That's because you misunderstand how UAC works. An Administrator under Vista only means that they are able to run software as an Administrator. By default, all software is still run as a Standard user (unless give explicit permission by the administrator). The best analogy of an Administrator to the unix world is just a regular user who belongs to the wheel group.
That is no longer true. Windows Vista & 7 both default to a limited user, not admin. I've been using Linux for my OS for 8 or so years, but you gotta give credit where credit is due.
Easy, if someone wants crop/scale/adjust some images, then they want some sort of image manipulation program. Say 3 options they run across are:
Photoshop - $700
Paint.NET - Free (OSS)
GIMP - Free (OSS)
Photoshop clearly has more features, but the average person also won't use most of them and would not pay $700 for it. Obviously it would make sense to use GIMP or Paint.NET. Now, when piracy comes into the equation, the comparison becomes:
Photoshop - Free
Paint.NET - Free
GIMP - Free
Paint.NET and GIMP kind of lose their appeal, don't they? Piracy hurts both free and proprietary software.
Of course, hindsight is always 20/20 and though Iran is now using their filters to essentially stop all outward communication, I'm sure that was not the initial sell to Nokia. There are a number of countries that heavily filter Internet traffic that the US deals with (eg. China and Saudi Arabia). Even in the States, Australia and the UK, such measures have been proposed as an attempt to "protect the children." Now that the shit has hit the fan in Iran, its all of a sudden a super bad thing and "someone must pay!!!" It is entirely stupid to punish Nokia for something that it could not predict. Can we learn from this? Absolutely, but punishing Nokia doesn't do anything, it is simply the easy way out. The hard work would be talking it out with other countries and trying to set up international agreements barring sales of this type of software (I would hope, just in general, no exceptions...).
I know the feeling. When I started weight lifting I was 185lbs and now... I'm still 185lbs. However, the difference between before and after is night and day.
Aside from the fact that even the summary says the study correct for physical activity, BMI is just weight normalized among height/gender. It may not be as good as body fat %, but its a load better then just weight. That said, BMI is still a good measure of the fat for the population. Your average person does a light amount of exercise. I'd say, the very active people are outmatched by the sedentary people. Given BMI accounts for the average, the sedentary people, who have a high fat:muscle ratio compared to a normal person, probably make up for the very active people who have a high muscle:fat ratio. In other words, for every guy who has 5 lbs more muscle then a normal guy of the same weight, there is probably a guy who has 5 lbs less muscle then a guy of normal weight. It's also a hella lot harder to put muscle on then take it off...
But when Google did it with AP's content (content was published publicly on internet, Google attributed the source to AP and Google was making a profit), AP claimed it as copyright infringement and Google paid for licenses to use their content (though it didn't go to court). This is the same situation; content published on internet, paper attributes source to girl, news paper makes a profit. So... the difference is?
Because this are the only two options, of course. OSS is not primarily about good software or hating M$ or Appl€. It's about public knowledge, education and empowerment of the user.
True, I did not mean to insinuate there are only 2 types of people. Especially since I fall into neither groups. I was just intending to point out that a lot of free software can easily compete with proprietary software based on its quality alone.
Yeah, I am allowed to stream content, though we aren't allowed to IM. A few people here stream internet radio (in an office of ~15), there are no bandwidth issues. What are the legal complications with streaming music from last.fm though?
I'm in Canada and opted to pay the $3/month, considering I listen to it all day at work. Depending on your listening habits, you might want to consider subscribing.
Your examples are kind of unfortunate - a quick Google shows up an applet for calculating an alpha hull that dates from 1997. Much of the literature is even older than that. I'm not going to take the time to track it back all the way, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if the concept didn't date from at least as long ago as the 80s, perhaps under different names.
I was not attempting to provide current examples, otherwise I would not have used either of those. However, most useful algorithms for alpha-hulls were developed in the 90s. Sub-linear time geometric algorithms would be an example of a newer research area, which has come about due to massive amounts of data that is now required to be analyzed that simply didn't exist in the 80s.
Even so, can you name a widely deployed software package that makes critical use of an alpha hull algorithm? Two? Three?
