You forget that the local grid isn't isolated [...]
That might be a valid point if we weren't talking about Hawaii!
Re:Contributions also slow down with maturity
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Is Ruby Dying?
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· Score: 2
I think that's as bad of an oversimplification as the original thesis. But it certainly raises an important issue the submitter seems to be ignoring. For a highly modularized system, a lack of contributions to particular modules may well simply indicate that those modules are mature and don't need a lot of additional contributions any more. To really get a feel for the health of the overall ecosystem, you have to take a broader view.
If it claims to be lightweight, it can only do so as a DE, not a WM. Ihave lightweight WMs, and E isn't one of them. As a DE, though, yeah, sorta. It's pretty comparable to XFCE, and with a lot more eye candy. Unfortunately, E17 also had a lot less stability. I also dislike the tendency in most themes (including the default one) to omit side borders on windows. I know that's something some people are into, and it's seen on WindowMaker as well, but I've never cared for it. It doesn't fit well with sloppy-focus/no-autoraise, which I consider non-negotiable.
E is pretty, though. But E17 also has a lot less eye candy than E13 did (although it's noticably smaller and faster). I realize that E13 was slow and unmaintainable, but wow could it look awesome!
And other WMs have been catching up on the eye candy too. Heck, even good ol' FVWM (an actual lightweight WM) has eye candy options I never would have imagined ten years ago.
It's a technology demo created by techies. And now you want a (good) plot as well? You should just be thankful it isn't about Harry Potter defeating Darth Vader!:)
It's win-win for me. I have a prediction on file with the James Randi Foundation saying that the Supremes will agree to hear a software patent case this year (done, now), and that they will decide it on overly narrow grounds. If I'm right, I'm one step closer to winning the million dollar prize for my psychic powers, and if I'm wrong, well, my day job gets that much easier.:)
You're confusing ideologies. Someone's position on the right or left is not going to have any bearing on their ideological positions about patents, because patents aren't a right/left issue. It's a different type of ideology. A more idiosyncratic ideology. But an ideology nonetheless.
(Actually, I shouldn't say left/right, because dem/rep doesn't break down that way, but I'm simplifying for the sake of clarity.)
That said, because this isn't tied to their political allegiances, they may all be more inclined to listen to the arguments rather than pre-emptively voting with their preconceptions. Not guaranteed, but much more likely than in some cases.
One, merely having a monopoly is not illegal. You have to abuse your monopoly to be convicted under anti-trust. Two, the search market still has more than two players. Yahoo and Ask are still around, among others. And MS is unlikely to simply shutter Bing. They're more likely to sell it off to someone who isn't Google--like the aforementioned Yahoo or Ask. Bing is hardwired into too much stuff to simply shut it down.
Actually, if you go fast enough, you don't need life-extension. The stuff you left behind may be 50,000 years out of reach, but you might only have experienced a couple of dozen years.
Unfortunately, we're probably at least as far from the necessary accelerations (and cushioning) as we are from the necessary life-extension techniques, so it's probably a moot point, but I value completeness.:)
ATI Linux drivers have traditionally been crappy, but since they were bought by AMD, they've opened up a lot, and have been steadily contributing to the main kernel. The kernel drivers (as opposed to the proprietary Linux drivers) have been improving by leaps and bounds lately. Kernel 3.5 saw 3D performance improvements of over 35% with some AMD cards, and 3.12 is supposed to have a similar huge boost.
I don't know how they compare to the closed source drivers from Nvidia *or* ATI, but I'm currently running 3.10, and the in-kernel drivers are definitely working very well for me.
Nope, Lovelace was her title.King was her married name. And, because of the peculiarities of these things, "Lady" would be properly attached to "Lovelace" in this case, but not to "Ada" (or "Augusta"). So, Ada, Lady Lovelace would be one correct rendering, as would Ada, Countess Lovelace, or Augusta, Countess Lovelace (though she seemed to prefer Ada) or Augusta Ada King, (with or without added titles afterwards), but not Lady Ada or Lady Augusta, and not Ada Lovelace.
At least, as far as I've been able to figure out. People more adept at the nuances of British nobility may be able to provide a more accurate assessment.
There was reportedly a huge jump in performance with the 3.5 kernel series (as high as 38% in at least one case), and a lot more work was done with 3.6 through 3.10.
