Twinhead makes laptops that normally run without a fan. Their computers use a proprietary heat pipe for cooling. (There is a fan, but it only goes on under extreme circumstances.) Why go to the trouble of building one?
I got a Twinhead for that reason, and have been glad that I did.
Buy Windows XP: give Bill Gates even more of your money.
The web page that you cite mostly gives tabular data. (In some ways, data from the Hipparcos project is preferable to that.)
People who are interested in photographic images from the Hubble Space Telescope would likely be better browsing those available from the Hubble Heritage Project. They're incredible!
--When everyone uses Windows, and Windows contains government spyware, we will be in the world's first true invincible police state.
The open-sockets DDoS hole, first railed against by Steve Gibson, should also start to rear its head. Microsoft previously claimed that Windows XP security was so superb that the required (zombie) programs wouldn't be able to run in the first place--that is, Windows XP machines would be safe from external forces running malicious programs!
Perhaps the script kiddies were waiting until people got new PCs for Christmas.
This was an incredible interview. So, I challenge each and every Slashdot reader to something to support the cause. Anything. NOW.
For myself, I've just sent a copy of Lessig's latest book to Tony Blair (British PM). Maybe someone in his office will read some of it. Maybe it will help.
Do any one thing. Write a letter to a newspaper. Send the EFF money. Be creative! There are lots and lots of extremely creative people here. Let's go!
Software evolves, as Linus says, but many experienced software developers seem to struggle to understand this. I suspect that part of the problem is with the term "maintenance" as it applies to software. With software, maintenance means something different from what it means in engineering.
In engineering, maintenance is performed for one purpose: to achieve homeostasis. For example, a building is maintained so that it remains standing, etc. With software, maintenance consists of homeostatic things (bug fixes), but also of things to enhance, or change, functionality. You would never add new storeys in the middle of a high-rise building, or modify a jet fighter to carry large amounts of freight. Yet changes like this do occur with software.
And they always will occur. Or at least they should: software that is not receiving change requests is software that is dying. Be glad for those requests. And don't complain when users change their minds, or don't really know what they want. Users are people. In geek-speak, this means that they are not reprogrammable: you must deal with them as they are.
When developers really accept this, they tend to accept that the correct paradigm really is evolution. I dream that more advocates of the engineering approach to software will someday be among those people.
2. Have you tried listening with a good turntable/tonearm/cartridge? Again, you avoid the main issue.
As for (B), since you are such an authority, I shouldn't need to give you references, but since I'm so magnanimous, I'll give a few anyway:
M. L. Lenhardt et al., "Human ultrasonic speech perception", Science 253: 82 [1991].
T. Oohashi et al., "High-frequency sound above the audible range affects brain electronic activity and sound perception", AES Preprints 91: 3207 [1991].
It's interesting to see so much written by someone who has obviously never listened. Let's look at the "myths" on the page that you cite:
Myth 1. Tube amplifiers are the best way to listen to music.
Facts. Tube amplifiers tend to give a more realistic presentation of vocals and soundstaging--especially depth. If, due to your preferred music, that is what you most care about, then tube amps give great value for money.
Myth 2. Vinyl records are the best because they are analog while digital sampling ruins the sound.
Facts. Simply listen on a good turntable: use your ears, and you will prefer vinyl. I have never met anyone who disagreed after actually listening. There are various theories as to why. (A) Vinyl has a greater dynamic range (you can hear ~20 dB into the hiss, which is ignored). (B) Vinyl allows much faster transients (the human ear detects up to 30 kHz, even though pure tones are inaudible above about 20 kHz). (C) Things related to Shun Mook and PWB (which seem to work, though I don't understand why). (D) etc.
Myth 3. CD doesn't have a low enough signal to noise ratio. The new DVD super audio is a huge improvement.
Facts. This is really the same as above: CD has to throw away a lot of the information, especially getting rid of fast transients. The CD standard compresses music much more than DVD-A: so much so that the difference is audible (though "huge" might be exaggerated).
