I posted this in relation to a similar discussion on Kuro5hin. There are a few things in here that apply to that poster, but in general it applies here too, so I figured I'd cross post it.
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Step 1: Become a sysadmin.
Step 2: See step 1.
That's about it, really. UNIX is not really something you can master by reading up on it or by doing preparation in advance. It is a bit like english (or any spoken language), really. You just have to start using it.
By some standards, I'm a pretty advanced sysadmin. I've played with/configured about 75-80% of the items in the above list. According to other benchmarks, however, I have not even scratched the surface. It all depends on what sort of sysadmining you do. Sort of like how in spoken language you might be really good with, say, sporting words but know nothing of cooking terminology.
As far as I'm concerned, the best way to get good at being a sysadmin is to dive right in blind. Unfortunately that can be a really hard position to get into if you don't have a job related to sysadmining already. So, get yourself a nice box you can dedicate to a *nix and start hacking. I would suggest, however, that you not start with a crappy old 486. Even though there are lots of them around and they can be had for a dollar or two, the headaches of waiting for stuff to load and run might just drive you crazy. If you can, a high-end pentium would be best (and still very cheap). A PII would be better, of course.:-)
Now that you have a box (with lots of disk space and its own monitor) that you can dedicate to the task of sysadmin training, you can begin the process of becoming an expert. Here's a list of things I would suggest trying out (in a sort-of order, but not strictly):
- Install Slackware cold. What I mean is, don't read all the docs on Slackware before you try to make it work. Instead, just read enough to know how to get the install started. Then when you run into problems, try to figure them out yourself. After a couple of failed tries, launch Google on your main machine and start searching.
- Learn how to read and edit files. Learn about more, less, cat, grep, vi, vim, pico, nano, lpe, etc. No, you don't need to know them all right away. But find out what ways you like best to read raw text files and config files. Don't have any text files? Poke around in/etc! This is part of the UNIX experience that is different for nearly everyone. In the same way that you have your own style of spoken speech, this is where you develop your own style of UNIX. Try running everything. Try changing config files that look interesting. Hey, if it kills your box you'll just have to reinstall. And you should know all about that by now! Oh, and remember "man". It is your friend.
- Configure from scratch. Setup your network in Slackware (maybe using those reserved IPs if you don't have a real one). Get the box configured so it can ping your main box and vice versa. This might require a lot more quality time with Google if you're new at it and don't know where to start. But once you have a general idea, start searching man pages first since that can lead to other man pages which might ultimately lead to the solution (rememeber to check those "see also" sections!). Reading man pages is where tons and tons of general UNIX knowledge comes from and is very important. Oh, and you shoulnd't have to reboot for any of this (in theory).
- Setup a cron job that automatically syncs your computer's clock with an atomic clock. Don't know where to start? Google! But remember to break the problem down into its components. One component is to sync your computer with an atomic clock. The other part is making it do it automatically every so often. Usually, a UNIX tool will do just one part of the total solution. Keep this is mind.
- Setup Apache (since that's always fun to see working). But for maximum learning, compile Apache from source first. Google might be handy here, although explore the INSTALL or README files and such first.
- Setup SMB (samba) and make a network drive on your Linux box that can be mounted from Windows. Always a good time to be had here.:-P Of course Google is always around when you run into trouble. If you don't have Windows, you could probably skip this step, although there's something fun about storing Windows stuff on a UNIX box over a network. Or maybe its just me...
- Setup MySQL or Postgre or whatever one you think is better. Learn how to make some tables and some simple SQL (if you don't know this stuff already). But focus your time on the sysadmin-side. Learn how to properly back up the database (good chance for scripting here). Learn how to optimize a database. Setup mod_php for Apache and try to build a simple database-driven page (maybe pulls a list of names from a database table and displays them). Don't know where to start? Remember, UNIX is a collection of parts. It is the job of a sysadmin to put them together (in the form of scripts). Google? Is that you?
- Don't install X Windows. At least not right off. Focus on the sysadmin-ing bits of things. You can do nearly everything in UNIX without a GUI. You must learn these methods first or you will always be dependant on GUIs. In the UNIX world, being dependant on a GUI is the same thing as not being a sysadmin.
- By now you should know all about telnet and ftp. What about ssh? Did you know telnet is clear text and your password can be pulled right off the network? Don't like that idea? You shouldn't! Get paranoid. Secure your box from script kiddies and DOS attacks.
- You must have a reason to sysadmin. You can't just do it for the sake of doing it. If you don't have any reasons, make some up and stick to them. Give yourself deadlines to figure something out. Pretend that there's an office full of angry non-sysadmins just outside the door.
- Try setting up a mail list using majordomo. Once you get totaly frustered with that mess, set one up using mailman.