Alpha-hulls are used widely in molecular modeling software. Take your pick of which one.
Sure, in some areas there has been a lot of development. Graphics is a good one. But in general I don't think it's wrong to say that it is "generally true for all [widely deployed] software" that "just about every important thing we do... was thought of by 1980."
OK... So,
"Just about every important thing we do in software was thought of by 1980." == "generally true for all [widely deployed] software" that "just about every important thing we do... was thought of by 1980."
That is stretching the OP's intention a LOT, not a little. Sorry. He was talking about important software, not widely deployed software. Software certainly does not need to be "widely" deployed to be important. I'd say the software that is analyzing medical images is important, but probably not widely deployed by your definition.
By "not on the desktop," I mean in the DB arena, data mining, servers, gaming, hardware of all sorts, etc. My particular field is computational geometry. It's hard to find a practical purpose for many of the algorithms on the desktop, since they have no use there. The average desktop user simply doesn't have good reason to compute point depth or alpha-hulls. That, however, does not mean they are not important.
And, seriously, once or twice in a lab? If it is a software implementation, you can copy it and run it elsewhere too. That's the beauty of computers (and why research moves so fast).
Just about every important thing we do in software was thought of by 1980.
As a grad student in CS, whose research is in algorithms, I cannot stress how wrong you are. CS research is very fast paced. You'd be amazed at some of the stuff that is published in the last year, let alone the last 10 or 20. Just because you don't see it on your desktop, doesn't mean it isn't there.
Yep. I think some people just need to realize that there are lots of people that use OSS simply because it is good software and not because we are zealots that hate Microsoft or Apple or whatever.
Why point a device at a manual and watch the diagram? Why not watch the diagram on the device?
The tech is NOWHERE near being able to take a random 3D diagram to explode, nor will it ever be.
There is information lost in the 2D diagram.
Of course, that wouldn't make sense. The 3D model comes from somewhere else (which someone designed). Perhaps there is an RFID chip in the manual where your phone can go off and request the models/whatever that go along with the book, download them, then display them as you go (without you ever noticing a thing).
If we're making diagrams with extra information for the reader (such as a different angle, or a colored height map or occlusion info), why not just make the fucking 3D diagram itself?
Perhaps because you can make it easier to access. Especially if its just additional information that is more conveniently (and usually) accessed in hardcopy form, like a newspaper or a car manual.
It's a neat gimmick, but it's just that. They looked at a newspaper and got... a dancing goober? A video? Why the fuck wouldn't I just go to the content directly if I had access to it?
Because you have the content in your hands. The "extra" info is just that, extra. Or, may be you don't have access to it. May be it gets the information locally. Who knows. Also, not everyone wants to read a newspaper on a screen, but don't mind looking at their iPhone for a minute for some extra shit, like a vid or something.
while the game's 'maps' are generated by pointing the phone's camera (in this case 5MP) at a 2D drawing/printout lying on a table.
So it takes a picture of a map and makes a... map?
The end result is a 3D world which seems to spring forth in real time, with buildings popping up as players move around the game 'map.'
I've seen this before and it was nothing but a poorly executed gimmick.
You are seriously underestimating this. Technically, it would appear it recognizes a 2d image in 3d space, positions and orients it in that 3d space and then can displays some 3D model/animation associated with that picture. Yeah, not a technical miracle, but the biggest marvel is not what it does, but the fact it does it cheaply (processing power) and does it well.
I think their goal is to bring AR to the masses. It has a lot of applications, certainly outside of games. Did you watch the demo of them looking at the newspaper? Enhancing printed media is definitely a cool application. Imagine being able to hold your iPhone over your car manual and watch as a 3D diagram of a transmission explodes and reassembles itself. And the killer part of this is that it is running on a chip designed for phones; in other words, this is NOT one of those techs that you probably won't ever see in the real world. The demo shows it running well on a chip designed for the smart phones of TODAY. It will only take one killer app (probably not a game) and "AR" could be on millions of people's phones within a week.
as well as some tax on blank media since it COULD be used for illegal copies and such, and I would assume there is more BS like that.