Myth 4. Equalizers are bad.
Facts. Anything in the signal path will cause some unwanted distortion, and so should generally be avoided. This is truly obvious.
In other words, the things claimed to be myths are largely true.
There is nothing wrong with being ignorant. There is something wrong with pretending you're not and promulgating untruths.
Who would maintain the 14,000 school networks if they decided to use open source. In the article it says that MS will train people to maintain their systems in the schools.
The people who are trained to maintain Microsoft systems could instead be trained to maintain Linux/KDE. That would be a nice punishment for Microsoft.
Of that 1.1 billion, 0.9 is for Microsoft software. Since the schools would be unlikely to purchase much of the software anyway (they are poor), Microsoft actually loses nothing. Moreover, the schools could alternatively get open-source software--for free. Then the children would be able to read the source, and thereby learn (they are in school remember) more about computers.
In other words, this (i) helps Microsoft strengthen their Monopoly, (ii) costs Microsoft little more than $200 million, and (iii) probably harms children.
I'm not sure how geeky this is, but I've asked Santa for the Encyclopædia Britannica. For me, there's nothing else (that you can buy).
"I wish that I understood how people could be happy yet lack curiosity,
because I would no longer find them so alien, so frightening, so unlikely to
care about anything beyond their own comfort." --Jonathan W. King (adapted)
What I find interesting about IBM's Demystifying Linux Brochure is that it seems to be wholly honest. I couldn't see any attempt to mislead. It paints things positively, but nothing beyond that. The facts speak largely alone.
Compare this with Microsoft's advertising, which is sometimes grossly misleading, occasionally even other-worldly. I feel good about IBM being on our side. Let's hope lots of Slashdot'ers forward this to their top IT management.
There seems to be confusion about what a computer language is. The correct answer is
a language for describing partial recursive functions.
A partial recursive function is a type of function that was introduced by Kurt Godel, in the 1930s, using mathematical logic. (Also in the 1930s, Alan Turing developed the Turing machine as a model of human thought processes. It was then proven that the partial recursive functions were the same as the functions that could be evaluated by Turing machines. Later, electronic computers were created, and they were well modelled by Turing machines.)
The important point here is that the definition has nothing to do with physical devices. Of course, most computer languages can be understood by particular physical devices (electronic computers), but that is not required--and it only came about later. Even after the advent of electronic computers, some computer languages were still being invented for the purpose of communicating with people. Two good examples illustrating this are APL and MIX.
APL (AProgramming Language) was invented by Ken Iverson, a Harvard mathematician. His sole purpose was to have a good way to describe algorithms to people. Physical computers were not even a consideration. Later, other people thought that it would be a good idea to implement the language, and interpreters for computers were crafted, but that was strictly secondary.
MIX was invented by Don Knuth, a Stanford mathematician. His primary purpose was to have a "formal, precise way" to "present the various techniques" detailed in his book Art of Computer Programming (I'm quoting from the preface). Although algorithms described in MIX could be executed on a (idealized) computer, Knuth's primary purpose was communicate to people.
Both these languages are intended to be used to describe algorithmic calculations, but not all computer languages need do this. Prolog is an example, where you just describe the input and output of the program (e.g. input "a list" and output "an ordered list", where "ordered" means "i LE j implies list[i] LE list[j]"), without necessarily describing how to calculate the output. And Prolog was invented primarily to be executed on a computer.
If an algorithm is described in English, then plainly, there are free-speech protections. What if Esperanto were used? Again, free-speech protections should apply, but note that Esperanto is an artificial language. So, I think that the same provisions should apply if the language is APL or MIX. From there, we surely get protection for Prolog, Java, C, etc.: all human-readable languages.
Has this line of reasoning been used in the courts? If not, why?
I've got a 1998 Twinhead laptop that uses heat pipe technology for cooling. The laptop also has a fan, which almost never goes on, due to the heat pipe. (It was for the quiet fanless running that I bought a Twinhead.)
