OK, what if you have a flakey NIC? What if a cable gets stepped on or eaten by mice?
I once worked on a system that made use of PC's to process bitstreams for a digital radio broadcast system. Communications were UDP-based, and we had a problem where the odd data packet was being lost (0.5 seconds of audio lost approx every 20 seconds). I spent a MONTH debugging code to figure out where the lost packets were going. Then using tcpdump, I saw that the NIC was actually losing packets (each packet contained an integer counter). I was able to repeat the loss of packets at will.
Replaced the NIC, and all was well.
This is not to put down UDP; for this application, TCP would have retransmitted and the added delay would have created problems elsewhere.
Moral of the story: expect data to be lost over ANY kind of network.
You can look at code from any number of perspectives, but for the sake of argument allow me to shoehorn them into two categories. Some view programming as an art, something that just "happens" and is totally dependent on the genius of the "artist". No process is considered. The individual is working on inspiration. A fly by the seat of the pants approach. A few remarkable individuals seem to get away with this, and do quite well. For a while anyway.
Others view the field as entirely an engineering discipline. Even GUI design falls under the realm of "Human Factors Engineering". Process is king here. Every change is backed up by a change order and source code control.
Over time, my view has moved steadily towards the engineering end of the spectrum. Big surprise. I've seen too much effort wasted to buy the "I'm an artist; leave me alone" attitude. I think it's a cop-out supported by people with a short attention span who don't want to work with a team.
True art (painting, music, etc.) is a transfer function: taking life's experiences and expressing them through universally recognized symbols. Really now, how do you express emotion (pain, love, joy) in a line of working code.
We're builing logic machines here. Correctness matters. That's not to say a design can't be "elegant". Indeed some of the best engineering (bridges, towers) is very aesthetically pleasing. But that doesn't make it art.
Now when it comes to games, a lot of it is art; there's character development, the layout of the scenes, etc. I suppose you could consider the creation of that as art. But the encoding of that into computer instructions is engineering precisely because it has to be correct (or it won't even compile).
It's a shame that the article has so much fluff, because this would have been a great discussion.
As someone who's used both, here's my take on it
QNX strengths:
- HARD real-time. If you don't know what that means, find out before flaming anyone. This is a huge strength that matters a LOT in some markets.
- Microkernel. You don't write kernel-mode device drivers; everything's in user-mode. Compile-run-debug cycles are much shorter when you don't have to reboot every time your driver crashes.
Linux strengths:
- GNU toolset
- lots of supported hardware
- lots of applications
- open source
- popular
In short, QNX is an embedded OS that's moving into the desktop market whereas Linux is a server OS that's moving into the desktop & embedded market.
The big news with QNX RTP is that you don't have to give up the good stuff that comes with Linux.
Remember, though, if you don't need the real-time responsiveness or the microkernel architecture, Linux is fine.
It's a shame the article was posted, because it would be of benefit to have a better, more thought-out one. Other points to discuss would be
-what advantages / disadvantages come from the fact that there is a single "distribution" of RTP?
-how will QNX's other features (such as FLEET networking) help boost Linux?
-what role the the GPL play in how the QNX RTP-Linux tango plays out?
QNX naturally sees the growth of Linux as a threat, so they played their cards right: give away what they can, while keeping their truly valuable code closed.
Companies like QNX can't continue as completely closed shops, but if they have unique and valuable features they can play up on these advantages and make money at it.
Developers win too: e.g. prototype with Linux, and migrate to QNX when required. Always nice to have another option.
This business with the "Evil Empire" is getting pretty old now; companies still have to convince a buyer to buy their products. I used to think that recording companies were doomed in the age of the Net, but now I think they'll do just fine. Why? In one word: content.
No, not the music itself. The artist, rightly, has the copyright to that. Owning a CD does not give you the right to distribute endless copies of it. Even Madonna has a kid to feed;-)
By content I mean promotion, packaging, marketing, videos, etc. This stuff does not come for free. It's all about value-added. When an artist signs with a record company, this is what they get in exchange. You can't ftp an album cover.
I draw an analogy to news: I could spend hours reading the newswires, but who has the time? Rather, I'm willing to pay for a weekly magazine that's organized, analytical, etc. This is value-added. Sort of like "any fool can have the facts; a wise man has an opinion".
This is where I think the Net is going; yes a lot will be free, but as always you get what you pay for. This is where capitalism wins.
Life is unfolding as it should, despite what naysayers think about technology. The world is getting better all the time and technology is the biggest contributing factor. Technology drives the world, it has so since we learned to save the seeds of crops.
I think we're pretty lucky to live in the age we do: few diseases, pollution is down, crime is down, communism's dead, life expectancy is the highest it's ever been, and the Flight Sim 2000 is out next month.
Some people make a living out of doom-and-gloom. I just ignore them; to each his own. And hey, everybody needs a hobby, right!
Is how Monsanto enforces it's "licenses" to use it's product. Even if your neighbor's field cross-polinates with yours, you can be held liable for growing Roundup-ready canola (a herbicide-resistant crop).