- Start playing with Perl. Don't worry about making it clean or pretty. Just get the job done. Perl isn't too picky. Don't use strict mode. Just make it work. Worry about getting your code clean and proper later. Perl won't care. Do things like build Perl or shell scripts that "automate" a backup process or perhaps reads some of your Apache log files and generates some stats. Yeah, there are stats programs, but you need the practise with Perl. Do it yourself once. Google is always there when you need it.
- Make some other user accounts on your box. Login with them and try to break the system (messing up configs, reading logs you shouldn't, reading other user's mail, etc). If you can, there's a problem. Learn how to fix it. Then fix it. Google knows these things.
- Buy some X10 stuff. Hook it up to the UNIX box. Build some Perl scripts that turn lights on and off with some event (such as a web hit--mod_php, anyone? Or hey, mod_perl if you're really into Perl) or at certain times of the day. Add in silly things like playing a sound on certain events (say, when you send an e-mail to the machine at a certain address it executes a command which plays sound). Or, make it so that if you telnet to a certain port (you do know about ports, right?), you can issue some special commands which affect the lights in the room and the music currently playing. Build a web interface for your room/house. If you can do this stuff, you'll know you're getting close to being a sysadmin. It might even involve Perl if you wanted it to. Or C. Or Python. Or whatever you want to learn right then. You see, you can do just about anything in just about any language in UNIX. I'm sure you think different than the person down the street. In UNIX, writting code in different languages is similar to how people think different. The end result might be the same (such as saying the same thing as someone else, but knowing that you likely arrived at that word with totaly unique thinking methods). In UNIX, language is not nearly as important as the result.
- When you think you've become a master, try to automate. Find yourself doing some things nearly the same all the time (say, when you build backups)? Build a script. Whatever language you want. Doesn't matter. Don't like the way the scripting languages work with your particular problem? Write your own meta-language and have another scripting language "execute" it.
- Now you're probably getting cocky. Format the drive on your linux box and install FreeBSD. Start over.
If you get this far, and are very comfortable in both Linux and *BSD, then you're probably about ready for an intro job in sysadmining. And by this point, you will no longer care about getting a certification (unless it might mean a higher wage:-). You'll know that being a true UNIX master has little to do with book learning and everything to do with knowing how to search on Google. And that's when you'll know you are true sysadmin material. How do you know when you are a master? When your website or newsgroup postings or maillist messages become answers instead of questions and there's lots of Google referers in the logs.:-)
Douglas Adams and Larry Niven. I know Ringworld is one of those future stories that might seem really silly in 50 years, but I think it has just enough internal consistancy and depth that it will stand the test of time. I mean, it is already pretty old by scifi standards and its still very much loved, so it is off to a great start. A lot of material writen around the same time is already laughable. But not Ringworld.
And of course Douglas Adams is just classic. Mostly because the science is so absurd it isn't really the point anyway. And that will last a long time to come.
I once wrote a small rant about this on my site. Although I admit, it isn't very well done.:-P
Basically, I think that overlapping windows waste far more time than they save. It might be better if you could dedicate the entire screen to one task at a time. Perhaps providing a common tool bar across all views for things like the clock and MP3 player displays or whatever. Also that bar could be a common place to drag information when you need to switch between contexts. I don't know for sure how well this would work, but it seems a lot of things could be cleaned up about the user experience if we just got rid of overlapping stuff.
Hmm.. I guess I should go out and get me some sandals then. Oh, and I'll have to start doing drugs and wearing peace symbols I suppose. And a VW van of course (to do all my lovin' in).
Wait a second.. I'd have to change everything about me to become a "sandal wearing hippy". Nevermind. You must have the wrong guy.
I think I may have figured it out. The General was locked in the space station's bridge when the dude left. In a way, I think you are probably expected to assume he stays there forever. However, what if he got out? See, there is one shuttle still left on the planet--the one at the bottom of the lake! What if Tahde got out and figured out how to fix it? Or what if it wasn't even really broken? The thing should be able to withstand quite a lot given that it works in space and all. So, if Thade got that ship out and popped in for a ride, he might have ended up in that storm and flew back in time hundreds of years and landed on earth.
In fact, now that I think about it some more, there is also one little chimp on the planet of the apes that knows how to fly those things too.. The test pilot!
I think that if there is a sequel, this would be the only explaination possible. And it fits with the facts of the movie.
I don't have much love for Microsoft, but there is no way in hell I want to see this happen. Government regulation of dangerous/unhealthy products and services is one thing. An OS?!? Come on! The market is already beginning to balance itself with the growing popularity of Linux, OS X, and all those Internet Appliances that are bound to show up (*cough*). The market WILL take care of itself one way or another. Even Microsoft can't hold everything back forever. Eventually something new will come out. Yeah, it might be hard, but the end result will be better for everyone in the long run. And there is NO need to keep Microsoft from releasing a new OS upgrade! Heck, if it sucks, less people will buy it. They may have a monopoly of sorts right now, but it isn't one that is locked tight. An OS can be changed in an afternoon. There is no need for this kind of insane action.
