Yeah. In Chile we laugh at you California people making big deal of 7.0 magnitude earthquakes. Here those are called aftershocks.
For the record -- I was 60 miles from the epicenter of the 8.8 on February 27th. The quake wasn't that bad, but the aftershocks every 15 minutes for the next 3 days got tiring.
Uh. No, that language has been around since Windows 95, when they promised us that it was the "fastest, most secure version of Windows yet" and that everything we do "will be more fun!"
I bought two Acer Eee Pcs here in Chile, both came with XP Starter Edition. Just for giggles, I installed it on an old PC. Not only is it limited to three apps at a time (the NVIDIA app doesn't seem to count, but trying to configure things through the control panel is sometimes dicey), but video resolution is limited to 1024x768 (since beginning computer users won't know what to do if the resolution is too great!).
All in all, I tend to agree that it's a crap product.
(the netbooks run Linux, of course..)
Re:Single provider and SOA?
on
The Zen of SOA
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
That's what SOA aims at: interchangeable components in systems. You're not crafting one big program, or complex of programs, from end-to-end, making it up as you go. You're building uniformly-structured and interchangeable components, and assembling them.
I'm a bit confused here... are you just taking random statements and claiming they prove your point because they sound similar?
I fail to see how my statement does that. Are you saying that because of possibility of errors in the control program, the proper best practices way is a huge series of if-statements?
Or are you saying that because of the possibility of errors in the hardware, the control program should be written as a series of if-statements?
In either of the above cases, perhaps if more engineers (software or computer) adopted Dijkstra's point of view, there would be less errors?
Furthermore does this "computer" ever use a cylical control structure to do anything?
I think you are missing his point, perhaps intentionally.
The vast majority of software is engineered - engineers are trying to get a specific outcome, they are not trying to calculate something.
Computer programs, he argues, are nothing more than long proofs. Each function you write is equivalent to a predicate in logical calculus, or a function in mathematics.
If you were only interested in outcome, you could write a program that multiplies two numbers together as a long series of "if" statements. But you'd most likely miss some possible values for inputs.
However, if you were interested in it being correct for all possible inputs, you would use the mathematical operation * or use a loop to calculate the correct answer.
I think that is the argument he is making and as a University professor, I tend to agree. I've seen some of my students test an array by using an if-statement for every single element of the array, where as a loop would have been infinitely more suitable.
Only one should be deemed correct. But if you adapt the "engineering" and "outcome" point of view, both are correct.
In some sense, all software is, in essence, analgous to the broken window. After a piece of software is created, any subsequent sales are equivalent to the broken window (due to the fact that exact digital copies can be had for practically nothing).
You can argue that software vendors have to recoup the cost of creation -- but ask yourself this: How many times have you bought the same piece of code, labeled as an "upgrade"?
To companies that produce stuff or even that sell services, buying software takes away from money they could use for reinvestment, or for paying profit to the shareholders. If they have software that does exactly what they want and costs them $0 to maintain then they are happy. If OSS software serves to help them achieve this ideal, then in this sense OSS is a race to zero, at least for the creator of said software. However there is a gain in profit for the creator of the product or service.
However, no commercial software product is exactly what a company wants or needs, there is always going to be some customization, some maintenance involved. This is new work, not old work that you are paying for again. Once you step away from the idea of the sale of software of a product, things take on a new light. No longer a broken window, companies are paying for time and knowledge.
So in that sense, it's not a race to zero. Software engineers will still be in demand.
Seriously - That's asking like is Ken Thompson still relevent, or Alan Turing still relevent. They may be alive or dead, but they've at least contributed something to the computing landscape. Unlike whiners like you or me who have done nothing but troll slashdot.
Brake == those things that you use to stop your car.
Break == stopping doing something for a time, or splitting something in two.
What's especially confusing about your post is that it almost makes sense using the second word, until you talk of "Why did I need to break? Was it to stop from hitting the car in front of me? "
You mean, like those people that support some version of gravity and those people that do not?
Or those people that support that Pi is 3.14... and those that believe Pi is 3? Or those people that believe that computers operate because there are tiny magic fairies inside them and those that do not?
I'm for relativism as much as the next guy, but you have to put your foot down somewhere. The lack of tolerance by the scientists is because the other side believes what they want to believe, contrary to all evidence otherwise. Present credible evidence that evolution doesn't work, and then scientists will start to take notice. However, the other side presents (for the most part) no evidence other than "I believe" to back up their argument.
