Re:Breeding population
on
TigerCloning
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· Score: 1
these tasmanians will be a different species than the original. Why? Because we chose a non-random sample AND subjected the new animal to new conditions (unless they plan on releasing them into the wild).
Not to mention the fact that usually, cloning doesn't involve the original cytosol of an egg, so there would also be problems there, it seems.
(Although it can probably be asserted that since we have other species of tigers around, using one of their eggs and its cytoplasm will be acceptable, if not optimal)
Re:What we want is information, not ads or hype.
on
The New Mediascape
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· Score: 1
Not to mention the fact that the only good news is at Stratfor (free) and Jane's (not free).
That said, even OBSD has security holes if you want it to do anything useful. The fixes page listed an FTP hole, and a remote-root hole via DHCP, I believe.
Just that the default install is very minimal, and doesn't have most services turned out.
Of course, it is more secure than many of the other OSes out there, and the bugs are fixed very quickly. One would also think that the BSD license would be more attractive for them than the GPL.
IANAGPL lawyer, but if they don't 'release' their modifications, they don't have to release their source.
That said, it might be argued that giving it to any other branch of the government (to maintain some semblance of interoperability) might qualify as 'releasing' the code.
OR they might have just developed their own OS instead, and then released it...
I mean, the language Ada was done because apparently the military didn't like any of the ones out there, and while it's not exactly the language of choice for most hackers, it's usable and certainly adequate.
There certainly seems to be a bias towards functional languages, but what is:
... objectivity, since the challenge was to produce a chess program, and entries were judged by playing each other. Still, look at these glowing elegies of functional programming:
We have no hesitation in recommending Cilk as "the programming language of choice for discriminating hackers,"
... I thought Cilk was C with multi-processor support tacked on? Not especially functional, so far as languages go...
Because some of us are stuck, temporarily or permanently, on a shitty slow 56k (or worse) connection, and downloading ISOs or FTP directories just isn't practical.
This means actual CDs, mostly shrink-wrapped, which are then sold as commercial products with a version number to inform the public of the "age" of said distro.
If they came out with anything like that again, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
One Must Fall: Battlegrounds is currently under production by Rob Elam (the original author of OMF) of Diversions Entertainment.
The short of it is that he left Epic after Mark Rein couldn't be convinced to do an OMF sequel, and is now working on his own. Release date is unknown at present.
Lotta new Taiwanese motherboards are coming with an ATA-66 controller, courtesy of the Intel chipset, and then an additional Highpoint or other ATA-100 chip. Allowing a total of 8 ATAPI/EIDE devices.
I seem to remember the government strongly supporting Red Flag Linux and some other distro, because Linux is, after all, free(beer). And the average Chinese worker isn't too keen on spending 2 month's salary on Windows ME. (Pirating aside...)
maybe I'm crazy, but putting on Mandrake and going nuts with the included programs is pretty darn easy. Putting on 98 and NT I thought was rather a nightmare.
That said, Windows is more foolproof to install. It checks for more devices and writes progress to disk to mark how far along it is, in the event that it got crashed out by a rogue memory poke.
The fact remains that hardware detection and installation of appropriate drivers is an important part of OS setup. Having to find and download "experimental" or "beta" drivers that aren't included with the default CD (or network) install for a Linux or BSD system makes system installation a lot harder for many.
I agree with most of your points. The question that I seem to see is:
What is AMD getting out of this? The Yahoo article mentions a very specific patent that AMD is currently holding that is of great interest to Transmeta, but not the reverse.
Granted, maybe Transmeta's holding patents to low-power designs that may somehow be applicable for the mobile Athlon? That chip sucks more wattage than my desk lamp...
IMHO the swap is certainly imaginable, and by no means a mere hoax or PR gambit, seeing as how AMD owns so little of the portable market (K6's in portables? not for any serious user) that they really don't have all that much to lose, and possible a good deal to gain from swapping patents with Transmeta.
Oh, it will definitely manage to panic the kernel. But as usual, seeing as how GNU/Linux is open-source, said problems would be fixed very quickly.
Now, Microsoft could ostensibly release service updates that actually cause crashes (though this sounds a bit absurd, even if it came from Microsoft), but again, said bugs they were exploiting in the kernel would be fixed.