Re:I saw AI this afternoon. (SPOILERS)
on
Review: A.I.
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· Score: 1
What the heck happened to his father? His mother is all he talks about. It is so oedipal, it's rediculous. The movie even ends with his mother and him in bed. He calls his mother "Mommy" after he is imprinted and completely ignores the father. He pays more attention to his mean brother. Wouldn't his programmers make it so he was imprinted to 2 people? Thus his father becomes a static character that is quite flat. David calls his father "Henry" the whole movie.
As far as I can tell, this was all intentional. David is attached to his mother because Henry never went through the imprinting protocol. I think David was supposed to be brought up in a two-parent family, but since Henry never imprinted, David assumed the only parent he has was his mother. Henry treated David as nothing more than a machine on several occasions and it was pretty obvious to me that he was the one who had the real problem with the idea of a loving AI. And what's all this about David ending up in bed with his mother? That's a pretty normal thing for a kid David's age. He was just lying there! Geesh.
David breaks easily from a little spinach and yet he lasts 2000 years frozen in the water. He dives into water twice and that doesn't hurt his circuits at all.
If you looked carefully while they were taking the spinach out, it would appear David is almost all (maybe totaly) optical. Water doesn't matter. The only reason the veggies didn't agree with him was likely because it jammed up some joints or blocked some signal paths.
Also how, exactly, are the robots powered? This is a small issue because this is sci-fi and you have to suspend your belief but come on!
Possibly with a small nuclear-type of thing. That would work pretty nicely and last a terribly long time without refueling. Also, I think the robot who discovered him actually charged him up or something when he touched him (remember how David jerked suddenly?). So the power supply may not have lasted 2,000 years.
Anyway, I loved the movie. I admit I was a bit bored while actually watching it, but on the drive home my friends and I pulled it apart and linked it all together. As far as I'm concerned this may be the best movies since 2001. And I suspect that, like 2001, it will be very very highly regarded in a few years even though right now most people seem to hate it.
Re:What Makes Sammy Run?
on
Review: A.I.
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· Score: 1
"the idea that a robot boy could neither eat spinach nor get wet without having some kind of short-circuit is simply stupid"
No, it isn't actually. From what I saw, David is almost (if not totaly) built using optical technology. There's nothing to short out! The reason the spinach caused so much trouble was because it jammed up physical joints and may have blocked some optical signals.
There can be a lag sometimes. The servers do not keep an open connection with each other at all times, so there is some connection overhead if you are the first to do a connection between the two (or the connection dropped and had to be remade). There does seem to be slightly more lag when talking through another server, though, but I've not noticed it as long as 20 seconds. Usually only 1 or 2 in my experience. Perhaps it was a fluke.:-)
I'm not sure exactly what you are saying, but Jabber is most certainly *not* dependent on one server. It is designed to be installed in the same way as e-mail servers, so ISPs should install Jabber themselves. That's one of the main reasons why a JID (Jabber ID) is in the form of an e-mail address. Jabber is a distributed system and very similar to P2P (only the client connects to a server that takes care of talking to other servers for you, so it's one step removed from "pure" P2P).
Dubuque may be a small city, but it is not exactly in the middle of nowhere (well, ok, it IS in Iowa..:-). Still, I wonder if Jon knows that Jeremie Miller (the jabber project (jabber.org) and listed by Katz himself in the article) is from Cascade which is an even smaller town only a few miles from Dubuque. Either that's an amazing coincidence, or he was trying to imply something else.
In any case, I found it to be pretty darned funny since Jeremie is one of those people at the top of the new P2P world and from a traditional small-town farm family himself.
"When American producers take a Brtish production and try and change it to suit the American audience, the result ALWAYS sucks. Name one that didn't."
Who Wants to be a Millionaire? comes to mind. But of course it is the *only* one that comes to mind. And mostly because they stole every last detail (I've seen both). Heck, the hosts are even close to the same in that case...
I hope they don't screw with The Weakest Link, though..... Goodbye!
Yeah, this is what Jabber does. There's no need for one central server for the entire world. In fact, the point is to have tons of small servers at the ISP level. Jabber servers can talk directly to other Jabber servers and route messages much like e-mail does it.
