>Does anyone seriously think that western governments have any kind of moral credibility?
Well, Bush has been re-elected even after killing hundred thousand of people either 'by mistake' or 'lying for the justificaton' so one could ask where is the 'moral credibility' of the electors??
NB: I'm French and dislike Sarkozy but at least I don't expect him to start a war for false reason (if only because France don't have an army able to do this kind of war).
Uh? And what is this magical feature of the other CPUs that the Atom doesn't have that make it less able to 'multi-task' (except of course multi-core CPU)? It's an in-order CPU yes but that has nothing to do with multi-tasking..
One very good way to 'teach skeptiscim' is to: 1) show another country 'stupid beliefs': like 'little-green men UFOs' in the USA and show how widespread they are in this country.
This show quite well that there are stupid beliefs which are *very* widespread, but the danger is that one could conclude 'these foreigners are dumb' so:
2) debunk a 'stupid belief' which happen in your own country: in France for example, there's a widespread belief that you can judge someone by looking at the shape of his handwriting and this is *very* serious as this is quite often used as a selection test when you apply for a job! (I think that this 'stupid belief' is mostly France-specific).
At this point, normally one understand that you have to be *very cautious* about any belief..
Religions are a good example of how people are ready to drop skepticism for the confort of having life after death, a kind of super-father, etc so you can use them as a good warning against blind belief.
That's why skydivers have two parachute and open the first one high enough so that they have the time to open the second one in case of malfunction of the first.
You're just afraid of what you don't know: driving fast requires a 100% well functionning car also, because having a tire explode at 100+ km/h isn't very good for your health..
His design which gives the responsibility of borders drawing to each application has the 'little problem' that one malicious application could cover the fullscreen with a transparent screen and hijack all the entries..
Not a very good design in my book!
Re:Finally, developers' ignorance and childish
on
The State of X.Org
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· Score: 1
>>No windowing system has anything resembling widgets on the server-side.
Well, Berlin/Fresco tried to go in this direction a few years ago.. The project is dead now, and I think that it's too hard to do it this way.
I'd prefer not: even though as you said they did a rewrite which took several years, I consider that their design suck: it allows one tab to freeze the whole browser..
For users no, but AMD isn't doing so well for a long time and investors don't like to loose money, so who know how long they're still going to compete with Intel?
Wow, very impressive! BeOS booted from the GRUB screen to a *fully* responsive GUI in 14s on my Celeron333 with 128Mo of RAM, and BeOS was a modern OS (memory protection, GUI, etc) without much difference with Linux or Windows for desktop usage.
It's nice to see that you only need a quadcore to boot more than twice slowly (remember those 14s included the time to startup and autologin into the equivalent of KDE or Gnome).;-)
Not so widely apparently because the Itanium also has a register window..
Of course, I don't think that VLIW are a good idea (compilers aren't good enough for those), but this show that Intel&HP engineers thought that register window is a good idea..
The news here is that it has achieved 'self-replication' (between quotes because the replication is only done for the plastic parts).
The article gives little detail beside the price of the parts: how much time is necessary for the self-replication? what are the skills needed for the assembly?
You make it sound as if language were chosen purely on their qualities, which is not the case: there is also the 'widespread knowledge' factor which is used to select a language for projects which explains that few language are used.
And the 'cost of the tools' factor: my opinion is that Ada lost to C++ not because C++ is a better language but because Ada's compilers were expensive whereas C++ compilers were cheap/free.
And as a language, I think that Scala is better designed, that's all. This doesn't mean that C# is bad, it's probably a good combination for Windows programming due to Microsoft's support, but that's a poor benchmark for 'superiority'!
Usually scalable algorithm are slower when the CPU count is low so the question is: how many CPU are needed so that the scalable algorithm is as good as the non scalable one?
Strangely this isn't talked about in this 'lightweight' article..
>I am so completely convinced of the superiority of the.NET model and the C# language
Your sentence is missing something: the superiority of C# *compared to what*?? Or you believe that C# is the best language currently?
I agree that C# is superior to C++ for ease of development (but not for speed and memory usage), but I don't find it superior to Scala. A small intro to Scala: http://www.artima.com/scalazine/articles/steps.html
>A lot of the memory issues have been fixed in Firefox 3 as well as improving JavaScript performance.
Great! Now they just have to fix their threading issues (one 'frozen' tab shouldn't be able to freeze the whole browser), their stability issue (as much as possible a crash of a plugin shouldn't be able to crash the browser) and it could be considered as a solid browser..
The future is very near! Sure currently buying a 1TB Solid State drive would be too expensive, but do we need really it?
No: on my HDD, I have two partitions: one of 30 GB for the OS and the software (which has still a lot of free space), and a big one for the data.
