If there's no difference in performance or realisable features, then what's the problem ? If there was any measurable difference, that would be a different issue.
Sounds to me like a bunch of people wanting to "upgrade" their machines at someone else's expense. I think it's shady marketing practices (marketing should reflect reality. Sigh.) but I don't see there's been any harm done....
Maybe I wasn't clear. I was referring to the compile-to-machine-code not just-in-time-compiling. There is no VM in a precompiled java program, although there will be garbage collector and arrays will be checked etc.
Tools like gcj, or newer JBuilder's will do this. There will always be some overhead for GC, but unless you're doing physics simulations running for weeks, I seriously doubt you'd notice the difference...
Given that "VM" languages are being used more and more (and really, anything that handles it's own memory is the largest gain, IMHO), a lot of the attacks will be getting less and less to work with over time.
I can't see mainstream OS's being written in Java just yet [grin - Windows JP (Java Protected), now with less memory holes!] but applications are getting more likely to be protected in this way.
Running.NET or compiled-java is pretty much indistinguishable from running C++ programs, and they're so much easier to develop in than more-traditional languages, so perhaps the future is bright:-)
I guess all I'm really saying is that it's hopeless once the thing doesn't say "I'm OK". If it's not ok, then do all the regression analysis, try to figure out where it went wrong and try another probe... A shame, but true:-(
Yes, I know, but Beagle's not actually that big - it's about 2m across, fully expanded, according to what I've read. Even if the airbags are still attached and nicely spread out, I still think the camera hasn't much chance of picking out anything interesting.
I said 6 pixels (and I still think I'm being generous). To put that into perspective, you have this entire page (I'm assuming you're at 1280x1024 or 1024x768) and somewhere there *might* be something like - on it, or maybe ; except the contrast will be nowhere near as good as on this page. Even shadows of rocks will have a more prominent signature on the image:-(
You need a resolution of about 10cm, and the problem with that is that there's a lot of 10cm^2 patches on a planet:-((
Eloquent am I "Challenger" challenges neither my enunciation nor pronunciation.
Can't really see the relevance though - there's a world of difference between a rocket blowing up on launch and one crash-landing. In this case, there's two worlds of difference, which sort of underlies the point, yes ?
Sure, I probably could have been nicer about it. Put it down to the "US rulez, UK suckz" posts I read just before posting...
I mean, do you think they intentionally build the signalling system to self-destruct on a crash landing, or what ?
There's a 73 Kg limit (including all the airbags, entry heat-shield, and the actual payload) for the entire mission, and you want to put in armoured (read: heavy) modules for when it all goes wrong ?
What purpose would this serve ? So we can now get a photo where the 6 white pixels (and I'm being *very* generous with the resolving power of the orbital cameras) are the lander. Whoosh. What now ? And to do that, we leave out the gas spectrometer, perhaps ?
I'm sure you're a clever individual, but there are also very clever people at mission control. They will have forgotten more about sending probes on a journey through the Solar System than you or I will ever know, and I really was a rocket scientist, albeit only for a few years (it doesn't pay well...) Engage brain before fingers...
Gaaah well now that post has been moderated down. Perhaps there's some sympathy out there after all... It was the 'chalk one up to US spirit' (or something like that:-)
[Grin] And given my nick, I find it amusing that/. says 'slow down Cowboy' when you post too quickly - or does it just take the last word in your name ?
Huge ambition packed into such a small volume (73kg) and the only test-landing failed miserably.
Well, you never learn until you've tried and failed. Perhaps next time.
What I do find disappointing is the first post above though. I'm obviously disappointed for us Brits that our first Mars probe has died a death, but I'm elated the US managed to get theirs to work perfectly. Pity the feelings aren't reciprocal:-( We are all in this together, remember ? Anyone still there ?
I've been stuck with a really noisy AMD system as my desktop for the last 6 months or so... It's sufficiently bad that I have to shut 2 doors between the workroom and the bedroom (not the room doors, ones in-between) so it can't be heard at night...
I kept telling myself to get a new chip/fan/mboard, but I've been waiting for the 64-bit ones to come out (not because they're 64-bit, but because they're simply faster and better designed). Now at last, I can reduce the noise-level, at least once I've sent in and paid my tax return....
[I realise your post was intended as humour, but it sparked the flame:-]
This is after-all a site for "stuff that matters". What the author is trying to express is that blind obedience to society norms is a bad thing. Effectively, he's saying "distrust Authority", an old maxim, but one that needs reiteration from time to time.
I have to say that I identify closely with a lot of his ideas, nothing depresses me more than the continued conversion of people into "consumers" told what to "consume", when to do it, how much to do it, and presumably when to stop.
The only way out of the cycle is education - but not facts and figures, instead the freedom to think and postulate, debate and conclude. The sort of education that we (at least in the UK) tend to reserve for the 18+ year-olds who go to college.