As far as I'm concerned, were that to happen, it would be a good thing, since they'd be helping the kernel become more stable. Of course, if Microsoft managed to find a bug that was more of an architectural flaw, and thus couldn't be easily fixed, then we should still be congratulating them, for much the same reasons.
It seems to me that English, like many other languages, has a high degree of ambiguity, and a high degree of degeneracy as well.
Programming languages are generally designed to avoid ambiguity, since computers can't parse out meanings accurately. Yet ambiguity has been an inspiration in many languages, in the form of things like interface polymorphism, and so forth.
On the other hand, most programming languages also support few ways of doing something. Languages that support many ways of accomplishing the same task, or implementing the same feature (C++, Perl) are often thought of as being bloated by the 'purists.'
In this case, it might be because English is sufficiently 'rich' in terms of synonyms for many things, that many languages are designed with multiple paths to accomplishing the same goals.
Many of the differences between languages seem to be things that we don't implement on a computer anyhow. Things like structure are something that most languages differ in, and something that every computer language seems to reinvent. (Witness Lisp vs. TCL)
All of this, of course, applies mostly to languages that are considered relatively 'low-level'. When you start discussing Python (executable pseudocode), Perl, TCL, and Cobol, English obviously starts to have a strong influence.
(Witness the until/unless control structure, the if, until, structures that Perl implemented.)
Disclaimer: I'm no linguist, nor an expert programmer, and these are my opinions. I do, however, speak English, Chinese, German, and Spanish.
:-) Novell's Netware release 4 and 5 are certainly quite good, but anyone remember back to version 3?
Mmm, binderies. Binary-files like windows registries, that stored all settings and network objects, users, etc., and which mysteriously tended to corrupt themselves over time.
(Leaving any hapless admin who had forgotten to back up these happy strange binderies to rebuild the entire system from memory and logs.) Fun!
As it were, at least Novell realized how much the bindery sucked, and so they threw it out in 4 and 5, I think.
I'm honestly glad to see that so many OEMs are putting Linux in so many places -- Compaq with Linux on the iPAQ, Sun making Gnome standard on Solaris, and so forth, but the question of licensing still remains.
Nowhere in the article, it seems, do they talk about the license for the code. Will this stuff all be GPL, or BSD? Or some other license?
1) Linux has source, so you can change the source, and recompile without documenting it. On the other hand, when you use OSes like Solaris and Windows, changes you make to the system are magically written down in your logbook, without you having to ever lift a finger.
2) Software itself doesn't cost that much compared with labor. And since we all know that Linux admins are all clueless bastards who spend most of their time wondering what the su utility does, while MCSEs are all highly-trained professionals with impeccable credentials and a top-notch knowledge base, using linux means hiring hundreds of admins to administer a cobbled-together, bloated OS running on excessive hardware, while using NT means hiring only a tiny handful of well-trained Microsoft puppets to run that lean, mean, tidy OS.
3) Did I mention how NT admins are invariably well-trained? And highly knowledgeable? While most Linux and other Unix admins are still dithering over the difference between "Enter" and "Return" on their keyboards?
Oh wait, that _wasn't_ what he meant? I'd love to hear what he/does/ mean then!
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these tasmanians will be a different species than the original. Why? Because we chose a non-random sample AND subjected the new animal to new conditions (unless they plan on releasing them into the wild).
Not to mention the fact that usually, cloning doesn't involve the original cytosol of an egg, so there would also be problems there, it seems.
(Although it can probably be asserted that since we have other species of tigers around, using one of their eggs and its cytoplasm will be acceptable, if not optimal)
Not to mention the fact that the only good news is at Stratfor (free) and Jane's (not free).
That said, even OBSD has security holes if you want it to do anything useful. The fixes page listed an FTP hole, and a remote-root hole via DHCP, I believe.
Just that the default install is very minimal, and doesn't have most services turned out.
Of course, it is more secure than many of the other OSes out there, and the bugs are fixed very quickly. One would also think that the BSD license would be more attractive for them than the GPL.
IANAGPL lawyer, but if they don't 'release' their modifications, they don't have to release their source.