It's kind of like someone jumping in front of a speeding car and saying "I don't believe in inertia and mass so this car will be able to stop before it hits me." Just because they believe, it doesn't make them right, and 99% of the time the evidence will prove them wrong. So if a certain belief system encourages this behavior, likely most rational people will recognize that belief system as flawed and react with intolerance.
A good interview with Will Wright that talks a little bit about Go.
Go, at it's heart, is a game of cellular automata. From the simple local rules incredible complexity emerges. To date there have been a few academic papers that deal with creating cellular automata rules for playing, but with little success. Very strong local play, but lousy global play.
I think the trick to a successful Go playing program is to harness the local cellular automata knowledge in a higher order algorithm. Perhaps to use the cellular automata to give likely next moves and then do a deep search on them.
Human Go players do this already -- reading, i.e. looking ahead involves players searching through likely play combinations to find the one with the most profit. They find the likely play combinations through a feel of shape or of other criteria, then narrow it down to see if their short list of play combinations works or does not work.
Build a big honking PC to sit off in a closet, or basement or somewhere far away where you can't hear it, then build a small, noiseless mini-ITX or smaller box that connects via gigabit ethernet and acts as a thin client. These have more than enough power to play music, dvds, etc local, and even surf locally. Most other apps get run off the server.. Even 100baseT is fast enough, but gigabit gives that extra little to make things seemless.
Best of both worlds... Unless you want to game, and then you buy a console..
Something always strikes me very odd about conversations about Second Life and their ilk here on Slashdot. Invariably someone decries the concept of buying "virtual goods" and renting "virtual property".
Let's step back a bit here... What is the difference between "software" and "a virtual shirt", or "digital music"? Are they not both just some pattern of ones and zeros? Sure, a virtual shirt only makes sense in terms of Second Life... But for me this is the same as buying digital music that can be played on some hardware device. Or buying software that can be run on some subset of computers.
Virtual land... Who would rent "virtual property"? What sense does that make? Perhaps we should ask all those that rent space for web pages?
That being said, I think Second Life is kinda daft in its implementation, but the concept is very very cool.
Interstingly enough, the people here (yes, I live in Chile) say they send all the good wine overseas and the dregs are used on local markets.
You are correct in that very good wine is available fairly cheaply here. Casillero del Diablo is good and reasonably priced. Cusiño Macul is another favorite of mine, especially the Don Luis Chardonnay. I have others that I like, but I'm too tired to remember their names right now..
Actually, Microsoft wanted to use the NT for consumers. As you said, it didn't have good DOS support. However, NT needed a mamoth machine at the time to run. That's why it got released for "servers" in the anticipation that they would be a bit beefier hardware.
Wolfram is a day late and a dollar short for the whole "creator of cellular automata" label.
Von Neumann was the first. Conway popularized the idea with the Game of Life. Wolfram just did an intensive study of 1-d CAs. The applicability of CAs to biological patterns has been known since the early days though.
As a user of Last.fm for a while now, I must say I quite enjoy the charts and the hookups to other users. I have the same problems as the author with its recommendations - but Last.fm seems to be aware of that problem too.
Users receive personalized recommendations based on what they've played and last.fm has implemented a cool little interface that lets you choose between how popular or obscure your recommendations. For me, that seems to cut down on the misplaced music genere problem and actually generates music that I might actually listen to.
The trick is to implement a similar filter for all recommendations, maybe in addition to a filter based on tags (which last.fm supports). I think the idea behind last.fm is good, it just needs to be tweaked a little bit.
Personally, I would like to know why their website keeps redirecting me to a different domain on every other link.
To date, just surfing that "one website", I've been redirected to gtxglobal.net, gtxc.org, gtxc.us, gtxc.tv, seemingly at random..
What's up with that? Anyway - This whole company just screams "fraud". I've worked with some fly-by-night operators in the past and this company fits with that whole modus operandi. They provide all sorts of buzz-word laden marketspeak about some product, but can you actually see the product in action? Absolutely not! It's "not available for individual consumers at this time" and we should "contact your solution provider and ask them about offering GTX Global Communicator"
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I have to say. This is absurd. I've been here since '98, '99. This is the worst I've seen it. Come on, some basic checking would be a start.
Maybe it's time to auction off my userid.. Though I don't know why anyone would want it. There's just no prestige anymore.
I live in Talca, so I share your dismay. I only realized how desensitized I was when I incorporated a 5.7 into my dream, but didn't wake up.
Y vamos La Roja!
