What is it about using a few MB of Microsoft's bandwidth to download their.WMV file to play in XINE on my Fedora Core 3 laptop that makes me, eh, happy????
Not that I care all that much, but THEY set up some goofy "mms" protocol that makes me download their entire !@#!@ movie before playing it, instead of streaming over HTTP like any other sane person... so I'll download the entire thing before watching 10-20 seconds of their 20 minute video...
I guess they can afford the $0.01 or two this download will cost them.
Some days I wonder if my memory problems might have been FROM an early introduction to the PC. When I was 4 I touched my first keyboard and quickly adjusted to using a keyboard over using a pencil (around 6 years). This is about 25 years ago. Is what I have more like the ADD that today's youths seems to all have, and do they have ADD because of the early introduction to knowledge overload? Do short attention spans possibly come from our 60-75hz gods?
If so, I wonder how much of a disadvantage it would be. It's really fascinating what comes out of a search on the 'net, and I've gotten to the point where I don't bother trying to remember something I know I can find quickly.
Whether we're talking about how to wire up an electric light, find an algorithm for managing socket connections in an event-driven fashion, getting a phone number to the Fry's in Sacramento, or finding a fun place to take my wife over a w/e, the Internet has become a knowledgebase I rely on constantly, simply because it works much better than trying to remember.
The Internet provides knowledge, but we people provide understanding. The Internet provides a wonderful medium for exchanging information, but it takes people to read it, ponder it, and make the connections.
In this schema, assuming ubiquitous Internet access, there's no real advantage to highly developed, long-term memory, so long as you keep enough intact to trigger the "I though I read something once" response, which can then be used as a basis for a quick 'net search.
I believe you are looking at the next model for technology advancement - that of combinatory thought, where human and machine intelligence combine.
I have trouble imagining this so-called laptop being anything other than a gimmick to assuage a sensitive ego that just wants to claim "biggest, baddest", without any particular attention paid to issues of practicality or usability.
It's too big/heavy to be particularly portable, it gets uncomfortably warm in normal use, it burns lots of power, so battery life is worthless.
Trying to jam a high-end Desktop into a laptop has resulted in a system not well suited to replace a desktop or a laptop particularly well.
For a desktop replacement, get one of the newer Mobile AMDs or maybe a Pentium M. I have the latter, and even though 2 years old, it still does a respectable job playing games, and working as a good, solid, developer's workstation. Plus, it's quite light, decent battery life, (I type this on battery) stylish appearance, and I sit with it in my lap all day without getting very uncomfortable.
Figure out what you really want to do, and get the right tool for that. Sheesh!
Years ago I ran a network to transfer messages, much like Email. Then, it was typical to relay some 10,000 messages per week. I worked in a regional office. We're talking DOS 3.2 and Banyan VINES days, 286 systems and token ring networks, when 19200 bps was considered "fast", and the best modems available where 9600 bps.
Well, being curious and all, I read the manuals, starting with MS-DOS. Got a working knowledge, used batch files to tweak certain, commonly run commands, and improving performance by some 50% without any necessary hardware expenditures. (partly by creating a RAM drive in the upper 384k and loading commonly used commands there for sped) I was feeling pretty good about things.
Then, I started reading up on the NOS, Banyan VINES. I did a network scan, and found another system. It was call "Itl". I logged into it, and started poking around, just curious as to what it was I was looking at. Turns out I was logged into the International Computer of the telecommunications network!
I logged out immediately, and said nothing for a while. But then, doing some "file cleanup", on my server, I got confused and nuked some stuff I shouldn'ta. Remembering my access to the International System, (which was largely an exact duplicate of my regional network server) I logged into it, copied over the files, and then was suspended from work for an entire WEEK while they grilled me about what I saw, what I did, and then yelled at me.
They finally realized I wasn't malicious, that I made a mistake (that I wouldn't make again, EVER) and that I fixed it without loss to the organization. I was eventually allowed back to work. Sure as hell shook me up, though, and I guess I wasn't the only one..
It's not the NSA's "SE Linux" - it's now included by default in the Linux kernel. It's EVERYBODY's "SE Linux". Of course, it sounds nice to say "NSA" but the reality is that while they initially developed it and do some maintenance, it's now part of the Linux kernel and is therefore pretty certain to stay.
Fedora Core Linux, for example, comes with SE Linux enabled by default.
No, but you can reduce theft by first defining what a theft is, and then enforcing the penalties thereof. In Russia, what we call copyright violation they call "legal".
If you want to curb it, you have to remove the economic incentive to steal.