Basically, the Jabber servers act in the p2p style. You still have to have servers for your client to connect to, but it's a LOT better than the rest of the IM systems which have one central server. In Jabber your "screen name" is really just like an e-mail address. For example, bob@jabber.org or billg@jabber.com or hank@someotherjabberserver.com. That's how the servers know how to route messages to each other. Now imagine if every ISP setup a Jabber server that mirrored the same name you get for your e-mail. You could get both Jabber IMs and e-mail and just have to remember/give out one address for everything: username@myisp.net
I want to know what is being done for merchants. I really like this idea of a disposible credit card myself, but there's still a pretty huge problem with online sales and that is the chargeback. We online store folks have something like 0 methods of contesting a chargeback. They want documentation? Well, I just print something out from a database. Problem is, that's not enough. What they really want is a physical indication of the presence of the card itself. Well, that's a bit hard over the Internet.
So, in short, there's not much of anything we online merchants can do when a chargeback comes our way. I would love to see a nice solution to this problem.
"Attached to this, and more importantly is the fact that informational simulations HAVE NO CAUSAL POWERS! Having no physical existance, they cannot cause or affect anything except what is formally defined for them in the simulation."
So, how is this any different from us? We can only affect things that are formally defined for our own existence. I cannot move something which does not exist.
If I program a nice red bouncy ball object for my artificial creatures to play with and they go about pushing it around all by themselves simply because it triggers a "fun" response in some code someplace (there was no directly coded 'play_with_red_ball' function), how is this any different from Real Life(TM)? I may pick up a basketball and bounce it around simply because I find it fun. Not because anyone told me to do it. In the same way that the AI creatures caused the ball to move simply because they "wanted" to, I caused a real ball to move because I "wanted" to. That seems very causal to me.
As far as I can tell, you're just as guilty of using "confusion and elaborate talk" and "intellectual slight-of-hand" to make us all believe it simply can't be done because you say so. I fail to see how this comment is proof of anything other than you having not read the book. (I did, BTW)
Also, Grand doesn't propose that we make simulations of life. In fact, that's exactly what he says the more traditional AI research is doing wrong. He suggests that the only way to make artificial life is to let it happen itself on its own terms. So, he simulates a very simple "world" which has basic rules (similar to our own) like gravity and such. And he then places his creatures into it. Instead of trying to simulate intelligence or actions in the way we experience them, he instead lets the creatures see their "life" from their own point of view. The idea is that as far as the creature is concerned (if it could be concerned at all:-), there is no outside world to be simulated in. This is basically how we function since we are constrained to exist within our own universe.
I think you have fallen into the trap of not wanting to think outside the box. Who says that the meaning of life is *required* to have causal power in OUR universe? If it can cause change in it's own universe, then that seems to be good enough since that's all we do (as far as anyone knows). Just because our universe may be the container of this virtual universe doesn't mean that you can escape your reality. Is there any reason not to think that perhaps our own universe exists inside of a larger one? How could we ever find out? And does it matter? This is the same reasoning the author used when he got into particle physics and other strange topics. It was not to create a simulation of our universe, but to use that knowledge to create a simpler sub-universe in which his creatures could live.
I have read the book and this is NOT the approach he takes. In fact he strongly argues against this exact approach for the reasons you've given (and others).
As I remember it, the main reason he got into subatomic particles and such was in the area of the book where he was talking about life itself and how it works. He never once suggested that we should emulate that in order to create artificial life. In fact, one of the key arguments was that artificial life shouldn't be the same as physical life since the enviroments are different. Life tends to form and grow according to the enviroment it lives in and it wouldn't make sense to have normal biological life in a computer simluation.
Instead, the approach he takes is that he starts with some very basic principals and builds from there adding things like desire, attention, needs, wants, etc. to the creature. The end result is that it looks and acts a whole lot like real life. And with the addition of a digial DNA concept, it even reproduces like real life in that genes are inherited and even a little bit of teaching between parents and children take place (from what I can gather this is just one of the millions of behaviors that have been observed that were not directly programmed!). It even goes so far that the genes describe the color of the "fur" on the creatures and so sometimes common traits will pop up where you can recognize familes by physical attributes. It is quite amazing, really (I have played the game as well).
At any rate, my point is that he does *not* suggest starting at the bottom and building a complete life/universe simulator up. He just started there so as to better understand the process of life itself and its various drives and motivations. Then he went about similating those drives and NOT the actual details that lead us bilogical beings up to them (because, after all, an artificial life form does not live in our world!).
It really is an amazing book and IMHO the review does very little justice to it. You just have to read it!
Slashdot Mirror
...that they had a Champaign Supernova afterward?
Perhaps most importantly, do you want this to be fitted nasally?
NO!! Bastards! Andromeda is/was the last good scifi on TV (next to old B5 reruns). This just sucks. Ruined my day. :-(
I posted this in relation to a similar discussion on Kuro5hin. There are a few things in here that apply to that poster, but in general it applies here too, so I figured I'd cross post it.
