Could learn a thing or two from studying vacuum tube technology. Unlike most everything casts from silicon, you can actually "see" electron flow, with enough certainty to end the conceptual debate between hole flow and electron flow.
Today's payment market has three primary entities. Bank, processor, and issuer. Visa and MasterCard are only issuers and rely upon their network to coerce banks and processors to play along. AMEX is 'mostly' vertically integrated combining all three and therefore has had a higher relative value for marketing purposes (because they see and handle every part of every transaction)
Companies like Square have come in and are disrupting POS with their own network that aggregates and does bulk transactions with the issuer, but to this day nearly all consumer POS transactions are still controlled by a (very small) hand full of issuers and their networks. They have no net interest in migrating to any other form of payment or transaction, "Progress" is not in their best interest.
If this outfit can wedge themselves in and start building out a block-chain based network and eventually gain a foothold in the point-of-sale space (the last 1/4 mile in the consumer communications business), they have a chance to force a paradigm shift. A chance.
But like I said, in the long term, Bitcoin is dead at the starting gate for all but the early speculators. The ideal case, would only use the blockchain with a virtual issuer to ensure secure, very low cost transactions that are denominated in a real currency.
Similar story on this end. I learned all kinds of electronics as teenager and then went off, first working on Air Force Radar for a number of years and then transitioning to software engineering as a civilian. A couple of years ago, I got my highly coveted treasure trove of TTL parts trays from my dad. Started playing around again on the same old breadboards, discovered SparkFun, EBay, and rediscovered Jameco.
Seems nobody personally knows much of anything about the 4004 anymore, but Don Lancaster's TTL cookbook is just as applicable today as it was 30 years ago.
I was one of those kids who built up simple bread board computers using stock standard TTL parts. I learned more about digital machinery in reading about and figuring out how processors work by trying to create my own bits of programmable/sequence-able logic using the astonishingly complete range of commodity TTL parts that where cheaply available in the late 1970s and 1980s.
The 4004 was an important inspiration, but TTL is what launched our pervasive digital age.
Unlike the 4004, it blows my mind how much of the original TTL part library is STILL available.
Running Plex on FreeBSD 10 with 24 TB of ZFS goodness. I use PlayOn for internet video "caching" and there's a Roku attached to every TV. NoWhereMan's private Roku Channel picks up all the local broadcast I'm interested in as well.
As both Star Trek Continues and Star Trek Phase II are fan funded, it's hugely unfortunate that they can't seem fit to combine forces and up the quality in a single concerted effort. I have a personal preference for what Vic has done with Star Trek Continues, but see merit in what Cowley is doing with Phase II.
Its unfortunate that the federation remains divided.
HP's RGS is really excellent remote graphics solution, suitable for the likes of film production studios and CAD/CAM design firms - at 4K resolutions and 30FPS video. It all sports support for a plethora of input devices from Wacom tablets to speciality LogiTech mice. To top it off, its bidirectionally compatible with Windows and Linux and Mac can be coaxed into working as well.
The egyptian pharaoh version of Lex Luthor... While the slaves are busy building his empire of a pyramid, he's preparing for his passage into the heavens.
Just kidding. What I really wish for is platform independent, standards based browser support by all web content. Time to kill the promise that became a curse called "Java" as well. Write once, run everywhere my ass....
Just restored a 1976 Dodge pickup to near immaculate condition for less than 1 years worth of new truck payments. Insurance is $65 a year, and a 5 year registration in Colorado cost $200. Not only can I fix nearly anything with either a ball peen hammer or $20 visit to CarQuest, I'm pretty sure its immune to anything up to a nuclear EMP.
Unfortunately the world will not pause for two to four years while we make needed repairs to our political infrastructure.
While I commend his bravado and focus, he must enumerate some credentials and contingency plans for the full spectrum of responsibilities required of a commander and chief of the worlds (currently) most pre-eminent military and commercial power before I can even toss a copper into his tip jar.