No the reason to mention the NSA is that the NSA's hackery has been all over the news recently, so it's an obvious leap that many people would have made if he hadn't mentioned it. In fact, for all we know (reporting being what it is), it was a direct response to the question, "do you think the NSA is responsible?"
In the absence of evidence, I would be more likely to refrain from naming anybody.
Except that the NSA's hackery has been much in the news recently, so mentioning that there's no reason to suspect them in particular (which is what the article basically did) might well be worthwhile. It's basically answering a question that was sure to come up.
Really? I think the BBC is great when it comes to general news. Sure, they're not perfect, but they are, IMO, well above average. I probably should have made it more clear in my post that I'm only criticising their science coverage, which, for whatever strange reason, has been remarkably and noticably subpar for the last decade or so.
But this was a science story, so I'm waiting to hear from other sources before I start to jump for joy. Assuming they didn't flub this story, it's very cool news!
For "non just science stories", yeah, The Beeb is great. One of my go-to sources in general. Which makes the state of their science reporting even sadder.
That was only a sampling. You obviously didn't read them, or you would have seen links to many more. Also, Goldacre has bigger and more important fights on his hand. As for Liberman and others from Language Log, they basically gave up in frustration several years ago, and now only call out the Beeb when it reports on their field, Linguistics. Seriously, though, if you are familiar with a field or topic of science, go see for yourself how well the Beeb does when it covers that field. I'm pretty confident you'll be appalled.
On the other hand, an institution that is regularly criticized by folks like Dr. Ben Goldacre of http://www.badscience.net/ and Prof. Mark Liberman of Language Log for the incredibly poor quality of their science reporting may not be the source you really want to trust on this or any other topic.
Granted, few general-purpose new sources are particularly good when it comes to their coverage of science, but the BBC does have a bit of a reputation for being above average--a reputation which seems to be rather undeserved, as far as I can tell.
Well, trivial in the sense that it doesn't require particularly sophisticated technology. Just huge, gigantic piles of not-sophisticated technology. The deployment, provisioning, and maintenance of that huge pile of technology is non-trivial. The code itself is relatively trivial, though. But code is only a tiny portion of what's required.
scaling watson up to hundreds of millions of users is the problem
Exactly. And this is even more so when you consider ongoing costs. Google uses cheap, throwaway servers in mind-boggling quantity. Building gigantic clusters of Watson-style machines is going to be an entirely different proposition. Between the up-front costs and the on-going maintenance costs, IBM would need some serious motivation to even think about trying this. Frankly, it doesn't seem like it fits their current business model at all.
I might be able to see IBM trying to license Watson-like technologies to Google, MS, Yahoo, and/or Ask. I can't see them suddenly switching direction to the degree that would be required for them to try to compete directly.
A trick that relies on the compiler recognizing its own code, which, as the code is edited over the years, would require truly amazing AI. Thompson had it fairly easy, because he was dealing with a relatively simple and fairly static compiler, and could use simple pattern matching to identify the places to insert his trojan. GCC, on the other hand, has undergone some major rewrites over the years.
Of course, if you really want to be sure, you can load the compiler source into something completely different. I once built GCC using a C interpreter, and then used the interpreted version to compile the compiler again, and got identical binaries, so I'm pretty confident that GCC has no such trojans lurking. But you're welcome to try the same trick yourself.
If you'd like to ask my brother that question, feel free. He's a foot taller than me, and can probably lift me with one hand, so I'm not going to ask him that. (Oh, and I think the fact that he's married and has kids might help answer the question about whether he has a girlfriend--the answer is clearly, no.):)
Then why even post numbers if the numbers are completely meaningless? We all know that some parents are clueless about such things. I said so in my original post. But what's the point of saying that 10% of the purchasers have a kid in tow if that doesn't actually provide any information about how many parents are buying the game for their kids? (And it doesn't.) It's a useless number that serves no purpose except to try to convince us that we have hard data that we actually don't.
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You forget that the local grid isn't isolated [...]
That might be a valid point if we weren't talking about Hawaii!
I think that's as bad of an oversimplification as the original thesis. But it certainly raises an important issue the submitter seems to be ignoring. For a highly modularized system, a lack of contributions to particular modules may well simply indicate that those modules are mature and don't need a lot of additional contributions any more. To really get a feel for the health of the overall ecosystem, you have to take a broader view.
