I run as root all the time. I cut my teeth on DOS, Windows, and then NT, and have always run with Administrative priveleges. Never had a problem, I am just extremely careful with what I do.
Most of the time I use Linux I am tinkering, recompiling, reinstalling new versions etc... things that require root access. So why bother with the fiction of a 'user' account?
Ok, so I might be exposing myself to a slightly greater risk with regards to Linux viruses - guess that's what backups are for.
There are plenty of people that cannot afford a computer or internet access who can afford a cell phone or pager.
There are already email pagers, and they will get better and cheaper. It will not in the future(and does not now) require a $1000 computer to get email.
There are any number of devices in the works that would allow very low income individuals to cheaply send and receive email. Maybe the US government needs to be subsidizing these rather than an obselete, bureaucratic paper pusher. Ultimately it has to be cheaper overall to deliver text messages (or letters) electronically.
I started reading the teaser text of the article before I read who posted it. The fact that 'incubus' appears in the first sentence clued me in to the fact that it must be a Katz article - yep.
It is amazing to me the amount of overgeneralization modern day techno journalist can pack into a single sentence.
For the deliver of anything other than actual physical objects or documents with 'real world' signatures, snail mail is obselete. Eventually once a good digital signature standard is worked out and legally recognized only parcel post will survive. I see no reason anyone will be sending actual 'letters' in twenty year's time.
There are those few old-timers that claim 'nothing is better than a real letter' - I've got news for you, the upcoming adult generation has teethed on email and holds no such warm fuzzies for the printed word.
The Post Office's days are numbered. When it comes down to delivering pure information there are myriads of companies that are in a better position to do it faster, better, and cheaper than the Post Office.
About the only thing that could allow the Post Office to survive is for it to morph into a FedEx/UPS parcel delivery competitor. In this way it could leverage it's huge, already established physical distribution network.
The next big 'public service' to fall prey to technology will be the Library. Imagine, a world without libraries and the US Postal service. What will civil servants do?
They have a little box that you can type your confession in, they claim that the information remains on your computer and is sent nowhere - wouldn't it be funny if they were actually recording each confession and having a great laugh on us?
"Dear Lord, I spilled hot grits down my pants"
"Dear Lord, I lusted after a petrified Natalie Portman"
These folks have the law on their side. Like it or not the DeCSS software publishes a trade secret, the CSS encryption algorithm. This is illegal. Plain and simple. Doesn't matter what you are going to use it for - piracy or viewing, if you plan to profit from it or not - it's just plain against the law to publish someone else's trade secret without their express permission.
No sucessful Open Source product will ever be based on DeCSS because the DVD industry will continue to defend their valid legal right to their trade secrets and impose severe penalties on anyone who dares to defy them.
You say 'the genie is out of the bottle' - wait until the coders of the Linux DVD project get threatened with imprisonment and million dollar fines - we will see how far this project progresses.
You want a Linux DVD player? Get some venture capital together, buy a license for the algorithm, and go to town. Sell it to all the large linux re-packagers (redhat et al.) and laugh all the way to the bank.
Slashdot has one of the highest signal to noise ratios of any discussion forum I have ever participated in. The moderation system has helped a great deal in that I can now screen out most of the idiots.
I don't see massive flame-wars on slashdot for the most part. People need not be afraid of posting their opinions to slashdot as long as they are well-considered and intelligent - such commentary is almost always well recieved.
Can someone give me an example of the problem here on slashdot? Jon?
The article mentions that her delivery of the news items could be modified to suit user preferences.
I can just see the options now:
Sultry Voice: On Accent: [x]French []British []American Flirtation Coefficient: Min |----------O-| Max Startup Phrase: [ Hey there sexy, have I got some HOT news for you ] Shutdown Phrase: [ Mmmmm, ohhhh, mmmmmmmmm ] Lipstick Color: Hooker Red
Muddle minded generalizations, bah
on
The Regulon
·
· Score: 2
Yes there is a natural regulating mechanism in the 'semiosphere' - the number of consumers of information and the time that they have available to consume. Both are finite, so information can 'explode' all it wants, only so much of it can be looked at.
