No no no. What if Google decides to SHAFT a company - meaning not allowing them to buy their ranking up, and squashing their returns. Hard to prove, but not hard to do. I don't know what the law says about who can or can't buy a list placing on google, but presumably google has the right to sell or not sell their product.
If someone can't afford superbowl commericals, that's fine. That's open market, and the presumption is there that once they get to the point where they can afford it, they can buy it. It's also one of many chances on television to sell a message. But on the web google is becoming IT. If google arbitrarily decided to bury a web company because they don't like the color of their product, they could. That's potentially dangerous. It isn't happening right now as far as we know, but it could happen with the wrong people in the lead.
"This would make sence only if it was really impossible to find anything on the web without Google, which is obviously - WRONG. You can use a multitude of search engines, you can build your own search engine."
Actually, I think his point is slightly different. Whether people can use other engines or not doesn't matter - the fact that almost everyone DOES use google is what matters. Screwing one company won't change their usage in a big way unless perhaps the media makes a huge fuss and pumps up an alternative. So there is a danger in practice, although you are right in principle. (Hint - practical is what counts in business.)
"Your comparison of Google to phone companies falls on its ass simply because Google does not actually own any hard lines but the phone companies do. For you to start your own phone company you will need to put millions of kilometers of cable but for you to start your own search engine you only need some programming skills, a computer and internet access."
You also need users. Without that, everything else is useless.
"Google should never be regulated by government - it is not the essential service. In fact Google is already regulated by its users - if you stop using it - it will go away just like Excite did."
That doesn't help anyone they shaft on the way down. Practical again - businesses don't have time to wait for that.
"One more thing - why should anyone have rights to regulate a private company that does not have contractual obligations to anybody? Are you paying them to use them? Maybe you should, then ask for regulation."
It's a tricky problem. Both sides have valid points. If it helps, consider google in the same light as Windows. Microsoft is a convicted monopoly, but alternatives exist, perfectly viable ones. Linux, Mac, and Sun come immediately to mind. So what makes Microsoft a monopoly? Simple answer - it's what everyone uses. And that gives Microsoft immense power. Now think about what Google could do if Microsoft bought it. Sure, everyone could use another search engine, but they're used to using this one. Plus, other services use google and won't want to switch in a big hurry. No, there are potential problems if the leaders of google go bad. Not that this bunch will, but there's a reason declaring a king is not a terribly smart political choice. But I too am reluctant to see the government stick its nose in, because they aren't terribly unbiased or effective as a rule. It's a tough problem.
"Why is simple important? Because of PR. If you can get a product out fast, or a new press release out fast, then that's Good Business. Taking your time to get it right doesn't fill newspaper columns. Nobody ever wrote an editorial on how so-and-so proved the ALU free of bugs. They =WILL= write plenty on Intel/whoever releasing the latest nth generation processor, even if their last release was the month before."
This is a good point, and one of the reasons I'd like to see chip speed level off for a while. If computer companies can't get new sales by upping the power of the system through Mhz, then they might actually take the time to mathematically prove their hardware. That would SERIOUSLY rock.
That's gotta be PR BS. How many drivers do you need for a Point of Sale system? I take it no one will be playing quake on these things. A 486 could do it just fine, be dirt cheap, and extremely stable. Try running any newer Microsoft offering on one. Then upgrade it and see how it does.
As for support, they could have just talked to Redhat/IBM whoever and gotten them to support it. POS systems are a narrow, reasonably well defined task. They could handle that.
I'm betting there's more that we aren't being told. Three to one someone wanted to go with the "safe" bet and ignored any arguments against Microsoft. Oh, well. I guess I get to make fun of Home Depot's computers when they bluescreen in addition to the blue screens I've seen in train stations. How do you bluescreen displaying a train schedule??? Anyway, that's another comment. I just hope Home Depot's prices don't get driven too high when their POS system starts suffering from vendor lockin effects. I wonder how often they'll need to "upgrade" the software on them.
I've had my computer pointing to them for a while now, and everything works swimmingly. They support most of the TLDs that ICANN uses, and define a few of their own. Encourage people to use it. If enough do, then eventually we can switch over to a democratic system.
We do actually need a universal registrar, much as we need universal telephone numbers. However, opennic is democratic while ICANN is an isolated monolith. We need to switch.
"For example, we gripe about Gnome/KDE, but I haven't heard much about alternatives to X."
You want to check out www.fresco.org. That's our best chance for a true next generation GUI.
Re:solution for one of the problems..