In short, FreeBSD/PC-BSD is to the Linux desktop user experience what RHEL is to Linux in general
I've been running PC-BSD as my primary desktop OS for about 5 years now. I say desktop, but I mostly use some variation of T-Series thinkpad as "my desktop". In the for what its worth, I also have several server class machines running RHEL compatible, Arch, and of course plain FreeBSD (which PC-BSD is mostly a specialization of).
I also find PC-BSD/FreeBSD to be the best desktop experience but with caveats.
To those familiar with the Linux ecosystems, Comparing the FreeBSD/PC-BSD Desktop to Linux is almost exactly like comparing Redhat to Arch Linux (perhaps the Ubuntu's as well). Distro's like Arch tend to have the latest greatest of everything, and everything "mostly" works. You can tweak and fiddle with it to your hearts content, and their is no "standard" configuration. A RHEL distro by contrast, is chosen for its consistency and POLA features (Principles of Least Astonishment). There is a clear definition of how everything on a RHEL distro is supposed to work and it will be maintained to those standards.
FreeBSD/PC-BSD is very similar. There are very clear definitions of the entire stack from userland to kernel with each major release. It is very actively supported to those definitions and expectations, as well as fairly strict adherence to POSIX definitions where available.
The user land apps may not be the latest greatest, but they are generally stable (I hate that Thunderbird is still stuck at v31!). The one noticeable exception is web browsers and their flash support. Both FireFox and Chromium seem to leak resources when running Flash heavy web sites and I must routinely pkill them after several of hours of heavy use (dozens of active tabs open for hours). Thankfully, Flash is dying a long over due death of its own making.
With the exception of browsers and flash support mentioned, everything else just works and tends to be rock solid with very few POLA violations even between major version numbered updates. Add to that the most excellent ZFS support on PC-BSD (and associated incremental snapshoting/backup options it enables), I can say that I have never once lost a byte of data unintentionally through every update and release since FreeBSD 8.2. I've also not suffered a single crash ever that was not due to an out of memory condition caused by Chromium and its messed up Flash NaCL/PNaCL support.
Google Voice, the service be it through a web browser, a dedicated app, or an embedded appliance was perfect circa three years ago.
Since then, it seems the steering committees within Google have vacillated from not competing with carriers to competing with Skype/Lync, to being a dongle for android, and ultimately being a widget wedged up Hangouts ass in order to entice a migration and integration that doesn't work and sorely lacks the clear headed design objectives of the original.
Once upon a time ago, one could manipulate GVoice with standard libraries and Python, one could buy a standard VOIP appliance and use it as a primary phone, and keep a history of every telecommunication with number portability in a web browser! It was awesome!
Since then, its become a tepid mess of remembering where not to click to keep from flushing the entire kludge down the urethra of hangouts.
Restore 3rd party app support, restore GVoice to the core functionality and greatness it once was, and quit breaking it!
When ever someone ask the question, "What would Jesus do", they are usually less interested in what Jesus would do and more interested in persuading someone else to do something they would not otherwise do.
The historical figure "Jesus" set a pretty clear example of how an individual should coexists with others. An example that by and large is but a footnote in most American evangelical offshoots of Christianity. Rather, self serving power structures construct a hodge-podge mix of old and new testament hegemony that 90% of the time ain't got jack shit to do with the near Buddhist examples of Christ himself. Godly inspired racism, sexism, discrimination, intolerance of another's beliefs, and war upon your fellow man are all "classic" examples.
In the 150 years after Christ got hammered, Just about every permutation of future church leadership was tried out. There's at least some evidence of a blood line based church leadership and the sect that buried the dead sea scrolls. The only one that survived used a form of elections to pick successors, and by implication, who spoke for god.
In Islam, following the death of Mohammed, the same thing played out again with the Sunni and the Shiites. And once again in America with the LDS church after the martyrdom of Joseph Smith. In every case that I know of, bloodline ascensions (or similar predisposition), almost always become the weaker of the two splinters. Where as the sects that hold elections and decide whose going to play the role of god's spokesperson, thrive.