Replacing the OS&software partition with a SSD would bring 99% percent of the benefits of having a 'full' SSD: fast boot time, fast application startup, etc.. Especially as we can use a part of the SSD as a cache for the HDD. So IMHO, we don't really need big SSDs (30-60GB is enough), but fast SSDs should improve the computers' responsivenesscomputers..
So my ideal computer would have: one fast SSD of 60GB (for responsiveness), 1TB of HDD (for bulk storange) plus another external 1TB HDD for backups.
>>Firstly, let's remember that so far, cold fusion has been a con. A rip-off. A fraud. >None of the above, actually. It's been a failure to date, but who's been defrauded?[cut]
I disagree: remember that some of those cold fusion proponents made claims in mainstream press papers without/before publishing in the peer-reviewed physics journal. Short-circuiting the normal way to do science is a fraud: it has been used to 'steal' fame.
>a Japanese professor finds a way to get cold fusion to get work and the reactor[ITER] is obsolete before built!
A big MAYBE: first the cold fusion experiment must be investigated, reproduced, etc, AND it obsoletes ITER only if it can be harnessed to produce energy, which is far from certain..
Look about high temperature supraconductors: at a time they were all the rage, but currently in many (most?) setup, it's old fashioned 'cold' supraconductors which are used because of issues with the 'high temperatures' one (britleness, ability to withstand high current, etc.)
>The PowerPC is nothing without the AltiVec vector unit, which is a decidely CISC concept.
Ahem, the first PowerPC didn't have the AltiVec vector unit..
As for being a CISC concept, in some way it's true that they are complex intructions (division is also a complex instruction provided by many RISC), but they have also a fixed length, register-register operation only with separated load-store, etc so they're also RISC in many ways..
>Frankly, I don't see how you could avoid it as long as you have indirect references.
Avoid totally?
No.. But reduce significantly the issue see Nice which have by default non-null types (with X x =..; x can't be null) and if you want to declare nullable variable you have to add a '?' at the end of the typename ie X? x; so the type system helps catching errors.
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>The terrorists from the Middle East want to kill all Americans. Why? Because of something our government did decades ago,
*decades ago*??? Have you missed a little think named Irack war?
>Does anyone seriously think that western governments have any kind of moral credibility?
Well, Bush has been re-elected even after killing hundred thousand of people either 'by mistake' or 'lying for the justificaton' so one could ask where is the 'moral credibility' of the electors??
NB: I'm French and dislike Sarkozy but at least I don't expect him to start a war for false reason (if only because France don't have an army able to do this kind of war).
Uh? And what is this magical feature of the other CPUs that the Atom doesn't have that make it less able to 'multi-task' (except of course multi-core CPU)?
It's an in-order CPU yes but that has nothing to do with multi-tasking..
>How To Teach a Healthy Dose of Skepticism?
One very good way to 'teach skeptiscim' is to:
1) show another country 'stupid beliefs': like 'little-green men UFOs' in the USA and show how widespread they are in this country.
This show quite well that there are stupid beliefs which are *very* widespread, but the danger is that one could conclude 'these foreigners are dumb' so:
2) debunk a 'stupid belief' which happen in your own country: in France for example, there's a widespread belief that you can judge someone by looking at the shape of his handwriting and this is *very* serious as this is quite often used as a selection test when you apply for a job! (I think that this 'stupid belief' is mostly France-specific).
At this point, normally one understand that you have to be *very cautious* about any belief..
Religions are a good example of how people are ready to drop skepticism for the confort of having life after death, a kind of super-father, etc so you can use them as a good warning against blind belief.
That's why skydivers have two parachute and open the first one high enough so that they have the time to open the second one in case of malfunction of the first.
You're just afraid of what you don't know: driving fast requires a 100% well functionning car also, because having a tire explode at 100+ km/h isn't very good for your health..
And what about security?
His design which gives the responsibility of borders drawing to each application has the 'little problem' that one malicious application could cover the fullscreen with a transparent screen and hijack all the entries..
Not a very good design in my book!
>>No windowing system has anything resembling widgets on the server-side.
Well, Berlin/Fresco tried to go in this direction a few years ago..
The project is dead now, and I think that it's too hard to do it this way.
>>Think about the Mozilla project.
I'd prefer not: even though as you said they did a rewrite which took several years, I consider that their design suck: it allows one tab to freeze the whole browser..
>Competition can't hurt.
For users no, but AMD isn't doing so well for a long time and investors don't like to loose money, so who know how long they're still going to compete with Intel?
I wonder if OpenBSD wouldn't be better suited for this..
Wow, very impressive! BeOS booted from the GRUB screen to a *fully* responsive GUI in 14s on my Celeron333 with 128Mo of RAM, and BeOS was a modern OS (memory protection, GUI, etc) without much difference with Linux or Windows for desktop usage.