What Katz fails to do is establish any reason or need for regulating the flood of information. Is the fact that within the next 25 years I will be able to access the sum total of human knowledge within an instant of thinking of it somehow bad? It's not like this information is crushing in on me. Web sites don't just pop up in my browser unbidden (at least most don't;) I seek out the information myself.
Katz's 'semiosphere' metaphor is weak at best, ludicrous more like. The biological world is finite, habits are limited in capacity, animals die, reproduce recombinantly. None of these features is present in the realm of information. Or capacity to store information grows exponentially every year. Information does not reproduce, and there is no natural limit to the amount of information we can store. There does not need to be a 'regulon'.
And as always, I utterly failed to find any sort of a point in this little fluff piece. Reading stuff like this really makes me think that I, with my relatively poor writing skills and reasoning abilities could be a pundit. I'd couldn't be worse than Jon.
I have a Gateway Pentium 150 purchase almost 4 years ago. The thing graciously took a 56k modem. It now has two PCI 100Mb ethernet cards. I have tripled the amount of RAM it had originally, and can still add more. Oh yeah, I also added a PCI SCSI card, no problems. I once had a problem with the decidedly non-commodity IBM harddrive. Gateway replaced it immediately.
But I don't think this is the point with the Qube, it is not mean to be expanded. It's meant to be configured and then left to achieve 2+ year uptimes.
Uh, no. We stopped evolving the moment we took control of our environment instead of being subject to it. Natural selection is no longer a force in human evolution. Traits which would get folks killed in a hunter-gatherer environment are no longer a barrier to reaching breeding age.
No, we are certainly still evolving. Species often co-evolve with their environment. We are merely subject to a different fitness landscape than we have been in the past.
Just because traits that were once less desirable in the past are not longer weeded out, does NOT mean that there are not new traits that may or may not add or detract from our ability to reproduce in the new fitness landscape.
There is no stagnation. In fact one could make a compelling argument that by compensating for previously lethal traits one allows the human genome to explore the 'phase space' of possible genomes more throroughly. Someone else proferred Stephen Hawking as an example of this.
Fact is, it's already happening! It's been happening ever since the first human decided to feed his badly maimed friend instead of leaving him to die because he couldn't contribute to the survival of the group
This is an aspect of human social behavior, which is at least partially coded for in the genome in terms of proteins that code for brain structure/chemistry. Social traits (such as caring for the sick or wounded) have almost certainly been positively selected for due to the fact that they improve the survivability of the species as a whole and thus improve the survivability of the particular individual who engaged in such 'selfless' activies. The example you give is an example of evolution in action, not of 'devolution'.
I hate to whine, but this appears to happen quite frequently - I wish Rob would build something into the posting scripts for top level stories to automatically check the links.
I would say that usually about 10% of the links given in a top level story can be counted upon to be broken - pretty poor.
Sure, if you read the discussion someone usually figures out the correct link and posts it, but sometimes I would just like to read the link itself without having to sort through the comments to find the 'real' link.
I have never seen this answered to my satisfaction. Are they using a particular individual's DNA, multiple DNA samples from many individuals, or does it matter?
The Nature article said that individual human DNA differs from person to person by about 1 base pair in 1000.
If this is true, it seems like having one individual's sequence might be useful, but it is not going to tell you all that much about the variance from person to person. You'll get a general idea of what's going on, but it seems like you would have to sequence quite a few more individuals before you could really say how genetic changes effect a gene's expression.
One of the biggest limiting factors that stops me from moving to Linux for 100% of my computer use is the poor support for MSOffice file formats in Linux Office apps.
What level of support will KOffice provide for MSOffice file formats? I need nothing less than 100% support for at least Excel and Word file formats. It would also help if the support was entirely transparent - no kuldgy 'export' or 'import' required.
Also, an Exchange mail client would be REALLY nice.
I seem to recall NASA already had a 3D prototyping tool. I don't recall too many details, but it basically relied on converging two lasers into an bath of epoxy resin which was gradually raised up, providing the third dimension
Yes ultraviolet lasers that cure an epoxy resin on a base. Gradually the base is lowered and the cured layers build up to produce a 3D object. But this produces macroscopic objects.
Once could imagine a similar process using this nano-lithographic process to produce microscopic 3D objects.