It will be the same with Linus. There'll be red faced rants quoting mailing lists from the "holy years" of Linus. "Linus would never allow....", "It would be an abomination to Linus if....".
Same shit, different day, different Jihad.
Meanwhile, FreeBSD and the like, being godless and democratic, will continue to move forward with nary a speed bump.
The opensource/OS wars are no different than any other religion. Those with a god-head thrive and press forward fastest up until mortality gets in the way. Overwhelmingly, religions that favor single supreme leader (usually based on bloodline) end up withering and eventually perishing through fragmentation and indecision, while those that adopt a kind of voting democracy for leadership, thrive and grow sustainably.
Perhaps when Linus is no longer in the driver's seat, Linux will fragment, being pulled apart by commercial interest. Meanwhile, FreeBSD, having never had a benevolent dictator, will continue with its elected core team, nominated committers, and filtered contributors just like it has for the past 20+ years.
If we are still using OS's built upon "C", my money bet is on FreeBSD.
Being of Dutch descent and having chosen to live in The Netherlands for a number of years to reconnect with my (soggy) roots, it pleases me to no end that a Slashdot headline featuring 3D printing AND bridge construction, so quickly devolves into the nuances of Dutch linguistic syntax.
I hit this decision point about 10 years ago (soon I'll be 50). Every manager I've ever worked for who moved on from being a crusty coder, sucked as a manager too, where as managers who did what they did because they loved it, where almost always really great. As the technologies I knew well began to fall to the wayside, I didn't not want to become a reluctant manager or lead.
So I started over. And I have continued to do that every 3 or so years. Short of using a compiler, there is not one thing I do today that has much of anything to do with what I did 10 years ago, but I love what I do just as much. That's the trick - keep yourself engaged in what makes you excited. If that is managing teams - great. If not, don't become one of "those" mangers that lost his spark.
I recently went to replace my Sansa Clip from several years ago after I'd broken the clip through careless handling (while wearing motorcycle winter gloves). I also had tried a variety of replacement strategies and found none to be as all around functional as the old Sansa. After a bit of shopping and what not, I was floored that no one had made anything _better_ than the Sansa. Some where close, but skipped the FM radio functionality.
So now after 5 years, I'm on my second Sansa. Might just go ahead and order another one while I still can!
When I was trying to learn Dutch, the biggest impediment I had was knowing some German. It's similar enough to feel familiar, but that familiarity leads to frustration more often than not.
I think this is the biggest handicap in feeling comfortable with PowerShell is not the fact that it is not better or worse, but different. Once you get the hang of the verb-noun attribute conventions it becomes fairly easy to intuit ways to do what you want to do (or navigate the inline help). Microsoft has made the syntax and paradigms (sometimes annoyingly) consistent.
I once wrote the back end infrastructure for SpecExplorer's SMB tests to exercise a FreeBSD CIFs server. The ability to embed inside the PowerShell test scripts, the C# code needed to implement ssh connections and adapt the behavior of windows shell "objects" to affect a POSIX SMB server was beautiful and elegant. I'd probably have to use Python or Ruby to do something similar on a real POSIX box.
And then there is the issue of portability. Unless your POSIX shell script works in dash, it probably is not as portable as you'd like to think. On the other hand, pure PowerShell script that doesn't exercise platform specific extensions tend to be very portable (on windows).
While we've been busy distracting ourselves with purely ideological debate that can neither demonstrate a definitive start nor end of human life, the Chinese have been busy figuring out how to make that life "better" (for various definitions of better).
I've yet to hear a single argument that can define life beginning at conception, whose logic can also be applied to define the end of life.
Slashdot Mirror
Could learn a thing or two from studying vacuum tube technology. Unlike most everything casts from silicon, you can actually "see" electron flow, with enough certainty to end the conceptual debate between hole flow and electron flow.