:-)
/etc! This is part of the UNIX experience that is different for nearly everyone. In the same way that you have your own style of spoken speech, this is where you develop your own style of UNIX. Try running everything. Try changing config files that look interesting. Hey, if it kills your box you'll just have to reinstall. And you should know all about that by now! Oh, and remember "man". It is your friend.
:-P Of course Google is always around when you run into trouble. If you don't have Windows, you could probably skip this step, although there's something fun about storing Windows stuff on a UNIX box over a network. Or maybe its just me...
:-). You'll know that being a true UNIX master has little to do with book learning and everything to do with knowing how to search on Google. And that's when you'll know you are true sysadmin material. How do you know when you are a master? When your website or newsgroup postings or maillist messages become answers instead of questions and there's lots of Google referers in the logs. :-)
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Step 1: Become a sysadmin.
Step 2: See step 1.
That's about it, really. UNIX is not really something you can master by reading up on it or by doing preparation in advance. It is a bit like english (or any spoken language), really. You just have to start using it.
By some standards, I'm a pretty advanced sysadmin. I've played with/configured about 75-80% of the items in the above list. According to other benchmarks, however, I have not even scratched the surface. It all depends on what sort of sysadmining you do. Sort of like how in spoken language you might be really good with, say, sporting words but know nothing of cooking terminology.
As far as I'm concerned, the best way to get good at being a sysadmin is to dive right in blind. Unfortunately that can be a really hard position to get into if you don't have a job related to sysadmining already. So, get yourself a nice box you can dedicate to a *nix and start hacking. I would suggest, however, that you not start with a crappy old 486. Even though there are lots of them around and they can be had for a dollar or two, the headaches of waiting for stuff to load and run might just drive you crazy. If you can, a high-end pentium would be best (and still very cheap). A PII would be better, of course.
Now that you have a box (with lots of disk space and its own monitor) that you can dedicate to the task of sysadmin training, you can begin the process of becoming an expert. Here's a list of things I would suggest trying out (in a sort-of order, but not strictly):
- Install Slackware cold. What I mean is, don't read all the docs on Slackware before you try to make it work. Instead, just read enough to know how to get the install started. Then when you run into problems, try to figure them out yourself. After a couple of failed tries, launch Google on your main machine and start searching.
- Learn how to read and edit files. Learn about more, less, cat, grep, vi, vim, pico, nano, lpe, etc. No, you don't need to know them all right away. But find out what ways you like best to read raw text files and config files. Don't have any text files? Poke around in
- Configure from scratch. Setup your network in Slackware (maybe using those reserved IPs if you don't have a real one). Get the box configured so it can ping your main box and vice versa. This might require a lot more quality time with Google if you're new at it and don't know where to start. But once you have a general idea, start searching man pages first since that can lead to other man pages which might ultimately lead to the solution (rememeber to check those "see also" sections!). Reading man pages is where tons and tons of general UNIX knowledge comes from and is very important. Oh, and you shoulnd't have to reboot for any of this (in theory).
- Setup a cron job that automatically syncs your computer's clock with an atomic clock. Don't know where to start? Google! But remember to break the problem down into its components. One component is to sync your computer with an atomic clock. The other part is making it do it automatically every so often. Usually, a UNIX tool will do just one part of the total solution. Keep this is mind.
- Setup Apache (since that's always fun to see working). But for maximum learning, compile Apache from source first. Google might be handy here, although explore the INSTALL or README files and such first.
- Setup SMB (samba) and make a network drive on your Linux box that can be mounted from Windows. Always a good time to be had here.
- Setup MySQL or Postgre or whatever one you think is better. Learn how to make some tables and some simple SQL (if you don't know this stuff already). But focus your time on the sysadmin-side. Learn how to properly back up the database (good chance for scripting here). Learn how to optimize a database. Setup mod_php for Apache and try to build a simple database-driven page (maybe pulls a list of names from a database table and displays them). Don't know where to start? Remember, UNIX is a collection of parts. It is the job of a sysadmin to put them together (in the form of scripts). Google? Is that you?
- Don't install X Windows. At least not right off. Focus on the sysadmin-ing bits of things. You can do nearly everything in UNIX without a GUI. You must learn these methods first or you will always be dependant on GUIs. In the UNIX world, being dependant on a GUI is the same thing as not being a sysadmin.
- By now you should know all about telnet and ftp. What about ssh? Did you know telnet is clear text and your password can be pulled right off the network? Don't like that idea? You shouldn't! Get paranoid. Secure your box from script kiddies and DOS attacks.
- You must have a reason to sysadmin. You can't just do it for the sake of doing it. If you don't have any reasons, make some up and stick to them. Give yourself deadlines to figure something out. Pretend that there's an office full of angry non-sysadmins just outside the door.