Ok, what he seems to be saying is that every possible configuration of the universe has some probability, which is determinable by plugging that configuration into some equation (who knows what this thing looks like).
Now, in the set of all possible configurations, there are bound to exist configurations that LOOK as if they are a time evolved state of another confuration. In other words, state B is configured in such a way as it appears to contain information imparted by a previous state A.
But in 'reality' they are merely two status in the 'mist' which have some finite probability of 'existing'. String enough of these states together in a sequence and you get his 'time capsules'.
Ok, interesting mind candy, but it does not seem like there is much here to chew on for the real physicist. My understanding of physics is that is about the production of mathematical models which should predict the real, observed behavior of physical systems.
The progression of time is an observable. Just about every observation one could wish to make will involve time, whatever it is, even if it is an 'illusion'.
If you were to produce a theory that did not contain time you would have to demonstrate how time appears to come into being in some special cases (and demonstrate it a little bit better than with some speciously reasoned 'time capsule' argument), and demonstrate that your model not only describes all currently obsevable physical behavior properly, but in some way BETTER than other models.
I have been wishing for something like this for at least the past two years. I am tired of having to remember usernames/passwords for every site I use. And having to supply billing/shipping address and CC information every time I make a purchase is a pain.
BUT, I am MORE than a little leary of Microsoft being in the position of providing a solution to this problem. I simply do not trust them with this type of information, and I don't trust them to provide a fail-safe mission critical service that MUST be up 24/7.
I think most of us would agree that in principle this is a good idea, just that this particular implementation might give the clueful user pause.
But, how hard is this to do? Could the OSS community develop a distributed, secure, web-based single-logon facility?
The components of such a system could be as follows.
1. A standard for user information. Another post already mention just such an open standard.
2. A 'logon server' which provides user information to client web sites at a user's request.
3. A standard, open, secure protocol with which a client web site interacts with a logon-server.
4. A user who registers with a 'logon server' and specifies the information they are willing to provide other client web-sites. The user also specifies a backup logon server which will mirror their information.
5. Client web sites which modify their logon procedure to gather user information from a user specified 'logon server'. No registration would be required on the part of the client web site.
Each 'logon server' could actually be many servers. It would be relatively easy to distribute the load as most of the activity would be of a read-only nature, making the replication of user data across servers fairly simple. User updates to their data are another issue, but they would be relatively infrequent.
How would anyone make money? Banner adds on the logon server's logon page perhaps. Re-selling consumer buying patterns would most likely be the biggest source of revenue. There is nothing wrong with this as long as nothing which could indentify you uniquely is revealed. I don't care if someone wants to know what the buying patterns of a 28yo white male in such and such an income bracket are.
It is important to note that the user would chose their single logon service, and could change/cancel at any time.
It would be an open standard, with all the code required to start a logon server available freely on the web. This would hopefully prohibit any one service from gaining a monopoly stranglehold on the market.
I started using Google a few weeks ago and have not used another search engine since.
It just works, the way a search engine should work.
I can't tell you how many times I have looked at the nonsensicle spew other search engines produce and wonder what their programmers were thinking.
Search results that don't appear to contain ANY of the key words, search results that include page upon page of links to the SAME site (how easy is that to correct - come on). Ever just try to type a company name into the other search engines? You are lucky if their home page pops up in the first ten pages of results.
Google comes pretty damned close to what I would expect from a human with almost encyclopedic knowledge of the web. It comes the closest to ranking relevancy the way humans do. Its a shame it took this long for someone to get it right, but I am glad it's here now.
This is definitely a compromise solution, but it could work well for AMD. I think that Intel is underestimating the need for backward compatibility (and high performance backward compatibility). Intel is convinced that they now have the market presence required to force the move to an entirely new architecture.
The only problem is if there is an alternative, and AMD appears to be poised to offer just such an alternative.
If they can deliver on the performance end, and I think they can, they will offer a much more attractive solution to users and developers. Users won't have to upgrade apps and OS to get better performance, and it sounds like developers of high end apps might have to make only minor changes to adapt their software to use the 64 bit aspects of the chip.