Anything of value has an economic incentive to steal. There's tremendous economic incentive to steal diamonds, but the threat of jail time, combined with the difficult problem of breaking into maximum security safes, outweighs the benefits to stealing them.
Removing economic incentive is but one way to reduce crime.
Because not getting the best performance out of hardware, no matter how old or new it is, puts your application at a disadvantage compared to your competitors. No matter how much you may try and justify things, your users don't care about the language you use to develop - they care about performance.
Come again? This might be true for a rather small percentage of software, but I don't think it applies even for a majority.
What I find funny is that I remember these same arguments being made about C because it was so inefficient and "high level", and how assembler was the way to go for performance reasons.
Most software development is for fixed-function, limited, internal use by a company, organization, or small niche marketplaces. In these environments, getting feature N to work quickly is very important, getting it to work rapidly is marginally important, and the language or platform is irrelevant.
High-level languages like Ruby, Perl, and PHP (and possibly Java) allow developers to focus on getting the job done quickly, without spending as much time worrying about things like memory management. They allow you to switch types dynamically, so that adding 5 to a character '3' results in an 8.
If a total of 200 people are using the software, it's very reasonable to expect that the software would perform nicely on commodity software, even if it's not particularly efficient. In this space, all that matters is that it works, and is developed as quickly and cheaply as possible. The cost of development is typically much, much higher than the cost of the total hardware involved - so who cares if it takes a $10,000 server to make it work, if it saves $120,000 in labor expenses for development, and gets to implementation 4 months earlier?
Interestingly enough, personal beliefs aside, I think the *evolution* people are looking at ID the wrong way, insisting that "ID proponents are all religious whackos!" and "ID rules out evolution!".
This comment bespeaks an incredible lack of understanding of the issues involved. Perhaps you should read up on concepts like "irreducible complexity"... ?
Part of a good relationship is knowing when to vent your unreasonable irritation with an uninvolved third party confidant, rather than bottling it up and spitting it in her face one day.
No. Part of a good relationship is knowing that each other is human, prone to weakness, and liable to make mistakes. Having a good relationship has the occasional blow up. In fact, I'd say that sometimes, bitching, yelling, and cursing is a good way to "clear the air" and come clean with each other. You have a good relationship when things like this can happen and the thought never strikes you to leave.
Hey, you're human. If she can't expect you to be human with the occasional mistakes and irritations, what business does she have expecting any different from you?
Perhaps your problem is that you aren't honest enough with your g/f? If you can't be honest with her without her blowing up, ask yourself: what kind of relationship do you actually have?
JAMIE HYNEMAN -- The fact that young people are becoming interested in science as a result of the show is by far the biggest bonus for us, and one that took us by surprise as we had no intent that the show do this. However one of the reasons it has worked is that very fact that we are not really trying to be educational. We blow stuff up, we screw around. Adam puts things up his nose. Sometimes we do stuff just because we are curious. We are interesting to young people perhaps because we are a little bit out of control.
Science without experimentation is like reproduction without a fetus. It just doesn't happen. Mythbusters is an interesting, entertaining, and educational show where they use basic concepts of science (get curious about something, make a theory, cook up a test to try the theory, do the test, and make a conclusion) in order to try out people's ideas.
What's sad is that science is so often cuby-holed into knowing the specific gravity of a particular compound - but this isn't science, just fact regurgitation. Science is a method that, when followed, results in a long-term tendency towards truth.
So many people think science is stuffy and arrogant, but Mythbusters is science in action. I love it!
Everytime one of these "big brother" posts hits slashdot, I provide a link to perhaps the single most insightful article I've seen on this subject: the "Transparent Society".
Written some 10 years ago, it laid out, for the first time, the actual problem with the non-private, cameras-are-everywhere society, and what we, as people can and should demand to keep the powers in check.
If you've not read this seminal work, I strongly recommend that you do so!
You know, I noticed that between me and my friends the most painful experience when dealing with computers is losing a hard drive.
Yes, I know it's a nerd thing to say but it's almost as bad as losing a pet.
It's not the Hard Drive - it's the data. All your settings, files, bookmarks, pictures, sounds, etc. You don't really ever look at the HDD itself unless you are replacing it, or moving it into another system.
I'm leaning towards Maxtor simply because I have a lot of them and one hasn't failed me with crucial data on it.
You sir, turn in your geek card! What kind of business do you have, having crucial data on a system that's not backed up or at least mirrored with RAID!?!
A cheap-o HDD is $60 if you shop around, there's no excuse any more not to run software RAID1!
How much is your time and/or "crucial" data worth, anyway?
I'm actually looking forward to this one - I think it's a good thing that the script is being held to some standards.