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Wireless networking in the building, and build just enough ability into it that it can call in to work to get a desktop from outside the wireless system.
If someone steals it, the joke's on them too. A nice benefit. Maybe if we get OLED laptop technology companies can produce a really cheap unit to do this, that is portable as well. How cool would that be?
This kind of stuff can be made to work. What it does do is limit functionality to business only tasks, which should be one more reason for businesses to like it.
I think people forget that the Hard Sciences are made up of people, same as the social sciences, and also have the usual problems associated with using people to try to get stuff done. (Although I'm not sure I'd put not reading all of the papers you site real high on the list - if all you're after is one point in a long and complex paper that seems like a fairly inefficient use of time. Some of these papers are HARD to understand.)
What gives the Hard Sciences the right to that title is that, eventually, someone will root out the bull that someone else has published, brand it as such, other people will check it and agree, and it dies. You can prove someone WRONG. Try that in the social sciences - has anyone ever heard of a huge scandal where someone faked results in the social sciences? They would get in trouble if they didn't do the studies and were found out, but can you prove that they cheated just by taking their conclusions, working with them, and crying foul when something doesn't work? In the Hard Sciences, you can. That's what makes them so strong and practical.
Not that Social Sciences are worthless, mind you. It's just that BS seems to be a lot easier to get away with there. Sort of like in English class, when we were supposed to get the meaning out of a book. I never get the meaning the author's trying to convey (or at least what they say later he/she was trying to convey), but I wrote down something and got a good grade. Because how could they prove my thinking about the book wrong? I think the social sciences have a little of that problem in them somewhere. Controlled experiments are really tough to do, so you run into problems.
This ignores two problems...
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a) The phone industry had one task to do - get data over wires from point A to B, and however they did that was fine - users wouldn't have to be retrained if you replace old cables with fiber optic. That task is relatively simple, compared to the complexity of what is running and being distributed over the internet today. Automation works best when the target is static and clearly definable. I'm not sure either applies with servers/IT/internet.
b) A significant amount of trouble with maintaining systems comes from having to figure out lots of different pieces of hardware. Lots of random equipment makes IT support a great deal more difficult. There are two solutions:
1. Standardize all company hardware on a small number of systems/components, say one type of desktop, one type of server, and a few special purpose machines, and then only support those. Tools like VASystemImager then can make tasks like upgrading and bug fixing vastly simpler.
2. Use inexpensive thin clients interfacing to some powerful central server, ala Largo, and only have to maintain that central machine and swap out cheap, dumb clients. Also simplifies things tremendously.
People will no doubt point out that you have to run different types of OSs for different jobs and so on, but you can still use the central server/thin client approach and just make the connection to whichever OS you need transparent. It takes thought to set up, but once it is working you don't have 4000 individual support headaches to deal with. Only a few machines to upgrade, support, etc.
Unfortunately, this won't happen. First, you would have to have a truly MASSIVE infastructure upgrade, which replaces a working system. Riiight. Second, you need to have management willing to try something new and be patient to wait for the long term results. That's not how they think - they think next quarter profits. There is also sheer mental inertia to contend with.
It would be much easier for new companies to adopt this idea from the get go, than for older companies to adopt it. That may be where new, useful IT principles get applied.
The only way current companies will do something is if the system BREAKS, and I mean just totally stops functioning. Thats when they will wake up to the fact that significant changes are needed.
"While the way it was handled in the end days was dreadful, Data's fascination with and envy of humanity was the most interesting thing about him. Without that aspect of his character, he's literally just a robot."
I suppose, but that doesn't mean he couldn't be interesting in such a role. I guess what I find interesting about Data isn't what most people like.
"Oh, balls. Some of the very best episodes-- "Darmok," "The Inner Light," "Family," "The Perfect Mate," "Sarek"-- were the ones where Picard let down his guard. In those episodes we saw friendship, love, grief, rage, the whole gamut that flesh is heir to. The fact that he's stoic doesn't mean he's emotionless. Quite the contrary, in fact."
I'm not saying Picard doesn't have emotions. I'm saying that it's the fact that he is able to prevent them from controlling him so well (at least in the episodes I've seen) that makes him a strong individual. He has tremendous self control, and the instances where he doesn't exercise it just enhance the overall effect. It's something like
"If one desires to command, the place to begin is within. For if you cannot command yourself, why then should others obey?"
That's the sense I get from Picard, and that's something I admire, particularly since most of us on this planet aren't very good at it.