- Try setting up a mail list using majordomo. Once you get totaly frustered with that mess, set one up using mailman.
- Start playing with Perl. Don't worry about making it clean or pretty. Just get the job done. Perl isn't too picky. Don't use strict mode. Just make it work. Worry about getting your code clean and proper later. Perl won't care. Do things like build Perl or shell scripts that "automate" a backup process or perhaps reads some of your Apache log files and generates some stats. Yeah, there are stats programs, but you need the practise with Perl. Do it yourself once. Google is always there when you need it.
- Make some other user accounts on your box. Login with them and try to break the system (messing up configs, reading logs you shouldn't, reading other user's mail, etc). If you can, there's a problem. Learn how to fix it. Then fix it. Google knows these things.
- Buy some X10 stuff. Hook it up to the UNIX box. Build some Perl scripts that turn lights on and off with some event (such as a web hit--mod_php, anyone? Or hey, mod_perl if you're really into Perl) or at certain times of the day. Add in silly things like playing a sound on certain events (say, when you send an e-mail to the machine at a certain address it executes a command which plays sound). Or, make it so that if you telnet to a certain port (you do know about ports, right?), you can issue some special commands which affect the lights in the room and the music currently playing. Build a web interface for your room/house. If you can do this stuff, you'll know you're getting close to being a sysadmin. It might even involve Perl if you wanted it to. Or C. Or Python. Or whatever you want to learn right then. You see, you can do just about anything in just about any language in UNIX. I'm sure you think different than the person down the street. In UNIX, writting code in different languages is similar to how people think different. The end result might be the same (such as saying the same thing as someone else, but knowing that you likely arrived at that word with totaly unique thinking methods). In UNIX, language is not nearly as important as the result.
- When you think you've become a master, try to automate. Find yourself doing some things nearly the same all the time (say, when you build backups)? Build a script. Whatever language you want. Doesn't matter. Don't like the way the scripting languages work with your particular problem? Write your own meta-language and have another scripting language "execute" it.
- Now you're probably getting cocky. Format the drive on your linux box and install FreeBSD. Start over.
If you get this far, and are very comfortable in both Linux and *BSD, then you're probably about ready for an intro job in sysadmining. And by this point, you will no longer care about getting a certification (unless it might mean a higher wage
Douglas Adams and Larry Niven. I know Ringworld is one of those future stories that might seem really silly in 50 years, but I think it has just enough internal consistancy and depth that it will stand the test of time. I mean, it is already pretty old by scifi standards and its still very much loved, so it is off to a great start. A lot of material writen around the same time is already laughable. But not Ringworld.
And of course Douglas Adams is just classic. Mostly because the science is so absurd it isn't really the point anyway. And that will last a long time to come.
I once wrote a small rant about this on my site. Although I admit, it isn't very well done. :-P
:-)
Basically, I think that overlapping windows waste far more time than they save. It might be better if you could dedicate the entire screen to one task at a time. Perhaps providing a common tool bar across all views for things like the clock and MP3 player displays or whatever. Also that bar could be a common place to drag information when you need to switch between contexts. I don't know for sure how well this would work, but it seems a lot of things could be cleaned up about the user experience if we just got rid of overlapping stuff.
But maybe it's just me.
Hmm.. I guess I should go out and get me some sandals then. Oh, and I'll have to start doing drugs and wearing peace symbols I suppose. And a VW van of course (to do all my lovin' in).
Wait a second.. I'd have to change everything about me to become a "sandal wearing hippy". Nevermind. You must have the wrong guy.
I made a web site button that I'm using on sites I admin. I encourage everyone else to either use this one or make their own or something.
He is not Bill Clinton.
I think I may have figured it out. The General was locked in the space station's bridge when the dude left. In a way, I think you are probably expected to assume he stays there forever. However, what if he got out? See, there is one shuttle still left on the planet--the one at the bottom of the lake! What if Tahde got out and figured out how to fix it? Or what if it wasn't even really broken? The thing should be able to withstand quite a lot given that it works in space and all. So, if Thade got that ship out and popped in for a ride, he might have ended up in that storm and flew back in time hundreds of years and landed on earth.
In fact, now that I think about it some more, there is also one little chimp on the planet of the apes that knows how to fly those things too.. The test pilot!
I think that if there is a sequel, this would be the only explaination possible. And it fits with the facts of the movie.