If it claims to be lightweight, it can only do so as a DE, not a WM. Ihave lightweight WMs, and E isn't one of them. As a DE, though, yeah, sorta. It's pretty comparable to XFCE, and with a lot more eye candy. Unfortunately, E17 also had a lot less stability. I also dislike the tendency in most themes (including the default one) to omit side borders on windows. I know that's something some people are into, and it's seen on WindowMaker as well, but I've never cared for it. It doesn't fit well with sloppy-focus/no-autoraise, which I consider non-negotiable.
E is pretty, though. But E17 also has a lot less eye candy than E13 did (although it's noticably smaller and faster). I realize that E13 was slow and unmaintainable, but wow could it look awesome!
And other WMs have been catching up on the eye candy too. Heck, even good ol' FVWM (an actual lightweight WM) has eye candy options I never would have imagined ten years ago.
It's a technology demo created by techies. And now you want a (good) plot as well? You should just be thankful it isn't about Harry Potter defeating Darth Vader! :)
It's win-win for me. I have a prediction on file with the James Randi Foundation saying that the Supremes will agree to hear a software patent case this year (done, now), and that they will decide it on overly narrow grounds. If I'm right, I'm one step closer to winning the million dollar prize for my psychic powers, and if I'm wrong, well, my day job gets that much easier. :)
You're confusing ideologies. Someone's position on the right or left is not going to have any bearing on their ideological positions about patents, because patents aren't a right/left issue. It's a different type of ideology. A more idiosyncratic ideology. But an ideology nonetheless.
(Actually, I shouldn't say left/right, because dem/rep doesn't break down that way, but I'm simplifying for the sake of clarity.)
That said, because this isn't tied to their political allegiances, they may all be more inclined to listen to the arguments rather than pre-emptively voting with their preconceptions. Not guaranteed, but much more likely than in some cases.
Heh, comments like this are why I haven't given up on Slashdot completely! :)
One, merely having a monopoly is not illegal. You have to abuse your monopoly to be convicted under anti-trust. Two, the search market still has more than two players. Yahoo and Ask are still around, among others. And MS is unlikely to simply shutter Bing. They're more likely to sell it off to someone who isn't Google--like the aforementioned Yahoo or Ask. Bing is hardwired into too much stuff to simply shut it down.
Actually, if you go fast enough, you don't need life-extension. The stuff you left behind may be 50,000 years out of reach, but you might only have experienced a couple of dozen years.
Unfortunately, we're probably at least as far from the necessary accelerations (and cushioning) as we are from the necessary life-extension techniques, so it's probably a moot point, but I value completeness. :)
I wish he weren't already modded to five, because I *do* have mod points, and have rarely seen something so deserving of one. :)
ATI Linux drivers have traditionally been crappy, but since they were bought by AMD, they've opened up a lot, and have been steadily contributing to the main kernel. The kernel drivers (as opposed to the proprietary Linux drivers) have been improving by leaps and bounds lately. Kernel 3.5 saw 3D performance improvements of over 35% with some AMD cards, and 3.12 is supposed to have a similar huge boost.
I don't know how they compare to the closed source drivers from Nvidia *or* ATI, but I'm currently running 3.10, and the in-kernel drivers are definitely working very well for me.
Phoronix on 3.5 drivers
Phoronix on 3.12 drivers.
You do realize we're talking about a woman who's been dead for over a century and a half, yes? One who died while Queen Vicky was still middle-aged?
(Not that I disagree with you....)
Nope, Lovelace was her title.King was her married name. And, because of the peculiarities of these things, "Lady" would be properly attached to "Lovelace" in this case, but not to "Ada" (or "Augusta"). So, Ada, Lady Lovelace would be one correct rendering, as would Ada, Countess Lovelace, or Augusta, Countess Lovelace (though she seemed to prefer Ada) or Augusta Ada King, (with or without added titles afterwards), but not Lady Ada or Lady Augusta, and not Ada Lovelace.
At least, as far as I've been able to figure out. People more adept at the nuances of British nobility may be able to provide a more accurate assessment.
There was reportedly a huge jump in performance with the 3.5 kernel series (as high as 38% in at least one case), and a lot more work was done with 3.6 through 3.10.