As for time travel and entertainment, surely we can be more clever than to dump people back in time and have them scramble to avoid messing up the future. The first time it was sort of interesting, but after a while it just drives me nuts. Back to the future also drove me nuts with that, particularly since it kept bring up paradoxes as a problem, but I can get by since I don't really treat it as science fiction. Star Trek is scifi, though, and I have a much harder time when they chearfully ignore problems it would cause. I guess for the general population it doesn't matter, and I agree they can still be entertaining, but as a matter of principle I think Star Trek can and should try to do better than that. I think the problem is TV people love that device as a way of making scifi relevant to a larger audience by giving them a setting they are thoroughly familiar with. Oh, well.
I guess I think about this stuff as a "let's do some great scifi and see if we can make a little money at it" rather than "what scifi will make us as much money as possible." The profit motive is great, but it has some definite limitations. Encouraging quality for qualitiy's sake is definitely one of them.
"That's actually kind of a neat idea, and a new and different way of pressing the reset button on the whole Star Trek universe."
Personally, I wish they would stop pushing the reset button so much. It just sucks. Babylon 5 had the right idea - plan ahead and stick to your guns. I mean, come on - Star Trek has enough loyal fans to be able to try almost anything. Why can't they just follow a story of the Federation's expansion through the galaxy? It would be a lot easier for them if they would just stop reusing the same characters and coming up with all sorts of reasons to have them do new and different stuff. Be daring! Create a new series in the future with new problems! I personally think the Borg have been given the wrong treatment by the series - why the $%&#@ do we want them to exhibit emotion? The idea of a "Borg Queen" never appealed to me at all, either. I like the old school Borg of Peter David's Vendetta much better - when they are like that is when they add something unique. For that matter, why did Data have to get that stupid emotion chip? I never thought his whole quest to become human thing was all that interesting. His strength was often to not be saddled with emotions, and that gave him unique qualities to contribute in an otherwise emotion ridden environment. I think that's why Picard is such a good Captain, for that matter - that slightly inhuman quality he has, the almost limitless self control and focus. Don't make inhuman characters human - that's not why they're interesting! We've got humans for that! Or if you must have emotions everywhere, for goodness sake don't drive home that you're doing a study of emotions with a sledge hammer. Being subtle can work wonders and add amazing depth to a story. They should try it more often.
Also, time travel violates causality. It shouldn't be allowed. Period.
Well, there is GNU Hurd. I guess you could argue that's old too, but the concept is exceptionally powerful and the new L4 development efforts can be utilized (in theory, at least.) Innovation is slow. But things aren't completely frozen.
They're a little warmer than 32K BTY - according to http://superconductors.org/Type2.htm the current record is 138K. You can get these Type2 materials to superconduct with liquid nitrogen, which is nice and cheap in a relative sense. (I think it's a little less than milk in bulk.) Problem is a lot of Type II superconductors are ceramics. Doing circuits with ceramics sucks, and if you wanted your whole computer to use it the problem gets a lot worse. Kick it and shatter all the electronics! Yay. Still, in theory someone might be able to do it - I'm just not sure how much benefit you would get.
I was surprised to see the original announcement, and was wondering what business reasons they could have. I can't say I'm surprised to see this.
Now I hope a way is found, so that when openBeOS achieves it's goal it has GoBe productive to distribute with it. That would be worth dual booting my machine for. But it will most likely have to be a Blender type effort.
I'm afraid Blender has given some companies a false idea of people's willingness to pay to release programs. Blender was a unique program that solved a problem no other free program did - interactive 3D modeling. It had a huge, multiplatform following willing to pay to see it survive. I know of one or two efforts by other programs which didn't succeed. It takes the right software package to do it.
That said, GoBe may be such a package. It largely depends on how many BeOS users are active and willing to contribute. That's a tough equation to compute and I honestly have no idea what would happen. BeUnited may be about to find out, though.
I hope it does get released, and OpenBeOS succeeds. I have tried BeOS briefly and found it to be clean, smooth and a nice experience. It might be just the thing for an open source business desktop. Sure it may not have the infinite flexibility that WindowMaker, fluxbox, gnome, kde, etc. offer for interfaces, but to business that may actually be a plus. Trick would be software to run on it. GoBe would be a nice carrot to offer.
There's some talk at BeUnited about raising money to get the "Be only" version of the source code. To me this makes sense, since GoBe did more for Be than any of the other platforms it ran on. If OpenBeOS really comes through it would be a great thing to see. Check out
It can play it if you can download the whole.mov file (two towers trailers - WOOOHOOO) but it doesn't seem to handle those stupid mov files most of the new trailers are using, which seem to be some kind of reference file to other files which make no sense. Anyone gotten that to work?
