What's the accuracy of the current technology? 75-80%?
Depending on what spot of earth you live, simply assuming that it will rain/not rain gives you higher accuracy. Assuming that tomorrow will be the same as today is very accurate in a lot of places.
If on the other hand you have a program that in a very desertic region can predict rain with 10% of accuracy, I would argue that it is a superior method.
at that point I believe people will find themselves preferring these to dead-tree books, if only because they don't have to keep going out and buying new ones.
There are many reasons to go into a bookstore, and buying a book is actually only one of them. Besides, if you do not have to do an effort, then what's the value?
One of the concerns with all this is that people begin to take culture for granted. And then what's the use.
I do not believe that, given the volatility of the market, it is a good idea to give computers to kids. It would be much better to sell a subsidized & afordable stationary PC to those who can not afford a computer otherwise. And then let them do what they think is best with them. Complement this with _decent_ labs in school where they learn some programming and then you have a great thing. But it should not be on their desks when seeing biology class.
What I would fear with an approach as described is that a LOT of time and money would be wasted in systems that will basically suck and be worthless after some time. And kids would have yet another source of distraction.
Mathematicians still use paper, and I do not see how you could really improve an algebra class through the use of computers. Paper is incredibly convenient when writing symbols, and beside some slides and animations, the teacher is better of writing on the blackbord.
Publish information on the web. Ask them to write assinments on a word-prossesor and then print it. let them write email to the teachers and among them. A computer is a tool.
... the other half thinks schools should concentrate on reading, 'riting, 'rithmetic, and reducing class sizes.
Obviously, without reading, 'riting, 'rithmetic, you won't get far.
I do not think it will hold up in appeal. First of all, AOL aint no helpless dwarf. Second, it is definately a silly veredict. Germany has decent mechanisms to deal with this kind of situations and no interest whatsoever in really harming any branch of the IT industry. In fact, there is a huge discussion in germany on how to promote the sector.
And the court lies in Bavaria. This is a very right-winged state. A lot of these guys look like they are secretely envious at the Austrians for Haider. This people hate change and everything that is different. I do not think such a court ruling would have happened somewhere else.
"Why should I pay a $15 buck markup for some plastic disk? I am not buying the disk...I am buying the/music/.
You nailed it! But at the end you'd pay $13 for the music on a gratis medium. That is the way.
If you ever tried to make a decent recording of human-played music (guittars & drums & key-b & whatever), you know it involves money and time. Some time ago the standard RC figure was 'round 300 hours for a LP. And you need a good studio (implies $$$). Giving the material for free afterwards is simply absurd.
On the other hand, I really do not understand what people expect from the Napster thang. My bet is that on the long run this kind o' network would end up full of, er.., crap. If every shitty band around puts its mediocre tunes on it...
I'm beginning to think that the fundamental problem lies in the fact that you can do perfect copies of digital material. It looks like no matter how you turn things around, you cannot launch digital media without this hapening.
Quite frankly, I do not see a solution for this problem. If you plan to make money out of a piece of merchandise that anyone can duplicate at basically no cost, you are not having a sound biz model.
This does not seem to aply to open-source code, because what makes most money flow is tech support and distribution. For music it might not be such a big deal 'cos a lot of money can be made through live performances. But for movies I wonder.
There is a passage in the book ''The End Of Eternity'', by Asimov, where they mention a device that was capable of duplicating objects and thus destroyed a complete economy.
Some people feel that C++ is rather complex and hard to learn, and that a lot of wisdom is needed not to misuse/abuse its features and to avoid its pitfalls. In view of that, what is in your opinion the best way to teach C++? rmstar
O hell, they are going for the full ticket in controlling information. There is no other purpose for that than this, 'cos TEMPEST is not going to be blocked by that. They want to control it, and they want it badly.
Ok, I'm going to say something trying to understand the other side of the coin:
Artist, and by extension, companies that distribute works of art, are used to have a certain amount of control over their work. There are many reasons for that, and most have nothing to do with a future edition of the gestapo.
For instance, the control over who is listening your music is important because you don't want it to get 'burnt out' too quickly. It is part of the job to see where you play, where you publish, when, and on what scale, what pricing it has, etc.
