The point of no return has already passed us by. We have, a long time ago, created a world so full of complexity, that we have become reliant on our technology. We need the air traffic control systems, the banking networks, the databases, the ISP's, the chips in our cars. We rely on the IC controllers that run our assembly lines and decide how to make our clothes, cook our food, route our electricity.
It is irrelevant to wonder if the machines will ever become sentient, or what effect that will have on us as a species. It's a moot point. We're already two species. There's the homo informaticus to which all reading this belong, and the old homo sapiens that isn't at all sapient to how we are changing it's world.
The old species is already nomadic, living hand-to-mouth and at odds with nature. The new species has been able to avoid the dismal lifestyle of the old through it's fusion with technology. The fact that we have embraced technology, and evolved thereby, was a willful, convenience driven event.
We are dependent on our technology as much as birds are dependent on their ability to fly. To un-plug means death. We may not be left biologically dead without our tech, but our lifestyle, our standard of living, would end. Is that no death? We, as we are, would cease to exist. We would revert to an earlier stage of evolution, and our species would prove to be another failed mutation.
It is our survival instinct, our will to live, that drives us to develop new technology, and to become even more dependent on it. As birds that once only glided from tree to tree and now rise into the sky under their own power, we too will learn to soar in our newly claimed environment. But don't think that we will still be human when we do.
With our beepers and PDA's, and our Internet access that makes us better informed (read better adapted to the environment than our predecessors) and better suited to survive. We are more fit that the agrarian society we are replacing. We are the new species. The earth will not overgrow with vegetation, because we, the new species, eat paper for a living. We burn fossils for sustinence and we belch smoke. We will for a long time, and then things will change somehow.
Just because there are not Hunter-Killer aircraft and terminators running around, just because we are not batteries, does not mean that the machines are not in charge. They are - and we are them. We have already merged, we are one.
As the kids play with M$ software, they'll break it. It will fail them.
The less savvy will lose and important homework assignment when the computer crashed because of error 89837:34975398. Their grade will go down, and they will remember.
The more savvy will break it on purpose. They will be trying to tweak the school network, to chat with a friend, to get into a teacher's account, and they'll succeed. They too will remember. And when their time comes to choose the software their company will use, the memory will come back.
Microsoft is standing tall in front of the young. "The emperor has no clothes!!!"
Remember all those AppleII's and Mac's that we had in school growing up? (Ok, I'll date myself, I had a TRS-80, but still)... Apple (Jobs) gave free computers to schools throughout the 80's - with exactly the same intention. Get them while their young, keep them when they grow up...
Ironic, how Microsoft can't even 'innovate' a way of exploiting people, without ripping off Apple.:)
I'm writing this from work, on company time. I'm playing devil's advocate, but... Let's consider this for a minute from the point of view of the employer.
- It is simply too much work to monitor all employee's 'break' habints individually. - Many employees (ab)use work resources for their entertainment or personal gain. - All employees are paid for a certain number of hours of WORK in a day.
When I work, I am paid for my 8 hours, plus OT as needed. I expect to be paid for that amount of time, so why should the employer not expect to get that much work out of me?? It's only fair, equal work for equal pay and all that. In this, the employer is simply protecting itself from exploitation by workers. (the degree of 'break' is at issue though)
Monitoring individuals is a resource black hole. It can not be done effectively without devoting a significant staff and resources. An automated monitoring system serves to gather statistical data about employee work and break habits, so that these statistics can be used to reduce privilige to 'acceptable' levels. What counts here is a conscientious and sensible HR/IT regulator that defines what 'acceptable' is. And hey, if we feel that our surfing during work hours is reasonable - and we expect out employer to trust us, why should we not trust that regulator to NOT be a slave-driver? If the average stats show a reasonable non-work usage, fine.
If certain individuals skew the stats, they are singled out. Isn't that fair? Would we want to lose all access to/. just because one person stays on it all day? Should all web access be cut off because one person has a thing for kiddie-porn? Should all employees have to live within restrictive disk-quota policies because someone is running a rogue web business off of the company server?
Monitoring helps the company protect itself legally from those few employees who abuse and expose the company by engaging in questionable or unprofessional behavior on company time.
Monitoring helps the company protect itself from widespread abuse, by allowing the tailoring of 'freedom' to within acceptable levels.
We have to remember that while we are being paid for our time, we are renting ourselves to the company. Our employment agreement states that we are there, working, for 8 hours per day. If we are not, then we should not be getting paid for that much time. If we are, then we are violating the terms of our rental agreement.
We are the ones exploiting the employer, not vice-versa.
Alright, so the Palm stuff is really looking good. The Visor is promising, and the PdQ phone is a great hybrid...
The WinCE machines are surging over the retail counters.
Some time ago (a year or so) I bought the Philips Nino... It's a neat little device, and the virtual recognition area really appeals to me. But I think I would like to jump ship to the PalmV or Visor. I hate to just throw the Nino away, and it's not worth half of what I paid for it.
My question to/. then is this: What's there to be done with old PDA's?? They're still functional, they're still potent hardware. The Nino has a 75Mhz chip in it. Can I plug it into my fuse box and have it serve as a power consumption controller?? Obviously, I'm being facetious, but I'd like to dedicate the PDA to a task rather than just pitch it off a bridge - it's a matter of principle - I don't like to throw things out.