Why? You KNOW it's going to suck. Ender's game was filled with lots of psycho-babble, with lots of little moments, and the primary skill Card has is that of describing something beautifully, not in coming up with OMFG! plotlines.
Ender's game has a cult following. It's like a VW - you either love it or hate it. And, sadly, Ender's game will NOT be a big blockbuster, but rather something like "Serenity" - a geekfest, and probably a poor performer at the box office. Outside of the Slashdot/Digg/Fark crowd, who's ever heard of it?
So I guess nothingness = zero for the non-technical persons, but actually 1 (one) for the/. crowd?
The problem is that "0" and "NULL"/"placeholder" have been confused with the base 10 digits.
Ever wonder why, when you count to 10, that "10" takes 2 digits, while all the others only take nine?
When looking at a number system, remember that you are really counting off the number of unique combinations. The decimal number system consists of 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 - that's 10 combinations that only require 1 digit.
But, for "people" counting, we discount the first combination: "0" and start at 1. And that's where the problem is. Furthermore, we use "0" as a placeholder, so that we end up with "10", "100" or "1,000". When you count in any other base, you start at 0.
So, what we should have is "1-10" being counted as "0-9" and an additional "null" character, so that "10" (11 in "normal" parlance) might be written as "1_" or "1*"
Just silly. But, inertia will probaby stop us from ever fixing this inanity.
My question is, will cellphones start to not turn off when the cell phone is "off". Will "off" now mean "really low power mode" - just enough to keep transmitting?
They aready do just that. Modern digital cell phones send a pulse every few seconds in order to register that it's got service, that it's online, and what cell it should register in.
The cell companies then have a helluva router system to get the text messages and calls to you when you "show up" in a particular cell.
One of the great innovations with digital cellular is dynamic signal strength - when you are close to a cell tower and have good signal, it cuts back its broadcast so that the notice pulse every few seconds conserves every last watt. That lets a phone run for days on end without any problems if you don't talk much.
Combine the "helluva" routers and a database, and you have an unparalleled geographic location system.
On a lighter note, the Star-Trek allusion at the end of the post makes me agree with the first poster. As our computers get faster and faster, we'll probably end up interfacing with them in more intimate ways - I don't mean to say that we'll all become like the Borg or anything, but even improvements like voice control (subvocalization? Or is that just a bad SF tech...?) or touchscreens, or heck, almost ANYTHING else. The Mouse + Keyboard can hardly be the most efficient way to interact with our computer, methinks.
The problem is that the current keyboard + mouse combination is pretty efficient as it is. See, in order to interact more with the computer, you have to be willing/able to impart more information to the computer. That information has to come from somewhere! Current estimates (A LA Ray Kurzweil, the total information bandwidth from brain to body is about a 1 Mb stream.
The human mind is certainly capable of lots of information in the form of memories and imagination, but precise, abstract thought is expensive. And that's the exact kind of thought that keyboard+mouse+monitor interfaces excel at carrying. The keyboard/mouse will last until neural interfaces are developed. And, when they scan my brain into the computer so that I become a sim, I only hope it's a *nix derivative system I get scanned into!
As a vendor of software for use in the educational sector, I can state with confidence that we have users using our products on Windows 95, P-200!
The lack of funding for something as basic as a $400 computer is sometimes nothing short of astonishing. Highly qualified teachers sitting their twiddling their thumbs because it takes 15 minutes to load MS Office. I wish I were kidding.
People, our bodies are not designed to sit in a single position, doing the exact, same motions over and over. We are not robots, and even robots eventually wear out. Millions of years of evolution (or a gleam in your favorite god's eye) developed us as doing a wide variety of tasks in a large number of flexible positions!
In 1999, I switched careers from "computer techie", fixing and selling computers, to databases and software engineering.
Much more rewarding, satisfying, and I get to work at home, with Linux pretty much all the time now, doing away with the Windows frustrations.
Anyhow, at first I got a big, powerful, cheap desktop computer, a big monitor, etc. It wasn't 8 months before my hands started to really ache, often quite badly.
So, I bought a Microsoft Ergo keyboard. Within a week or two, I noticed a HUGE difference! Whereas before I had to position everything "just so" to avoid wrist pain, with the Ergo, I could just sit however I liked, whatever felt comfortable.
Some years later, I bought a Dell laptop. (it runs Fedora Core) At first, I used it as a plug-in replacement for my desktop system, but as time went on, I found that I more and more preferred to work in various positions all over the house. Sometimes I'm slacking on the couch. Sometimes, I'm hunched over the patio table.
I'm almost never at the "coding table" that I used to have in the office.