Yeah, we pay ~$0.20 per CD in tax. However, we don't have courts awarding record companies $2m from a single citizen who shared 24 songs. Not sure which BS I would rather subscribe to.
It would actually go up by a factor of 8, apparently. The summary mentions that it would provide 40x our current consumption of electricity and 5x our current total energy consumption (that includes fossil fuels).
An integral part of that game you shelled out for is unlocking achievements. If you just want to have some quick fun, there is tons of games out there that will let you do that. However, if you buy a game that is intended to appeal to a hardcore gamer, someone who enjoys that effort-reward system, then don't be shocked if it requires effort to get reward. You shelled out the money for a game, first and foremost, not the content. It's. Just. A. Game. They are meant to be fun and different people have different definitions of fun. If you don't enjoy a game for what it is, then don't buy it.
If you are the type of gamer that feels they must unlock and earn everything, that is perfectly fine. However, all gamers are not like you. I have a day job that's 8-10 hours a day. I have friends that want to go out into the real world for drinking, driving fast cars, golf, shooting, pranking, talking with girls, more than talking with girls, and generally being social while not being behind a headset or a controller. This leaves a small amount of time for me to play video games, and, consequently, cuts into my ability to unlock things.
You seem to hold the classic stereotype that people who enjoy the effort-reward system in video games are loners that live in a basement. I have a full-time professional job that I enjoy. I am also looking forward to finishing my M.Sc. I am engaged and can pay off my bills. I too, have friends (shocker, I know) that I see far too often. I play golf once a week and work out 5 times a week. I also really enjoyed playing Neverwinter Nights and Rockband. I enjoy games like the GP and would wager that I have less free-time then you. If I get 4h of free-time and feel like playing a video game, then I want to play one that I enjoy, hopefully without being judged.
If I actually care about how something looks or need to include any sort of graphics, tables, charts, etc, I don't even bother with word processors and just use LaTeX.
Slashdot Mirror
That's because you misunderstand how UAC works. An Administrator under Vista only means that they are able to run software as an Administrator. By default, all software is still run as a Standard user (unless give explicit permission by the administrator). The best analogy of an Administrator to the unix world is just a regular user who belongs to the wheel group.
That is no longer true. Windows Vista & 7 both default to a limited user, not admin. I've been using Linux for my OS for 8 or so years, but you gotta give credit where credit is due.
Easy, if someone wants crop/scale/adjust some images, then they want some sort of image manipulation program. Say 3 options they run across are:
Photoshop clearly has more features, but the average person also won't use most of them and would not pay $700 for it. Obviously it would make sense to use GIMP or Paint.NET. Now, when piracy comes into the equation, the comparison becomes:
Paint.NET and GIMP kind of lose their appeal, don't they? Piracy hurts both free and proprietary software.
Of course, hindsight is always 20/20 and though Iran is now using their filters to essentially stop all outward communication, I'm sure that was not the initial sell to Nokia. There are a number of countries that heavily filter Internet traffic that the US deals with (eg. China and Saudi Arabia). Even in the States, Australia and the UK, such measures have been proposed as an attempt to "protect the children." Now that the shit has hit the fan in Iran, its all of a sudden a super bad thing and "someone must pay!!!" It is entirely stupid to punish Nokia for something that it could not predict. Can we learn from this? Absolutely, but punishing Nokia doesn't do anything, it is simply the easy way out. The hard work would be talking it out with other countries and trying to set up international agreements barring sales of this type of software (I would hope, just in general, no exceptions...).
I know the feeling. When I started weight lifting I was 185lbs and now... I'm still 185lbs. However, the difference between before and after is night and day.
Aside from the fact that even the summary says the study correct for physical activity, BMI is just weight normalized among height/gender. It may not be as good as body fat %, but its a load better then just weight. That said, BMI is still a good measure of the fat for the population. Your average person does a light amount of exercise. I'd say, the very active people are outmatched by the sedentary people. Given BMI accounts for the average, the sedentary people, who have a high fat:muscle ratio compared to a normal person, probably make up for the very active people who have a high muscle:fat ratio. In other words, for every guy who has 5 lbs more muscle then a normal guy of the same weight, there is probably a guy who has 5 lbs less muscle then a guy of normal weight. It's also a hella lot harder to put muscle on then take it off...