I'm saying that this is a traditional way of doing it and that there are lots of people more than used to do things this way. I'm NOT making a judgement about the circumstance.
A lot of the effect that a work of art produces in its audience would be lost if that control is gone. This one is not quite obvious unless you realize that a good portion of the art part of the business is about comunication, not about fullfilling your needs as a consumer. So even if you take away the money aspect out of the equation, there might be reasons to copy-protect a given material. YMMV, but I also think it is a legitimate decission to try to make money, even shiploads of it, out of your work of art.
So the reasons behind copy protection will not stop existing soon. I'm sure that we can expect the conflict to escalate further and further, and puting the open surce concept in complete oposition to copyright might result in something we don't want.
So please think a little bit.
It is a most unhelpful circumstance in this discusion that art and technical/scientifical knowledge end up in the same lot. They don't have the same function in society and thus should not be legislated in the same way.
It does not matter how much effort goes into something like this, there will be no substitute for thought. This, like much of the OO philosophy, are (in my view anyway) attepmts to reduce thinking to something you can do mechanically. Just follow the right instructions, and youll write great programs.
Mind you, Im not saying that this is all bad. It might help some people sometimes, but most of the time stuff like this just takes space in peoples brains and gets in the way of reasoning. Instead of following their own thoughts, they try to remember and to live up to the wise sayings of GodFather(tm) Suchandsuch... and invariably get it all wrong.
Besides, I think it is a questionable practice to face a problem with a "in what pattern would it fit" attitude.
>C/C++ was not created so that programs could use >less CPU cycles; it was created so that >programs could be written more quickly >(programmer time), more robustly, and vastly >larger than their assembly >counterparts.
I Agree.
That's why you write most of the stuff in C/C++ and then if something is time critical you do the 500 instruction assembly thang. Or you buy a faster computer.
>But the scope of problems you can solve in those >500 lines are so unbelievably small that its not >worth the time to test it.
I disagree. That is what people have been told over and over again, but this is wrong. For example, you can solve the 8 queens problem in 500 assy lines, and there are a lot of problems in that complexity range. And the fun factor is incredibly high.
Part of the argument was in fact compilers beeing better at writing fast code than assy. programmers. I HAD to say something:)
Anyway, usualy normal portable code does the trick if you are not running realy time critical stuff. And if you do, then no compiler will.
We are at a point in this industry where most advances won't matter to almost anyone that would spend a thought on it. There is no difference (to the vast mayority of users) between a task taking a nanosecond or a femtosecond. Or whatever.
I can tell you from experience that normaly, when you write assembly code, it turns out at least 30% faster than equivalent C code, no matter what you tell your C compiler - right from the start! If you know what you are doing, of course. After you spend some time optimising, this percentage grows.
I have not seen one compiler that is able to optimize better than a human. I've worked with some compilers, have looked at the assembly code they generate and have written assembly code myself, both for Intel based systems and for MIPS Rxxxx.
The problem is that compilers have to generate code defensively. That means that they have to add code that enforces the laws of the higher language. Also, they have to follow clear guidelines with respect to register usage, parameter passing etc. that I as an assembly programer can change according to the situation. A compiler cannot behave that way because for this it has to see some bigger picture, and this is beyond it's abilities.
I think you completely underestimate the difficulty of writing fast code. JIT and java stuff will allways be inferior in performance to serious code (assembly or not) written for serious processors by serious programers. The best human-machine combination is still this one: the human does the thinking, and the machine limits itself to be stupid.
As far as I know this is also the situation in Germany. A lot of competition goes on among kids about who wears what. The companies are happy, of course, but I doubt the kids are, and much less the parents (who have to pay the clothes).
I went with an uniform to school and yes, it limits your personal freedom. But on the other hand it is an equalizer: it says ''here everybody is equal''.
I like jon katz's proposal. It neither is very restrictive nor particulary difficult to enforce. And if it works, it would make for better quality.
The AC's anonymity need not be compromised. At present, it is limited anyway, because the IP adresses are kept. A way of keeping the AC's security is to delete all references to the real poster after a day, so that some moderation could hapen. One could organize things in a way that the moderator doesn't know who's post it is.