I don't have much love for Microsoft, but there is no way in hell I want to see this happen. Government regulation of dangerous/unhealthy products and services is one thing. An OS?!? Come on! The market is already beginning to balance itself with the growing popularity of Linux, OS X, and all those Internet Appliances that are bound to show up (*cough*). The market WILL take care of itself one way or another. Even Microsoft can't hold everything back forever. Eventually something new will come out. Yeah, it might be hard, but the end result will be better for everyone in the long run. And there is NO need to keep Microsoft from releasing a new OS upgrade! Heck, if it sucks, less people will buy it. They may have a monopoly of sorts right now, but it isn't one that is locked tight. An OS can be changed in an afternoon. There is no need for this kind of insane action.
What the heck happened to his father? His mother is all he talks about. It is so oedipal, it's rediculous. The movie even ends with his mother and him in bed. He calls his mother "Mommy" after he is imprinted and completely ignores the father. He pays more attention to his mean brother. Wouldn't his programmers make it so he was imprinted to 2 people? Thus his father becomes a static character that is quite flat. David calls his father "Henry" the whole movie.
As far as I can tell, this was all intentional. David is attached to his mother because Henry never went through the imprinting protocol. I think David was supposed to be brought up in a two-parent family, but since Henry never imprinted, David assumed the only parent he has was his mother. Henry treated David as nothing more than a machine on several occasions and it was pretty obvious to me that he was the one who had the real problem with the idea of a loving AI. And what's all this about David ending up in bed with his mother? That's a pretty normal thing for a kid David's age. He was just lying there! Geesh.
David breaks easily from a little spinach and yet he lasts 2000 years frozen in the water. He dives into water twice and that doesn't hurt his circuits at all.
If you looked carefully while they were taking the spinach out, it would appear David is almost all (maybe totaly) optical. Water doesn't matter. The only reason the veggies didn't agree with him was likely because it jammed up some joints or blocked some signal paths.
Also how, exactly, are the robots powered? This is a small issue because this is sci-fi and you have to suspend your belief but come on!
Possibly with a small nuclear-type of thing. That would work pretty nicely and last a terribly long time without refueling. Also, I think the robot who discovered him actually charged him up or something when he touched him (remember how David jerked suddenly?). So the power supply may not have lasted 2,000 years.
Anyway, I loved the movie. I admit I was a bit bored while actually watching it, but on the drive home my friends and I pulled it apart and linked it all together. As far as I'm concerned this may be the best movies since 2001. And I suspect that, like 2001, it will be very very highly regarded in a few years even though right now most people seem to hate it.
"the idea that a robot boy could neither eat spinach nor get wet without having some kind of short-circuit is simply stupid"
No, it isn't actually. From what I saw, David is almost (if not totaly) built using optical technology. There's nothing to short out! The reason the spinach caused so much trouble was because it jammed up physical joints and may have blocked some optical signals.
Ummm.... Why is this -1 offtopic? This is one of the most on-topic comments posted so far.. *sigh*
There can be a lag sometimes. The servers do not keep an open connection with each other at all times, so there is some connection overhead if you are the first to do a connection between the two (or the connection dropped and had to be remade). There does seem to be slightly more lag when talking through another server, though, but I've not noticed it as long as 20 seconds. Usually only 1 or 2 in my experience. Perhaps it was a fluke. :-)
I'm not sure exactly what you are saying, but Jabber is most certainly *not* dependent on one server. It is designed to be installed in the same way as e-mail servers, so ISPs should install Jabber themselves. That's one of the main reasons why a JID (Jabber ID) is in the form of an e-mail address. Jabber is a distributed system and very similar to P2P (only the client connects to a server that takes care of talking to other servers for you, so it's one step removed from "pure" P2P).
I can do that... Hey wait a minute....
:-P
Dubuque may be a small city, but it is not exactly in the middle of nowhere (well, ok, it IS in Iowa..:-). Still, I wonder if Jon knows that Jeremie Miller (the jabber project (jabber.org) and listed by Katz himself in the article) is from Cascade which is an even smaller town only a few miles from Dubuque. Either that's an amazing coincidence, or he was trying to imply something else.
In any case, I found it to be pretty darned funny since Jeremie is one of those people at the top of the new P2P world and from a traditional small-town farm family himself.
do Harry and Martha in Dubuque need peer-to-peer?
Well, I don't know Harry or Martha, but I live in Dubuque and I want and need peer-to-peer.
"When American producers take a Brtish production and try and change it to suit the American audience, the result ALWAYS sucks. Name one that didn't."
Who Wants to be a Millionaire? comes to mind. But of course it is the *only* one that comes to mind. And mostly because they stole every last detail (I've seen both). Heck, the hosts are even close to the same in that case...
I hope they don't screw with The Weakest Link, though..... Goodbye!
Why don't you just use TOC for the Jabber plugin? (Just an innocent question from someone who doesn't know what features TOC is missing :-).
I'd rather that the AIM transport worked all of the time than having to keep up with the AOL vs. the world wars.