But when Google did it with AP's content (content was published publicly on internet, Google attributed the source to AP and Google was making a profit), AP claimed it as copyright infringement and Google paid for licenses to use their content (though it didn't go to court). This is the same situation; content published on internet, paper attributes source to girl, news paper makes a profit. So... the difference is?
Because this are the only two options, of course. OSS is not primarily about good software or hating M$ or Appl€. It's about public knowledge, education and empowerment of the user.
True, I did not mean to insinuate there are only 2 types of people. Especially since I fall into neither groups. I was just intending to point out that a lot of free software can easily compete with proprietary software based on its quality alone.
Yeah, I am allowed to stream content, though we aren't allowed to IM. A few people here stream internet radio (in an office of ~15), there are no bandwidth issues. What are the legal complications with streaming music from last.fm though?
With the same restrictions as Pandora; it is only available in some countries (eg. not Canada).
I'm in Canada and opted to pay the $3/month, considering I listen to it all day at work. Depending on your listening habits, you might want to consider subscribing.
OTOH, Last.fm clients are available for most popular media players on Linux (Amarok & RhythmBox, for example).
But don't you ever think about switching services or stop paying them, or you'll lose your music.
Your examples are kind of unfortunate - a quick Google shows up an applet for calculating an alpha hull that dates from 1997. Much of the literature is even older than that. I'm not going to take the time to track it back all the way, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if the concept didn't date from at least as long ago as the 80s, perhaps under different names.
I was not attempting to provide current examples, otherwise I would not have used either of those. However, most useful algorithms for alpha-hulls were developed in the 90s. Sub-linear time geometric algorithms would be an example of a newer research area, which has come about due to massive amounts of data that is now required to be analyzed that simply didn't exist in the 80s.
Even so, can you name a widely deployed software package that makes critical use of an alpha hull algorithm? Two? Three?
Alpha-hulls are used widely in molecular modeling software. Take your pick of which one.
Sure, in some areas there has been a lot of development. Graphics is a good one. But in general I don't think it's wrong to say that it is "generally true for all [widely deployed] software" that "just about every important thing we do... was thought of by 1980."
OK... So,
"Just about every important thing we do in software was thought of by 1980." == "generally true for all [widely deployed] software" that "just about every important thing we do... was thought of by 1980."
That is stretching the OP's intention a LOT, not a little. Sorry. He was talking about important software, not widely deployed software. Software certainly does not need to be "widely" deployed to be important. I'd say the software that is analyzing medical images is important, but probably not widely deployed by your definition.
By "not on the desktop," I mean in the DB arena, data mining, servers, gaming, hardware of all sorts, etc. My particular field is computational geometry. It's hard to find a practical purpose for many of the algorithms on the desktop, since they have no use there. The average desktop user simply doesn't have good reason to compute point depth or alpha-hulls. That, however, does not mean they are not important.
And, seriously, once or twice in a lab? If it is a software implementation, you can copy it and run it elsewhere too. That's the beauty of computers (and why research moves so fast).
Just about every important thing we do in software was thought of by 1980.
As a grad student in CS, whose research is in algorithms, I cannot stress how wrong you are. CS research is very fast paced. You'd be amazed at some of the stuff that is published in the last year, let alone the last 10 or 20. Just because you don't see it on your desktop, doesn't mean it isn't there.
Yep. I think some people just need to realize that there are lots of people that use OSS simply because it is good software and not because we are zealots that hate Microsoft or Apple or whatever.
Why point a device at a manual and watch the diagram? Why not watch the diagram on the device?
The tech is NOWHERE near being able to take a random 3D diagram to explode, nor will it ever be. There is information lost in the 2D diagram.
Of course, that wouldn't make sense. The 3D model comes from somewhere else (which someone designed). Perhaps there is an RFID chip in the manual where your phone can go off and request the models/whatever that go along with the book, download them, then display them as you go (without you ever noticing a thing).
If we're making diagrams with extra information for the reader (such as a different angle, or a colored height map or occlusion info), why not just make the fucking 3D diagram itself?