Today's payment market has three primary entities. Bank, processor, and issuer. Visa and MasterCard are only issuers and rely upon their network to coerce banks and processors to play along. AMEX is 'mostly' vertically integrated combining all three and therefore has had a higher relative value for marketing purposes (because they see and handle every part of every transaction)
Companies like Square have come in and are disrupting POS with their own network that aggregates and does bulk transactions with the issuer, but to this day nearly all consumer POS transactions are still controlled by a (very small) hand full of issuers and their networks. They have no net interest in migrating to any other form of payment or transaction, "Progress" is not in their best interest.
If this outfit can wedge themselves in and start building out a block-chain based network and eventually gain a foothold in the point-of-sale space (the last 1/4 mile in the consumer communications business), they have a chance to force a paradigm shift. A chance.
But like I said, in the long term, Bitcoin is dead at the starting gate for all but the early speculators. The ideal case, would only use the blockchain with a virtual issuer to ensure secure, very low cost transactions that are denominated in a real currency.
Step 1: Integrate with existing payment technology
Step 2: Replace existing payment technology.
Bitcoin is perhaps the wrong horse to be riding, but as a proof of concept this is sill interesting.
Similar story on this end. I learned all kinds of electronics as teenager and then went off, first working on Air Force Radar for a number of years and then transitioning to software engineering as a civilian. A couple of years ago, I got my highly coveted treasure trove of TTL parts trays from my dad. Started playing around again on the same old breadboards, discovered SparkFun, EBay, and rediscovered Jameco.
Seems nobody personally knows much of anything about the 4004 anymore, but Don Lancaster's TTL cookbook is just as applicable today as it was 30 years ago.
I was one of those kids who built up simple bread board computers using stock standard TTL parts. I learned more about digital machinery in reading about and figuring out how processors work by trying to create my own bits of programmable/sequence-able logic using the astonishingly complete range of commodity TTL parts that where cheaply available in the late 1970s and 1980s.
The 4004 was an important inspiration, but TTL is what launched our pervasive digital age.
Unlike the 4004, it blows my mind how much of the original TTL part library is STILL available.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Or anything offensive to Islam, unless you've had sex with it first.
Pretty much the same here...
Running Plex on FreeBSD 10 with 24 TB of ZFS goodness. I use PlayOn for internet video "caching" and there's a Roku attached to every TV. NoWhereMan's private Roku Channel picks up all the local broadcast I'm interested in as well.
As both Star Trek Continues and Star Trek Phase II are fan funded, it's hugely unfortunate that they can't seem fit to combine forces and up the quality in a single concerted effort. I have a personal preference for what Vic has done with Star Trek Continues, but see merit in what Cowley is doing with Phase II. Its unfortunate that the federation remains divided.
I spent about 6 months working on this product last year:
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campa...
HP's RGS is really excellent remote graphics solution, suitable for the likes of film production studios and CAD/CAM design firms - at 4K resolutions and 30FPS video. It all sports support for a plethora of input devices from Wacom tablets to speciality LogiTech mice. To top it off, its bidirectionally compatible with Windows and Linux and Mac can be coaxed into working as well.
The egyptian pharaoh version of Lex Luthor... While the slaves are busy building his empire of a pyramid, he's preparing for his passage into the heavens.
Just kidding. What I really wish for is platform independent, standards based browser support by all web content. Time to kill the promise that became a curse called "Java" as well. Write once, run everywhere my ass....
Just restored a 1976 Dodge pickup to near immaculate condition for less than 1 years worth of new truck payments. Insurance is $65 a year, and a 5 year registration in Colorado cost $200. Not only can I fix nearly anything with either a ball peen hammer or $20 visit to CarQuest, I'm pretty sure its immune to anything up to a nuclear EMP.
Unfortunately the world will not pause for two to four years while we make needed repairs to our political infrastructure.
While I commend his bravado and focus, he must enumerate some credentials and contingency plans for the full spectrum of responsibilities required of a commander and chief of the worlds (currently) most pre-eminent military and commercial power before I can even toss a copper into his tip jar.