Anyway, I can confirm that this compiles, runs and rocks, including audio. Thanks Mplayer Team!
There's great as in "great literary work", or great as in fun to read.
I'm gonna catch a lot of heat for this one, but I really like E.E. "Doc" Smith. It's not high literary art but if you read the Lensman and Skylark series there's an atmosphere to those books you just don't find anywhere else. I know people complain about how every gun is the new ultimate weapon, but really if you think about it that's what we do with computers, military weapons, and lots of other technology, so it doesn't bother me much. They do deserve respect as a precurser to lots of later stuff - I'm willing to bet George Lucas had read these books before thinking up the whole Star Wars thing. And I saw one of Smith's "nonsense" words appear in a modern Star Trek book, so I can't be the only one who likes his stuff. Most people would say his work isn't "great", and in a literary sense I'll agree, but they're great fun and to me that makes them worthwhile.
Sorry to reply to my own post, but one thing I should add - while I don't know quite how this relates to grid support per say, there is a lisp interface to the pvm library at http://www.symbolicnet.org/ftpsoftware/cl-pvm/ which help with getting Maxima to do this stuff. It is free for noncommercial use - I imagine you could contact the authors to discuss other uses.
Part of the readme:
The CL-PVM package consists of a set of Common Lisp functions that interfaces Common Lisp (KCL, AKCL, or GCL) to the C-based library of PVM. Generally, there is one CL interface function to each PVM C library function. The CL function calls its C-based counter part and relays data to and from the C function. This interface is complete and allows Lisp-based programs to take part in a PVM arrangement and thus facilitates the combination of symbolic, numeric, graphics, and other useful systems in a distributed fashion. CL-PVM also offers a set of tools to help use it effectively with Lisp and MAXIMA tasks. Documentation, on-line manual pages, and examples are also included.
If you don't like the current gnuplot you might want to try cvs. The pm3d mode makes 3D plots look much nicer, and cvs also allows interactive rotation of 3D plots with the mouse (in Linux, anyway. These features haven't been translated to Windows as far as I know.)
Probably the most advanced open source project competing with Mathematica et. al. is Maxima. It's a spinoff of Macsyma, which was the first symbolic integrator. Originally developed by MIT, it's got a lot of features the other programs have, and a few they don't. It's got some bugs, but is under very active development.
It's major weaknesses currently are in the GUI and documentation department. TeXmacs can do a decent job of providing a nice interface, but it still won't measure up to Mathematica, which can handle 2D input and output. The default interface is a Tcl/Tk program, which is OK but pretty basic. My prefered way to use Maxima is through emacs - it has a very good emacs mode called emaxima.
As far as grid support goes I'm not aware of anything. The project isn't really to that stage - it's currently working towards a stable 6.0 release which fixes all known mathematical bugs. Then comes feature extensions and new GUI work. That would probably be the point to start thinking about grid support - basically someone would have to decide they wanted it enough to impliment it. The usual open source thing.
Berlin (now Fresco) stands as good a chance as any of materalizing - it has a running prototype. Yes, it's slow, but what's the rush? X is doing pretty well, so we can afford to wait for a really good solution.
Also remember that a replacement to X doesn't preclude running X in a compatibility role, so I can definitely see it happening.
"So picoGUI looks cool... who gives a sh.... (of course this will be modded as flaimbait... since I don't slobber at every would be GUI posted on slashdot)"
Well, I don't have moderator points, but I will say that (again) we are missing the ultimate point. Open source software development is supposed to be FUN. They think this is fun, or maybe useful for their stuff, or maybe both. That's plenty. People who are having fun with it will "give a shi..". Everything doesn't have to be take over the world. Unfortunately this article put it in those terms, rather than "hey, here's a cool little project."
Two applications I find potentially interesting for this are a) GUI installers that don't require X (serious overkill) and b) usable GUIs on really old hardware - make an interface to a few apps in picogui, make a mini desktop, stuff it on a 386/486, and ship it off to a country where computers are hard and expensive to come by.
For my money, the reason to replace X is not speed, but more power and flexibility and clean design. Hardware takes care of speed. That's why I'm a fan of Berlin. But until Berlin is done, X is great. But so are cool projects like picogui.
Slashdot Mirror
No no no. What if Google decides to SHAFT a company - meaning not allowing them to buy their ranking up, and squashing their returns. Hard to prove, but not hard to do. I don't know what the law says about who can or can't buy a list placing on google, but presumably google has the right to sell or not sell their product.