AMD has essentially decided to continue in the path that Intel has followed for the last 15 years. Intel has decided to veer off that path in favor of a new architecture. AMD has decided that there might still be a few years of profitability in it, and I think that they are right.
Jon Katz == well-respected, professional writer who adds a diversifying aspect to/.
That is open for debate. Your asserting it does not make it so.
Josh == some guy who uses the word secondarily. Gee, starting a sentence with an adverb, ehh?
I am not a professional writer. I wrote a five minute response to a post on slashdot. It will be read an order of magnitude fewer people than Jon's stuff. Forgive the lack of proofreading.
Dont talk about bad writing unless you yourself are a writer,
Hmm... Interesting theory, to be a critic you must practice the artform itself. Shut up Ebert, unless you can make a movie yourself, you have no right to criticize.
You don't need to be a writer to know bad writing when you see it. In the same way you do not need to be a director or script writer to know a bad movie when you see it.
and NEVER throw out stupid and groundless insults and expect to be respected around here.
Groundless? Hmmm... you appear yourself to be attacking me instead of my argument. Provide some counterevidence if you find my argument to be groundless. I listed the reasons I perceive for the negative response Katz has received on slashdot, in response to a theory that Katz put forth in his post. If you think that is stupid and groundless, so be it. I can live with an AC thinking I am a moron.
And a first stepping stone towards respect on slashdot is to attach your name to you posts.
I am glad for Jon that he finally paid someone to install Linux on a laptop for him. What a triumph. He is truly a geek now. He is the master of his technological domain. You are one of us Jon:)
But seriously, it is good to see that he has realized his limits, and that he would never be able to install it on his own. He is in fact a writer, and I am sure he has better things to do than wile away the hours tracking misbehaving daemons and tweaking vsync frequencies.
But here's what the fight about me being on Slashdot has always really been about: You don't need to be - and shouldn't have to be - a programmer to use and appreciate Linux, which is, to my amazement, every bit as easy and logical as my beloved Macs, once you get past the installation.
No, the fight has been over the fact that Jon is first of all a relatively poor writer. Suffering through some of his muddle-mind and meandering posts has truly be a harrowing experience at times. It is often difficult to get to the root of what exactly Jon is trying to say.
Secondarily when he writes about technology he exposes a level of ignorance that is generally not well respected by the highly technical slashdot crowd. It is not a matter of 'belonging'. As a writer it is about kwowing the limits of your knowledge and sticking to what you know.
I don't write authoritative papers on nuclear physics, because I only know a tiny bit about the subject. Similarly, Jon should not be writing posts on installing or using Linux, and attempt to make his self appear as an authority on the subject. This is what has rubbed slashdotters the wrong way.
I am glad for Jon that he finally paid someone to install Linux on a laptop for him. What a triumph. He is truly a geek now. He is the master of his technological domain. You are one of us Jon:)
But seriously, it is good to see that he has realized his limits, and that he would never be able to install it on his own. He is in fact a writer, and I am sure he has better things to do than wile away the hours tracking misbehaving daemons and tweaking vsync frequencies.
But here's what the fight about me being on Slashdot has always really been about: You don't need to be - and shouldn't have to be - a programmer to use and appreciate Linux, which is, to my amazement, every bit as easy and logical as my beloved Macs, once you get past the installation.
No, the fight has been over the fact that Jon is first of all a relatively poor writer. Suffering through some of his muddle-mind and meandering posts has truly be a harrowing experience at times. It is often difficult to get to the root of what exactly Jon is trying to say.
Secondarily when he writes about technology he exposes a level of ignorance that is generally not well respected by the highly technical slashdot crowd. It is not a matter of 'belonging'. As a writer it is about kwowing the limits of your knowledge and sticking to what you know.
I don't write authoritative papers on nuclear physics, because I only know a tiny bit about the subject. Similarly, Jon should not be writing posts on installing or using Linux, and attempt to make his self appear as an authority on the subject. This is what has rubbed slashdotters the wrong way.
Slashdot Mirror
I run as root all the time. I cut my teeth on DOS, Windows, and then NT, and have always run with Administrative priveleges. Never had a problem, I am just extremely careful with what I do.
Most of the time I use Linux I am tinkering, recompiling, reinstalling new versions etc... things that require root access. So why bother with the fiction of a 'user' account?