That said, it might be argued that giving it to any other branch of the government (to maintain some semblance of interoperability) might qualify as 'releasing' the code.
OR they might have just developed their own OS instead, and then released it ...
I mean, the language Ada was done because apparently the military didn't like any of the ones out there, and while it's not exactly the language of choice for most hackers, it's usable and certainly adequate.
Extinguish the sun, plunging the Earth into eternal darkness!
That or we could just prevent Saturn from reviving, and allow the silence to take over the earth.
(If you're not a SailorMoon S fan, you won't get it).
Okay ... now I've gotta do a Sailor Moon summary:
Usagi: mmmmm, Cake!
Raye: you're fat!
Usagi: Beats Raye over head.
cut to scene of bad guy's hideout:
Badguy: you fools! You let those weak Sailor Soldiers get away again?
Minions: My lord! We will be certain to destroy her this time!
Badguy: stares at incompetent subordinates. Alright. Here is a mazoku to do your work for you...
Minions: thank you, my lord. We will not fail.
Cut to scene in public area:
Badguy: see's Usagi. Aha! I've got you now! Mazoku, go get her!
Mazoku: makes incompetent noise. Lunges incompetently.
Usagi: transforms. makes speech. attacks. fails. screams.
Rest of Senshi: transforms. makes speech. attack. fail. scream.
Random goodguy: here's a powerup!
Usagi & Senshi: yay! transforms again. powers up. obliterates Mazoku
Badguy: ahhhhhhh! Disappears
That said, Sailor Moon has some of the best JPop ever composed. IMO of course.
There certainly seems to be a bias towards functional languages, but what is:
... objectivity, since the challenge was to produce a chess program, and entries were judged by playing each other. Still, look at these glowing elegies of functional programming:
... I thought Cilk was C with multi-processor support tacked on? Not especially functional, so far as languages go...
We have no hesitation in recommending Cilk as "the programming language of choice for discriminating hackers,"
More or less. I believe NetBSD follows more or less the same patterns?
OpenBSD's current is always more secure than release, however, and I believe also theoretically more stable as well.
Because some of us are stuck, temporarily or permanently, on a shitty slow 56k (or worse) connection, and downloading ISOs or FTP directories just isn't practical.
This means actual CDs, mostly shrink-wrapped, which are then sold as commercial products with a version number to inform the public of the "age" of said distro.
Nah, suits talking out of their asses are so commonplace nowadays that most people barely notice.
If they came out with anything like that again, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
One Must Fall: Battlegrounds is currently under production by Rob Elam (the original author of OMF) of Diversions Entertainment.
The short of it is that he left Epic after Mark Rein couldn't be convinced to do an OMF sequel, and is now working on his own. Release date is unknown at present.
Yeah. I know that many old sk001 games like Epic (Megagames') One Must Fall were coded in a mixture of Watcom C and assembler for speed.
Some of their optimizations might be very instructive indeed.
Lotta new Taiwanese motherboards are coming with an ATA-66 controller, courtesy of the Intel chipset, and then an additional Highpoint or other ATA-100 chip. Allowing a total of 8 ATAPI/EIDE devices.
Win98 in China? Said who? Link please ...
I seem to remember the government strongly supporting Red Flag Linux and some other distro, because Linux is, after all, free(beer). And the average Chinese worker isn't too keen on spending 2 month's salary on Windows ME. (Pirating aside...)
maybe I'm crazy, but putting on Mandrake and going nuts with the included programs is pretty darn easy. Putting on 98 and NT I thought was rather a nightmare.
That said, Windows is more foolproof to install. It checks for more devices and writes progress to disk to mark how far along it is, in the event that it got crashed out by a rogue memory poke.
The fact remains that hardware detection and installation of appropriate drivers is an important part of OS setup. Having to find and download "experimental" or "beta" drivers that aren't included with the default CD (or network) install for a Linux or BSD system makes system installation a lot harder for many.
No we're not. We have far more than a mere 1,000 monkeys. We have millions! That's gotta help, right?
Guys? Uh, guys?
I agree with most of your points. The question that I seem to see is:
...