In short, FreeBSD/PC-BSD is to the Linux desktop user experience what RHEL is to Linux in general
I've been running PC-BSD as my primary desktop OS for about 5 years now. I say desktop, but I mostly use some variation of T-Series thinkpad as "my desktop". In the for what its worth, I also have several server class machines running RHEL compatible, Arch, and of course plain FreeBSD (which PC-BSD is mostly a specialization of).
I also find PC-BSD/FreeBSD to be the best desktop experience but with caveats.
To those familiar with the Linux ecosystems, Comparing the FreeBSD/PC-BSD Desktop to Linux is almost exactly like comparing Redhat to Arch Linux (perhaps the Ubuntu's as well). Distro's like Arch tend to have the latest greatest of everything, and everything "mostly" works. You can tweak and fiddle with it to your hearts content, and their is no "standard" configuration. A RHEL distro by contrast, is chosen for its consistency and POLA features (Principles of Least Astonishment). There is a clear definition of how everything on a RHEL distro is supposed to work and it will be maintained to those standards.
FreeBSD/PC-BSD is very similar. There are very clear definitions of the entire stack from userland to kernel with each major release. It is very actively supported to those definitions and expectations, as well as fairly strict adherence to POSIX definitions where available.
The user land apps may not be the latest greatest, but they are generally stable (I hate that Thunderbird is still stuck at v31!). The one noticeable exception is web browsers and their flash support. Both FireFox and Chromium seem to leak resources when running Flash heavy web sites and I must routinely pkill them after several of hours of heavy use (dozens of active tabs open for hours). Thankfully, Flash is dying a long over due death of its own making.
With the exception of browsers and flash support mentioned, everything else just works and tends to be rock solid with very few POLA violations even between major version numbered updates. Add to that the most excellent ZFS support on PC-BSD (and associated incremental snapshoting/backup options it enables), I can say that I have never once lost a byte of data unintentionally through every update and release since FreeBSD 8.2. I've also not suffered a single crash ever that was not due to an out of memory condition caused by Chromium and its messed up Flash NaCL/PNaCL support.
Brilliantly enumerated and eloquently expressed.
Google Voice, the service be it through a web browser, a dedicated app, or an embedded appliance was perfect circa three years ago. Since then, it seems the steering committees within Google have vacillated from not competing with carriers to competing with Skype/Lync, to being a dongle for android, and ultimately being a widget wedged up Hangouts ass in order to entice a migration and integration that doesn't work and sorely lacks the clear headed design objectives of the original. Once upon a time ago, one could manipulate GVoice with standard libraries and Python, one could buy a standard VOIP appliance and use it as a primary phone, and keep a history of every telecommunication with number portability in a web browser! It was awesome! Since then, its become a tepid mess of remembering where not to click to keep from flushing the entire kludge down the urethra of hangouts. Restore 3rd party app support, restore GVoice to the core functionality and greatness it once was, and quit breaking it!
Nah... I'll just wait for the white or the black smoke.
When ever someone ask the question, "What would Jesus do", they are usually less interested in what Jesus would do and more interested in persuading someone else to do something they would not otherwise do.
The historical figure "Jesus" set a pretty clear example of how an individual should coexists with others. An example that by and large is but a footnote in most American evangelical offshoots of Christianity. Rather, self serving power structures construct a hodge-podge mix of old and new testament hegemony that 90% of the time ain't got jack shit to do with the near Buddhist examples of Christ himself. Godly inspired racism, sexism, discrimination, intolerance of another's beliefs, and war upon your fellow man are all "classic" examples.
In the 150 years after Christ got hammered, Just about every permutation of future church leadership was tried out. There's at least some evidence of a blood line based church leadership and the sect that buried the dead sea scrolls. The only one that survived used a form of elections to pick successors, and by implication, who spoke for god.