Ok, so I might be exposing myself to a slightly greater risk with regards to Linux viruses - guess that's what backups are for.
-josh
There are plenty of people that cannot afford a computer or internet access who can afford a cell phone or pager.
There are already email pagers, and they will get better and cheaper. It will not in the future(and does not now) require a $1000 computer to get email.
There are any number of devices in the works that would allow very low income individuals to cheaply send and receive email. Maybe the US government needs to be subsidizing these rather than an obselete, bureaucratic paper pusher. Ultimately it has to be cheaper overall to deliver text messages (or letters) electronically.
-josh
I started reading the teaser text of the article before I read who posted it. The fact that 'incubus' appears in the first sentence clued me in to the fact that it must be a Katz article - yep.
It is amazing to me the amount of overgeneralization modern day techno journalist can pack into a single sentence.
-josh
-josh
For the deliver of anything other than actual physical objects or documents with 'real world' signatures, snail mail is obselete. Eventually once a good digital signature standard is worked out and legally recognized only parcel post will survive. I see no reason anyone will be sending actual 'letters' in twenty year's time.
There are those few old-timers that claim 'nothing is better than a real letter' - I've got news for you, the upcoming adult generation has teethed on email and holds no such warm fuzzies for the printed word.
The Post Office's days are numbered. When it comes down to delivering pure information there are myriads of companies that are in a better position to do it faster, better, and cheaper than the Post Office.
About the only thing that could allow the Post Office to survive is for it to morph into a FedEx/UPS parcel delivery competitor. In this way it could leverage it's huge, already established physical distribution network.
The next big 'public service' to fall prey to technology will be the Library. Imagine, a world without libraries and the US Postal service. What will civil servants do?
-josh
They have a little box that you can type your confession in, they claim that the information remains on your computer and is sent nowhere - wouldn't it be funny if they were actually recording each confession and having a great laugh on us?
"Dear Lord, I spilled hot grits down my pants"
"Dear Lord, I lusted after a petrified Natalie Portman"
"Dear Lord, FIRST CONFESSION d00dz!"
-josh
These folks have the law on their side. Like it or not the DeCSS software publishes a trade secret, the CSS encryption algorithm. This is illegal. Plain and simple. Doesn't matter what you are going to use it for - piracy or viewing, if you plan to profit from it or not - it's just plain against the law to publish someone else's trade secret without their express permission.
No sucessful Open Source product will ever be based on DeCSS because the DVD industry will continue to defend their valid legal right to their trade secrets and impose severe penalties on anyone who dares to defy them.
You say 'the genie is out of the bottle' - wait until the coders of the Linux DVD project get threatened with imprisonment and million dollar fines - we will see how far this project progresses.
You want a Linux DVD player? Get some venture capital together, buy a license for the algorithm, and go to town. Sell it to all the large linux re-packagers (redhat et al.) and laugh all the way to the bank.
-josh
Slashdot has one of the highest signal to noise ratios of any discussion forum I have ever participated in. The moderation system has helped a great deal in that I can now screen out most of the idiots.
I don't see massive flame-wars on slashdot for the most part. People need not be afraid of posting their opinions to slashdot as long as they are well-considered and intelligent - such commentary is almost always well recieved.
Can someone give me an example of the problem here on slashdot? Jon?
-josh
The article mentions that her delivery of the news items could be modified to suit user preferences.
I can just see the options now:
Sultry Voice: On
Accent: [x]French []British []American
Flirtation Coefficient: Min |----------O-| Max
Startup Phrase: [ Hey there sexy, have I got some HOT news for you ]
Shutdown Phrase: [ Mmmmm, ohhhh, mmmmmmmmm ]
Lipstick Color: Hooker Red
Yes there is a natural regulating mechanism in the 'semiosphere' - the number of consumers of information and the time that they have available to consume. Both are finite, so information can 'explode' all it wants, only so much of it can be looked at.
;) I seek out the information myself.