We live in an ever-more complex society, with ever-more subtle distinction between right and wrong, between do and do-not. It is a crying shame that most are incapable of distinguishing those distinctions. The "system" has failed these people.
I wonder if we are indeed moving into the "Corporate state" governmental model (anyone who played 'elite' will know that these are the most stable of governments), which simply exist to exist. Life should be more:-(
Given that the majority of/. readership is actually American, perhaps it was your fellow compatriot moderators, not wishing to be associated with your view....
I say "way to go, Spirit", as a UK citizen, by the way; and I'm hoping that Beagle is still sending the 'where the **** are you' message to the orbiter, but realistically, there's not much hope now:-(
Well, maybe - it's an argument, certainly. IM(ns)HO though there's a lot less difference between BG2 and NWN than there is between NWN and DnD - it's a very different gaming experience... one of them doesn't use a computer for a start, and at least when I played DnD, there was far more alcohol and pizza consumed in that game:-))
is Neverwinter Nights. Not sure if it was *made* this year though. I think you could make an argument for it being a sequel to Baldur's Gate, but in my eyes it's a totally new game:-) Oh yeah, and fantastic to boot:-))))
Oh yeah, I remember: "Do unto others as you would have them do to you"...
Reminds me indirectly of the Euro-MP who complained that people were contacting her with their views. They ought to have just sat back and been told what they wanted....
Disgusted. Is it any wonder we regard politicians as full of (sh)it ?
Do you know how finely tuned the receivers are ? I do.
Typically your receiver has a (physical, not in-software) narrow-bandpass low-noise amplifier that is tuned to a minute section of the frequency spectrum (say 1MHz range), specifically because you're trying to find a needle in a haystack - a galactic haystack at that! It's a noisy place out there; to design for the specific case you need requires a lot of optimisation of that case versus everything else - it's not just like scanning up and down the range... if you are not spot-on the correct frequency at the correct time, you'll miss the signal.
Agreed, the "article" was horribly biased, and you rightly cast aspersions on the author's integrity, but normally when critiquing someone in this way, you might also point out the glaring errors in *what* (s)he says, as well as showing *why* what (s)he says is wrong. I'm not sure anything he says is *wrong* per-se (at least on the linux front - I don't know enough about the win32 side to comment). I do think it needed to be couched in a more balanced article though...
As for your points about ssh, yep they're security products, that's why the instant someone finds something wrong, it's important to broadcast that info far and wide. No-one (should, at least) expects the code to be perfect because it has an extra 'S' in the name. We do expect a careful approach to security, and an open one too. I don't believe you do yourself much credit with this argument - it's about ssh anyway, not Linux.
I doubt WU has been owned by anyone, but if it had been, the sensible approach to take would be for the perpetrator to contact MS and tell them they've just distributed X million 'delete-the-system' virii to their customers, and it'll cost 100 million dollars to get the 'undo' key... It would then all be dealt with quietly. Open source is... unlikely... to follow this route:-)
It's a classic catch-22 when you need to download the patches, but the act of downloading them makes you vulnerable... I have just bought my parents a new PC (with XP, they're not up to Linux just yet...) and I never thought twice about doing the windows-update thing... OTOH, they are behind a decent firewall (that does run Linux:-) so the risk is pretty minimal.
Perhaps all these DSL/WiFi combo boxes will be a blessing in disguise because they all come with a firewall (on by default, with Cisco's Linksys ones:-)
(the mindset)... with Oracles customers (the Oracle mindset is described as "use 'em and dump 'em.")
I know I'd not be particularly happy, but what else do you do ? If your business needs Oracle, then there is no real alternative - Informix is a distant second place, with the rest of the pack some why behind. Good luck porting from "standard SQL" to "standard SQL" as well:-)
I have a certain amount of respect for Ellison (purely down to his PR image, of course:-) but if he's manipulated power into his own hands as much as the review makes out, Oracle is doomed. No one man can provide the needs of a gigantic company like Oracle over the long term - it has to be a collabarative effort...
The BBC had her standing up for the stranded Jon, although interestingly enough, the new page (just checked it) hasn't got the quote on it any more. It went something like "Jon's flight was as carefully planned as mine, and it was the highly unseasonal winds that caused us both problems".
It just seems to me as though there's a lot more going on behind the scenes than the scientists out there are all admitting to...
Slashdot Mirror
If there's no difference in performance or realisable features, then what's the problem ? If there was any measurable difference, that would be a different issue.
Sounds to me like a bunch of people wanting to "upgrade" their machines at someone else's expense. I think it's shady marketing practices (marketing should reflect reality. Sigh.) but I don't see there's been any harm done....
Simon.