What is AMD getting out of this? The Yahoo article mentions a very specific patent that AMD is currently holding that is of great interest to Transmeta, but not the reverse.
Granted, maybe Transmeta's holding patents to low-power designs that may somehow be applicable for the mobile Athlon? That chip sucks more wattage than my desk lamp
IMHO the swap is certainly imaginable, and by no means a mere hoax or PR gambit, seeing as how AMD owns so little of the portable market (K6's in portables? not for any serious user) that they really don't have all that much to lose, and possible a good deal to gain from swapping patents with Transmeta.
My $0.02
Oh, it will definitely manage to panic the kernel. But as usual, seeing as how GNU/Linux is open-source, said problems would be fixed very quickly.
Now, Microsoft could ostensibly release service updates that actually cause crashes (though this sounds a bit absurd, even if it came from Microsoft), but again, said bugs they were exploiting in the kernel would be fixed.
As far as I'm concerned, were that to happen, it would be a good thing, since they'd be helping the kernel become more stable. Of course, if Microsoft managed to find a bug that was more of an architectural flaw, and thus couldn't be easily fixed, then we should still be congratulating them, for much the same reasons.
It seems to me that English, like many other languages, has a high degree of ambiguity, and a high degree of degeneracy as well.
Programming languages are generally designed to avoid ambiguity, since computers can't parse out meanings accurately. Yet ambiguity has been an inspiration in many languages, in the form of things like interface polymorphism, and so forth.
On the other hand, most programming languages also support few ways of doing something. Languages that support many ways of accomplishing the same task, or implementing the same feature (C++, Perl) are often thought of as being bloated by the 'purists.'
In this case, it might be because English is sufficiently 'rich' in terms of synonyms for many things, that many languages are designed with multiple paths to accomplishing the same goals.
Many of the differences between languages seem to be things that we don't implement on a computer anyhow. Things like structure are something that most languages differ in, and something that every computer language seems to reinvent. (Witness Lisp vs. TCL)
All of this, of course, applies mostly to languages that are considered relatively 'low-level'. When you start discussing Python (executable pseudocode), Perl, TCL, and Cobol, English obviously starts to have a strong influence.
(Witness the until/unless control structure, the if, until, structures that Perl implemented.)
Disclaimer: I'm no linguist, nor an expert programmer, and these are my opinions. I do, however, speak English, Chinese, German, and Spanish.
:-) Novell's Netware release 4 and 5 are certainly quite good, but anyone remember back to version 3?
Mmm, binderies. Binary-files like windows registries, that stored all settings and network objects, users, etc., and which mysteriously tended to corrupt themselves over time.
(Leaving any hapless admin who had forgotten to back up these happy strange binderies to rebuild the entire system from memory and logs.) Fun!
As it were, at least Novell realized how much the bindery sucked, and so they threw it out in 4 and 5, I think.
I'm honestly glad to see that so many OEMs are putting Linux in so many places -- Compaq with Linux on the iPAQ, Sun making Gnome standard on Solaris, and so forth, but the question of licensing still remains.
Nowhere in the article, it seems, do they talk about the license for the code. Will this stuff all be GPL, or BSD? Or some other license?
Summary of Firstbrook's points:
/does/ mean then!
1) Linux has source, so you can change the source, and recompile without documenting it. On the other hand, when you use OSes like Solaris and Windows, changes you make to the system are magically written down in your logbook, without you having to ever lift a finger.
2) Software itself doesn't cost that much compared with labor. And since we all know that Linux admins are all clueless bastards who spend most of their time wondering what the su utility does, while MCSEs are all highly-trained professionals with impeccable credentials and a top-notch knowledge base, using linux means hiring hundreds of admins to administer a cobbled-together, bloated OS running on excessive hardware, while using NT means hiring only a tiny handful of well-trained Microsoft puppets to run that lean, mean, tidy OS.
3) Did I mention how NT admins are invariably well-trained? And highly knowledgeable? While most Linux and other Unix admins are still dithering over the difference between "Enter" and "Return" on their keyboards?
Oh wait, that _wasn't_ what he meant? I'd love to hear what he
Not necessarily. I can be in a public place (like an airplane), and still work on highly confidential projects.