional problem than a legal one. I just don't see how the threat of jail time is going to fix someone's dirty obsession.
OTOH, this probably does not have anything to do with the question at hand, and is instead a proxy for those who want to control the population by making certain thoughts criminal. This issue would be merely the test bed for effective means of thought control, a legal means of establishing the validity of thought crime. If, by using an emotionally charged subject, they can establish a legal equivalence of the crime, and merely thinking about it, then it paves the way to the extension of making political crimes subject to the same kind of enforcement as well.
Defendant: But, I didn't actually do the crime!
Prosecutor: But you thought about it, didn't you? If you weren't thinking about doing it, why did you visit these websites? Why do you have these images on your computer?
If you think about it, the above dialog applies equally well to both child pornography and terrorism.
And look where it got them. In the late 90's, early 2000's, HP (among others) produced printers that could print a perfect image of a dollar bill. And counterfeiters started using them. HP had to (or rather, was *requested* to) modify their printer software to print yellow dots on the bill, so that it could be recognized as fake.
Ah, but that's a matter of rights, not of the definition of marriage.
For example, an unmarried man or woman could assume legal guardianship of a minor, and have all of the rights and responsibilities associated with the child's natural parents. However, he or she would be known as the child's guardian, not the parent.
Now, interestingly, we could apply this same logic to law: we could have guardianship of another granted by either marriage (implicit), or a "domestic order" (explicit). In either case, the rights and legal recognition would be the same, but there's no dishonesty involved about the nature and purpose of the relationship. There's no need to redefine the word marriage.
Besides, suppose that the gays are successful in their propaganda crusade. I predict that instead of offering increased rights for gay couples, what will happen is that right-leaning states (such as Ohio) will instead restrict the legal priveleges and rights of married couples - i.e., no more tax breaks, requiring next of kin, rather than spouse, to make legal decisions regarding health care, etc... In effect, they would just be making it harder for married couples, without actually gaining any rights or recognition for themselves. Much like affirmative action, it could have a very detrimental effect on how gays are actually treated by the rest of society.
You're defeating your own points here. If a couple divorces, we don't recognize them as married. Thus, they lose the status of being married. Likewise, the fact that some may not desire exclusive access to their spouse does not deny the protection of exclusivity that marriage provides, and that most people desire. Those who enter into polygamous relationships do so with the understanding that their relationship is not a marriage. Hence, when a couple decides to get married, they do so with the mutual understanding that they belong to each other exclusively. If you allow the redefinition of marriage to whatever the couple decides, then it opens up the possibility that one spouse will later claim that a polygamous relationship was part of the original marriage covenant. OTOH, if you legally differentiate between married and polygamous couples, the cheating spouse cannot claim his or her adultery was a part of the original marriage covenant. The purpose of the strict definition of marriage is to provide honesty in relationships, rather than an attempt to prohibit certain kinds of relationships (many of which are already illegal irrespective of the definition of marriage in a particular state).
The legal meaning of marriage is important. Because marriage has a legal meaning, the nature of the relationship is preserved. This provides honesty and protection to the spouses and children. Consider what would happen if there was a movement to redefine murder, to say, the killing of a white person. Realistically, this is what the term murder means in this country - crimes against blacks and minorities are seldom solved. However, the fact that our judicial system often fails to provide justice doesn't mean that we should redefine the word murder to mean what is most commonly enforce in practice. Instead, we define it in ideal terms, because though we realize that our system is far from perfect, we always seek to uphold the ideal. To do otherwise would be unconscionable.