Maybe I wasn't clear. I was referring to the compile-to-machine-code not just-in-time-compiling. There is no VM in a precompiled java program, although there will be garbage collector and arrays will be checked etc.
Tools like gcj, or newer JBuilder's will do this. There will always be some overhead for GC, but unless you're doing physics simulations running for weeks, I seriously doubt you'd notice the difference...
Simon.
Given that "VM" languages are being used more and more (and really, anything that handles it's own memory is the largest gain, IMHO), a lot of the attacks will be getting less and less to work with over time.
.NET or compiled-java is pretty much indistinguishable from running C++ programs, and they're so much easier to develop in than more-traditional languages, so perhaps the future is bright :-)
I can't see mainstream OS's being written in Java just yet [grin - Windows JP (Java Protected), now with less memory holes!] but applications are getting more likely to be protected in this way.
Running
Simon
I guess all I'm really saying is that it's hopeless once the thing doesn't say "I'm OK". If it's not ok, then do all the regression analysis, try to figure out where it went wrong and try another probe... A shame, but true :-(
Simon
Yes, I know, but Beagle's not actually that big - it's about 2m across, fully expanded, according to what I've read. Even if the airbags are still attached and nicely spread out, I still think the camera hasn't much chance of picking out anything interesting.
:-(
:-((
I said 6 pixels (and I still think I'm being generous). To put that into perspective, you have this entire page (I'm assuming you're at 1280x1024 or 1024x768) and somewhere there *might* be something like - on it, or maybe ; except the contrast will be nowhere near as good as on this page. Even shadows of rocks will have a more prominent signature on the image
You need a resolution of about 10cm, and the problem with that is that there's a lot of 10cm^2 patches on a planet
Simon.
Eloquent am I
"Challenger" challenges neither my enunciation nor pronunciation.
Can't really see the relevance though - there's a world of difference between a rocket blowing up on launch and one crash-landing. In this case, there's two worlds of difference, which sort of underlies the point, yes ?
Sure, I probably could have been nicer about it. Put it down to the "US rulez, UK suckz" posts I read just before posting...
Simon.
Um, the point I was obviously struggling to make is that we shouldn't be *fighting* at all...
Simon
I mean, do you think they intentionally build the signalling system to self-destruct on a crash landing, or what ?
There's a 73 Kg limit (including all the airbags, entry heat-shield, and the actual payload) for the entire mission, and you want to put in armoured (read: heavy) modules for when it all goes wrong ?
What purpose would this serve ? So we can now get a photo where the 6 white pixels (and I'm being *very* generous with the resolving power of the orbital cameras) are the lander. Whoosh. What now ? And to do that, we leave out the gas spectrometer, perhaps ?
I'm sure you're a clever individual, but there are also very clever people at mission control. They will have forgotten more about sending probes on a journey through the Solar System than you or I will ever know, and I really was a rocket scientist, albeit only for a few years (it doesn't pay well...) Engage brain before fingers...
Simon.
Gaaah well now that post has been moderated down. Perhaps there's some sympathy out there after all... It was the 'chalk one up to US spirit' (or something like that :-)
/. says 'slow down Cowboy' when you post too quickly - or does it just take the last word in your name ?
[Grin] And given my nick, I find it amusing that
Simon
Huge ambition packed into such a small volume (73kg) and the only test-landing failed miserably.
:-( We are all in this together, remember ? Anyone still there ?
Well, you never learn until you've tried and failed. Perhaps next time.
What I do find disappointing is the first post above though. I'm obviously disappointed for us Brits that our first Mars probe has died a death, but I'm elated the US managed to get theirs to work perfectly. Pity the feelings aren't reciprocal
Simon.
I've been stuck with a really noisy AMD system as my desktop for the last 6 months or so... It's sufficiently bad that I have to shut 2 doors between the workroom and the bedroom (not the room doors, ones in-between) so it can't be heard at night...
....
I kept telling myself to get a new chip/fan/mboard, but I've been waiting for the 64-bit ones to come out (not because they're 64-bit, but because they're simply faster and better designed). Now at last, I can reduce the noise-level, at least once I've sent in and paid my tax return
Simon.
Jesus man, what are you, Taco's cousin ?
....
All this time, I thought *my* id was low... goes away and sits quietly in the corner again
Simon
... but now they'll all turn to online spam instead of the dead-tree variety :-(
Simon.
[I realise your post was intended as humour, but it sparked the flame :-]
:-(
This is after-all a site for "stuff that matters". What the author is trying to express is that blind obedience to society norms is a bad thing. Effectively, he's saying "distrust Authority", an old maxim, but one that needs reiteration from time to time.
I have to say that I identify closely with a lot of his ideas, nothing depresses me more than the continued conversion of people into "consumers" told what to "consume", when to do it, how much to do it, and presumably when to stop.