If someone can't afford superbowl commericals, that's fine. That's open market, and the presumption is there that once they get to the point where they can afford it, they can buy it. It's also one of many chances on television to sell a message. But on the web google is becoming IT. If google arbitrarily decided to bury a web company because they don't like the color of their product, they could. That's potentially dangerous. It isn't happening right now as far as we know, but it could happen with the wrong people in the lead.
"This would make sence only if it was really impossible to find anything on the web without Google, which is obviously - WRONG. You can use a multitude of search engines, you can build your own search engine."
Actually, I think his point is slightly different. Whether people can use other engines or not doesn't matter - the fact that almost everyone DOES use google is what matters. Screwing one company won't change their usage in a big way unless perhaps the media makes a huge fuss and pumps up an alternative. So there is a danger in practice, although you are right in principle. (Hint - practical is what counts in business.)
"Your comparison of Google to phone companies falls on its ass simply because Google does not actually own any hard lines but the phone companies do. For you to start your own phone company you will need to put millions of kilometers of cable but for you to start your own search engine you only need some programming skills, a computer and internet access."
You also need users. Without that, everything else is useless.
"Google should never be regulated by government - it is not the essential service. In fact Google is already regulated by its users - if you stop using it - it will go away just like Excite did."
That doesn't help anyone they shaft on the way down. Practical again - businesses don't have time to wait for that.
"One more thing - why should anyone have rights to regulate a private company that does not have contractual obligations to anybody? Are you paying them to use them? Maybe you should, then ask for regulation."
It's a tricky problem. Both sides have valid points. If it helps, consider google in the same light as Windows. Microsoft is a convicted monopoly, but alternatives exist, perfectly viable ones. Linux, Mac, and Sun come immediately to mind. So what makes Microsoft a monopoly? Simple answer - it's what everyone uses. And that gives Microsoft immense power. Now think about what Google could do if Microsoft bought it. Sure, everyone could use another search engine, but they're used to using this one. Plus, other services use google and won't want to switch in a big hurry. No, there are potential problems if the leaders of google go bad. Not that this bunch will, but there's a reason declaring a king is not a terribly smart political choice. But I too am reluctant to see the government stick its nose in, because they aren't terribly unbiased or effective as a rule. It's a tough problem.
I hadn't tried blackdown. Really does work. Thanks!
we might finally see java and other plugins compiled for glibc 2.3? Those have been lacking for quite a while now.
"Why is simple important? Because of PR. If you can get a product out fast, or a new press release out fast, then that's Good Business. Taking your time to get it right doesn't fill newspaper columns. Nobody ever wrote an editorial on how so-and-so proved the ALU free of bugs. They =WILL= write plenty on Intel/whoever releasing the latest nth generation processor, even if their last release was the month before."
This is a good point, and one of the reasons I'd like to see chip speed level off for a while. If computer companies can't get new sales by upping the power of the system through Mhz, then they might actually take the time to mathematically prove their hardware. That would SERIOUSLY rock.
That's gotta be PR BS. How many drivers do you need for a Point of Sale system? I take it no one will be playing quake on these things. A 486 could do it just fine, be dirt cheap, and extremely stable. Try running any newer Microsoft offering on one. Then upgrade it and see how it does.
As for support, they could have just talked to Redhat/IBM whoever and gotten them to support it. POS systems are a narrow, reasonably well defined task. They could handle that.
I'm betting there's more that we aren't being told. Three to one someone wanted to go with the "safe" bet and ignored any arguments against Microsoft. Oh, well. I guess I get to make fun of Home Depot's computers when they bluescreen in addition to the blue screens I've seen in train stations. How do you bluescreen displaying a train schedule??? Anyway, that's another comment. I just hope Home Depot's prices don't get driven too high when their POS system starts suffering from vendor lockin effects. I wonder how often they'll need to "upgrade" the software on them.
http://www.opennic.unrated.net/
I've had my computer pointing to them for a while now, and everything works swimmingly. They support most of the TLDs that ICANN uses, and define a few of their own. Encourage people to use it. If enough do, then eventually we can switch over to a democratic system.
We do actually need a universal registrar, much as we need universal telephone numbers. However, opennic is democratic while ICANN is an isolated monolith. We need to switch.
"For example, we gripe about Gnome/KDE, but I haven't heard much about alternatives to X."
You want to check out www.fresco.org. That's our best chance for a true next generation GUI.