Yeah. In Chile we laugh at you California people making big deal of 7.0 magnitude earthquakes. Here those are called aftershocks.
For the record -- I was 60 miles from the epicenter of the 8.8 on February 27th. The quake wasn't that bad, but the aftershocks every 15 minutes for the next 3 days got tiring.
Uh. No, that language has been around since Windows 95, when they promised us that it was the "fastest, most secure version of Windows yet" and that everything we do "will be more fun!"
I bought two Acer Eee Pcs here in Chile, both came with XP Starter Edition. Just for giggles, I installed it on an old PC. Not only is it limited to three apps at a time (the NVIDIA app doesn't seem to count, but trying to configure things through the control panel is sometimes dicey), but video resolution is limited to 1024x768 (since beginning computer users won't know what to do if the resolution is too great!).
All in all, I tend to agree that it's a crap product.
(the netbooks run Linux, of course..)
That's what SOA aims at: interchangeable components in systems. You're not crafting one big program, or complex of programs, from end-to-end, making it up as you go. You're building uniformly-structured and interchangeable components, and assembling them.
You mean... like Unix?
I'm a bit confused here... are you just taking random statements and claiming they prove your point because they sound similar?
I fail to see how my statement does that. Are you saying that because of possibility of errors in the control program, the proper best practices way is a huge series of if-statements?
Or are you saying that because of the possibility of errors in the hardware, the control program should be written as a series of if-statements?
In either of the above cases, perhaps if more engineers (software or computer) adopted Dijkstra's point of view, there would be less errors?
Furthermore does this "computer" ever use a cylical control structure to do anything?
I think you are missing his point, perhaps intentionally.
The vast majority of software is engineered - engineers are trying to get a specific outcome, they are not trying to calculate something.
Computer programs, he argues, are nothing more than long proofs. Each function you write is equivalent to a predicate in logical calculus, or a function in mathematics.
If you were only interested in outcome, you could write a program that multiplies two numbers together as a long series of "if" statements. But you'd most likely miss some possible values for inputs.
However, if you were interested in it being correct for all possible inputs, you would use the mathematical operation * or use a loop to calculate the correct answer.
I think that is the argument he is making and as a University professor, I tend to agree. I've seen some of my students test an array by using an if-statement for every single element of the array, where as a loop would have been infinitely more suitable.
Only one should be deemed correct. But if you adapt the "engineering" and "outcome" point of view, both are correct.
To not answer your question, Yes and no.
In some sense, all software is, in essence, analgous to the broken window. After a piece of software is created, any subsequent sales are equivalent to the broken window (due to the fact that exact digital copies can be had for practically nothing).
You can argue that software vendors have to recoup the cost of creation -- but ask yourself this: How many times have you bought the same piece of code, labeled as an "upgrade"?
To companies that produce stuff or even that sell services, buying software takes away from money they could use for reinvestment, or for paying profit to the shareholders. If they have software that does exactly what they want and costs them $0 to maintain then they are happy. If OSS software serves to help them achieve this ideal, then in this sense OSS is a race to zero, at least for the creator of said software. However there is a gain in profit for the creator of the product or service.
However, no commercial software product is exactly what a company wants or needs, there is always going to be some customization, some maintenance involved. This is new work, not old work that you are paying for again. Once you step away from the idea of the sale of software of a product, things take on a new light. No longer a broken window, companies are paying for time and knowledge.
So in that sense, it's not a race to zero. Software engineers will still be in demand.
Because he's not you.
Seriously - That's asking like is Ken Thompson still relevent, or Alan Turing still relevent. They may be alive or dead, but they've at least contributed something to the computing landscape. Unlike whiners like you or me who have done nothing but troll slashdot.
Brake == those things that you use to stop your car.
Break == stopping doing something for a time, or splitting something in two.
What's especially confusing about your post is that it almost makes sense using the second word, until you talk of "Why did I need to break? Was it to stop from hitting the car in front of me? "
You mean, like those people that support some version of gravity and those people that do not?
Or those people that support that Pi is 3.14... and those that believe Pi is 3? Or those people that believe that computers operate because there are tiny magic fairies inside them and those that do not?
I'm for relativism as much as the next guy, but you have to put your foot down somewhere. The lack of tolerance by the scientists is because the other side believes what they want to believe, contrary to all evidence otherwise. Present credible evidence that evolution doesn't work, and then scientists will start to take notice. However, the other side presents (for the most part) no evidence other than "I believe" to back up their argument.