What have those of you who didn't throw out or retire the old PDA done with them? Are they of any use? Can my Nino run Linux (and hence be a web server) ? Can I wire it to my car, and have it at least show me what it's computer is thinking - i.e. diagnostics, efficiency, etc??
I'd be much more willing to buy a new one if I didn't feel the old one was going to go to waste.
Take a look at the Qualcomm PdQ PDA... It's a cell phone, pager and Pilot all in one.
But I agree with your statement. Integrated functionality, and modular items, are sorely needed. Hopefully this new Handspring Visor - with it's expansion slot - will spurr the other vendors to get on the bandwagon.
Of course we will see a bunch of competing standards until either a de facto standard is chosen for technological superiority, or more likely a consortium forms, and royalties are paid.
In any case, in about three years, there's sure to be a PDA bus standard, for which expansion modules, port duplicators and such are available. Hopefully the modules will be intelligently enough designed that their functionality will be software definable - so the MP3 player will be able to do multi-duty as a voice recorder & speach-to-text convertor etc...
This way we'll be able to buy the hardware option that matches all the software options we are interested in (storage, special purpose processing, DSP, opticals, audio I/O...). That Transmeta chip might be in for a broader market then they realize.:)
Subject: Re: OpenGL mini drivers? Date: 1999/03/31 Author: Dave Taylor
I think that Sean Baggaley pitched in with Russ Williams' pet anti-OpenGL sentiments because they're both British. It's obvious. I mean, come on. Evil empire. Elitist snobs. Still bitter about the "colonials" on the other side of the "puddle." Duh.:)
I love the D3D vs OpenGL struggle. I love the consistently inconsistent visuals you get from playing 3D games on today's PC's. I wish Microsoft and SGI would reduce each other to charred cinders with patent infringement lawsuits.
John uses OpenGL because he can afford to. He can lose hundreds of thousands of sell-throughs and be perfectly happy. Christ, he could throw every copy of Quake 3 in a wood chipper and sell the chaff to the government for use in hideous anti-personel weapons against the Serbs, and he would still make a killing on the royalty advances. This has always been John's modus operandi, whether he was turning a monster dime or a modest dime, and we should be thankful. Others follow suit because John's products become the IHV's benchmarks, so the IHV's improve their drivers and hardware to work with John's games, and so other game developers can eventually switch over. I think this is a better system than following Microsoft's lead just because one of their over-worked engineers or megalomaniac managers decided to arbitrate a new standard.
There's an alternative. You don't see anyone hotly debating whether to use DirectDraw. You don't see video glitches on games that use software renderers. They just work. They just deliver exactly what you specified and never crash. Sure, you have to come up with innovative gameplay and/or excellent artwork, but the technique has been a solid technique for hit-making from Myst to Heroes 3.
I am quite happy for the 3D cards and API's to beat each other black and blue while the real engineers either deal with what's available or quietly work on the solution to this whole mess.
Here's a fun multiple-choice quiz. What do you suppose that long-term solution is?
- A. Waiting for Nvidia to come out with the TNT N (as N gets large). - B. Waiting for 3DFX to come out with the Voodoo N (as N gets large). - C. Waiting for Matrox to come out with the GN00 (as N gets large). - D. Waiting for ATI to come out with the Rage * (as * gets goofy). - E. Waiting for OpenGL to get caps bits. - F. Waiting for D3D code to be easier to read. - G. Waiting for someone really brave to come out with a general-purpose processor w/ an open architecture that is suitable for high-performance parallel processing so that we have complete control over every pixel and get a consistent, high-quality, fast, innovative graphic experience.
I leave it to you, noble reader. (but if you pick anything but G., then you have gooey fluff where your brains should be, nyah)
Comment worth vs moderation increment
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Moderation Ideas
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· Score: 2
I very much like the idea of judging the overall worth of a posting (-1 to +5) rather than adding a point to it's value... But, a comment can't possibly go from 0 or 2 to 5 just because I said so...
So how about a compromise:
Moderators still get moderation quanta (I vote for fractions of points, see my rant at #33). They then get to choose what worth a post has, and their quantum adds (or subtracts) the actual value of the post in that direction.
In this way, the overall moderator opinion of worth, coupled with their quanta towards that end, result in a post that is moderated to the average of all moderator opinions... Preferably where it started.:)
It's another level of complexity, and should keep Rob busy for weeks in trying to figure out how to implement it. [VBSEG]
One more way of displaying a discussion would be nice. We can now look in order of post, or by score, either with threads or without...
For moderating purposes, it might be useful to see the most busy threads first (or last) to see wether there is a flame-war raging, or a hot discussion (of value) brewing...
IMHO, the 'Overrated' and 'Underrated' moderation items should have the effect of MetaModeration. These are, essencially, means by which moderators can correct one another's work.
Some of the Funny ratings are quite pertinent to the discussion at hand though. And a humorous attitude about something tends to show understanding of the subject... Well, to me at least. So a person with enough understanding to make a joke is, in effect, making a worthwhile contribution.
Maybe we should have an additional category? For relevant humor or offtopic humor? But here I diverge from my personal opinion that simpler is better...
Moderate thoughts on Moderation
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Moderation Ideas
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· Score: 5
First off, MM is not really necessary.