Twinhead advertising claims that their heat pipe technology is patented. I've no further details and couldn't find anything relevant on their web site.
Buy Windows XP. Give Bill Gates even more of your money.
I have some concern about how all these changes appear to businesses. Linux is supposed to be a high-quality alternative to other operating systems. Yet we've recently had a production kernel that failed to even compile, and there have been major upheavals to the "stable series" VMM, which sometime degrade reliability or performance. This isn't going to impress, and it gives competitors valid ammunition.
Almost all successful enterprises have to overcome a hurdle: how to transition from the "just for fun" start-up stage to the "managed with professionalism" stage. Ideally, fun is kept along with the professionalism. Note that even at Microsoft, B. Gates now lets S. Balmar (CEO) and R. Belluzzo (President and COO) manage things. Gates is the "chief software architect" and Microsoft is still his, but others do the managing.
Linux needs more professionalism in the management of releases, I believe.
My concern was that if Microsoft maintains its monopoly in office software and that software only runs on Windows (and Mac), then users will keep using Windows. Which means that Windows will not see serious competition.
So if the settlement doesn't force Microsoft to allow others to read and write Word and Excel files, then the monopoly in desktop operating systems is not seriously threatened. Thus the settlement really seems to be a failure.
Microsoft has a monopoly on word processors and spreadsheets. And Microsoft keeps changing the internal file formats for these (.doc and.xls files).
Since Microsoft has a monopoly, competitors (e.g. StarOffice) can only realistically compete if they can read and write Microsoft file formats. Competitors, however, cannot do this reliably if the formats keep changing.
In other words, the DoJ settlement does not do what is necessary to introduce competition into the software-applications market. So, it seems to be a failure.
For a very different approach to gravitation, poorly exposited but with fascinating fundamentals, see Information Mechanics by F. W. Kantor. There is also a web page: http://w3.execnet.com/kantor/index.htm.
For many Slashdotters, Kantor's central idea of basing physics on information, rather than things like matter and energy, might seem inherently appealing.
The discussion so far has focussed mainly on Rik's and Andrea's VMs. For the 2.4.x series, that's fair. For 2.5, though, what about considering the AIX VM?
IBM has said that they will open source any part of AIX that we would like. The AIX VM works well under high stress. Obviously it could not just be put as-is into Linux, but there must be a lot of good ideas/algorithms in it that could--arguably should--be moved to Linux. Why isn't anyone looking at doing this?
It's interesting that Sun is saying this. Sun's main business of servers is being squeezed from the bottom by Linux (and WinNT/XP). It is also now being squeezed from the top by IBM: both by Linux-on-the-mainframe and by the new p-series (Regatta) *nix servers, which IBM intends to eventually run mostly Linux. The Economist has a detailed story discussing all this.
An additional problem for Sun is with workstations, where Linux seems to be making headway against Solaris (whether on a SPARC or on a high-end PC).
Right now, Sun is in good financial shape, with lots of cash and revenues. As the above shows, though, in the long run, Linux could threaten Sun's survival.
What are the stats for Slashdot? For example, number of active (by some definition) user accounts, number of distinct IPs/day, total hits/day, etc.
Slashdot is the only real chance we have for news freedom. Thank you.
Re:Stupidity runs rampant in our industry
on
MySQL 4.0 Released
·
· Score: 2
And I walked off the gig.
That took a lot of integrity. It's really nice to hear about this. Thanks.
Q: Why should an IE user switch?
on
Mozilla 0.9.5
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Consider the typical Windows user, who uses IE 6. What are the reasons that I should give to such users for switching to Mozilla, or perhaps Netscape 6.1?
Please note that political arguments about open-source software are not what I'm looking for. The typical Windows user isn't going to listen to this.
What about features, speed, reliability, etc.? The things that I could tell users.
Slashdot Mirror
I got a Twinhead for that reason, and have been glad that I did.