Wireless networking in the building, and build just enough ability into it that it can call in to work to get a desktop from outside the wireless system.
If someone steals it, the joke's on them too. A nice benefit. Maybe if we get OLED laptop technology companies can produce a really cheap unit to do this, that is portable as well. How cool would that be?
This kind of stuff can be made to work. What it does do is limit functionality to business only tasks, which should be one more reason for businesses to like it.
I think people forget that the Hard Sciences are made up of people, same as the social sciences, and also have the usual problems associated with using people to try to get stuff done. (Although I'm not sure I'd put not reading all of the papers you site real high on the list - if all you're after is one point in a long and complex paper that seems like a fairly inefficient use of time. Some of these papers are HARD to understand.)
What gives the Hard Sciences the right to that title is that, eventually, someone will root out the bull that someone else has published, brand it as such, other people will check it and agree, and it dies. You can prove someone WRONG. Try that in the social sciences - has anyone ever heard of a huge scandal where someone faked results in the social sciences? They would get in trouble if they didn't do the studies and were found out, but can you prove that they cheated just by taking their conclusions, working with them, and crying foul when something doesn't work? In the Hard Sciences, you can. That's what makes them so strong and practical.
Not that Social Sciences are worthless, mind you. It's just that BS seems to be a lot easier to get away with there. Sort of like in English class, when we were supposed to get the meaning out of a book. I never get the meaning the author's trying to convey (or at least what they say later he/she was trying to convey), but I wrote down something and got a good grade. Because how could they prove my thinking about the book wrong? I think the social sciences have a little of that problem in them somewhere. Controlled experiments are really tough to do, so you run into problems.
a) The phone industry had one task to do - get data over wires from point A to B, and however they did that was fine - users wouldn't have to be retrained if you replace old cables with fiber optic. That task is relatively simple, compared to the complexity of what is running and being distributed over the internet today. Automation works best when the target is static and clearly definable. I'm not sure either applies with servers/IT/internet.
b) A significant amount of trouble with maintaining systems comes from having to figure out lots of different pieces of hardware. Lots of random equipment makes IT support a great deal more difficult. There are two solutions:
1. Standardize all company hardware on a small number of systems/components, say one type of desktop, one type of server, and a few special purpose machines, and then only support those. Tools like VASystemImager then can make tasks like upgrading and bug fixing vastly simpler.
2. Use inexpensive thin clients interfacing to some powerful central server, ala Largo, and only have to maintain that central machine and swap out cheap, dumb clients. Also simplifies things tremendously.
People will no doubt point out that you have to run different types of OSs for different jobs and so on, but you can still use the central server/thin client approach and just make the connection to whichever OS you need transparent. It takes thought to set up, but once it is working you don't have 4000 individual support headaches to deal with. Only a few machines to upgrade, support, etc.
Unfortunately, this won't happen. First, you would have to have a truly MASSIVE infastructure upgrade, which replaces a working system. Riiight. Second, you need to have management willing to try something new and be patient to wait for the long term results. That's not how they think - they think next quarter profits. There is also sheer mental inertia to contend with.
It would be much easier for new companies to adopt this idea from the get go, than for older companies to adopt it. That may be where new, useful IT principles get applied.
The only way current companies will do something is if the system BREAKS, and I mean just totally stops functioning. Thats when they will wake up to the fact that significant changes are needed.
"While the way it was handled in the end days was dreadful, Data's fascination with and envy of humanity was the most interesting thing about him. Without that aspect of his character, he's literally just a robot."
I suppose, but that doesn't mean he couldn't be interesting in such a role. I guess what I find interesting about Data isn't what most people like.
"Oh, balls. Some of the very best episodes-- "Darmok," "The Inner Light," "Family," "The Perfect Mate," "Sarek"-- were the ones where Picard let down his guard. In those episodes we saw friendship, love, grief, rage, the whole gamut that flesh is heir to. The fact that he's stoic doesn't mean he's emotionless. Quite the contrary, in fact."
I'm not saying Picard doesn't have emotions. I'm saying that it's the fact that he is able to prevent them from controlling him so well (at least in the episodes I've seen) that makes him a strong individual. He has tremendous self control, and the instances where he doesn't exercise it just enhance the overall effect. It's something like
"If one desires to command, the place to begin is within. For if you cannot command yourself, why then should others obey?"
That's the sense I get from Picard, and that's something I admire, particularly since most of us on this planet aren't very good at it.