A good comment is good. It is unlikely that a single, rabid individual, will sink a good comment into oblivion, without an equally determined benefactor raising it up again. By that same token, a conspiracy of evildoers to elevate each other's trash, whenever one of them has moderator access, is slim to none.
Occam's Razor applies, and a system of lesser complexity is preferable to one of greater complexity. Slashdot should not hamstring itself with rules, and rules about rules, else it will become a burocracy in which nothing ever happens.
Personally, I've never used MM, but I would rather see it go away - simply because Moderation points strike me as a rare commodity, so their negative effect seems to be outweighed by their utility to the holder. Also, with/. being a self-correcting mechanism already, they just add another layer.
MM is an interesting exercise for Rob, it nothing else, and as such it is as useful as anything that keeps a mind from being idle.:) I, for one, would rather see Rob bring his considerable talents to bear on extending the article discussion forums. On many occasions, a great off-topic discussion has been sparked by an article. This discussion either flops for being off-topic, or dies when the article expires from the main page. It would be nice to have some quantifiable worth of such a discussion, that would enable it to live on until it dies a natural death.
As for a redoux of the moderation philosophy, how about fractional moderation? Increase the number of moderators, certainly, maybe by a factor of four. But reduce the worth of each assignable point by that same amount. This way, several moderators would have to agree to elevate a post to the next higher integer score. The ability to abuse moderator privilege goes away, as does the confidence that a single vote of one individual will make a lot of difference.
As moderators, we would then add our voice to a comment, not knowing if we're the first, or the decisive ones to raise the message status. Follow?
This way, good posts will rise, bad posts will sink, and iffy posts will tent to teeter-totter on the edge of where they started.
Ah, all this opinionated rambling has tired me out. But, before my hands completely cramp... How's about making all posts require a Preview??
Suck for those of us that didn't install that increasingly flavored distribution, doesn't it?
First CodeWarrior gets bound to Red Hat, now IBM's hardware 'compatibility' aims for that distro... I think that perhaps Big Business is missing the point of Linux. I'm certain that Red Hat enjoys the notoriety of being the 'originator' of Linux, but we know better. Yes, they're a great contributor to the exposure and success that Linux as a whole enjoys. Yes, they've made it easier and friendlier, and they may be the spear-head on which Linux is delivered into the mainstream, but the big companies out there need to know that Red Hat != Linux.
Am I wrong in the expectation that if this prejudice isn't resolved, Red Hat is going to suffer a backlash from those that believe in the Freedom of Linux?
I really don't think that the post was intended to poke fun at or in any way detract from the serverity of the threat that Florida and the South-Eastern Seaboard is facing. It has been woefully misfilled under humor, though there is a sense of 'geek-to-the-end' about abandoning your home but leaving a WebCam to record the onslaught of the storm.
I, for one, am dreading the reports from the Bahamas, once they are available. I certainly hope that this does not turn out to be another Andrew for Florida. I'm also a bit concerned about the leftovers (or whatever there be) that makes it's way here to New England.
We have all seen severe weather at one point or another. It's been a number of years since I've seen a hurricane. I think Gloria was a class 3, and I'm quite a ways off shore, so I can only imagine what you folks are facing now. But if it helps at all, I'm sure I speak for most/. readership when I say that we are not entertained, but rather concerned and enawed by Floyd. Our thoughts are with you, and we are not laughing.
Now what is 3Com's thinking in spinning off Palm Computing to a separate company? It was a cash cow, now what is the future?
3Com wasn't able to market and develop the Palm concept very well. They suffer from MS-Word Syndrome where 'average Joe' personal technology is concerned. They're great with networking and MODEMS - things you install and forget. Hands-on, in-your-face-every-day devices are alien to them.
I mean, the Palm VII, Palm III, Palm IIIx?? Whom are they kidding? Their marketting people were beginning to have useless and 'buzz' features put in, in an apparent attempt to establish a variety of 'trim' levels. Much like being able to select the color of the underlines beneath your misspellings in Word. They were selling them in college bookstores - in a variety of 'fashion' colors for chrissakes!
Just like the Nokia cell phones... All we need now is clip on transluscent flip-up screen covers and interchangable, color case covers... Feh! The Pilot was beginning to suffer from a lack of competition. After all, the only alternative in the same class of device is WinCE.
Spinning off Palm into a separate company is the best thing that could happen to the Pilot. This way, a product specific marketting department can work closely with the product specific engineering staff, without too many suits munging up the process.
Hopefully they'll come back to the exceptional fundamentals that made the Pilot a great tool. A little of it shines still in the Palm V, and hopefully the compatition (despite what they claim, it'll be there) from handspring will force some innovation and usefull feature development in both camps.
The scary thing is that this is one of the more useful applications of Java I've seen...
Man, that one stung! Really.
I don't know how much exposure there has been to Java applications that are actually useful, but damn!
I'm currently working in a small group, in a large company, that is developing (the group) a DB (Oracle 8) centered, distributed (web) application for designing industrial and utility-scale boilers for electricity production. We're talking 1.21 GigaWatts here, Marty! It's my first project with this new group, and it's slick as snot.
Some other notable Java apps: NetBeans and FreeBuilder (granted, they're devtools themselves, but they're java and they nifty), Lotus domino is available as a Java app.
And then there's always Applixware Office Anywhere that is written purely in Java.
Really, I'm surprised at the off-the-cuff derission against Java, Rob (old bean).:)
CNN.com is running a related story on social phobia, panic attacks and selective mutism.