But personally I agree that the quality of a forum like slashdot should be preserved, and eventualy measures have to be taken in order to achieve that.
Business and voting can't heve the same standard. It is one thing if someone steals a million dollars and a different one if he forges a hundred votes, because of the influence this can have in a country's destiny and the actual restriction of rights this means.
And Interviews. Classy interviews! There was one explaining why the UK cannot in principle ban asbestos (known to put public health at risk) because it goes against the rules of the WTO. If that where not enough, it is not possible for a country to impose restrictos to ban firms that use child labor because you'll have trouble with the WTO.
Bravo, BBC!
Although this kind of things is not new. The so-called third world has had to deal with this sort of situation for years.
THe only thing I can say about the protests is that I'd LOVE to be in Seattle! Man I would RUSH to the street. I am thankfull to all those people protesting. It is important to stop the corporations of getting too powerfull.
Well I don't know... But if used up all this fibers might produce some multiple of all the data SETI produces in a given interval of time, and if it also is encrypted just forget it.
If the film get's it right, there are many hacks involved: Landing on almost no power, building an CO2 filter out of stuff that was around, getting into deorbit position by hand(!)... I mean...
I've allways had the impression that windows is in fact difficult. Things are either stupid or a hack. The documentation is bad when at all present.
Unix is configurable, has well defined layers, tons of documentation and if you have linux, you can look at the code. It might be more dificult to learn, but once you have learned it you can do more in less time and more easily.
Somehow the idea got widespread that computers should be easy to use, and it is possible that this myth is going to swamp NT. After all, what do you mean ''system administration for dummies'', ''c++ for dummies''? if you are a dummy keep off.
I don't think computers are easy to use. I like unix because it is honest on that point. On the long run you do not do a favor to serious users if you conceal the difficulties and pretend they are not there.
Slashdot Mirror
Depending on what spot of earth you live, simply assuming that it will rain/not rain gives you higher accuracy. Assuming that tomorrow will be the same as today is very accurate in a lot of places.
If on the other hand you have a program that in a very desertic region can predict rain with 10% of accuracy, I would argue that it is a superior method.
rmstar
There are many reasons to go into a bookstore, and buying a book is actually only one of them. Besides, if you do not have to do an effort, then what's the value?
One of the concerns with all this is that people begin to take culture for granted. And then what's the use.
rmstar.
I do not believe that, given the volatility of the market, it is a good idea to give computers to kids. It would be much better to sell a subsidized & afordable stationary PC to those who can not afford a computer otherwise. And then let them do what they think is best with them. Complement this with _decent_ labs in school where they learn some programming and then you have a great thing. But it should not be on their desks when seeing biology class.
What I would fear with an approach as described is that a LOT of time and money would be wasted in systems that will basically suck and be worthless after some time. And kids would have yet another source of distraction.
Mathematicians still use paper, and I do not see how you could really improve an algebra class through the use of computers. Paper is incredibly convenient when writing symbols, and beside some slides and animations, the teacher is better of writing on the blackbord.
Publish information on the web. Ask them to write assinments on a word-prossesor and then print it. let them write email to the teachers and among them. A computer is a tool.
Obviously, without reading, 'riting, 'rithmetic, you won't get far.
rmstar.
I do not think it will hold up in appeal. First of all, AOL aint no helpless dwarf. Second, it is definately a silly veredict. Germany has decent mechanisms to deal with this kind of situations and no interest whatsoever in really harming any branch of the IT industry. In fact, there is a huge discussion in germany on how to promote the sector.
And the court lies in Bavaria. This is a very right-winged state. A lot of these guys look like they are secretely envious at the Austrians for Haider. This people hate change and everything that is different. I do not think such a court ruling would have happened somewhere else.
rmstar
My question is, will we still bother?
rmstar
You nailed it! But at the end you'd pay $13 for the music on a gratis medium. That is the way.
If you ever tried to make a decent recording of human-played music (guittars & drums & key-b & whatever), you know it involves money and time. Some time ago the standard RC figure was 'round 300 hours for a LP. And you need a good studio (implies $$$). Giving the material for free afterwards is simply absurd.