As for time travel and entertainment, surely we can be more clever than to dump people back in time and have them scramble to avoid messing up the future. The first time it was sort of interesting, but after a while it just drives me nuts. Back to the future also drove me nuts with that, particularly since it kept bring up paradoxes as a problem, but I can get by since I don't really treat it as science fiction. Star Trek is scifi, though, and I have a much harder time when they chearfully ignore problems it would cause. I guess for the general population it doesn't matter, and I agree they can still be entertaining, but as a matter of principle I think Star Trek can and should try to do better than that. I think the problem is TV people love that device as a way of making scifi relevant to a larger audience by giving them a setting they are thoroughly familiar with. Oh, well.
I guess I think about this stuff as a "let's do some great scifi and see if we can make a little money at it" rather than "what scifi will make us as much money as possible." The profit motive is great, but it has some definite limitations. Encouraging quality for qualitiy's sake is definitely one of them.
"That's actually kind of a neat idea, and a new and different way of pressing the reset button on the whole Star Trek universe."
Personally, I wish they would stop pushing the reset button so much. It just sucks. Babylon 5 had the right idea - plan ahead and stick to your guns. I mean, come on - Star Trek has enough loyal fans to be able to try almost anything. Why can't they just follow a story of the Federation's expansion through the galaxy? It would be a lot easier for them if they would just stop reusing the same characters and coming up with all sorts of reasons to have them do new and different stuff. Be daring! Create a new series in the future with new problems! I personally think the Borg have been given the wrong treatment by the series - why the $%&#@ do we want them to exhibit emotion? The idea of a "Borg Queen" never appealed to me at all, either. I like the old school Borg of Peter David's Vendetta much better - when they are like that is when they add something unique. For that matter, why did Data have to get that stupid emotion chip? I never thought his whole quest to become human thing was all that interesting. His strength was often to not be saddled with emotions, and that gave him unique qualities to contribute in an otherwise emotion ridden environment. I think that's why Picard is such a good Captain, for that matter - that slightly inhuman quality he has, the almost limitless self control and focus. Don't make inhuman characters human - that's not why they're interesting! We've got humans for that! Or if you must have emotions everywhere, for goodness sake don't drive home that you're doing a study of emotions with a sledge hammer. Being subtle can work wonders and add amazing depth to a story. They should try it more often.
Also, time travel violates causality. It shouldn't be allowed. Period.
OK, enough ranting.
They have correct source code??
Well, there is GNU Hurd. I guess you could argue that's old too, but the concept is exceptionally powerful and the new L4 development efforts can be utilized (in theory, at least.) Innovation is slow. But things aren't completely frozen.
They're a little warmer than 32K BTY - according to http://superconductors.org/Type2.htm the current record is 138K. You can get these Type2 materials to superconduct with liquid nitrogen, which is nice and cheap in a relative sense. (I think it's a little less than milk in bulk.) Problem is a lot of Type II superconductors are ceramics. Doing circuits with ceramics sucks, and if you wanted your whole computer to use it the problem gets a lot worse. Kick it and shatter all the electronics! Yay. Still, in theory someone might be able to do it - I'm just not sure how much benefit you would get.
I was surprised to see the original announcement, and was wondering what business reasons they could have. I can't say I'm surprised to see this.
Now I hope a way is found, so that when openBeOS achieves it's goal it has GoBe productive to distribute with it. That would be worth dual booting my machine for. But it will most likely have to be a Blender type effort.
I'm afraid Blender has given some companies a false idea of people's willingness to pay to release programs. Blender was a unique program that solved a problem no other free program did - interactive 3D modeling. It had a huge, multiplatform following willing to pay to see it survive. I know of one or two efforts by other programs which didn't succeed. It takes the right software package to do it.
That said, GoBe may be such a package. It largely depends on how many BeOS users are active and willing to contribute. That's a tough equation to compute and I honestly have no idea what would happen. BeUnited may be about to find out, though.
I hope it does get released, and OpenBeOS succeeds. I have tried BeOS briefly and found it to be clean, smooth and a nice experience. It might be just the thing for an open source business desktop. Sure it may not have the infinite flexibility that WindowMaker, fluxbox, gnome, kde, etc. offer for interfaces, but to business that may actually be a plus. Trick would be software to run on it. GoBe would be a nice carrot to offer.