Their spin is unfocused, and suggests both a developing condition and/or a psychological trauma that causes the above behaviours.
We should consider social factors as heavily as chemical and neurological ones, when contemplating geekness as a form of autism... It seems, to me at least, that being geek is a reaction to the environment, or a predisposition to a particular pattern of behavior. It is not something of which we should be 'cured' in either case.
The field of psychology is fundamentally flawed in that all the bookworms and loners who write the psych dogma are themselves abnormal.
They project, onto those whom they would like to emulate, the definition of 'normal'. Normalcy, per a sub-conscious desire to fit in, is wishfull thinking on part of the psycho-babbler. It is a fictional standard to which they (and so we as sheep) aspire to, based on the image they hold from childhood, of those they wish had been their friends - the social butterflies.
We all know the 'bell curve' model of statistics. We can all make the mental leap of comprehension, and realize that normal, in this context, means 'average' statistically. It explains why the 'popular' kids are always so 'mean' to their peers. Pun intended.
Also, lets consider for a moment that nothing is ever accomplished by the average. Mediocrity barely succeeds in sustaining itself - nevermind driving the world forward. Mediocrity did not put mankind on the moon. The average socialite was home eating bland meatloaf and oatmeal while the geeks and idiot-savants at NASA did the impossible. The mediocre stared in wide-eyed wonder as those they once pushed around, now stood a million miles above them. The different became the better, the Neil Armstrong, the Charles Atlas. They shook and rocked the mediocre status quo, and being average didn't feel so glamorous or popular anymore.
The psychological label of 'average' serves to do only one thing. It bludgeons the outstanding into a cookie-cutter mold of sameness. It homogenizes the radical and exceptional, before they have a chance to give the psychology geek something better than 'average' to aspire towards.
Much as Freud's own screwed up relationship with his parents gave us the Oedipal Complex and Penis Envy, so does the modern label of 'normal' force the better and the different into hiding.
Let's let the psychologists talk. Let's let them broadcars their findings using the technology we developed. Let's let them feel above average, and then let's bitch-slap them down with their own research papers, just for being different and for standing out above the crowd. Let's medicate them for having such disturbing ideas. Obviously, they suffer from ADD, and they must be protected from their own instability.:)
Not because parents will assert their rights to raise their kids in their own way.
Not because kids are clever enough to bypass any and all 'child-proof' methods laid before them.
Not because the Federal Legislature is about to grow a conscience and a common sense, and thus realize that this whole censorship in the name of the children is rank with hypocricy...
No. It will fail because most of the parents that would even consider using it, still have 12:00 blinking on their VCR. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him RTFM.
As for Kermit, well... Good riddence to another fallen fairytale. Exposing the children to the fact that even their childhood friends are sellouts is a worthwhile lesson. Disillusionment is good. We do not want our kids growing up in a world of illusions and false beliefs, do we?
Before he can rest in the promised land, Knuth faces one last mountain. He must redesign the generalized computer used in his book for programming examples and exercises from a 50-year-old von Neumann-style machine with inefficient commands to a more modern RISC (reduced instruction set computer) system permitting faster operation. (Intel processors in most PCs are of the older variety; PowerPC chips in recent Macintosh models are RISC.)
"I'm trying to design it so it's 10 years ahead of its time," says Knuth. "I've studied all the machines we have now and tried to take their nicest features and put them all together." This super RISC machine, which he calls MMIX, is essentially a teaching concept. But he says he "would love to see it built.
I'm spending a lot of time documenting it so someone could build it. The design will be in the public domain." In the midst of his "Computer Musings" series of introductory talks on MMIX, Knuth is mere months away from completing this phase of his work.
Knuth says he realized then that TeX wasn't just a digression, it was itself part of the vision. "I saw that this fulfilled a need in the world and so I better do it right."
The embedded chip in this new card will probably allow it to work a lot like a SecureCard.
It has a pseudo-random number generator, which essencially functions as an ECB. Your PIN and the ECB value for that moment in time are both required to perform a valid transaction. This way, either just the card (if lost), or just your PIN (if overheard?) are individually useless, since they only work jointly.
A ChipCard, for online shopping, is probably not a very good application. An ATM card would make more sense, but since Amex has more clout, it's easier for them to introduce the tech.
Then again, I might be completely wrong, and the chip might simply store data such as encryption certificates, and facilitate another layer of security. This makes much more sense for online transactions.
Perhaps a built in ROM capable of Diffie-Hellman?? But then why bother to hook it up to a PC, a simple acoustic coupler between the phone and the card would do... Uhoh, starting to think... Should get back to work.
Sun has a vested interest in pummeling Microsoft. It stands to benefit from a variety of other movements in the industry as well.
It does not want to bolster the viability of another *nix!
Why should they support a free OS, and alternative to Solaris, with a free JDK?
Sun, like everyone else, is in business to make money, first and foremost. Turning out a great product is secondary, and the good of all mankind comes in a distant third.
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The point of no return has already passed us by. We have, a long time ago, created a world so full of complexity, that we have become reliant on our technology. We need the air traffic control systems, the banking networks, the databases, the ISP's, the chips in our cars. We rely on the IC controllers that run our assembly lines and decide how to make our clothes, cook our food, route our electricity.