In Islam, following the death of Mohammed, the same thing played out again with the Sunni and the Shiites. And once again in America with the LDS church after the martyrdom of Joseph Smith. In every case that I know of, bloodline ascensions (or similar predisposition), almost always become the weaker of the two splinters. Where as the sects that hold elections and decide whose going to play the role of god's spokesperson, thrive.
It will be the same with Linus. There'll be red faced rants quoting mailing lists from the "holy years" of Linus. "Linus would never allow....", "It would be an abomination to Linus if....".
Same shit, different day, different Jihad. Meanwhile, FreeBSD and the like, being godless and democratic, will continue to move forward with nary a speed bump.
The opensource/OS wars are no different than any other religion. Those with a god-head thrive and press forward fastest up until mortality gets in the way. Overwhelmingly, religions that favor single supreme leader (usually based on bloodline) end up withering and eventually perishing through fragmentation and indecision, while those that adopt a kind of voting democracy for leadership, thrive and grow sustainably. Perhaps when Linus is no longer in the driver's seat, Linux will fragment, being pulled apart by commercial interest. Meanwhile, FreeBSD, having never had a benevolent dictator, will continue with its elected core team, nominated committers, and filtered contributors just like it has for the past 20+ years. If we are still using OS's built upon "C", my money bet is on FreeBSD.
Being of Dutch descent and having chosen to live in The Netherlands for a number of years to reconnect with my (soggy) roots, it pleases me to no end that a Slashdot headline featuring 3D printing AND bridge construction, so quickly devolves into the nuances of Dutch linguistic syntax.
I hit this decision point about 10 years ago (soon I'll be 50). Every manager I've ever worked for who moved on from being a crusty coder, sucked as a manager too, where as managers who did what they did because they loved it, where almost always really great. As the technologies I knew well began to fall to the wayside, I didn't not want to become a reluctant manager or lead. So I started over. And I have continued to do that every 3 or so years. Short of using a compiler, there is not one thing I do today that has much of anything to do with what I did 10 years ago, but I love what I do just as much. That's the trick - keep yourself engaged in what makes you excited. If that is managing teams - great. If not, don't become one of "those" mangers that lost his spark.
Among the uniquely feminine super powers is the ability to transport ping pong balls while keeping their hands free.
I recently went to replace my Sansa Clip from several years ago after I'd broken the clip through careless handling (while wearing motorcycle winter gloves). I also had tried a variety of replacement strategies and found none to be as all around functional as the old Sansa. After a bit of shopping and what not, I was floored that no one had made anything _better_ than the Sansa. Some where close, but skipped the FM radio functionality. So now after 5 years, I'm on my second Sansa. Might just go ahead and order another one while I still can!
When I was trying to learn Dutch, the biggest impediment I had was knowing some German. It's similar enough to feel familiar, but that familiarity leads to frustration more often than not. I think this is the biggest handicap in feeling comfortable with PowerShell is not the fact that it is not better or worse, but different. Once you get the hang of the verb-noun attribute conventions it becomes fairly easy to intuit ways to do what you want to do (or navigate the inline help). Microsoft has made the syntax and paradigms (sometimes annoyingly) consistent. I once wrote the back end infrastructure for SpecExplorer's SMB tests to exercise a FreeBSD CIFs server. The ability to embed inside the PowerShell test scripts, the C# code needed to implement ssh connections and adapt the behavior of windows shell "objects" to affect a POSIX SMB server was beautiful and elegant. I'd probably have to use Python or Ruby to do something similar on a real POSIX box. And then there is the issue of portability. Unless your POSIX shell script works in dash, it probably is not as portable as you'd like to think. On the other hand, pure PowerShell script that doesn't exercise platform specific extensions tend to be very portable (on windows).
While we've been busy distracting ourselves with purely ideological debate that can neither demonstrate a definitive start nor end of human life, the Chinese have been busy figuring out how to make that life "better" (for various definitions of better). I've yet to hear a single argument that can define life beginning at conception, whose logic can also be applied to define the end of life.