Perhaps because you can make it easier to access. Especially if its just additional information that is more conveniently (and usually) accessed in hardcopy form, like a newspaper or a car manual.
It's a neat gimmick, but it's just that. They looked at a newspaper and got... a dancing goober? A video? Why the fuck wouldn't I just go to the content directly if I had access to it?
Because you have the content in your hands. The "extra" info is just that, extra. Or, may be you don't have access to it. May be it gets the information locally. Who knows. Also, not everyone wants to read a newspaper on a screen, but don't mind looking at their iPhone for a minute for some extra shit, like a vid or something.
while the game's 'maps' are generated by pointing the phone's camera (in this case 5MP) at a 2D drawing/printout lying on a table.
So it takes a picture of a map and makes a ... map?
The end result is a 3D world which seems to spring forth in real time, with buildings popping up as players move around the game 'map.'
I've seen this before and it was nothing but a poorly executed gimmick.
You are seriously underestimating this. Technically, it would appear it recognizes a 2d image in 3d space, positions and orients it in that 3d space and then can displays some 3D model/animation associated with that picture. Yeah, not a technical miracle, but the biggest marvel is not what it does, but the fact it does it cheaply (processing power) and does it well.
I think their goal is to bring AR to the masses. It has a lot of applications, certainly outside of games. Did you watch the demo of them looking at the newspaper? Enhancing printed media is definitely a cool application. Imagine being able to hold your iPhone over your car manual and watch as a 3D diagram of a transmission explodes and reassembles itself. And the killer part of this is that it is running on a chip designed for phones; in other words, this is NOT one of those techs that you probably won't ever see in the real world. The demo shows it running well on a chip designed for the smart phones of TODAY. It will only take one killer app (probably not a game) and "AR" could be on millions of people's phones within a week.
as well as some tax on blank media since it COULD be used for illegal copies and such, and I would assume there is more BS like that.
Yeah, we pay ~$0.20 per CD in tax. However, we don't have courts awarding record companies $2m from a single citizen who shared 24 songs. Not sure which BS I would rather subscribe to.
It would actually go up by a factor of 8, apparently. The summary mentions that it would provide 40x our current consumption of electricity and 5x our current total energy consumption (that includes fossil fuels).
* With respect to ringtones, ASCAP seeks to license the wireless carriers' transmissions of your music. ASCAP is not seeking to charge consumers.
Because, surely, the wireless carriers would never think to recoup that cost by charging more. I think somebody really doesn't get basic economics.
An integral part of that game you shelled out for is unlocking achievements. If you just want to have some quick fun, there is tons of games out there that will let you do that. However, if you buy a game that is intended to appeal to a hardcore gamer, someone who enjoys that effort-reward system, then don't be shocked if it requires effort to get reward. You shelled out the money for a game, first and foremost, not the content. It's. Just. A. Game. They are meant to be fun and different people have different definitions of fun. If you don't enjoy a game for what it is, then don't buy it.
If you are the type of gamer that feels they must unlock and earn everything, that is perfectly fine. However, all gamers are not like you. I have a day job that's 8-10 hours a day. I have friends that want to go out into the real world for drinking, driving fast cars, golf, shooting, pranking, talking with girls, more than talking with girls, and generally being social while not being behind a headset or a controller. This leaves a small amount of time for me to play video games, and, consequently, cuts into my ability to unlock things.
You seem to hold the classic stereotype that people who enjoy the effort-reward system in video games are loners that live in a basement. I have a full-time professional job that I enjoy. I am also looking forward to finishing my M.Sc. I am engaged and can pay off my bills. I too, have friends (shocker, I know) that I see far too often. I play golf once a week and work out 5 times a week. I also really enjoyed playing Neverwinter Nights and Rockband. I enjoy games like the GP and would wager that I have less free-time then you. If I get 4h of free-time and feel like playing a video game, then I want to play one that I enjoy, hopefully without being judged.
It looks like cheating if there's only N logical ways to write something and N+1 students in the class.
Heh, someone paid attention in their intro to proofs course =] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeonhole_principle
If I actually care about how something looks or need to include any sort of graphics, tables, charts, etc, I don't even bother with word processors and just use LaTeX.