It is irrelevant to wonder if the machines will ever become sentient, or what effect that will have on us as a species. It's a moot point. We're already two species. There's the homo informaticus to which all reading this belong, and the old homo sapiens that isn't at all sapient to how we are changing it's world.
The old species is already nomadic, living hand-to-mouth and at odds with nature. The new species has been able to avoid the dismal lifestyle of the old through it's fusion with technology. The fact that we have embraced technology, and evolved thereby, was a willful, convenience driven event.
We are dependent on our technology as much as birds are dependent on their ability to fly. To un-plug means death. We may not be left biologically dead without our tech, but our lifestyle, our standard of living, would end. Is that no death? We, as we are, would cease to exist. We would revert to an earlier stage of evolution, and our species would prove to be another failed mutation.
It is our survival instinct, our will to live, that drives us to develop new technology, and to become even more dependent on it. As birds that once only glided from tree to tree and now rise into the sky under their own power, we too will learn to soar in our newly claimed environment. But don't think that we will still be human when we do.
With our beepers and PDA's, and our Internet access that makes us better informed (read better adapted to the environment than our predecessors) and better suited to survive. We are more fit that the agrarian society we are replacing. We are the new species. The earth will not overgrow with vegetation, because we, the new species, eat paper for a living. We burn fossils for sustinence and we belch smoke. We will for a long time, and then things will change somehow.
Just because there are not Hunter-Killer aircraft and terminators running around, just because we are not batteries, does not mean that the machines are not in charge. They are - and we are them. We have already merged, we are one.
As the kids play with M$ software, they'll break it. It will fail them.
The less savvy will lose and important homework assignment when the computer crashed because of error 89837:34975398. Their grade will go down, and they will remember.
The more savvy will break it on purpose. They will be trying to tweak the school network, to chat with a friend, to get into a teacher's account, and they'll succeed. They too will remember. And when their time comes to choose the software their company will use, the memory will come back.
Microsoft is standing tall in front of the young.
"The emperor has no clothes!!!"
Remember all those AppleII's and Mac's that we had in school growing up? (Ok, I'll date myself, I had a TRS-80, but still)... Apple (Jobs) gave free computers to schools throughout the 80's - with exactly the same intention. Get them while their young, keep them when they grow up...
:)
Ironic, how Microsoft can't even 'innovate' a way of exploiting people, without ripping off Apple.
I'm writing this from work, on company time. I'm playing devil's advocate, but... Let's consider this for a minute from the point of view of the employer.
/. just because one person stays on it all day? Should all web access be cut off because one person has a thing for kiddie-porn? Should all employees have to live within restrictive disk-quota policies because someone is running a rogue web business off of the company server?
- It is simply too much work to monitor all employee's 'break' habints individually.
- Many employees (ab)use work resources for their entertainment or personal gain.
- All employees are paid for a certain number of hours of WORK in a day.
When I work, I am paid for my 8 hours, plus OT as needed. I expect to be paid for that amount of time, so why should the employer not expect to get that much work out of me?? It's only fair, equal work for equal pay and all that. In this, the employer is simply protecting itself from exploitation by workers. (the degree of 'break' is at issue though)
Monitoring individuals is a resource black hole. It can not be done effectively without devoting a significant staff and resources. An automated monitoring system serves to gather statistical data about employee work and break habits, so that these statistics can be used to reduce privilige to 'acceptable' levels. What counts here is a conscientious and sensible HR/IT regulator that defines what 'acceptable' is. And hey, if we feel that our surfing during work hours is reasonable - and we expect out employer to trust us, why should we not trust that regulator to NOT be a slave-driver? If the average stats show a reasonable non-work usage, fine.
If certain individuals skew the stats, they are singled out. Isn't that fair? Would we want to lose all access to
Monitoring helps the company protect itself legally from those few employees who abuse and expose the company by engaging in questionable or unprofessional behavior on company time.
Monitoring helps the company protect itself from widespread abuse, by allowing the tailoring of 'freedom' to within acceptable levels.
We have to remember that while we are being paid for our time, we are renting ourselves to the company. Our employment agreement states that we are there, working, for 8 hours per day. If we are not, then we should not be getting paid for that much time. If we are, then we are violating the terms of our rental agreement.
We are the ones exploiting the employer, not vice-versa.
Alright, so the Palm stuff is really looking good.
/. then is this: What's there to be done with old PDA's?? They're still functional, they're still potent hardware. The Nino has a 75Mhz chip in it. Can I plug it into my fuse box and have it serve as a power consumption controller?? Obviously, I'm being facetious, but I'd like to dedicate the PDA to a task rather than just pitch it off a bridge - it's a matter of principle - I don't like to throw things out.
The Visor is promising, and the PdQ phone is a great hybrid...
The WinCE machines are surging over the retail counters.
Some time ago (a year or so) I bought the Philips Nino... It's a neat little device, and the virtual recognition area really appeals to me. But I think I would like to jump ship to the PalmV or Visor. I hate to just throw the Nino away, and it's not worth half of what I paid for it.
My question to
What have those of you who didn't throw out or retire the old PDA done with them? Are they of any use? Can my Nino run Linux (and hence be a web server) ? Can I wire it to my car, and have it at least show me what it's computer is thinking - i.e. diagnostics, efficiency, etc??
I'd be much more willing to buy a new one if I didn't feel the old one was going to go to waste.