On the other hand, I really do not understand what people expect from the Napster thang. My bet is that on the long run this kind o' network would end up full of, er.., crap. If every shitty band around puts its mediocre tunes on it...
Ugh!
rmstar
They sometimes create streaks of light that screw up astronomical photographs. You can see one at
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap991022.html
AFAIK, they also interfere with radioastronomy.
I'm beginning to think that the fundamental problem lies in the fact that you can do perfect copies of digital material. It looks like no matter how you turn things around, you cannot launch digital media without this hapening.
Quite frankly, I do not see a solution for this problem. If you plan to make money out of a piece of merchandise that anyone can duplicate at basically no cost, you are not having a sound biz model.
This does not seem to aply to open-source code, because what makes most money flow is tech support and distribution. For music it might not be such a big deal 'cos a lot of money can be made through live performances. But for movies I wonder.
There is a passage in the book ''The End Of Eternity'', by Asimov, where they mention a device that was capable of duplicating objects and thus destroyed a complete economy.
Cheers,
rmstar
Some people feel that C++ is rather complex and hard to learn, and that a lot of wisdom is needed not to misuse/abuse its features and to avoid its pitfalls. In view of that, what is in your opinion the best way to teach C++? rmstar
O hell, they are going for the full ticket in controlling information. There is no other purpose for that than this, 'cos TEMPEST is not going to be blocked by that. They want to control it, and they want it badly.
Ok, I'm going to say something trying to understand the other side of the coin:
Artist, and by extension, companies that distribute works of art, are used to have a certain amount of control over their work. There are many reasons for that, and most have nothing to do with a future edition of the gestapo.
For instance, the control over who is listening your music is important because you don't want it to get 'burnt out' too quickly. It is part of the job to see where you play, where you publish, when, and on what scale, what pricing it has, etc.
I'm saying that this is a traditional way of doing it and that there are lots of people more than used to do things this way. I'm NOT making a judgement about the circumstance.
A lot of the effect that a work of art produces in its audience would be lost if that control is gone. This one is not quite obvious unless you realize that a good portion of the art part of the business is about comunication, not about fullfilling your needs as a consumer. So even if you take away the money aspect out of the equation, there might be reasons to copy-protect a given material. YMMV, but I also think it is a legitimate decission to try to make money, even shiploads of it, out of your work of art.
So the reasons behind copy protection will not stop existing soon. I'm sure that we can expect the conflict to escalate further and further, and puting the open surce concept in complete oposition to copyright might result in something we don't want.
So please think a little bit.
It is a most unhelpful circumstance in this discusion that art and technical/scientifical knowledge end up in the same lot. They don't have the same function in society and thus should not be legislated in the same way.
Cheers,
rmstar.
XCusemoi Messieur,
I somehow don't seem to get your point. What is wrong with them traceroutes??
best regards,
rmstar
It does not matter how much effort goes into something like this, there will be no substitute for thought. This, like much of the OO philosophy, are (in my view anyway) attepmts to reduce thinking to something you can do mechanically. Just follow the right instructions, and youll write great programs.
Mind you, Im not saying that this is all bad. It might help some people sometimes, but most of the time stuff like this just takes space in peoples brains and gets in the way of reasoning. Instead of following their own thoughts, they try to remember and to live up to the wise sayings of GodFather(tm) Suchandsuch... and invariably get it all wrong.
Besides, I think it is a questionable practice to face a problem with a "in what pattern would it fit" attitude.
My view, anyway,
rmstar
>C/C++ was not created so that programs could use
>less CPU cycles; it was created so that
>programs could be written more quickly
>(programmer time), more robustly, and vastly
>larger than their assembly
>counterparts.
I Agree.
That's why you write most of the stuff in C/C++ and then if something is time critical you do the 500 instruction assembly thang. Or you buy a faster computer.
>But the scope of problems you can solve in those
>500 lines are so unbelievably small that its not
>worth the time to test it.
I disagree. That is what people have been told over and over again, but this is wrong. For example, you can solve the 8 queens problem in 500 assy lines, and there are a lot of problems in that complexity range. And the fun factor is incredibly high.
rmstar
Part of the argument was in fact compilers beeing better at writing fast code than assy. programmers. I HAD to say something :)
Anyway, usualy normal portable code does the trick if you are not running realy time critical stuff. And if you do, then no compiler will.