Buy Windows XP: give Bill Gates even more of your money.
People who are interested in photographic images from the Hubble Space Telescope would likely be better browsing those available from the Hubble Heritage Project. They're incredible!
--When everyone uses Windows, and Windows contains government spyware, we will be in the world's first true invincible police state.
Perhaps the script kiddies were waiting until people got new PCs for Christmas.
For myself, I've just sent a copy of Lessig's latest book to Tony Blair (British PM). Maybe someone in his office will read some of it. Maybe it will help.
Do any one thing. Write a letter to a newspaper. Send the EFF money. Be creative! There are lots and lots of extremely creative people here. Let's go!
In engineering, maintenance is performed for one purpose: to achieve homeostasis. For example, a building is maintained so that it remains standing, etc. With software, maintenance consists of homeostatic things (bug fixes), but also of things to enhance, or change, functionality. You would never add new storeys in the middle of a high-rise building, or modify a jet fighter to carry large amounts of freight. Yet changes like this do occur with software.
And they always will occur. Or at least they should: software that is not receiving change requests is software that is dying. Be glad for those requests. And don't complain when users change their minds, or don't really know what they want. Users are people. In geek-speak, this means that they are not reprogrammable: you must deal with them as they are.
When developers really accept this, they tend to accept that the correct paradigm really is evolution. I dream that more advocates of the engineering approach to software will someday be among those people.
1. You don't actually rebut my point.
2. Have you tried listening with a good turntable/tonearm/cartridge? Again, you avoid the main issue.
As for (B), since you are such an authority, I shouldn't need to give you references, but since I'm so magnanimous, I'll give a few anyway:
91: 3207 [1991].
3. This is just point 2 again.
4. We agree here, I think. I was referring to analog equalizers (which seems to be what your original post was citing).
Your last comment seems an attempt to slip by the issues. My remark was hardly ad hominem (think about it).
(E) The distortion introduced by the CD's high-freq filter (the filter must get rid of all the sound above twice the sampling frequency).
Facts. Tube amplifiers tend to give a more realistic presentation of vocals and soundstaging--especially depth. If, due to your preferred music, that is what you most care about, then tube amps give great value for money.
Facts. Simply listen on a good turntable: use your ears, and you will prefer vinyl. I have never met anyone who disagreed after actually listening. There are various theories as to why. (A) Vinyl has a greater dynamic range (you can hear ~20 dB into the hiss, which is ignored). (B) Vinyl allows much faster transients (the human ear detects up to 30 kHz, even though pure tones are inaudible above about 20 kHz). (C) Things related to Shun Mook and PWB (which seem to work, though I don't understand why). (D) etc.
Facts. This is really the same as above: CD has to throw away a lot of the information, especially getting rid of fast transients. The CD standard compresses music much more than DVD-A: so much so that the difference is audible (though "huge" might be exaggerated).
Facts. Anything in the signal path will cause some unwanted distortion, and so should generally be avoided. This is truly obvious.
In other words, the things claimed to be myths are largely true.
There is nothing wrong with being ignorant. There is something wrong with pretending you're not and promulgating untruths.
The people who are trained to maintain Microsoft systems could instead be trained to maintain Linux/KDE. That would be a nice punishment for Microsoft.
In other words, this (i) helps Microsoft strengthen their Monopoly, (ii) costs Microsoft little more than $200 million, and (iii) probably harms children.
"I wish that I understood how people could be happy yet lack curiosity,
because I would no longer find them so alien, so frightening, so unlikely to
care about anything beyond their own comfort." --Jonathan W. King (adapted)
Okay, I'll showoff my ingnorance.... If softupdates is so good, why has Linux not used the same approach? (I.e. why is Linux adopting a jfs instead?)
Compare this with Microsoft's advertising, which is sometimes grossly misleading, occasionally even other-worldly. I feel good about IBM being on our side. Let's hope lots of Slashdot'ers forward this to their top IT management.