And thus, you have the same situation with marriage. Marriage is the ideal union of human beings. It does the best job of protecting and providing for the good of spouses, children, and society in general. Granted, we understand that their are those who won't get married because of emotional reasons, homosexual proclivity, and *gasp* even committment to a Higher Power. And there are those who cannot make the commitment that marriage requires, and get divorced. But these are those who fall short of the ideal - it is not a defect in marriage, but rather, that some people lack the ability to make the committment marriage requires. To some people, this is a defect. The problem is that gays continue to see their sexuality not as an indication they were meant for a higher calling than marriage, but rather that something is wrong with them. You see, gays, of all people, are the least forgiving of imperfections. The notion that their relationships is somehow less than ideal is so offensive to them that they would rather lie to themselves and society and call it marriage, than admit that something might be wrong with their approach to their sexuality.
But the truly ironic part is that if marriage is allowed to be defined by the couple, the acceptance of homosexuality and polygamy will be hampered. Instead of asking society to respect their relationships, gays are now asking that those relationships be called something they are not - marriage. They aren't fooling anyone; the implicit assumption in such a request is that the state of marriage is somehow more desirable, more ideal, than the state of being in a gay relationship.
Regardless, the state ahs no business deciding whether to recognize a right based on whether it will make them money.
If only I could convince them of that - I'd pay no taxes!
Whether or not you believe they have the right, the state does recognize relationships which are beneficial to its interests - for example, tax credits given for research, giving to charity, etc... I doubt the marriage debate will change any of this, as the practice is as old as this country.
From the standpoint of personal relationships, calling something marriage which isn't marriage is just plain dishonest. If the union of two gays was marriage, there would be no controversy. Instead, the crux of the issue is that gays want the respect that society affords marriage, without actually making the same committment and sacrifice that married couples do.
The binary union of one man and one woman solves several problems which other relationships cannot:
Parents have a natural affinity for their own offspring. Children have a natural affinity for their birth parents. Marriage provides the best solution - children have access to both parents, and both parents give their children full affection. This eliminates the "Your not my real father... " or "Why should I support *YOUR* kid..." types of situations.
Men and women desire exclusive access to their spouse - sexual, emotional, financial, mental, etc... Relationships with more than two people do not have the exclusivity privelege enjoyed by married couples. That is, one "spouse" will have to be shared by more than one of the other "spouses".
The couple as a whole makes more intellectually and emotionally balanced, and less self-centered decisions. The complementarity of the sexes forces the couple to consider both feminine and masculine points of view when making decisions. A relationship between two men could exist without any consideration of how their public decisions (i.e. voting, politics, charity, etc...) affect women. Likewise, the relationship of two women would be unlikely to create any sense of understanding or compassion for masculine points of view.
The union of man and woman usually produces offspring, and the raising of children provides a service essential to the future of the state. Unions of only men or only women do not have the procreative potential and do not provide the essential service of future generation to the state. This reason alone would be sufficient for the state to recognize a union of one man and one woman as distinct from civil unions for the purposes of law.
If marriage is whatever 2 people say it is, then how will the word mean anything?
The problem is that in the legal sphere, words have very specific meanings. They have to. Otherwise, it isn't possible for two people to communicate honestly. If I promised a woman I would marry her, and later have an affair with someone else, am I free to claim that I have done no wrong because adultery is consistent with my personal definition of marriage?
If you want to have civil unions, fine. But don't be dishonest about it. It isn't marriage. You may think it noble, but most of us do not, and most do want to distinguish between married and unmarried. The marriage between one man and one woman has a distinctly different character than the union of two men, or a man and a dog, or 3 women, etc...
Another example - suppose my daughter's personal definition of marriage is such that marriage occurs when a couple sleep together. If you slept with my daughter and left her, she'd be able to sue you for alimony, because, according to her personal definition, the two of you were married. You would now legally be obligated to support her.
If one can arbitrarily change the legal meaning of words, laws are pretty much useless.
Why not just link to the DHS terrorist database and prevent them from registering as well?
And, while we're at it, why not extend this to anyone who has ever, in their entire life, done something wrong. Contact the school board! (Given the antagonistic nature toward students, I'm sure most school boards would be more than willing to provide a list of names of "troublemakers").