;-)
It's nice to see that you only need a quadcore to boot more than twice slowly (remember those 14s included the time to startup and autologin into the equivalent of KDE or Gnome).
Not so widely apparently because the Itanium also has a register window..
Of course, I don't think that VLIW are a good idea (compilers aren't good enough for those), but this show that Intel&HP engineers thought that register window is a good idea..
The news here is that it has achieved 'self-replication' (between quotes because the replication is only done for the plastic parts).
The article gives little detail beside the price of the parts: how much time is necessary for the self-replication? what are the skills needed for the assembly?
You make it sound as if language were chosen purely on their qualities, which is not the case: there is also the 'widespread knowledge' factor which is used to select a language for projects which explains that few language are used.
And the 'cost of the tools' factor: my opinion is that Ada lost to C++ not because C++ is a better language but because Ada's compilers were expensive whereas C++ compilers were cheap/free.
>C# is like every other system out there, it has its own ways and means - it can be incredibly efficient and fast, if you use it correctly.
Look, the GP said that C# is superior, this isn't even English: I asked superior in what to what?
In memory usage and performance, certainly not superior to C++ on Linux:
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=csharp&lang2=gpp
And as a language, I think that Scala is better designed, that's all.
This doesn't mean that C# is bad, it's probably a good combination for Windows programming due to Microsoft's support, but that's a poor benchmark for 'superiority'!
Usually scalable algorithm are slower when the CPU count is low so the question is: how many CPU are needed so that the scalable algorithm is as good as the non scalable one?
Strangely this isn't talked about in this 'lightweight' article..
>I am so completely convinced of the superiority of the .NET model and the C# language
Your sentence is missing something: the superiority of C# *compared to what*??
Or you believe that C# is the best language currently?
I agree that C# is superior to C++ for ease of development (but not for speed and memory usage),
but I don't find it superior to Scala.
A small intro to Scala: http://www.artima.com/scalazine/articles/steps.html
+1
But unfortunately this kind of 'parse error' isn't rare: many claim to be rational and believe in $DEITY & $RELIGION at the same time for example.
>A lot of the memory issues have been fixed in Firefox 3 as well as improving JavaScript performance.
Great! Now they just have to fix their threading issues (one 'frozen' tab shouldn't be able to freeze the whole browser), their stability issue (as much as possible a crash of a plugin shouldn't be able to crash the browser) and it could be considered as a solid browser..
Until then it *isn't* an example to follow!
The future is very near!
Sure currently buying a 1TB Solid State drive would be too expensive, but do we need really it?
No: on my HDD, I have two partitions: one of 30 GB for the OS and the software (which has still a lot of free space), and a big one for the data.
Replacing the OS&software partition with a SSD would bring 99% percent of the benefits of having a 'full' SSD: fast boot time, fast application startup, etc.. Especially as we can use a part of the SSD as a cache for the HDD.
So IMHO, we don't really need big SSDs (30-60GB is enough), but fast SSDs should improve the computers' responsivenesscomputers..
So my ideal computer would have: one fast SSD of 60GB (for responsiveness), 1TB of HDD (for bulk storange) plus another external 1TB HDD for backups.
>I bought Vista, I use Vista, and once I turned off UAC I've had no problems with Vista.
But why did you replace XP by Vista?
As you've turned off UAC, you now have mostly the same security level as XP..
So what were your reasons beside the shiny new look?
>>Firstly, let's remember that so far, cold fusion has been a con. A rip-off. A fraud.
>None of the above, actually. It's been a failure to date, but who's been defrauded?[cut]
I disagree: remember that some of those cold fusion proponents made claims in mainstream press papers without/before publishing in the peer-reviewed physics journal.
Short-circuiting the normal way to do science is a fraud: it has been used to 'steal' fame.
And fame is a valuable commodity.
>a Japanese professor finds a way to get cold fusion to get work and the reactor[ITER] is obsolete before built!
A big MAYBE: first the cold fusion experiment must be investigated, reproduced, etc, AND it obsoletes ITER only if it can be harnessed to produce energy, which is far from certain..
Look about high temperature supraconductors: at a time they were all the rage, but currently in many (most?) setup, it's old fashioned 'cold' supraconductors which are used because of issues with the 'high temperatures' one (britleness, ability to withstand high current, etc.)
>The PowerPC is nothing without the AltiVec vector unit, which is a decidely CISC concept.
Ahem, the first PowerPC didn't have the AltiVec vector unit..
As for being a CISC concept, in some way it's true that they are complex intructions (division is also a complex instruction provided by many RISC), but they have also a fixed length, register-register operation only with separated load-store, etc so they're also RISC in many ways..
Avoid totally?
No.. But reduce significantly the issue see Nice which have by default non-null types (with X x = ..; x can't be null) and if you want to declare nullable variable you have to add a '?' at the end of the typename ie X? x; so the type system helps catching errors.