There's some talk at BeUnited about raising money to get the "Be only" version of the source code. To me this makes sense, since GoBe did more for Be than any of the other platforms it ran on. If OpenBeOS really comes through it would be a great thing to see. Check out
h p? f=21&i=4&t=4
http://www.beunited.org/standards/phorum/read.p
It can play it if you can download the whole .mov file (two towers trailers - WOOOHOOO) but it doesn't seem to handle those stupid mov files most of the new trailers are using, which seem to be some kind of reference file to other files which make no sense. Anyone gotten that to work?
Anyway, I can confirm that this compiles, runs and rocks, including audio. Thanks Mplayer Team!
There's great as in "great literary work", or great as in fun to read.
I'm gonna catch a lot of heat for this one, but I really like E.E. "Doc" Smith. It's not high literary art but if you read the Lensman and Skylark series there's an atmosphere to those books you just don't find anywhere else. I know people complain about how every gun is the new ultimate weapon, but really if you think about it that's what we do with computers, military weapons, and lots of other technology, so it doesn't bother me much. They do deserve respect as a precurser to lots of later stuff - I'm willing to bet George Lucas had read these books before thinking up the whole Star Wars thing. And I saw one of Smith's "nonsense" words appear in a modern Star Trek book, so I can't be the only one who likes his stuff. Most people would say his work isn't "great", and in a literary sense I'll agree, but they're great fun and to me that makes them worthwhile.
Sorry to reply to my own post, but one thing I should add - while I don't know quite how this relates to grid support per say, there is a lisp interface to the pvm library at http://www.symbolicnet.org/ftpsoftware/cl-pvm/ which help with getting Maxima to do this stuff.
It is free for noncommercial use - I imagine you could contact the authors to discuss other uses.
Part of the readme:
The CL-PVM package consists of a set of Common Lisp functions that interfaces Common Lisp (KCL, AKCL, or GCL) to the C-based library of PVM. Generally, there is one CL interface function to each PVM C library function. The CL function calls its C-based counter part and relays data to and from the C function. This interface is complete and allows Lisp-based programs to take part in a PVM arrangement and thus facilitates the combination of symbolic, numeric, graphics, and other useful systems in a distributed fashion.
CL-PVM also offers a set of tools to help use it effectively with Lisp and MAXIMA tasks. Documentation, on-line manual pages, and examples are also included.
If you don't like the current gnuplot you might want to try cvs. The pm3d mode makes 3D plots look much nicer, and cvs also allows interactive rotation of 3D plots with the mouse (in Linux, anyway. These features haven't been translated to Windows as far as I know.)
Probably the most advanced open source project competing with Mathematica et. al. is Maxima. It's a spinoff of Macsyma, which was the first symbolic integrator. Originally developed by MIT, it's got a lot of features the other programs have, and a few they don't. It's got some bugs, but is under very active development.
It's major weaknesses currently are in the GUI and documentation department. TeXmacs can do a decent job of providing a nice interface, but it still won't measure up to Mathematica, which can handle 2D input and output. The default interface is a Tcl/Tk program, which is OK but pretty basic. My prefered way to use Maxima is through emacs - it has a very good emacs mode called emaxima.
As far as grid support goes I'm not aware of anything. The project isn't really to that stage - it's currently working towards a stable 6.0 release which fixes all known mathematical bugs. Then comes feature extensions and new GUI work. That would probably be the point to start thinking about grid support - basically someone would have to decide they wanted it enough to impliment it. The usual open source thing.
Berlin (now Fresco) stands as good a chance as any of materalizing - it has a running prototype. Yes, it's slow, but what's the rush? X is doing pretty well, so we can afford to wait for a really good solution.
Also remember that a replacement to X doesn't preclude running X in a compatibility role, so I can definitely see it happening.
"So picoGUI looks cool... who gives a sh.... (of course this will be modded as flaimbait... since I don't slobber at every would be GUI posted on slashdot)"
Well, I don't have moderator points, but I will say that (again) we are missing the ultimate point. Open source software development is supposed to be FUN. They think this is fun, or maybe useful for their stuff, or maybe both. That's plenty. People who are having fun with it will "give a shi..". Everything doesn't have to be take over the world. Unfortunately this article put it in those terms, rather than "hey, here's a cool little project."
Two applications I find potentially interesting for this are a) GUI installers that don't require X (serious overkill) and b) usable GUIs on really old hardware - make an interface to a few apps in picogui, make a mini desktop, stuff it on a 386/486, and ship it off to a country where computers are hard and expensive to come by.
For my money, the reason to replace X is not speed, but more power and flexibility and clean design. Hardware takes care of speed. That's why I'm a fan of Berlin. But until Berlin is done, X is great. But so are cool projects like picogui.