The notion of a convict settling his debt to society with prison time is quickly becoming antiquated. How long before "Once a criminal, always a criminal" becomes the slogan of law enforcement? How long before forgiveness is a de facto criminal act?
I understand the intentions are good. But people do change. And some "sex offenders" are little more than drunks who got convicted of public urination, or streaking, etc...
And of course, *no one* would think of registering with a fake name. NEVER!
So I guess me being a good parent would be to keep my kids from the public library. Even if I supervise them, there's always the possibility that they'll encounter porn; sure, I can take it away after the fact, but that's not really acceptable to me either.
And people wonder why so many Americans don't believe in evolution... Is it any wonder, when in the name of free speech the libraries are made intolerable to the majority of America?
And we read that we are falling behind in science...
America will take the lead again when Libraries and schools become focused on learning, not pushing some unwanted social agenda.
Yes, but would you really want the federal government regulating the internet the same way they regulate tv and radio stations? Where simply having a reader post a foul mouthed reply could get you fined thousands of dollars?
Trying to usurp our government in order to have it become a surrogate parent for your children is unacceptable.
Hey, it's my government too. And my tax dollars. Why should my tax dollars go to support something that neither I, nor the majority of Americans, want?
It's not about surrogate parenting at all - it's a simple request that the Government refrain from interfering with us raising our children. It's that simple. We don't want the Government to step in as a surrogate parent, because they'd do something stupid, like, say, um, I don't know - exposing our children to porn? In this case, the Government is usurping the parent's ability to raise their children in the manner they see fit. It has nothing to do with whether or not adults can view porn on our dime (that's a separate issue, though very relevant.).
Your line of reasoning is fallacious; it's not as if pornography is a natural part of human existence. In fact, it is quite the opposite - normally, humans have sex, rather than merely fantasizing about it. Looking at pictures for arousal seems to imply that the viewer is somehow unable to enjoy natural sex - perhaps because they lack the social skills to acquire it, or perhaps because of some emotional difficulty with the opposite sex. We aren't trying to protect our children from sex, but rather from inaccurate portrayals of sex that will interfere with their later enjoyment of it.
And what right do you think you have to dictate how I raise my children? If a school cafeteria can serve kosher meals so as not to offend Jews, why can't a library refuse porn to the children of those who don't want them to have it? How does that interfere with your rights at all?
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From the other, more pressing issues that we should be dealing with. For example:
I could go on...
Anyway, Global Warming fanatics always bring up the negative aspects that it could produce, but not necessarily that it will. Indeed, anyone who is going to make 100 or 1000 year predictions on a few decades of data is foolish. We simply don't know. Regardless, does anyone ever bring up the possible benefits of global warming?
And these are just a few. The real question shouldn't be "is GW happening?", but, "Is it a bad thing?". It could be that preventing global warming would leave us with a worldwide shortage of food a few centuries from now. How are you going to feed 10 billion people?
can't replace the existing 200 billion lines of code.
Sure you can. A 20 line Perl script would probably work just as well.
And you can't maintain 200 billion lines of COBOL, either.
But seriously, COBOL is so verbose that the 200 billion lines of COBOL could probably be replaced by 100 million lines of C++ or Java. And it would be more maintainable. COBOL exists to keep programmers employed; consider what it provides for the programmer:
MULTIPLY HOURL-WAGE-IN-CENTS TIMES HOURS-LOGGED-FOR-THIS-EMPLOYEE-ONLY-NOT-INCLUDING
ADD TEMPORARY-SALARY-FOR-THIS-WEEK TO ONE-TIME-BONUS-FOR-SALARIED-EMPLOYEES-NOT-RECEIVI
MOVE BY NAME TMP-EMPLOYEE-SALARY-CALCULATION-WORKSHEET-STRUCTU
But I jest, of course. The truth is, most businesses are so afraid of moving away from COBOL that they'd rather continue to shell out premium salaries than take the risk of a failed migration. Kind of like a lot of Windows users - they'd like to try Linux, but are afraid of change. Well, I suppose you get what you deserve.