No the reason to mention the NSA is that the NSA's hackery has been all over the news recently, so it's an obvious leap that many people would have made if he hadn't mentioned it. In fact, for all we know (reporting being what it is), it was a direct response to the question, "do you think the NSA is responsible?"
In the absence of evidence, I would be more likely to refrain from naming anybody.
Except that the NSA's hackery has been much in the news recently, so mentioning that there's no reason to suspect them in particular (which is what the article basically did) might well be worthwhile. It's basically answering a question that was sure to come up.
Hmm, yes I am, but so is Prof. Liberman, some of whose criticisms I linked earlier, so the bad science part is not just domestic.
Really? I think the BBC is great when it comes to general news. Sure, they're not perfect, but they are, IMO, well above average. I probably should have made it more clear in my post that I'm only criticising their science coverage, which, for whatever strange reason, has been remarkably and noticably subpar for the last decade or so.
But this was a science story, so I'm waiting to hear from other sources before I start to jump for joy. Assuming they didn't flub this story, it's very cool news!
For "non just science stories", yeah, The Beeb is great. One of my go-to sources in general. Which makes the state of their science reporting even sadder.
That was only a sampling. You obviously didn't read them, or you would have seen links to many more. Also, Goldacre has bigger and more important fights on his hand. As for Liberman and others from Language Log, they basically gave up in frustration several years ago, and now only call out the Beeb when it reports on their field, Linguistics. Seriously, though, if you are familiar with a field or topic of science, go see for yourself how well the Beeb does when it covers that field. I'm pretty confident you'll be appalled.
On the other hand, an institution that is regularly criticized by folks like Dr. Ben Goldacre of http://www.badscience.net/ and Prof. Mark Liberman of Language Log for the incredibly poor quality of their science reporting may not be the source you really want to trust on this or any other topic.
- Bad Science's BBC category
- Enhance Breast Size by 80%
- Parrot Telepathy at the BBC
- More Junk Science from the BBC
- It's Always Silly Season in the BBC Science Section
Granted, few general-purpose new sources are particularly good when it comes to their coverage of science, but the BBC does have a bit of a reputation for being above average--a reputation which seems to be rather undeserved, as far as I can tell.
crawling the web to build the database is trivial
Well, trivial in the sense that it doesn't require particularly sophisticated technology. Just huge, gigantic piles of not-sophisticated technology. The deployment, provisioning, and maintenance of that huge pile of technology is non-trivial. The code itself is relatively trivial, though. But code is only a tiny portion of what's required.
scaling watson up to hundreds of millions of users is the problem
Exactly. And this is even more so when you consider ongoing costs. Google uses cheap, throwaway servers in mind-boggling quantity. Building gigantic clusters of Watson-style machines is going to be an entirely different proposition. Between the up-front costs and the on-going maintenance costs, IBM would need some serious motivation to even think about trying this. Frankly, it doesn't seem like it fits their current business model at all.
I might be able to see IBM trying to license Watson-like technologies to Google, MS, Yahoo, and/or Ask. I can't see them suddenly switching direction to the degree that would be required for them to try to compete directly.
A trick that relies on the compiler recognizing its own code, which, as the code is edited over the years, would require truly amazing AI. Thompson had it fairly easy, because he was dealing with a relatively simple and fairly static compiler, and could use simple pattern matching to identify the places to insert his trojan. GCC, on the other hand, has undergone some major rewrites over the years.
Of course, if you really want to be sure, you can load the compiler source into something completely different. I once built GCC using a C interpreter, and then used the interpreted version to compile the compiler again, and got identical binaries, so I'm pretty confident that GCC has no such trojans lurking. But you're welcome to try the same trick yourself.
If you'd like to ask my brother that question, feel free. He's a foot taller than me, and can probably lift me with one hand, so I'm not going to ask him that. (Oh, and I think the fact that he's married and has kids might help answer the question about whether he has a girlfriend--the answer is clearly, no.) :)
Then why even post numbers if the numbers are completely meaningless? We all know that some parents are clueless about such things. I said so in my original post. But what's the point of saying that 10% of the purchasers have a kid in tow if that doesn't actually provide any information about how many parents are buying the game for their kids? (And it doesn't.) It's a useless number that serves no purpose except to try to convince us that we have hard data that we actually don't.