Take a look at the Qualcomm PdQ PDA... It's a cell phone, pager and Pilot all in one.
:)
But I agree with your statement. Integrated functionality, and modular items, are sorely needed. Hopefully this new Handspring Visor - with it's expansion slot - will spurr the other vendors to get on the bandwagon.
Of course we will see a bunch of competing standards until either a de facto standard is chosen for technological superiority, or more likely a consortium forms, and royalties are paid.
In any case, in about three years, there's sure to be a PDA bus standard, for which expansion modules, port duplicators and such are available. Hopefully the modules will be intelligently enough designed that their functionality will be software definable - so the MP3 player will be able to do multi-duty as a voice recorder & speach-to-text convertor etc...
This way we'll be able to buy the hardware option that matches all the software options we are interested in (storage, special purpose processing, DSP, opticals, audio I/O...). That Transmeta chip might be in for a broader market then they realize.
I don't think I can handle several weeks of "No Comment" stories... Although, hearing nothing but that from JonKatz would be very refreshing.
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Me: Rob! I think we should have MetaMetaModeration for those people who unfairly MetaModerate posts...
Rob: No Comment.
Me: Hemos, I have devised a way to build miniature construction equipment from individual atoms.
Hemos: [gasp!] No Comment!
Me: Jon, I didn't like highschool. [snif]
Katz: err... ungh... erp.. NO COMMENT!!! [head explodes]
This was burried, but valuable. Thanks Chexum.
:)
Subject: Re: OpenGL mini drivers?
Date: 1999/03/31
Author: Dave Taylor
I think that Sean Baggaley pitched in with Russ Williams' pet anti-OpenGL sentiments because they're both British. It's obvious. I mean, come on. Evil empire. Elitist snobs. Still bitter about the "colonials" on the other side of the "puddle." Duh.
I love the D3D vs OpenGL struggle. I love the consistently inconsistent visuals you get from playing 3D games on today's PC's. I wish Microsoft and SGI would reduce each other to charred cinders with patent infringement lawsuits.
John uses OpenGL because he can afford to. He can lose hundreds of thousands of sell-throughs and be perfectly happy. Christ, he could throw every copy of Quake 3 in a wood chipper and sell the chaff to the government for use in hideous anti-personel weapons against the Serbs, and he would still make a killing on the royalty advances. This has always been John's modus operandi, whether he was turning a monster dime or a modest dime, and we should be thankful. Others follow suit because John's products become the IHV's benchmarks, so the IHV's improve their drivers and hardware to work with John's games, and so other game developers can eventually switch over. I think this is a better system than following Microsoft's lead just because one of their over-worked engineers or megalomaniac managers decided to arbitrate a new standard.
There's an alternative. You don't see anyone hotly debating whether to use DirectDraw. You don't see video glitches on games that use software renderers. They just work. They just deliver exactly what you specified and never crash. Sure, you have to come up with innovative gameplay and/or excellent artwork, but the technique has been a solid technique for hit-making from Myst to Heroes 3.
I am quite happy for the 3D cards and API's to beat each other black and blue while the real engineers either deal with what's available or quietly work on the solution to this whole mess.
Here's a fun multiple-choice quiz. What do you suppose that long-term solution is?
- A. Waiting for Nvidia to come out with the TNT N (as N gets large).
- B. Waiting for 3DFX to come out with the Voodoo N (as N gets large).
- C. Waiting for Matrox to come out with the GN00 (as N gets large).
- D. Waiting for ATI to come out with the Rage * (as * gets goofy).
- E. Waiting for OpenGL to get caps bits.
- F. Waiting for D3D code to be easier to read.
- G. Waiting for someone really brave to come out with a general-purpose processor w/ an open architecture that is suitable for high-performance parallel processing so that we have complete control over every pixel and get a consistent, high-quality, fast, innovative graphic experience.
I leave it to you, noble reader. (but if you pick anything but G., then you have gooey fluff where your brains should be, nyah)
I very much like the idea of judging the overall worth of a posting (-1 to +5) rather than adding a point to it's value... But, a comment can't possibly go from 0 or 2 to 5 just because I said so...
:)
So how about a compromise:
Moderators still get moderation quanta (I vote for fractions of points, see my rant at #33). They then get to choose what worth a post has, and their quantum adds (or subtracts) the actual value of the post in that direction.
In this way, the overall moderator opinion of worth, coupled with their quanta towards that end, result in a post that is moderated to the average of all moderator opinions... Preferably where it started.
It's another level of complexity, and should keep Rob busy for weeks in trying to figure out how to implement it. [VBSEG]
One more way of displaying a discussion would be nice. We can now look in order of post, or by score, either with threads or without...
For moderating purposes, it might be useful to see the most busy threads first (or last) to see wether there is a flame-war raging, or a hot discussion (of value) brewing...
Just a thought.
IMHO, the 'Overrated' and 'Underrated' moderation items should have the effect of MetaModeration. These are, essencially, means by which moderators can correct one another's work.
Some of the Funny ratings are quite pertinent to the discussion at hand though. And a humorous attitude about something tends to show understanding of the subject... Well, to me at least. So a person with enough understanding to make a joke is, in effect, making a worthwhile contribution.
Maybe we should have an additional category? For relevant humor or offtopic humor? But here I diverge from my personal opinion that simpler is better...
First off, MM is not really necessary.