The only way out of the cycle is education - but not facts and figures, instead the freedom to think and postulate, debate and conclude. The sort of education that we (at least in the UK) tend to reserve for the 18+ year-olds who go to college.
We live in an ever-more complex society, with ever-more subtle distinction between right and wrong, between do and do-not. It is a crying shame that most are incapable of distinguishing those distinctions. The "system" has failed these people.
I wonder if we are indeed moving into the "Corporate state" governmental model (anyone who played 'elite' will know that these are the most stable of governments), which simply exist to exist. Life should be more
Simon.
Given that the majority of /. readership is actually American, perhaps it was your fellow compatriot moderators, not wishing to be associated with your view ....
:-(
I say "way to go, Spirit", as a UK citizen, by the way; and I'm hoping that Beagle is still sending the 'where the **** are you' message to the orbiter, but realistically, there's not much hope now
Simon.
Well, maybe - it's an argument, certainly. IM(ns)HO though there's a lot less difference between BG2 and NWN than there is between NWN and DnD - it's a very different gaming experience ... one of them doesn't use a computer for a start, and at least when I played DnD, there was far more alcohol and pizza consumed in that game :-))
Simon
is Neverwinter Nights. Not sure if it was *made* this year though. I think you could make an argument for it being a sequel to Baldur's Gate, but in my eyes it's a totally new game :-) Oh yeah, and fantastic to boot :-))))
Simon
Oh yeah, I remember: "Do unto others as you would have them do to you"...
Reminds me indirectly of the Euro-MP who complained that people were contacting her with their views. They ought to have just sat back and been told what they wanted....
Disgusted. Is it any wonder we regard politicians as full of (sh)it ?
Simon.
Do you know how finely tuned the receivers are ? I do.
Typically your receiver has a (physical, not in-software) narrow-bandpass low-noise amplifier that is tuned to a minute section of the frequency spectrum (say 1MHz range), specifically because you're trying to find a needle in a haystack - a galactic haystack at that! It's a noisy place out there; to design for the specific case you need requires a lot of optimisation of that case versus everything else - it's not just like scanning up and down the range... if you are not spot-on the correct frequency at the correct time, you'll miss the signal.
Simon.
Agreed, the "article" was horribly biased, and you rightly cast aspersions on the author's integrity, but normally when critiquing someone in this way, you might also point out the glaring errors in *what* (s)he says, as well as showing *why* what (s)he says is wrong. I'm not sure anything he says is *wrong* per-se (at least on the linux front - I don't know enough about the win32 side to comment). I do think it needed to be couched in a more balanced article though...
... unlikely ... to follow this route :-)
As for your points about ssh, yep they're security products, that's why the instant someone finds something wrong, it's important to broadcast that info far and wide. No-one (should, at least) expects the code to be perfect because it has an extra 'S' in the name. We do expect a careful approach to security, and an open one too. I don't believe you do yourself much credit with this argument - it's about ssh anyway, not Linux.
I doubt WU has been owned by anyone, but if it had been, the sensible approach to take would be for the perpetrator to contact MS and tell them they've just distributed X million 'delete-the-system' virii to their customers, and it'll cost 100 million dollars to get the 'undo' key... It would then all be dealt with quietly. Open source is
Simon.
It's a classic catch-22 when you need to download the patches, but the act of downloading them makes you vulnerable ... I have just bought my parents a new PC (with XP, they're not up to Linux just yet ...) and I never thought twice about doing the windows-update thing... OTOH, they are behind a decent firewall (that does run Linux :-) so the risk is pretty minimal.
:-)
Perhaps all these DSL/WiFi combo boxes will be a blessing in disguise because they all come with a firewall (on by default, with Cisco's Linksys ones
Simon
This is presumably for when your granny visits, or some other technologically-challenged family members/friends :-)
I especially like that USB 'traditional phone' piece of kit that just lets you pretend you're on a normal line while sending everything over VOIP (!)
Simon.
... or so claimed AMD. Maybe this is why - they are releasing 64-bit chips at prices comparable to mid-range 32-bit ones! Way to go AMD :-)
:-)
I have no particular beef with Intel, btw, it's just that AMD always seem to aim more at value for money. I like that
Simon.
(the mindset)
I know I'd not be particularly happy, but what else do you do ? If your business needs Oracle, then there is no real alternative - Informix is a distant second place, with the rest of the pack some why behind. Good luck porting from "standard SQL" to "standard SQL" as well
I have a certain amount of respect for Ellison (purely down to his PR image, of course
Simon
The BBC had her standing up for the stranded Jon, although interestingly enough, the new page (just checked it) hasn't got the quote on it any more. It went something like "Jon's flight was as carefully planned as mine, and it was the highly unseasonal winds that caused us both problems".
It just seems to me as though there's a lot more going on behind the scenes than the scientists out there are all admitting to...
Simon.