One of my favorite tactics use to be buying grad-students pizza. There's this great prof at Berkeley who spearheaded a whole bunch of EDA innovations. He has a difficult to spell Italian name. Anyway, he had a reputation of making industry pay for his insights (and his student's). I'd just show up, offer free pizza and beer to his students, and have a great time while learning the latest Berkeley innovations.
Anyway, it's time to give back rather than take, for me. I've got this big dumb idea (I have lots!). I think that it's a terrible waste when good people are idle, and not working, simply because the economy is broken. I'm about half-way towards starting ShareALot.org as my solution to help everyone out of this mess. Any slashdot comments are welcome.
I compared the ODF article to the OOXML article. The most striking difference is the "Criticism" sections of the ODF article is twice as long, and points out really minor stuff that hardly deserves inclusion in such a summary. On the other hand, the OOXML article fails to mention ANY of the major criticism that has gone across Slashdot in recent years, including Microsoft's paying off countries to support them on the standards committee, or how Microsoft purposely refuses to support the ODF standard in any useful way (I still import/export Word/Excel/PowerPoint, in Open Office - far less broken). There is also no mention that ODF is short, sweet, and nearly complete, while OOXML is Webster Dictionary sized, yet highly incomplete. The low complexity of an ODF implementation relative to OOXML is missing.
In short, we here on slashdot would write very different articles on the two formats. The gist would probably be:
ODF - Reasonable format, with room for improvement
OOXML - Evil ploy by Microsoft to continue world-wide domination
Not that I'm against world domination by US corporations:-)
There's no protection on slashdot! I hereby flame you to a burnt crisp!
I do not believe there are differences between the sexes in innate ability in mathematics, or advanced algorithms coding. I do believe there are innate emotional differences. Many women programmers I've known have gone into management and roles that deal with customers, for example. Those who prefer the anti-social life of a hard-core mathematician or programmer are more commonly guys.
This is really, really, huge. We've had a number of articles on slashdot that clearly point out the danger Amazon poses to the e-book market. They're following an iTune-like model, with similar DRM, similarly ham-strung hardware, and they're waging a war to control e-book distribution. Google has the muscle to turn the tide in this battle, and to open the e-book market to many players, not just Amazon and Sony.
Consider an Amazon Kindle vs an Eee PC. The Eee PC has a bigger screen, costs less, has real wifi, and is a freaking great e-book reader. The only problem? F**king Amazon and Sony have locked up rights to distribute many of the most popular e-books. Screw e-book readers, IMO. Netbooks running a real OS (Ubuntu in my case) is the way to go. E-book readers like the Kindle are just another trap for us to fall into, where we lose choice, and pay outrageous prices for massively limited hardware and software, just so we can read the book we actually want to buy.
An unintended consequence of camera-phones is nicer cops and less crime. It takes only seconds to upload a photo of a crime in action, whether a robbery or cops beating someone senseless.
My wife totaled her car about 18 months ago. We still get weekly robo-calls saying it's our "last chance" to extend the warranty. Jail is too good for these goons.
Yes, converting food into fuel is bone-headed. Even burning wood makes more sense.
While this is news to most Americans, it's not really new news. In studying alternative energy at Berkeley in 1985, we were told:
- Plant efficiency is 2% of sunlight converted to energy in the plants, except for algae, which can be up to 10% - Burning conversions are around 50% - Only about 1% of the sunlight gets out to the electrical grid per acre.
In comparison, thermal solar, and solar photovoltaic both run in the 10% neighborhood, sometimes higher, meaning you can produce the nation's required energy on 1/10th of the land, and by the way land that is basically worthless desert.
Even as inefficient and bone-headed as ethanol is, it's providing something like 3% of our liquid fuel needs. With a proper program for harvesting sunlight, we will do far more.
Working in Silicon Valley, I found that most employees tried to avoid direct competition from their previous employer for at least a year, assuming they were treated fairly at their previous job.
What makes sense from a pragmatic point of view is the impact on the economy these non-competes have. Silicon Valley did not occur in MA, partly because of their restrictive non-competes. CA's model wins big-time. We have similar non-competes here in NC to MA, and we have close to zero new high-tech startups partly as a result.
