We are a software conglomerate with about 200 developers in four major cities. Maybe about ten are full-time telecommutors, visiting every couple months. Another half telecommute 2 days a week. The full-timers are generally long-term employees with good track records the company wanted to keep when circumstances changed.
Pre-immigrants on H-1B visas with no political rights. Approaching two million at last count.
open operating systems outlive hardware
on
The End of Unix?
·
· Score: 1
UNIX has been open most of life. First ATT almost free, toughened up by Bill Joy & friends at Berkeley. Now the Linux version. Most of the original computers and hardware companies in the 70s and 80s have bit the dust, but UNIX lives on.
You see alien heads all over GenX stuff. I attribute this mainly that every GenX kid saw the E.T. movie and quite a few saw Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind.
Both this movie and B.M. are about unhappy A.I.s. Kubrick's is about a presumably cute child A.I., perhaps more in line with the frustrations of last year's Iron Giant boy. B.M. suffered being too faithful to the Asimov story and having too many subplots that made it drag on.
Much of "attending school" is socialization in the classroom and outside the classroom. As the technology improves you could probably replace large lectures by quality videos, and recitation sections by interactive video chat rooms.
However a large component of many jobs is interacting with other people. Would the lost socialization harm this? Schools now dont always teach the teamwork used in business, even the software business.
The gene sequences are low level ATCG sequences with little direct information. This is similar to deducing the behavior of computer program by reading its binary core memory file. There are some clues to possible proteins and functionality, but it is largely mysterious. In fact the main way to determine function is use to the gene sequence to manufacture a sample of pure protein and test it in cells. Thats a lot easier than isolating the protein from a 100,000 others in the cell to figure it out.
The winner of the Intel (former Westinghouse) national science fair was a high school student who inserted coded messages into an artificial gene. She won $100,000 for the effort.
Most of the sequencing has been done by academic groups which puts all of the sequences on the net. Outside of a billion CGTAs around, its going to take a few decades to figure them out. I believe there a dozen fully sequence species out there- all single cells, except for a worm and a plant. Dozens more are being sequenced, with two mammals to come on line within a year or two (human, mouse).
Off of ideas, no matter what the rules are. Part of it will be figuring what the business rules are. Take MS as example- its made lots of money off of other people's ideas.
Atari began as a gaming company and tried to become a computer computer company. It had a respectable share of the PC market for a few years. Now the tide is coming the other way- a computer company morphing into a game company.
I'd welcome a new Dune movie every 20 years or so. The good novels are timeless and can be re-interpreted by film makers every generation. This happens with Shakespeare, the horror classics, etc. and why not Dune?
People who've read the book complain too much context is missing; while people who haven't read the book complain the movie is too convoluted and referential to the book! I thought the movie was a reasonable compromise (I read the book first). The movie also had very rich sets. It ranks in my top ten SF films and I try to see it every year or two.
I believe Dreamcast has a royalty of $7 / title sold; more if it is an in-house game. If the average user buys ten games or utilities during the life of the product, that $70 is probably more than the hardware.
We are a software branch of a large conglomerate. No strings attached, but hope that employees would work more in their spare time from home, try new technologies, and do personal computing at home rather than in the office. We get a new upgrade every 2-3 years. This year 600 MhZ, 256 MB, DVD-multmedia.
A gigahertz is a nice, round number. At some point the wires on the chip become just a few atoms thick and too choppy to shrink. I was hearing numbers around 3-4 GHz for a new insulator.
A super broad band net will facilitte two-way video in every room of your house, office, public building and portable message devices. That is the ultimate end of the net. Maybe around 2020.
Shows you how badly something can be designed when everyone wants to throw their two cents in. Also when designed primarily by professors who have no market constraints. Software engineering fortunately learned a few things since the 1970s. UNIX took the philosophy of simplicity and elegance. Its most elegant version being CMU Mach (in NeXT and Apple) and most widespread version in Linux. (Victim of Multics at MIT in the 1970s.)
Interesting convergence of two sciences in genomics: biology and computing. In the first pass, computers accelerate the decoding of the complex human genome by allowing the "shotgun" method: chop into a million pieces, decode, and statistically reassemble. In the next phase, computers will help identify and guess at the function of the expected 100,000 proteins in the genome. The function of only a couple percent are currently known. A quarter to a third can be currently guessed at from similarities to known ones.
Every supercomputer company has its maximum "pie in the sky" configuration, but corporations cant afford these $50+ million price tags. How do we know we can every reach these capacities? Answer: governemnt agencies- DOE, NOAA, NSA- buy a few of these uneconomical computers to keep the industry on their toes. I support limited purchase like this, but not the wholesale subsidy of the supercomputer industry like during the 70s nad 80s (e.g Thinking Machines).
Slashdot Mirror
We are a software conglomerate with about 200
developers in four major cities.
Maybe about ten are full-time telecommutors,
visiting every couple months. Another half
telecommute 2 days a week. The full-timers
are generally long-term employees with good
track records the company wanted to keep when
circumstances changed.
At least the Visicalc spreadsheet was a an Original Idea.