/. being a self-correcting mechanism already, they just add another layer.
:) I, for one, would rather see Rob bring his considerable talents to bear on extending the article discussion forums. On many occasions, a great off-topic discussion has been sparked by an article. This discussion either flops for being off-topic, or dies when the article expires from the main page. It would be nice to have some quantifiable worth of such a discussion, that would enable it to live on until it dies a natural death.
A good comment is good. It is unlikely that a single, rabid individual, will sink a good comment into oblivion, without an equally determined benefactor raising it up again. By that same token, a conspiracy of evildoers to elevate each other's trash, whenever one of them has moderator access, is slim to none.
Occam's Razor applies, and a system of lesser complexity is preferable to one of greater complexity. Slashdot should not hamstring itself with rules, and rules about rules, else it will become a burocracy in which nothing ever happens.
Personally, I've never used MM, but I would rather see it go away - simply because Moderation points strike me as a rare commodity, so their negative effect seems to be outweighed by their utility to the holder. Also, with
MM is an interesting exercise for Rob, it nothing else, and as such it is as useful as anything that keeps a mind from being idle.
As for a redoux of the moderation philosophy, how about fractional moderation? Increase the number of moderators, certainly, maybe by a factor of four. But reduce the worth of each assignable point by that same amount. This way, several moderators would have to agree to elevate a post to the next higher integer score. The ability to abuse moderator privilege goes away, as does the confidence that a single vote of one individual will make a lot of difference.
As moderators, we would then add our voice to a comment, not knowing if we're the first, or the decisive ones to raise the message status. Follow?
This way, good posts will rise, bad posts will sink, and iffy posts will tent to teeter-totter on the edge of where they started.
Ah, all this opinionated rambling has tired me out. But, before my hands completely cramp... How's about making all posts require a Preview??
Suck for those of us that didn't install that increasingly flavored distribution, doesn't it?
First CodeWarrior gets bound to Red Hat, now IBM's hardware 'compatibility' aims for that distro... I think that perhaps Big Business is missing the point of Linux. I'm certain that Red Hat enjoys the notoriety of being the 'originator' of Linux, but we know better. Yes, they're a great contributor to the exposure and success that Linux as a whole enjoys. Yes, they've made it easier and friendlier, and they may be the spear-head on which Linux is delivered into the mainstream, but the big companies out there need to know that Red Hat != Linux.
Am I wrong in the expectation that if this prejudice isn't resolved, Red Hat is going to suffer a backlash from those that believe in the Freedom of Linux?
I really don't think that the post was intended to poke fun at or in any way detract from the serverity of the threat that Florida and the South-Eastern Seaboard is facing. It has been woefully misfilled under humor, though there is a sense of 'geek-to-the-end' about abandoning your home but leaving a WebCam to record the onslaught of the storm.
/. readership when I say that we are not entertained, but rather concerned and enawed by Floyd. Our thoughts are with you, and we are not laughing.
I, for one, am dreading the reports from the Bahamas, once they are available. I certainly hope that this does not turn out to be another Andrew for Florida. I'm also a bit concerned about the leftovers (or whatever there be) that makes it's way here to New England.
We have all seen severe weather at one point or another. It's been a number of years since I've seen a hurricane. I think Gloria was a class 3, and I'm quite a ways off shore, so I can only imagine what you folks are facing now. But if it helps at all, I'm sure I speak for most
Now what is 3Com's thinking in spinning off Palm Computing to a separate company? It was a cash cow, now what is the future?
3Com wasn't able to market and develop the Palm concept very well. They suffer from MS-Word Syndrome where 'average Joe' personal technology is concerned. They're great with networking and MODEMS - things you install and forget. Hands-on, in-your-face-every-day devices are alien to them.
I mean, the Palm VII, Palm III, Palm IIIx?? Whom are they kidding? Their marketting people were beginning to have useless and 'buzz' features put in, in an apparent attempt to establish a variety of 'trim' levels. Much like being able to select the color of the underlines beneath your misspellings in Word. They were selling them in college bookstores - in a variety of 'fashion' colors for chrissakes!
Just like the Nokia cell phones... All we need now is clip on transluscent flip-up screen covers and interchangable, color case covers... Feh! The Pilot was beginning to suffer from a lack of competition. After all, the only alternative in the same class of device is WinCE.
Spinning off Palm into a separate company is the best thing that could happen to the Pilot. This way, a product specific marketting department can work closely with the product specific engineering staff, without too many suits munging up the process.
Hopefully they'll come back to the exceptional fundamentals that made the Pilot a great tool. A little of it shines still in the Palm V, and hopefully the compatition (despite what they claim, it'll be there) from handspring will force some innovation and usefull feature development in both camps.
The scary thing is that this is one of the more useful applications of Java I've seen...
:)
Man, that one stung! Really.
I don't know how much exposure there has been to Java applications that are actually useful, but damn!
I'm currently working in a small group, in a large company, that is developing (the group) a DB (Oracle 8) centered, distributed (web) application for designing industrial and utility-scale boilers for electricity production. We're talking 1.21 GigaWatts here, Marty! It's my first project with this new group, and it's slick as snot.
Some other notable Java apps: NetBeans and FreeBuilder (granted, they're devtools themselves, but they're java and they nifty), Lotus domino is available as a Java app.
And then there's always Applixware Office Anywhere that is written purely in Java.