The choice of Gnome vs KDE for our house is more about support from the distro than differences in the desktops. Kbuntu is simply less stable and polished than Ubuntu.
I think the article should have talked about the recent open-sourcing of QT, which I think is critical in the KDE vs Gnome debate. Last time around, I steered application development towards GTK, rather than QT, and I had all the developers work in Gnome. This time around, because of the decision to LGPL QT, I'm steering the app to QT 4, and developers will be encouraged to use KDE.
I believe the debate about desktops comes down to which apps win: Gnome or QT? Now that licensing issues for QT are fixed, and with QT's clear advantage in porting, I'd say QT apps will gain back lost ground.
Agreed. Sun Micro is a perfect example. IMO, Sun is the best workstation provider in history, a truly outstanding company. It's not Sun's fault that workstations are no longer in demand. Most people say Sun should have had the foresight to switch to a new business. I say bunk. A company that owns the #1 spot in their market should simply fade with it, and let a new generation of companies exploit new markets. As we approach peak oil, Shell, Exxon, and their competitors should continue to compete in oil even as their revenues fade. Making the jump to alternative energies makes little sense for them.
Hey, that was another great suggestion! I'm a bit embarrassed I wasn't already using it. I've not had much time to play with it, but thepiratebay.com has seemed to think I really need to meet a girl living near me for years. Different nearby towns, names, and ages, but always the same girl! I almost feel like I know her... I certainly know all her bathing suits. Now thepiratebay.com has nothing but whitespace where she use to be!
I think I'm happier with both Adblock Plus and a DNS based filter. Both free, easy, and useful.
I admit I never thought I'd have any sort of filter before I had kids. I think there's a difference between seeing stuff accidentally, and seeing what you're looking for. I had a nightmare last night about creepy bugs that eat people. I've had them now and then since I was a child and saw a 60's sci-fi flick where a giant spider ate people.
So, if my daughter wants to know what sex looks like, I'm OK with that. I just don't want advertisers who want are after my money to accidentally display their porn to her before she even knows how babies get their start.
And, it's true that the Internet has come a long way in decreasing accidental porn displays. My kids have had access for years with no filter, and everything's worked fine. But, my kids are ready to want to know more, and 'sex' is a very likely keyword about to be entered into Google. I'd prefer she check out the Wikipedia results before redtube's.
Dude, right on! I'm the original poster, and I have to tell you, this is exactly what I was looking for. I've set filter level to 'medium', for malware/phishing and porn. As the kids grow old enough to figure out how to get around it, they're probably old enough to handle unfiltered content.
I hate to sound like an add for these guys, but hey, it's free, and in a few minutes of testing, it blocked 100% of the porn sites I tried to visit, but nothing from wikipedia.org. Search for 'sex' on wikipedia, and you still get a useful, informative site. Search for 'sex' on Google, and not one hard-core porn site is allowed, but metacafe.com gets through. The 'cached' links from Google show hard-core porn thumbnails, though. Not perfect, but way better than I was expecting! Thanks!
Has Red Hat committed not to sue open-source projects? That would be the logical step, if their patents are truly defensive. I'll step in for Red Hat's defense. I personally resisted software patents, which I firmly believe should not be allowed, until a competitor patented work which I had invented first, yet refused to patent. Given the system, we have no choice but to play the game.
As with many new standards, there should be an open-source reference implementation, which has achieved certification. We do this with most other standards. I don't see why this is different.
And, I hope my personal efforts played a small part in Novel's crash. Will anyone here be offended if I do a little dance on their grave? Novel... morons.
I see a very cool use case: Scan every single item of paper money we produce. Generate a hash value that matches each unique bill. Use the US government's private key to sign the hash value, and print this signature on every bill as a bar-code, easily scanned by any scanner. Goodbye counterfeiters.
No, GP is correct. If the compiler knows the contents at address zero, and that it's not equal to CONSTANT, the optimization gives the same answer. It's a peep-hole optimization level thing.