The caveat to this system is that it would need some pretty heavy networking, even if optimised, and there could be latency issues. Still, I like this idea better than a mainframe.
And this caveat kills the deal. The problem has always been that networks simply can't compete with the throughput of native devices. Consider this:
Yeah, a multiframe is a nice idea, but it just doesn't work for the IO intensive workloads of business.
And the interesting thing is that it will always be this way. The maximum throughput of a bus is inversely related to the length of the conduit. The internal busses of computers, whose max length is typically measured in centimeters, and typically have 16,32, or 64 data lines, will always be able to outperform the network type busses. For example, USB has one "data line". Ethernet has 4. EIDE has 16, and PCI 32. It comes down to a simple matter of math and physics, and no amount of technological progress will change this.
I would go farther than that and say that writing a correct program in any language is not trivial. While it is true that certain languages (like Java) limit the kinds of errors a programmer can make, they do nothing to limit the number of errors a programmer can make.
While I understand there are some languages more appropriate for solving certain types of problems, making a language programmer-proof is never a worthy goal. Usually, the attempt to make a "better COBOL" ends up evolving like this:
There's no silver bullet to solve stupidity, or lack of rigor, or any of the several management "problems" which lead to bad code. It seems that whenever a different paradigm is introduced with the explicit purpose of reducing programming mistakes, it always backfires. Witness COBOL, for example. Instead of making things easier for programmers, it created a mess of unmaintainable spaghetti code - as it was marketted not to the experienced, knowledgeable programmer - but rather, to businesses with the implicit assumption that secretaries would be writing code.
I think the problem is that some in the research community believe have a holier than thou complex when it comes to writing code. They assume programming errors can be eliminated by proper choice of language. In reality, the language used is the least relevant. My experience has led me to believe these are the top sources of program errors:
Programming is a skill, not a commodity. It requires knowledge, rigor, and discipline. We'll all be better off when business wakes up and recognizes this.
Does it boot from the SD/MMC card yet?
One of the last things I did was to make the board check for an SD card at startup, and boot from that. Failing to find a card, it would then default to the flash. (More or less like the original PC's would boot floppy by default, then HD). I don't think these scripts made it into the releases, but it wouldn't be too hard to do.
Um, it uses a Texas Instruments DM320, not an Intel StrongARM.
Neuros bought most of the video codecs and Linux BSP from a third party. How do I know? - I was an engineer for said third party, and wrote/developed a few of the modules for this platform. In fact, I'm intimately familiar with the video and audio playback code.
That said, I have a few comments:
The sound and video often get very out of sync and sometimes the video judders, or slows to get back to where it should be...[emphasis added]
First of all, I had not observed this at all when using a pristine source. We did recognize that our coping mechanisms would produce a similar result if the incoming source had missing frames or audio, etc...
In fact A/V sync was one of the enduring problems on which I worked during my tenure. Suffice to say, we chose to gradually pull audio and video back in sync when sync was lost because our clients complained that the alternative appeared too jittery. Unlike other vendors, we could present acceptable quality playback with as much as 1/4 of the frames missing from the input stream. Most other encoders/decoders would produce a noticeable, annoying frame-jitter whenever there was a loss of either audio or video.
But, aside from that, here are some more things the article failed to mention:
Hope this helps.
I do feel some connection to this project because I did a lot of work on this platform. Truth be told, I'm thinking of buying one just for sentimental reasons; unfortunately, my company didn't hand out samples. I do know quite a bit about the BSP, and would be happy to answer any questions regarding the platform that I can.
Why bother hitting it with a hammer or microwaving it when simply wrapping it in aluminum foil will do?
I hated that feature, too, but my sister loved it. She ended up keeping both and only using Word when it was specifically required.