The important point here is that the definition has nothing to do with physical devices. Of course, most computer languages can be understood by particular physical devices (electronic computers), but that is not required--and it only came about later. Even after the advent of electronic computers, some computer languages were still being invented for the purpose of communicating with people. Two good examples illustrating this are APL and MIX.
APL (A Programming Language) was invented by Ken Iverson, a Harvard mathematician. His sole purpose was to have a good way to describe algorithms to people. Physical computers were not even a consideration. Later, other people thought that it would be a good idea to implement the language, and interpreters for computers were crafted, but that was strictly secondary.
MIX was invented by Don Knuth, a Stanford mathematician. His primary purpose was to have a "formal, precise way" to "present the various techniques" detailed in his book Art of Computer Programming (I'm quoting from the preface). Although algorithms described in MIX could be executed on a (idealized) computer, Knuth's primary purpose was communicate to people.
Both these languages are intended to be used to describe algorithmic calculations, but not all computer languages need do this. Prolog is an example, where you just describe the input and output of the program (e.g. input "a list" and output "an ordered list", where "ordered" means "i LE j implies list[i] LE list[j]"), without necessarily describing how to calculate the output. And Prolog was invented primarily to be executed on a computer.
If an algorithm is described in English, then plainly, there are free-speech protections. What if Esperanto were used? Again, free-speech protections should apply, but note that Esperanto is an artificial language. So, I think that the same provisions should apply if the language is APL or MIX. From there, we surely get protection for Prolog, Java, C, etc.: all human-readable languages.
Has this line of reasoning been used in the courts? If not, why?
Buy Windows XP. Give Bill Gates more of your money.
Twinhead advertising claims that their heat pipe technology is patented. I've no further details and couldn't find anything relevant on their web site.
Buy Windows XP. Give Bill Gates even more of your money.
I have some concern about how all these changes appear to businesses. Linux is supposed to be a high-quality alternative to other operating systems. Yet we've recently had a production kernel that failed to even compile, and there have been major upheavals to the "stable series" VMM, which sometime degrade reliability or performance. This isn't going to impress, and it gives competitors valid ammunition.
Almost all successful enterprises have to overcome a hurdle: how to transition from the "just for fun" start-up stage to the "managed with professionalism" stage. Ideally, fun is kept along with the professionalism. Note that even at Microsoft, B. Gates now lets S. Balmar (CEO) and R. Belluzzo (President and COO) manage things. Gates is the "chief software architect" and Microsoft is still his, but others do the managing.
Linux needs more professionalism in the management of releases, I believe.
So if the settlement doesn't force Microsoft to allow others to read and write Word and Excel files, then the monopoly in desktop operating systems is not seriously threatened. Thus the settlement really seems to be a failure.
Since Microsoft has a monopoly, competitors (e.g. StarOffice) can only realistically compete if they can read and write Microsoft file formats. Competitors, however, cannot do this reliably if the formats keep changing.
In other words, the DoJ settlement does not do what is necessary to introduce competition into the software-applications market. So, it seems to be a failure.
For many Slashdotters, Kantor's central idea of basing physics on information, rather than things like matter and energy, might seem inherently appealing.
IBM has said that they will open source any part of AIX that we would like. The AIX VM works well under high stress. Obviously it could not just be put as-is into Linux, but there must be a lot of good ideas/algorithms in it that could--arguably should--be moved to Linux. Why isn't anyone looking at doing this?
An additional problem for Sun is with workstations, where Linux seems to be making headway against Solaris (whether on a SPARC or on a high-end PC).
Right now, Sun is in good financial shape, with lots of cash and revenues. As the above shows, though, in the long run, Linux could threaten Sun's survival.
Slashdot is the only real chance we have for news freedom. Thank you.
That took a lot of integrity. It's really nice to hear about this. Thanks.
Please note that political arguments about open-source software are not what I'm looking for. The typical Windows user isn't going to listen to this.
What about features, speed, reliability, etc.? The things that I could tell users.