Really, I'm surprised at the off-the-cuff derission against Java, Rob (old bean).
CNN.com is running a related story on social phobia, panic attacks and selective mutism.
Their spin is unfocused, and suggests both a developing condition and/or a psychological trauma that causes the above behaviours.
We should consider social factors as heavily as chemical and neurological ones, when contemplating geekness as a form of autism... It seems, to me at least, that being geek is a reaction to the environment, or a predisposition to a particular pattern of behavior. It is not something of which we should be 'cured' in either case.
Here's how I see it.
:)
The field of psychology is fundamentally flawed in that all the bookworms and loners who write the psych dogma are themselves abnormal.
They project, onto those whom they would like to emulate, the definition of 'normal'. Normalcy, per a sub-conscious desire to fit in, is wishfull thinking on part of the psycho-babbler. It is a fictional standard to which they (and so we as sheep) aspire to, based on the image they hold from childhood, of those they wish had been their friends - the social butterflies.
We all know the 'bell curve' model of statistics. We can all make the mental leap of comprehension, and realize that normal, in this context, means 'average' statistically. It explains why the 'popular' kids are always so 'mean' to their peers. Pun intended.
Also, lets consider for a moment that nothing is ever accomplished by the average. Mediocrity barely succeeds in sustaining itself - nevermind driving the world forward. Mediocrity did not put mankind on the moon. The average socialite was home eating bland meatloaf and oatmeal while the geeks and idiot-savants at NASA did the impossible. The mediocre stared in wide-eyed wonder as those they once pushed around, now stood a million miles above them. The different became the better, the Neil Armstrong, the Charles Atlas. They shook and rocked the mediocre status quo, and being average didn't feel so glamorous or popular anymore.
The psychological label of 'average' serves to do only one thing. It bludgeons the outstanding into a cookie-cutter mold of sameness. It homogenizes the radical and exceptional, before they have a chance to give the psychology geek something better than 'average' to aspire towards.
Much as Freud's own screwed up relationship with his parents gave us the Oedipal Complex and Penis Envy, so does the modern label of 'normal' force the better and the different into hiding.
Let's let the psychologists talk. Let's let them broadcars their findings using the technology we developed. Let's let them feel above average, and then let's bitch-slap them down with their own research papers, just for being different and for standing out above the crowd. Let's medicate them for having such disturbing ideas. Obviously, they suffer from ADD, and they must be protected from their own instability.
Long live Harrison Bergeron!
Not because parents will assert their rights to raise their kids in their own way.
Not because kids are clever enough to bypass any and all 'child-proof' methods laid before them.
Not because the Federal Legislature is about to grow a conscience and a common sense, and thus realize that this whole censorship in the name of the children is rank with hypocricy...
No. It will fail because most of the parents that would even consider using it, still have 12:00 blinking on their VCR. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him RTFM.
As for Kermit, well... Good riddence to another fallen fairytale. Exposing the children to the fact that even their childhood friends are sellouts is a worthwhile lesson. Disillusionment is good. We do not want our kids growing up in a world of illusions and false beliefs, do we?
Here's to reality!
The TV is a brilliant invention for removing a persons mind through their eyes.
Now, if they could just make one with a button that would allow yolu to turn it off...
Again, from the article:
Before he can rest in the promised land, Knuth faces one last mountain. He must redesign the generalized computer used in his book for programming examples and exercises from a 50-year-old von Neumann-style machine with inefficient commands to a more modern RISC (reduced instruction set computer) system permitting faster operation. (Intel processors in most PCs are of the older variety; PowerPC chips in recent Macintosh models are RISC.)
"I'm trying to design it so it's 10 years ahead of its time," says Knuth. "I've studied all the machines we have now and tried to take their nicest features and put them all together." This super RISC machine, which he calls MMIX, is essentially a teaching concept. But he says he "would love to see it built.
I'm spending a lot of time documenting it so someone could build it. The design will be in the public domain." In the midst of his "Computer Musings" series of introductory talks on MMIX, Knuth is mere months away from completing this phase of his work.
From the interview:
Knuth says he realized then that TeX wasn't just a digression, it was itself part of the vision. "I saw that this fulfilled a need in the world and so I better do it right."
This is the crux.
The embedded chip in this new card will probably allow it to work a lot like a SecureCard.
It has a pseudo-random number generator, which essencially functions as an ECB. Your PIN and the ECB value for that moment in time are both required to perform a valid transaction. This way, either just the card (if lost), or just your PIN (if overheard?) are individually useless, since they only work jointly.
A ChipCard, for online shopping, is probably not a very good application. An ATM card would make more sense, but since Amex has more clout, it's easier for them to introduce the tech.
Then again, I might be completely wrong, and the chip might simply store data such as encryption certificates, and facilitate another layer of security. This makes much more sense for online transactions.
Perhaps a built in ROM capable of Diffie-Hellman?? But then why bother to hook it up to a PC, a simple acoustic coupler between the phone and the card would do... Uhoh, starting to think... Should get back to work.
Sun has a vested interest in pummeling Microsoft. It stands to benefit from a variety of other movements in the industry as well.
It does not want to bolster the viability of another *nix!
Why should they support a free OS, and alternative to Solaris, with a free JDK?
Sun, like everyone else, is in business to make money, first and foremost. Turning out a great product is secondary, and the good of all mankind comes in a distant third.