Slashdot Mirror
One of my favorite tactics use to be buying grad-students pizza. There's this great prof at Berkeley who spearheaded a whole bunch of EDA innovations. He has a difficult to spell Italian name. Anyway, he had a reputation of making industry pay for his insights (and his student's). I'd just show up, offer free pizza and beer to his students, and have a great time while learning the latest Berkeley innovations.
Anyway, it's time to give back rather than take, for me. I've got this big dumb idea (I have lots!). I think that it's a terrible waste when good people are idle, and not working, simply because the economy is broken. I'm about half-way towards starting ShareALot.org as my solution to help everyone out of this mess. Any slashdot comments are welcome.
I compared the ODF article to the OOXML article. The most striking difference is the "Criticism" sections of the ODF article is twice as long, and points out really minor stuff that hardly deserves inclusion in such a summary. On the other hand, the OOXML article fails to mention ANY of the major criticism that has gone across Slashdot in recent years, including Microsoft's paying off countries to support them on the standards committee, or how Microsoft purposely refuses to support the ODF standard in any useful way (I still import/export Word/Excel/PowerPoint, in Open Office - far less broken). There is also no mention that ODF is short, sweet, and nearly complete, while OOXML is Webster Dictionary sized, yet highly incomplete. The low complexity of an ODF implementation relative to OOXML is missing.
In short, we here on slashdot would write very different articles on the two formats. The gist would probably be:
Not that I'm against world domination by US corporations :-)
There's no protection on slashdot! I hereby flame you to a burnt crisp!
I do not believe there are differences between the sexes in innate ability in mathematics, or advanced algorithms coding. I do believe there are innate emotional differences. Many women programmers I've known have gone into management and roles that deal with customers, for example. Those who prefer the anti-social life of a hard-core mathematician or programmer are more commonly guys.
This is really, really, huge. We've had a number of articles on slashdot that clearly point out the danger Amazon poses to the e-book market. They're following an iTune-like model, with similar DRM, similarly ham-strung hardware, and they're waging a war to control e-book distribution. Google has the muscle to turn the tide in this battle, and to open the e-book market to many players, not just Amazon and Sony.
Consider an Amazon Kindle vs an Eee PC. The Eee PC has a bigger screen, costs less, has real wifi, and is a freaking great e-book reader. The only problem? F**king Amazon and Sony have locked up rights to distribute many of the most popular e-books. Screw e-book readers, IMO. Netbooks running a real OS (Ubuntu in my case) is the way to go. E-book readers like the Kindle are just another trap for us to fall into, where we lose choice, and pay outrageous prices for massively limited hardware and software, just so we can read the book we actually want to buy.
An unintended consequence of camera-phones is nicer cops and less crime. It takes only seconds to upload a photo of a crime in action, whether a robbery or cops beating someone senseless.
My wife totaled her car about 18 months ago. We still get weekly robo-calls saying it's our "last chance" to extend the warranty. Jail is too good for these goons.
Yes, converting food into fuel is bone-headed. Even burning wood makes more sense.
While this is news to most Americans, it's not really new news. In studying alternative energy at Berkeley in 1985, we were told:
- Plant efficiency is 2% of sunlight converted to energy in the plants, except for algae, which can be up to 10%
- Burning conversions are around 50%
- Only about 1% of the sunlight gets out to the electrical grid per acre.
In comparison, thermal solar, and solar photovoltaic both run in the 10% neighborhood, sometimes higher, meaning you can produce the nation's required energy on 1/10th of the land, and by the way land that is basically worthless desert.
Even as inefficient and bone-headed as ethanol is, it's providing something like 3% of our liquid fuel needs. With a proper program for harvesting sunlight, we will do far more.
Working in Silicon Valley, I found that most employees tried to avoid direct competition from their previous employer for at least a year, assuming they were treated fairly at their previous job.
What makes sense from a pragmatic point of view is the impact on the economy these non-competes have. Silicon Valley did not occur in MA, partly because of their restrictive non-competes. CA's model wins big-time. We have similar non-competes here in NC to MA, and we have close to zero new high-tech startups partly as a result.