It's kind of like someone jumping in front of a speeding car and saying "I don't believe in inertia and mass so this car will be able to stop before it hits me." Just because they believe, it doesn't make them right, and 99% of the time the evidence will prove them wrong. So if a certain belief system encourages this behavior, likely most rational people will recognize that belief system as flawed and react with intolerance.
A good interview with Will Wright that talks a little bit about Go.
Go, at it's heart, is a game of cellular automata. From the simple local rules incredible complexity emerges. To date there have been a few academic papers that deal with creating cellular automata rules for playing, but with little success. Very strong local play, but lousy global play.
I think the trick to a successful Go playing program is to harness the local cellular automata knowledge in a higher order algorithm. Perhaps to use the cellular automata to give likely next moves and then do a deep search on them.
Human Go players do this already -- reading, i.e. looking ahead involves players searching through likely play combinations to find the one with the most profit. They find the likely play combinations through a feel of shape or of other criteria, then narrow it down to see if their short list of play combinations works or does not work.
Actually, that would be trademarks.
Or you could do what I am doing..
Build a big honking PC to sit off in a closet, or basement or somewhere far away where you can't hear it, then build a small, noiseless mini-ITX or smaller box that connects via gigabit ethernet and acts as a thin client. These have more than enough power to play music, dvds, etc local, and even surf locally. Most other apps get run off the server.. Even 100baseT is fast enough, but gigabit gives that extra little to make things seemless.
Best of both worlds... Unless you want to game, and then you buy a console..
Something always strikes me very odd about conversations about Second Life and their ilk here on Slashdot. Invariably someone decries the concept of buying "virtual goods" and renting "virtual property".
Let's step back a bit here... What is the difference between "software" and "a virtual shirt", or "digital music"? Are they not both just some pattern of ones and zeros? Sure, a virtual shirt only makes sense in terms of Second Life... But for me this is the same as buying digital music that can be played on some hardware device. Or buying software that can be run on some subset of computers.
Virtual land... Who would rent "virtual property"? What sense does that make? Perhaps we should ask all those that rent space for web pages?
That being said, I think Second Life is kinda daft in its implementation, but the concept is very very cool.
Interstingly enough, the people here (yes, I live in Chile) say they send all the good wine overseas and the dregs are used on local markets.
You are correct in that very good wine is available fairly cheaply here. Casillero del Diablo is good and reasonably priced. Cusiño Macul is another favorite of mine, especially the Don Luis Chardonnay. I have others that I like, but I'm too tired to remember their names right now..
"British announce pilots for E-Voting" -- makes more sense then voting machines in cockpits.
Actually, Microsoft wanted to use the NT for consumers. As you said, it didn't have good DOS support. However, NT needed a mamoth machine at the time to run. That's why it got released for "servers" in the anticipation that they would be a bit beefier hardware.
Wolfram is a day late and a dollar short for the whole "creator of cellular automata" label.
Von Neumann was the first. Conway popularized the idea with the Game of Life. Wolfram just did an intensive study of 1-d CAs. The applicability of CAs to biological patterns has been known since the early days though.
Who needs winning when you can totally create your own landscapes with bombing runs.
Ahh. the countless hours spent, looping around, dropping my three bombs, then heading back to base to refuel. Those were the days.
As a user of Last.fm for a while now, I must say I quite enjoy the charts and the hookups to other users. I have the same problems as the author with its recommendations - but Last.fm seems to be aware of that problem too.
Users receive personalized recommendations based on what they've played and last.fm has implemented a cool little interface that lets you choose between how popular or obscure your recommendations. For me, that seems to cut down on the misplaced music genere problem and actually generates music that I might actually listen to.
The trick is to implement a similar filter for all recommendations, maybe in addition to a filter based on tags (which last.fm supports). I think the idea behind last.fm is good, it just needs to be tweaked a little bit.
Personally, I would like to know why their website keeps redirecting me to a different domain on every other link.
To date, just surfing that "one website", I've been redirected to gtxglobal.net, gtxc.org, gtxc.us, gtxc.tv, seemingly at random..
What's up with that?
Anyway - This whole company just screams "fraud". I've worked with some fly-by-night operators in the past and this company fits with that whole modus operandi. They provide all sorts of buzz-word laden marketspeak about some product, but can you actually see the product in action? Absolutely not! It's "not available for individual consumers at this time" and we should "contact your solution provider and ask them about offering GTX Global Communicator"
My what? Solution provider? Who the hell is that?
Damn straight.
How amusing. Moderated redundant on a duplicate story. Surely that counts for bonus points?