Seriously, many personality traits can considered a disorder; what matters is whether or not it's causing you a problem. So don't be offended if you fit a list of symptoms. If you're having problems (can't keep a job, can't make friends, etc.) then seek help.
Obviously Bill Gates didn't let his "condition" prevent him from making smart business decisions.
96 kbps is free (paying gets you faster rates), CDDB access, fast and stable on Win 98 (but not on NT, in my experience). I just pop in my CD's and it starts recording automatically; hands off operation.
I've tried the others, and found them clumsy to use.
I listen with cheap headphones, so 96kbps is fine enough.
First of all, it's too bad Pons & Fleishmann called it cold "fusion" because that's really got the physicists pissed off that two chemists would dare to infringe on their turf. Maybe they should have named it better. Something like "energy boiler" or "paladium fuel cell".
A few years back, I saw a "where are they now" item on P & F. They're in France, quietly plugging away in a lab funded by Toyota. Hmmmm...
They also showed a university lab that tried to repeat the experiment and had their setup blow up on them, killing one of the technicians. There's got to be something to this. I only hope that someday science matures enough to explain it.
Finally, it really saddens me to see this research dismissed outrightly. Good grief, have an open mind! Have we really become so arrogant to think that science knows everything about everything? Did you read the bit about the first transistors failing? Where would we be today if those researches simply gave up on the idea?
Thanks, Slashdot, for permitting this kind of discussion! This is why I come back again and again.
According to http://www.domainstats.com at this moment there are 8,114,014 domains registered worldwide.
In comparison, the Internet Movie Database contains 170,479 titles. Even counting all the porn, there can't be more than 500,000 movies that are censored.
Sounds like a nice government make-work project. It takes months to make a movie, but only days to build a new web site. It's going to be a joke, or a nightmare, depending on which side of the fence you're on.
Slashdot Mirror
I once worked on a system that made use of PC's to process bitstreams for a digital radio broadcast system. Communications were UDP-based, and we had a problem where the odd data packet was being lost (0.5 seconds of audio lost approx every 20 seconds). I spent a MONTH debugging code to figure out where the lost packets were going. Then using tcpdump, I saw that the NIC was actually losing packets (each packet contained an integer counter). I was able to repeat the loss of packets at will.
Replaced the NIC, and all was well.
This is not to put down UDP; for this application, TCP would have retransmitted and the added delay would have created problems elsewhere.
Moral of the story: expect data to be lost over ANY kind of network.
$40 (canadian) for 1.5Mbps / 512kbps
That's $US 25 ,or 29 Euros
Although I've never seen it that fast. Large files from MS download at ~1 Mbps.
You can look at code from any number of perspectives, but for the sake of argument allow me to shoehorn them into two categories. Some view programming as an art, something that just "happens" and is totally dependent on the genius of the "artist". No process is considered. The individual is working on inspiration. A fly by the seat of the pants approach. A few remarkable individuals seem to get away with this, and do quite well. For a while anyway.
Others view the field as entirely an engineering discipline. Even GUI design falls under the realm of "Human Factors Engineering". Process is king here. Every change is backed up by a change order and source code control.
Over time, my view has moved steadily towards the engineering end of the spectrum. Big surprise. I've seen too much effort wasted to buy the "I'm an artist; leave me alone" attitude. I think it's a cop-out supported by people with a short attention span who don't want to work with a team.
True art (painting, music, etc.) is a transfer function: taking life's experiences and expressing them through universally recognized symbols. Really now, how do you express emotion (pain, love, joy) in a line of working code.
We're builing logic machines here. Correctness matters. That's not to say a design can't be "elegant". Indeed some of the best engineering (bridges, towers) is very aesthetically pleasing. But that doesn't make it art.
Now when it comes to games, a lot of it is art; there's character development, the layout of the scenes, etc. I suppose you could consider the creation of that as art. But the encoding of that into computer instructions is engineering precisely because it has to be correct (or it won't even compile).
It's a shame that the article has so much fluff, because this would have been a great discussion.
As someone who's used both, here's my take on it
QNX strengths:
- HARD real-time. If you don't know what that means, find out before flaming anyone. This is a huge strength that matters a LOT in some markets.
- Microkernel. You don't write kernel-mode device drivers; everything's in user-mode. Compile-run-debug cycles are much shorter when you don't have to reboot every time your driver crashes.
Linux strengths:
- GNU toolset
- lots of supported hardware
- lots of applications
- open source
- popular
In short, QNX is an embedded OS that's moving into the desktop market whereas Linux is a server OS that's moving into the desktop & embedded market.
The big news with QNX RTP is that you don't have to give up the good stuff that comes with Linux.
Remember, though, if you don't need the real-time responsiveness or the microkernel architecture, Linux is fine.
It's a shame the article was posted, because it would be of benefit to have a better, more thought-out one. Other points to discuss would be
-what advantages / disadvantages come from the fact that there is a single "distribution" of RTP?
-how will QNX's other features (such as FLEET networking) help boost Linux?