Pre-immigrants on H-1B visas with no political
rights. Approaching two million at last count.
UNIX has been open most of life.
First ATT almost free, toughened up by Bill Joy
& friends at Berkeley. Now the Linux version.
Most of the original computers and hardware companies
in the 70s and 80s have bit the dust, but UNIX lives on.
You see alien heads all over GenX stuff.
I attribute this mainly that every GenX kid
saw the E.T. movie and quite a few saw Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind.
Both this movie and B.M. are about unhappy A.I.s.
Kubrick's is about a presumably cute child A.I.,
perhaps more in line with the frustrations of
last year's Iron Giant boy.
B.M. suffered being too faithful to the Asimov
story and having too many subplots that made it
drag on.
Much of "attending school" is socialization
in the classroom and outside the classroom.
As the technology improves you could probably
replace large lectures by quality videos,
and recitation sections by interactive video
chat rooms.
However a large component of many jobs is
interacting with other people. Would the
lost socialization harm this? Schools now dont
always teach the teamwork used in business,
even the software business.
Probably will work OK for people interested in
picking up job skills, whether as a first
degree or continuing education.
For the minority interested in a learning community,
you'd still "goto school".
The gene sequences are low level ATCG sequences
with little direct information. This is similar
to deducing the behavior of computer program
by reading its binary core memory file.
There are some clues to possible proteins and
functionality, but it is largely mysterious.
In fact the main way to determine function is
use to the gene sequence to manufacture a sample
of pure protein and test it in cells. Thats a lot
easier than isolating the protein from a 100,000
others in the cell to figure it out.
The winner of the Intel (former Westinghouse)
national science fair was a high school student who
inserted coded messages into an artificial gene.
She won $100,000 for the effort.
Not all that far off.
Genetic chemistry projects are fairly routine
at high school science fairs.
Most of the sequencing has been done by academic
groups which puts all of the sequences on the
net. Outside of a billion CGTAs around,
its going to take a few decades to figure
them out. I believe there a dozen fully
sequence species out there- all single cells,
except for a worm and a plant.
Dozens more are being sequenced, with two mammals
to come on line within a year or two (human, mouse).
Off of ideas, no matter what the rules are.
Part of it will be figuring what the business
rules are.
Take MS as example- its made lots of money off of
other people's ideas.
Atari began as a gaming company and tried to become
a computer computer company. It had a respectable share of the PC market for a few years.
Now the tide is coming the other way- a computer company morphing into a game company.
I'd welcome a new Dune movie every 20 years or so.
The good novels are timeless and can be re-interpreted by film makers every generation.
This happens with Shakespeare, the horror classics, etc. and why not Dune?
People who've read the book complain too much
context is missing; while people who haven't
read the book complain the movie is too convoluted
and referential to the book! I thought the movie
was a reasonable compromise (I read the book first). The movie also had very rich sets.
It ranks in my top ten SF films and I try to
see it every year or two.
I believe Dreamcast has a royalty of $7 / title
sold; more if it is an in-house game.
If the average user buys ten games or
utilities during the life of the product,
that $70 is probably more than the hardware.
We are a software branch of a large conglomerate.
No strings attached, but hope that employees
would work more in their spare time from home,
try new technologies, and do personal computing
at home rather than in the office.
We get a new upgrade every 2-3 years.
This year 600 MhZ, 256 MB, DVD-multmedia.
Professional graphics people already
use this stuff.
A gigahertz is a nice, round number.
At some point the wires on the chip become just
a few atoms thick and too choppy to shrink.
I was hearing numbers around 3-4 GHz for a new
insulator.
A super broad band net will facilitte two-way
video in every room of your house, office, public
building and portable message devices.
That is the ultimate end of the net.
Maybe around 2020.
Of course they'll try to crush Linux first.
But that is not possible, then they'll try to
exploit them.
MS-Office is a cash cow itslef.
Shows you how badly something can be designed
when everyone wants to throw their two cents in.
Also when designed primarily by professors who
have no market constraints.
Software engineering fortunately learned a few
things since the 1970s.
UNIX took the philosophy of simplicity and elegance. Its most elegant version being CMU Mach
(in NeXT and Apple) and most widespread version in Linux.
(Victim of Multics at MIT in the 1970s.)
Interesting convergence of two sciences in genomics: biology and computing.
In the first pass, computers accelerate the
decoding of the complex human genome by allowing
the "shotgun" method: chop into a million pieces,
decode, and statistically reassemble.
In the next phase, computers will help identify
and guess at the function of the expected 100,000
proteins in the genome. The function of only a couple percent are currently known. A quarter to a third can be currently guessed at from similarities to known ones.
Will knowing all this explain life?
Every supercomputer company has its maximum
"pie in the sky" configuration, but corporations
cant afford these $50+ million price tags.
How do we know we can every reach these capacities?
Answer: governemnt agencies- DOE, NOAA, NSA-
buy a few of these uneconomical computers
to keep the industry on their toes.
I support limited purchase like this,
but not the wholesale subsidy of the supercomputer industry like
during the 70s nad 80s (e.g Thinking Machines).