So, if I understand this right: The executive branch believes it has a right to read our email, because we have no "Constitutional" expectation of privacy, but the White House can refuse to turn over emails to Congress, because, alas, email is private?
So, I guess the Constitution gets interpreted differently when the subject of an investigation is the President. Hmmm....
I'm one of those users you'd probably be on the fence about.
Granted, I don't install every toolbar and stupid web-widget available. That said, I routinely need to run software which IT doesn't have the time to approve and install. Fortunately, I'm usually able to install it myself, and know enough about the machine not to screw it up.
However, users like me aren't your problem. In fact, I'd go farther and say that users like the ones you describe aren't the real problem, either.
Your problem is with the Windows OS model:
That even Microsoft itself has allowed its security certificates to lapse in the past, I don't think this is going to mean much. As soon as the address bar goes white when getting updates from microsoft.com, people will start to ignore it.
Besides, the user sophisticated enough to notice the difference probably won't care - by now, he's already got a set of favorite bargain sites, and when their address bar stays white, he'll just assume they're too cheap to buy the MS cert. After all, how *do* they undercut the competition?
And I'm guessing that most people - if they notice at all - will not be any more cautious. After all, that's what they bought anti-virus for, right? I'd be willing to bet that the average user believes AV software protects them from everything bad that could happen when using a computer.
Kind of odd - my sister is a graduate student in Biology. A few years ago, I set up Open Office on her computer.
A few months ago, I got a call. She had a little extra money, and decided to buy MS Office from the school bookstore - thinking that she'd finally moved out of the "I'm poor so I need free software" stage. She installed it - and now she calls me, asking me why it doesn't do automatic word completion. I told her, that's just something Microsoft doesn't do. Now she thinks MS is stupid. Of course, she uses Power Point because OO.org never did achieve full compatibility, but she's a little bit wiser about the state of software than she used to be.
She doesn't care what she runs, as long as it works. Same for my other sister - she used a RedHat based laptop for several semesters because she didn't have the money for Windows. I never received any support calls from her until the laptop finally died (hardware failure).
Do you know why geeks install pirated copies of Windows? It's the only way they can get the Hot Chick(TM) to call them back...
When the federal government stops using Microsoft Windows. There hasn't been a Windows release to date that didn't include some back door for a Terrorist Hacker(TM). If they were so serious about security that they won't publish this report, you'd think they would have at least considered the security of their own computer systems.
Or, more likely, it has nothing to do with national security, and everything to do with corporate protectionism.
Maybe the real intent of this campaign is to keep Canadian citizens distracted from the real issues facing their country. Or perhaps to see just many rights people are willing to surrender in the name of fighting _____________.
I still don't understand the concept behind making images illegal. Granted, someone who wants to look at this kind of stuff might have a really messed up sense of morality, and probably reality as well, but I don't see how this is a legal issue before there is an actual victim. I would think that the kind of depravity which would cause someone to seek out such images would be better handled by the Church than the law, as it seems to me that this is more of a spiritual and emotional problem than a legal one. I just don't see how the threat of jail time is going to fix someone's dirty obsession.
OTOH, this probably does not have anything to do with the question at hand, and is instead a proxy for those who want to control the population by making certain thoughts criminal. This issue would be merely the test bed for effective means of thought control, a legal means of establishing the validity of thought crime. If, by using an emotionally charged subject, they can establish a legal equivalence of the crime, and merely thinking about it, then it paves the way to the extension of making political crimes subject to the same kind of enforcement as well.
If you think about it, the above dialog applies equally well to both child pornography and terrorism.
And look where it got them. In the late 90's, early 2000's, HP (among others) produced printers that could print a perfect image of a dollar bill. And counterfeiters started using them. HP had to (or rather, was *requested* to) modify their printer software to print yellow dots on the bill, so that it could be recognized as fake.
Ah, but that's a matter of rights, not of the definition of marriage.