-what role the the GPL play in how the QNX RTP-Linux tango plays out?
So ironic that many Napster users who are college students will find their own IP being hijacked and distributed, to someone else's benefit.
Information wants to be free, doesn't it?
They've got the momentum behind them. Why would ISV's support anything else? Why would a user submit to more headaches with another distribution?
Pretty tough to control a positive feedback loop.
QNX naturally sees the growth of Linux as a threat, so they played their cards right: give away what they can, while keeping their truly valuable code closed.
Companies like QNX can't continue as completely closed shops, but if they have unique and valuable features they can play up on these advantages and make money at it.
Developers win too: e.g. prototype with Linux, and migrate to QNX when required. Always nice to have another option.
The OS then becomes just another component.
You'll find them doing things such as encryption, compression, audio/video processing, yada, yada. All in real time.
See this for more. (a bit dated but still relevant).
Well said.
;-)
This business with the "Evil Empire" is getting pretty old now; companies still have to convince a buyer to buy their products. I used to think that recording companies were doomed in the age of the Net, but now I think they'll do just fine. Why? In one word: content.
No, not the music itself. The artist, rightly, has the copyright to that. Owning a CD does not give you the right to distribute endless copies of it. Even Madonna has a kid to feed
By content I mean promotion, packaging, marketing, videos, etc. This stuff does not come for free. It's all about value-added. When an artist signs with a record company, this is what they get in exchange. You can't ftp an album cover.
I draw an analogy to news: I could spend hours reading the newswires, but who has the time? Rather, I'm willing to pay for a weekly magazine that's organized, analytical, etc. This is value-added. Sort of like "any fool can have the facts; a wise man has an opinion".
This is where I think the Net is going; yes a lot will be free, but as always you get what you pay for. This is where capitalism wins.
I recently had a bad batch. (dropped packets)
A second source confirmed to me that these cards are troublesome.
I recommend anything with the Tulip chipset (DEC 2xx4x) e.g. Netgear
I think we're pretty lucky to live in the age we do: few diseases, pollution is down, crime is down, communism's dead, life expectancy is the highest it's ever been, and the Flight Sim 2000 is out next month.
Some people make a living out of doom-and-gloom. I just ignore them; to each his own. And hey, everybody needs a hobby, right!
Is how Monsanto enforces it's "licenses" to use it's product. Even if your neighbor's field cross-polinates with yours, you can be held liable for growing Roundup-ready canola (a herbicide-resistant crop).
My bank already handles my electrical, phone, gas, city tax, and credit card bills automatically.
They're really offering little that I don't already have.
Oh, well; our tax dollars at work. Maybe it's time to sell Canada Post and let someone with some business sense run the thing.
Forgive my ignorance, but wouldn't that be enough to keep a government at bay? At least until they try to unlock some of your communication, that is.
I'm probably being too simplistic about it, I know. Please enlighten me.
I have antisocial personality disorder!
Seriously, many personality traits can considered a disorder; what matters is whether or not it's causing you a problem. So don't be offended if you fit a list of symptoms. If you're having problems (can't keep a job, can't make friends, etc.) then seek help.
Obviously Bill Gates didn't let his "condition" prevent him from making smart business decisions.
Hell, even jocks can have disorders, such as Narcissistic Personality Disorder,or Mathematics Disorder!
Here for doc's.
I say make it legal and tax it, like alcohol & tobacco.
I've tried the others, and found them clumsy to use.
I listen with cheap headphones, so 96kbps is fine enough.
See for yourself.
St. Isidore's already listed.
First of all, it's too bad Pons & Fleishmann called it cold "fusion" because that's really got the physicists pissed off that two chemists would dare to infringe on their turf. Maybe they should have named it better. Something like "energy boiler" or "paladium fuel cell".
A few years back, I saw a "where are they now" item on P & F. They're in France, quietly plugging away in a lab funded by Toyota. Hmmmm...
They also showed a university lab that tried to repeat the experiment and had their setup blow up on them, killing one of the technicians. There's got to be something to this. I only hope that someday science matures enough to explain it.
Finally, it really saddens me to see this research dismissed outrightly. Good grief, have an open mind! Have we really become so arrogant to think that science knows everything about everything? Did you read the bit about the first transistors failing? Where would we be today if those researches simply gave up on the idea?
Thanks, Slashdot, for permitting this kind of discussion! This is why I come back again and again.
No kidding.
According to http://www.domainstats.com at this moment there are 8,114,014 domains registered worldwide.
In comparison, the Internet Movie Database contains 170,479 titles. Even counting all the porn, there can't be more than 500,000 movies that are censored.
Sounds like a nice government make-work project. It takes months to make a movie, but only days to build a new web site. It's going to be a joke, or a nightmare, depending on which side of the fence you're on.
I like that. Maybe that should be the slogan that Jon "Maddog" Hall was proposing , i.e.:
Acme Linux
Protected by GNU
Pardon me...
I guess I'll have to be re-educated. Does Chairman RMS have a "little red book"?
since it's got Perl...
"monsters next door"?
Uugh.