What Katz fails to do is establish any reason or need for regulating the flood of information. Is the fact that within the next 25 years I will be able to access the sum total of human knowledge within an instant of thinking of it somehow bad? It's not like this information is crushing in on me. Web sites don't just pop up in my browser unbidden (at least most don't
Katz's 'semiosphere' metaphor is weak at best, ludicrous more like. The biological world is finite, habits are limited in capacity, animals die, reproduce recombinantly. None of these features is present in the realm of information. Or capacity to store information grows exponentially every year. Information does not reproduce, and there is no natural limit to the amount of information we can store. There does not need to be a 'regulon'.
And as always, I utterly failed to find any sort of a point in this little fluff piece. Reading stuff like this really makes me think that I, with my relatively poor writing skills and reasoning abilities could be a pundit. I'd couldn't be worse than Jon.
-josh
Gotta love when you can drive half way acrossed a country in 3 hours.
I have a Gateway Pentium 150 purchase almost 4 years ago. The thing graciously took a 56k modem. It now has two PCI 100Mb ethernet cards. I have tripled the amount of RAM it had originally, and can still add more. Oh yeah, I also added a PCI SCSI card, no problems. I once had a problem with the decidedly non-commodity IBM harddrive. Gateway replaced it immediately.
But I don't think this is the point with the Qube, it is not mean to be expanded. It's meant to be configured and then left to achieve 2+ year uptimes.
-josh
Uh, no. We stopped evolving the moment we took control of our environment instead of being subject to it. Natural selection is no longer a force in human evolution. Traits which would get folks killed in a hunter-gatherer environment are no longer a barrier to reaching breeding age.
No, we are certainly still evolving. Species often co-evolve with their environment. We are merely subject to a different fitness landscape than we have been in the past.
Just because traits that were once less desirable in the past are not longer weeded out, does NOT mean that there are not new traits that may or may not add or detract from our ability to reproduce in the new fitness landscape.
There is no stagnation. In fact one could make a compelling argument that by compensating for previously lethal traits one allows the human genome to explore the 'phase space' of possible genomes more throroughly. Someone else proferred Stephen Hawking as an example of this.
Fact is, it's already happening! It's been happening ever since the first human decided to feed his badly maimed friend instead of leaving him to die because he couldn't contribute to the survival of the group
This is an aspect of human social behavior, which is at least partially coded for in the genome in terms of proteins that code for brain structure/chemistry. Social traits (such as caring for the sick or wounded) have almost certainly been positively selected for due to the fact that they improve the survivability of the species as a whole and thus improve the survivability of the particular individual who engaged in such 'selfless' activies. The example you give is an example of evolution in action, not of 'devolution'.
I hate to whine, but this appears to happen quite frequently - I wish Rob would build something into the posting scripts for top level stories to automatically check the links.
I would say that usually about 10% of the links given in a top level story can be counted upon to be broken - pretty poor.
Sure, if you read the discussion someone usually figures out the correct link and posts it, but sometimes I would just like to read the link itself without having to sort through the comments to find the 'real' link.
-josh
I have never seen this answered to my satisfaction. Are they using a particular individual's DNA, multiple DNA samples from many individuals, or does it matter?
The Nature article said that individual human DNA differs from person to person by about 1 base pair in 1000.
If this is true, it seems like having one individual's sequence might be useful, but it is not going to tell you all that much about the variance from person to person. You'll get a general idea of what's going on, but it seems like you would have to sequence quite a few more individuals before you could really say how genetic changes effect a gene's expression.
-josh
One of the biggest limiting factors that stops me from moving to Linux for 100% of my computer use is the poor support for MSOffice file formats in Linux Office apps.
What level of support will KOffice provide for MSOffice file formats? I need nothing less than 100% support for at least Excel and Word file formats. It would also help if the support was entirely transparent - no kuldgy 'export' or 'import' required.
Also, an Exchange mail client would be REALLY nice.
-josh
I seem to recall NASA already had a 3D prototyping tool.
I don't recall too many details, but it basically relied on converging two lasers into an bath of epoxy resin which was gradually raised up, providing the third dimension
Yes ultraviolet lasers that cure an epoxy resin on a base. Gradually the base is lowered and the cured layers build up to produce a 3D object. But this produces macroscopic objects.
Once could imagine a similar process using this nano-lithographic process to produce microscopic 3D objects.
-josh
This seems nice for printed 'organic circuits' and such (2D), but could it be extended to build 3D objects?