We are at a point in this industry where most advances won't matter to almost anyone that would spend a thought on it. There is no difference (to the vast mayority of users) between a task taking a nanosecond or a femtosecond. Or whatever.
rmstar
I can tell you from experience that normaly, when you write assembly code, it turns out at least 30% faster than equivalent C code, no matter what you tell your C compiler - right from the start! If you know what you are doing, of course. After you spend some time optimising, this percentage grows.
rmstar
I dont think so.
I have not seen one compiler that is able to optimize better than a human. I've worked with some compilers, have looked at the assembly code they generate and have written assembly code myself, both for Intel based systems and for MIPS Rxxxx.
The problem is that compilers have to generate code defensively. That means that they have to add code that enforces the laws of the higher language. Also, they have to follow clear guidelines with respect to register usage, parameter passing etc. that I as an assembly programer can change according to the situation. A compiler cannot behave that way because for this it has to see some bigger picture, and this is beyond it's abilities.
I think you completely underestimate the difficulty of writing fast code. JIT and java stuff will allways be inferior in performance to serious code (assembly or not) written for serious processors by serious programers. The best human-machine combination is still this one: the human does the thinking, and the machine limits itself to be stupid.
my view, anyway.
rmstar.
Ditto!
As far as I know this is also the situation in
Germany. A lot of competition goes on among kids
about who wears what. The companies are happy, of
course, but I doubt the kids are, and much less
the parents (who have to pay the clothes).
I went with an uniform to school and yes, it
limits your personal freedom. But on the other
hand it is an equalizer: it says ''here everybody
is equal''.
my opinion anyway.
rmstar
I like jon katz's proposal. It neither is very
restrictive nor particulary difficult to enforce.
And if it works, it would make for better quality.
The AC's anonymity need not be compromised. At
present, it is limited anyway, because the IP
adresses are kept. A way of keeping the AC's
security is to delete all references to the real
poster after a day, so that some moderation could
hapen. One could organize things in a way that the
moderator doesn't know who's post it is.
But personally I agree that the quality of a forum
like slashdot should be preserved, and eventualy
measures have to be taken in order to achieve
that.
rmstar
Business and voting can't heve the same standard.
It is one thing if someone steals a million
dollars and a different one if he forges a hundred
votes, because of the influence this can have in a
country's destiny and the actual restriction of
rights this means.
just my opinion,
rmstar
Watch BBC. They are really bringing info.
And Interviews. Classy interviews! There was one explaining why the UK cannot in principle ban asbestos (known to put public health at risk) because it goes against the rules of the WTO. If that where not enough, it is not possible for a country to impose restrictos to ban firms that use child labor because you'll have trouble with the WTO.
Bravo, BBC!
Although this kind of things is not new. The so-called third world has had to deal with this sort of situation for years.
THe only thing I can say about the protests is that I'd LOVE to be in Seattle! Man I would RUSH to the street. I am thankfull to all those people protesting. It is important to stop the corporations of getting too powerfull.
rmstar
Well I don't know... But if used up all this
fibers might produce some multiple of all the data
SETI produces in a given interval of time, and if
it also is encrypted just forget it.
I gess, anyway.
rm *
Yeah!
If the film get's it right, there are many hacks
involved: Landing on almost no power, building an
CO2 filter out of stuff that was around, getting
into deorbit position by hand(!)... I mean...
rm *
I've allways had the impression that windows is in fact difficult. Things are either stupid or a hack. The documentation is bad when at all present.
Unix is configurable, has well defined layers, tons of documentation and if you have linux, you can look at the code. It might be more dificult to learn, but once you have learned it you can do more in less time and more easily.
Somehow the idea got widespread that computers should be easy to use, and it is possible that this myth is going to swamp NT. After all, what do you mean ''system administration for dummies'', ''c++ for dummies''? if you are a dummy keep off.
I don't think computers are easy to use. I like unix because it is honest on that point. On the long run you do not do a favor to serious users if you conceal the difficulties and pretend they are not there.
rm *