Cost per watt to produce solar pannels: $0.98 (FirstSolar)
Price Florida is willing to pay: $4.00
A sucker born every minute: priceless
The choice of Gnome vs KDE for our house is more about support from the distro than differences in the desktops. Kbuntu is simply less stable and polished than Ubuntu.
I think the article should have talked about the recent open-sourcing of QT, which I think is critical in the KDE vs Gnome debate. Last time around, I steered application development towards GTK, rather than QT, and I had all the developers work in Gnome. This time around, because of the decision to LGPL QT, I'm steering the app to QT 4, and developers will be encouraged to use KDE.
I believe the debate about desktops comes down to which apps win: Gnome or QT? Now that licensing issues for QT are fixed, and with QT's clear advantage in porting, I'd say QT apps will gain back lost ground.
Agreed. Sun Micro is a perfect example. IMO, Sun is the best workstation provider in history, a truly outstanding company. It's not Sun's fault that workstations are no longer in demand. Most people say Sun should have had the foresight to switch to a new business. I say bunk. A company that owns the #1 spot in their market should simply fade with it, and let a new generation of companies exploit new markets. As we approach peak oil, Shell, Exxon, and their competitors should continue to compete in oil even as their revenues fade. Making the jump to alternative energies makes little sense for them.
Hey, that was another great suggestion! I'm a bit embarrassed I wasn't already using it. I've not had much time to play with it, but thepiratebay.com has seemed to think I really need to meet a girl living near me for years. Different nearby towns, names, and ages, but always the same girl! I almost feel like I know her... I certainly know all her bathing suits. Now thepiratebay.com has nothing but whitespace where she use to be!
I think I'm happier with both Adblock Plus and a DNS based filter. Both free, easy, and useful.
I admit I never thought I'd have any sort of filter before I had kids. I think there's a difference between seeing stuff accidentally, and seeing what you're looking for. I had a nightmare last night about creepy bugs that eat people. I've had them now and then since I was a child and saw a 60's sci-fi flick where a giant spider ate people.
So, if my daughter wants to know what sex looks like, I'm OK with that. I just don't want advertisers who want are after my money to accidentally display their porn to her before she even knows how babies get their start.
And, it's true that the Internet has come a long way in decreasing accidental porn displays. My kids have had access for years with no filter, and everything's worked fine. But, my kids are ready to want to know more, and 'sex' is a very likely keyword about to be entered into Google. I'd prefer she check out the Wikipedia results before redtube's.
Dude, right on! I'm the original poster, and I have to tell you, this is exactly what I was looking for. I've set filter level to 'medium', for malware/phishing and porn. As the kids grow old enough to figure out how to get around it, they're probably old enough to handle unfiltered content.
I hate to sound like an add for these guys, but hey, it's free, and in a few minutes of testing, it blocked 100% of the porn sites I tried to visit, but nothing from wikipedia.org. Search for 'sex' on wikipedia, and you still get a useful, informative site. Search for 'sex' on Google, and not one hard-core porn site is allowed, but metacafe.com gets through. The 'cached' links from Google show hard-core porn thumbnails, though. Not perfect, but way better than I was expecting! Thanks!
Has Red Hat committed not to sue open-source projects? That would be the logical step, if their patents are truly defensive. I'll step in for Red Hat's defense. I personally resisted software patents, which I firmly believe should not be allowed, until a competitor patented work which I had invented first, yet refused to patent. Given the system, we have no choice but to play the game.
As with many new standards, there should be an open-source reference implementation, which has achieved certification. We do this with most other standards. I don't see why this is different.
And, I hope my personal efforts played a small part in Novel's crash. Will anyone here be offended if I do a little dance on their grave? Novel... morons.
I see a very cool use case: Scan every single item of paper money we produce. Generate a hash value that matches each unique bill. Use the US government's private key to sign the hash value, and print this signature on every bill as a bar-code, easily scanned by any scanner. Goodbye counterfeiters.
No, GP is correct. If the compiler knows the contents at address zero, and that it's not equal to CONSTANT, the optimization gives the same answer. It's a peep-hole optimization level thing.