For example, an unmarried man or woman could assume legal guardianship of a minor, and have all of the rights and responsibilities associated with the child's natural parents. However, he or she would be known as the child's guardian, not the parent.
Now, interestingly, we could apply this same logic to law: we could have guardianship of another granted by either marriage (implicit), or a "domestic order" (explicit). In either case, the rights and legal recognition would be the same, but there's no dishonesty involved about the nature and purpose of the relationship. There's no need to redefine the word marriage.
Besides, suppose that the gays are successful in their propaganda crusade. I predict that instead of offering increased rights for gay couples, what will happen is that right-leaning states (such as Ohio) will instead restrict the legal priveleges and rights of married couples - i.e., no more tax breaks, requiring next of kin, rather than spouse, to make legal decisions regarding health care, etc... In effect, they would just be making it harder for married couples, without actually gaining any rights or recognition for themselves. Much like affirmative action, it could have a very detrimental effect on how gays are actually treated by the rest of society.
You're defeating your own points here. If a couple divorces, we don't recognize them as married. Thus, they lose the status of being married. Likewise, the fact that some may not desire exclusive access to their spouse does not deny the protection of exclusivity that marriage provides, and that most people desire. Those who enter into polygamous relationships do so with the understanding that their relationship is not a marriage. Hence, when a couple decides to get married, they do so with the mutual understanding that they belong to each other exclusively. If you allow the redefinition of marriage to whatever the couple decides, then it opens up the possibility that one spouse will later claim that a polygamous relationship was part of the original marriage covenant. OTOH, if you legally differentiate between married and polygamous couples, the cheating spouse cannot claim his or her adultery was a part of the original marriage covenant. The purpose of the strict definition of marriage is to provide honesty in relationships, rather than an attempt to prohibit certain kinds of relationships (many of which are already illegal irrespective of the definition of marriage in a particular state).
The legal meaning of marriage is important. Because marriage has a legal meaning, the nature of the relationship is preserved. This provides honesty and protection to the spouses and children. Consider what would happen if there was a movement to redefine murder, to say, the killing of a white person. Realistically, this is what the term murder means in this country - crimes against blacks and minorities are seldom solved. However, the fact that our judicial system often fails to provide justice doesn't mean that we should redefine the word murder to mean what is most commonly enforce in practice. Instead, we define it in ideal terms, because though we realize that our system is far from perfect, we always seek to uphold the ideal. To do otherwise would be unconscionable.
And thus, you have the same situation with marriage. Marriage is the ideal union of human beings. It does the best job of protecting and providing for the good of spouses, children, and society in general. Granted, we understand that their are those who won't get married because of emotional reasons, homosexual proclivity, and *gasp* even committment to a Higher Power. And there are those who cannot make the commitment that marriage requires, and get divorced. But these are those who fall short of the ideal - it is not a defect in marriage, but rather, that some people lack the ability to make the committment marriage requires. To some people, this is a defect. The problem is that gays continue to see their sexuality not as an indication they were meant for a higher calling than marriage, but rather that something is wrong with them. You see, gays, of all people, are the least forgiving of imperfections. The notion that their relationships is somehow less than ideal is so offensive to them that they would rather lie to themselves and society and call it marriage, than admit that something might be wrong with their approach to their sexuality.
But the truly ironic part is that if marriage is allowed to be defined by the couple, the acceptance of homosexuality and polygamy will be hampered. Instead of asking society to respect their relationships, gays are now asking that those relationships be called something they are not - marriage. They aren't fooling anyone; the implicit assumption in such a request is that the state of marriage is somehow more desirable, more ideal, than the state of being in a gay relationship.
If only I could convince them of that - I'd pay no taxes!
Whether or not you believe they have the right, the state does recognize relationships which are beneficial to its interests - for example, tax credits given for research, giving to charity, etc... I doubt the marriage debate will change any of this, as the practice is as old as this country.