One could imagine a process where you build up a 3D object layer by layer.
-josh
Ok, what he seems to be saying is that every possible configuration of the universe has some probability, which is determinable by plugging that configuration into some equation (who knows what this thing looks like).
Now, in the set of all possible configurations, there are bound to exist configurations that LOOK as if they are a time evolved state of another confuration. In other words, state B is configured in such a way as it appears to contain information imparted by a previous state A.
But in 'reality' they are merely two status in the 'mist' which have some finite probability of 'existing'. String enough of these states together in a sequence and you get his 'time capsules'.
Ok, interesting mind candy, but it does not seem like there is much here to chew on for the real physicist. My understanding of physics is that is about the production of mathematical models which should predict the real, observed behavior of physical systems.
The progression of time is an observable. Just about every observation one could wish to make will involve time, whatever it is, even if it is an 'illusion'.
If you were to produce a theory that did not contain time you would have to demonstrate how time appears to come into being in some special cases (and demonstrate it a little bit better than with some speciously reasoned 'time capsule' argument), and demonstrate that your model not only describes all currently obsevable physical behavior properly, but in some way BETTER than other models.
-josh
The title makes it sound as if Gateway is selling off a subsidiary, when in fact they are going to be a RESELLER of Cobalt's products. Come on guys.
-josh
I have been wishing for something like this for at least the past two years. I am tired of having to remember usernames/passwords for every site I use. And having to supply billing/shipping address and CC information every time I make a purchase is a pain.
BUT, I am MORE than a little leary of Microsoft being in the position of providing a solution to this problem. I simply do not trust them with this type of information, and I don't trust them to provide a fail-safe mission critical service that MUST be up 24/7.
I think most of us would agree that in principle this is a good idea, just that this particular implementation might give the clueful user pause.
But, how hard is this to do? Could the OSS community develop a distributed, secure, web-based single-logon facility?
The components of such a system could be as follows.
1. A standard for user information. Another post already mention just such an open standard.
2. A 'logon server' which provides user information to client web sites at a user's request.
3. A standard, open, secure protocol with which a client web site interacts with a logon-server.
4. A user who registers with a 'logon server' and specifies the information they are willing to provide other client web-sites. The user also specifies a backup logon server which will mirror their information.
5. Client web sites which modify their logon procedure to gather user information from a user specified 'logon server'. No registration would be required on the part of the client web site.
Each 'logon server' could actually be many servers. It would be relatively easy to distribute the load as most of the activity would be of a read-only nature, making the replication of user data across servers fairly simple. User updates to their data are another issue, but they would be relatively infrequent.
How would anyone make money? Banner adds on the logon server's logon page perhaps. Re-selling consumer buying patterns would most likely be the biggest source of revenue. There is nothing wrong with this as long as nothing which could indentify you uniquely is revealed. I don't care if someone wants to know what the buying patterns of a 28yo white male in such and such an income bracket are.
It is important to note that the user would chose their single logon service, and could change/cancel at any time.
It would be an open standard, with all the code required to start a logon server available freely on the web. This would hopefully prohibit any one service from gaining a monopoly stranglehold on the market.
I started using Google a few weeks ago and have not used another search engine since.
It just works, the way a search engine should work.
I can't tell you how many times I have looked at the nonsensicle spew other search engines produce and wonder what their programmers were thinking.
Search results that don't appear to contain ANY of the key words, search results that include page upon page of links to the SAME site (how easy is that to correct - come on). Ever just try to type a company name into the other search engines? You are lucky if their home page pops up in the first ten pages of results.
Google comes pretty damned close to what I would expect from a human with almost encyclopedic knowledge of the web. It comes the closest to ranking relevancy the way humans do. Its a shame it took this long for someone to get it right, but I am glad it's here now.
-josh
This is definitely a compromise solution, but it could work well for AMD. I think that Intel is underestimating the need for backward compatibility (and high performance backward compatibility). Intel is convinced that they now have the market presence required to force the move to an entirely new architecture.
The only problem is if there is an alternative, and AMD appears to be poised to offer just such an alternative.