Yeah, this is what Jabber does. There's no need for one central server for the entire world. In fact, the point is to have tons of small servers at the ISP level. Jabber servers can talk directly to other Jabber servers and route messages much like e-mail does it.
Basically, the Jabber servers act in the p2p style. You still have to have servers for your client to connect to, but it's a LOT better than the rest of the IM systems which have one central server. In Jabber your "screen name" is really just like an e-mail address. For example, bob@jabber.org or billg@jabber.com or hank@someotherjabberserver.com. That's how the servers know how to route messages to each other. Now imagine if every ISP setup a Jabber server that mirrored the same name you get for your e-mail. You could get both Jabber IMs and e-mail and just have to remember/give out one address for everything: username@myisp.net
I want to know what is being done for merchants. I really like this idea of a disposible credit card myself, but there's still a pretty huge problem with online sales and that is the chargeback. We online store folks have something like 0 methods of contesting a chargeback. They want documentation? Well, I just print something out from a database. Problem is, that's not enough. What they really want is a physical indication of the presence of the card itself. Well, that's a bit hard over the Internet.
So, in short, there's not much of anything we online merchants can do when a chargeback comes our way. I would love to see a nice solution to this problem.
"Attached to this, and more importantly is the fact that informational simulations HAVE NO CAUSAL POWERS! Having no physical existance, they cannot cause or affect anything except what is formally defined for them in the simulation."
:-), there is no outside world to be simulated in. This is basically how we function since we are constrained to exist within our own universe.
So, how is this any different from us? We can only affect things that are formally defined for our own existence. I cannot move something which does not exist.
If I program a nice red bouncy ball object for my artificial creatures to play with and they go about pushing it around all by themselves simply because it triggers a "fun" response in some code someplace (there was no directly coded 'play_with_red_ball' function), how is this any different from Real Life(TM)? I may pick up a basketball and bounce it around simply because I find it fun. Not because anyone told me to do it. In the same way that the AI creatures caused the ball to move simply because they "wanted" to, I caused a real ball to move because I "wanted" to. That seems very causal to me.
As far as I can tell, you're just as guilty of using "confusion and elaborate talk" and "intellectual slight-of-hand" to make us all believe it simply can't be done because you say so. I fail to see how this comment is proof of anything other than you having not read the book. (I did, BTW)
Also, Grand doesn't propose that we make simulations of life. In fact, that's exactly what he says the more traditional AI research is doing wrong. He suggests that the only way to make artificial life is to let it happen itself on its own terms. So, he simulates a very simple "world" which has basic rules (similar to our own) like gravity and such. And he then places his creatures into it. Instead of trying to simulate intelligence or actions in the way we experience them, he instead lets the creatures see their "life" from their own point of view. The idea is that as far as the creature is concerned (if it could be concerned at all
I think you have fallen into the trap of not wanting to think outside the box. Who says that the meaning of life is *required* to have causal power in OUR universe? If it can cause change in it's own universe, then that seems to be good enough since that's all we do (as far as anyone knows). Just because our universe may be the container of this virtual universe doesn't mean that you can escape your reality. Is there any reason not to think that perhaps our own universe exists inside of a larger one? How could we ever find out? And does it matter? This is the same reasoning the author used when he got into particle physics and other strange topics. It was not to create a simulation of our universe, but to use that knowledge to create a simpler sub-universe in which his creatures could live.
I have read the book and this is NOT the approach he takes. In fact he strongly argues against this exact approach for the reasons you've given (and others).
As I remember it, the main reason he got into subatomic particles and such was in the area of the book where he was talking about life itself and how it works. He never once suggested that we should emulate that in order to create artificial life. In fact, one of the key arguments was that artificial life shouldn't be the same as physical life since the enviroments are different. Life tends to form and grow according to the enviroment it lives in and it wouldn't make sense to have normal biological life in a computer simluation.
Instead, the approach he takes is that he starts with some very basic principals and builds from there adding things like desire, attention, needs, wants, etc. to the creature. The end result is that it looks and acts a whole lot like real life. And with the addition of a digial DNA concept, it even reproduces like real life in that genes are inherited and even a little bit of teaching between parents and children take place (from what I can gather this is just one of the millions of behaviors that have been observed that were not directly programmed!). It even goes so far that the genes describe the color of the "fur" on the creatures and so sometimes common traits will pop up where you can recognize familes by physical attributes. It is quite amazing, really (I have played the game as well).
At any rate, my point is that he does *not* suggest starting at the bottom and building a complete life/universe simulator up. He just started there so as to better understand the process of life itself and its various drives and motivations. Then he went about similating those drives and NOT the actual details that lead us bilogical beings up to them (because, after all, an artificial life form does not live in our world!).
It really is an amazing book and IMHO the review does very little justice to it. You just have to read it!