From the standpoint of personal relationships, calling something marriage which isn't marriage is just plain dishonest. If the union of two gays was marriage, there would be no controversy. Instead, the crux of the issue is that gays want the respect that society affords marriage, without actually making the same committment and sacrifice that married couples do.
The binary union of one man and one woman solves several problems which other relationships cannot:
If marriage is whatever 2 people say it is, then how will the word mean anything?
The problem is that in the legal sphere, words have very specific meanings. They have to. Otherwise, it isn't possible for two people to communicate honestly. If I promised a woman I would marry her, and later have an affair with someone else, am I free to claim that I have done no wrong because adultery is consistent with my personal definition of marriage?
If you want to have civil unions, fine. But don't be dishonest about it. It isn't marriage. You may think it noble, but most of us do not, and most do want to distinguish between married and unmarried. The marriage between one man and one woman has a distinctly different character than the union of two men, or a man and a dog, or 3 women, etc...
Another example - suppose my daughter's personal definition of marriage is such that marriage occurs when a couple sleep together. If you slept with my daughter and left her, she'd be able to sue you for alimony, because, according to her personal definition, the two of you were married. You would now legally be obligated to support her.
If one can arbitrarily change the legal meaning of words, laws are pretty much useless.
Why not just link to the DHS terrorist database and prevent them from registering as well?
And, while we're at it, why not extend this to anyone who has ever, in their entire life, done something wrong. Contact the school board! (Given the antagonistic nature toward students, I'm sure most school boards would be more than willing to provide a list of names of "troublemakers").
The notion of a convict settling his debt to society with prison time is quickly becoming antiquated. How long before "Once a criminal, always a criminal" becomes the slogan of law enforcement? How long before forgiveness is a de facto criminal act?
I understand the intentions are good. But people do change. And some "sex offenders" are little more than drunks who got convicted of public urination, or streaking, etc...
And of course, *no one* would think of registering with a fake name. NEVER!
So I guess me being a good parent would be to keep my kids from the public library. Even if I supervise them, there's always the possibility that they'll encounter porn; sure, I can take it away after the fact, but that's not really acceptable to me either.
And people wonder why so many Americans don't believe in evolution... Is it any wonder, when in the name of free speech the libraries are made intolerable to the majority of America?
And we read that we are falling behind in science...
America will take the lead again when Libraries and schools become focused on learning, not pushing some unwanted social agenda.
Yes, but would you really want the federal government regulating the internet the same way they regulate tv and radio stations? Where simply having a reader post a foul mouthed reply could get you fined thousands of dollars?
Trying to usurp our government in order to have it become a surrogate parent for your children is unacceptable.
Hey, it's my government too. And my tax dollars. Why should my tax dollars go to support something that neither I, nor the majority of Americans, want?
It's not about surrogate parenting at all - it's a simple request that the Government refrain from interfering with us raising our children. It's that simple. We don't want the Government to step in as a surrogate parent, because they'd do something stupid, like, say, um, I don't know - exposing our children to porn? In this case, the Government is usurping the parent's ability to raise their children in the manner they see fit. It has nothing to do with whether or not adults can view porn on our dime (that's a separate issue, though very relevant.).
Your line of reasoning is fallacious; it's not as if pornography is a natural part of human existence. In fact, it is quite the opposite - normally, humans have sex, rather than merely fantasizing about it. Looking at pictures for arousal seems to imply that the viewer is somehow unable to enjoy natural sex - perhaps because they lack the social skills to acquire it, or perhaps because of some emotional difficulty with the opposite sex. We aren't trying to protect our children from sex, but rather from inaccurate portrayals of sex that will interfere with their later enjoyment of it.
And what right do you think you have to dictate how I raise my children? If a school cafeteria can serve kosher meals so as not to offend Jews, why can't a library refuse porn to the children of those who don't want them to have it? How does that interfere with your rights at all?