If they can deliver on the performance end, and I think they can, they will offer a much more attractive solution to users and developers. Users won't have to upgrade apps and OS to get better performance, and it sounds like developers of high end apps might have to make only minor changes to adapt their software to use the 64 bit aspects of the chip.
AMD has essentially decided to continue in the path that Intel has followed for the last 15 years. Intel has decided to veer off that path in favor of a new architecture. AMD has decided that there might still be a few years of profitability in it, and I think that they are right.
-josh
Jon Katz == well-respected, professional writer who adds a diversifying aspect to /.
That is open for debate. Your asserting it does not make it so.
Josh == some guy who uses the word secondarily. Gee, starting a sentence with an adverb, ehh?
I am not a professional writer. I wrote a five minute response to a post on slashdot. It will be read an order of magnitude fewer people than Jon's stuff. Forgive the lack of proofreading.
Dont talk about bad writing unless you yourself are a writer,
Hmm... Interesting theory, to be a critic you must practice the artform itself. Shut up Ebert, unless you can make a movie yourself, you have no right to criticize.
You don't need to be a writer to know bad writing when you see it. In the same way you do not need to be a director or script writer to know a bad movie when you see it.
and NEVER throw out stupid and groundless insults and expect to be respected around here.
Groundless? Hmmm... you appear yourself to be attacking me instead of my argument. Provide some counterevidence if you find my argument to be groundless. I listed the reasons I perceive for the negative response Katz has received on slashdot, in response to a theory that Katz put forth in his post. If you think that is stupid and groundless, so be it. I can live with an AC thinking I am a moron.
And a first stepping stone towards respect on slashdot is to attach your name to you posts.
-josh
I am glad for Jon that he finally paid someone to install Linux on a laptop for him. What a triumph. He is truly a geek now. He is the master of his technological domain. You are one of us Jon :)
But seriously, it is good to see that he has realized his limits, and that he would never be able to install it on his own. He is in fact a writer, and I am sure he has better things to do than wile away the hours tracking misbehaving daemons and tweaking vsync frequencies.
But here's what the fight about me being on Slashdot has always really been about: You don't need to be - and shouldn't have to be - a programmer to use and appreciate Linux, which is, to my amazement, every bit as easy and logical as my beloved Macs, once you get past the installation.
No, the fight has been over the fact that Jon is first of all a relatively poor writer. Suffering through some of his muddle-mind and meandering posts has truly be a harrowing experience at times. It is often difficult to get to the root of what exactly Jon is trying to say.
Secondarily when he writes about technology he exposes a level of ignorance that is generally not well respected by the highly technical slashdot crowd. It is not a matter of 'belonging'. As a writer it is about kwowing the limits of your knowledge and sticking to what you know.
I don't write authoritative papers on nuclear physics, because I only know a tiny bit about the subject. Similarly, Jon should not be writing posts on installing or using Linux, and attempt to make his self appear as an authority on the subject. This is what has rubbed slashdotters the wrong way.
-josh
I am glad for Jon that he finally paid someone to install Linux on a laptop for him. What a triumph. He is truly a geek now. He is the master of his technological domain. You are one of us Jon :)
But seriously, it is good to see that he has realized his limits, and that he would never be able to install it on his own. He is in fact a writer, and I am sure he has better things to do than wile away the hours tracking misbehaving daemons and tweaking vsync frequencies.
But here's what the fight about me being on Slashdot has always really been about: You don't need to be - and shouldn't have to be - a programmer to use and appreciate Linux, which is, to my amazement, every bit as easy and logical as my beloved Macs, once you get past the installation.
No, the fight has been over the fact that Jon is first of all a relatively poor writer. Suffering through some of his muddle-mind and meandering posts has truly be a harrowing experience at times. It is often difficult to get to the root of what exactly Jon is trying to say.
Secondarily when he writes about technology he exposes a level of ignorance that is generally not well respected by the highly technical slashdot crowd. It is not a matter of 'belonging'. As a writer it is about kwowing the limits of your knowledge and sticking to what you know.
I don't write authoritative papers on nuclear physics, because I only know a tiny bit about the subject. Similarly, Jon should not be writing posts on installing or using Linux, and attempt to make his self appear as an authority on the subject. This is what has rubbed slashdotters the wrong way.
-josh