I'm pretty sure it's the variation in my posture. I just haven't had much trouble with CTS. Sometimes, I feel a low grade ache in my left hand after a few weeks of heavy coding.
Re:Is Opera Google's doorway to beating Microsoft?
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Google to Buy Opera?
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I can't imagine what google is working on next, but I have been contemplating their need for a "proof-of-concept" engine that would be considered a web browser to some, but in all reality it would be an operating system. This sub-operating system would be hardware abstracted from the real OS, but give Google the ability for power users to see what Google can do with data.
And, how exactly would this be different than java?
One thing to keep in mind through all the brouhaha is that it WORKED. Peer review identified the duplicate images, peer review found the chinks in falsified work, peer review identified this man as not entirely honest, and peer review has removed this man and his work from being weighted very heavily in the court of public opinion.
Given time, peer review and demand for experimental evidence will uncover fraud and untruth. It's the scientific way.
The scientific process does not guarantee 100% accuracy at any point. No system can. But, the scientific process is a slow, iterative process that, over time, tends towards truth, building on past understandings.
It's the ONLY process found that does this consistently, and it's something that we must cling to tightly. Faith, reason, and personal insight have all shown dramatic, consistent, and spectacular failures.
But, introducing the idea that nothing is ever trusted completely (which is why Science calls bodies of knowledge "theories" even when very well proven) and demanding evidence and peer review thereof to identify truth allows us, with our feeble intellect and reasoning powers, to identify the small, provable and demonstrable bits of truth in a vast sea of lies, untruths, semi-truths, spin, pseudo-science, and other forms of intellectual horseshit.
Plus, the migration code will write the SQL for different databases. Quite handy, since the syntax is somewhat different between mysql and postgresql. (and others)
But, again, we're back to leaky abstractions. I might want a unique constraint that covers two or three fields. Sqlite is incapable of this. How would this be handled?
One of these answers is most likely:
1) There is no concept of a unique constraint in Rails, or
2) It's there, and silently ignored if you're using Sqlite, or
3) It's there, and bitches magnanimously if you're using Sqlite.
Bottom line: I don't know Ruby, or rails, and don't intend to anytime soon. But, I do try to keep abreast of competing technologies that I often include in my own development. (using Linux/Apache/PHP/Postgres)
Slashdot Mirror
What is it about using a few MB of Microsoft's bandwidth to download their .WMV file to play in XINE on my Fedora Core 3 laptop that makes me, eh, happy????
Not that I care all that much, but THEY set up some goofy "mms" protocol that makes me download their entire !@#!@ movie before playing it, instead of streaming over HTTP like any other sane person... so I'll download the entire thing before watching 10-20 seconds of their 20 minute video...
I guess they can afford the $0.01 or two this download will cost them.
Some days I wonder if my memory problems might have been FROM an early introduction to the PC. When I was 4 I touched my first keyboard and quickly adjusted to using a keyboard over using a pencil (around 6 years). This is about 25 years ago. Is what I have more like the ADD that today's youths seems to all have, and do they have ADD because of the early introduction to knowledge overload? Do short attention spans possibly come from our 60-75hz gods?
If so, I wonder how much of a disadvantage it would be. It's really fascinating what comes out of a search on the 'net, and I've gotten to the point where I don't bother trying to remember something I know I can find quickly.
Whether we're talking about how to wire up an electric light, find an algorithm for managing socket connections in an event-driven fashion, getting a phone number to the Fry's in Sacramento, or finding a fun place to take my wife over a w/e, the Internet has become a knowledgebase I rely on constantly, simply because it works much better than trying to remember.
The Internet provides knowledge, but we people provide understanding. The Internet provides a wonderful medium for exchanging information, but it takes people to read it, ponder it, and make the connections.
In this schema, assuming ubiquitous Internet access, there's no real advantage to highly developed, long-term memory, so long as you keep enough intact to trigger the "I though I read something once" response, which can then be used as a basis for a quick 'net search.
I believe you are looking at the next model for technology advancement - that of combinatory thought, where human and machine intelligence combine.
I have trouble imagining this so-called laptop being anything other than a gimmick to assuage a sensitive ego that just wants to claim "biggest, baddest", without any particular attention paid to issues of practicality or usability.
It's too big/heavy to be particularly portable, it gets uncomfortably warm in normal use, it burns lots of power, so battery life is worthless.
Trying to jam a high-end Desktop into a laptop has resulted in a system not well suited to replace a desktop or a laptop particularly well.
For a desktop replacement, get one of the newer Mobile AMDs or maybe a Pentium M. I have the latter, and even though 2 years old, it still does a respectable job playing games, and working as a good, solid, developer's workstation. Plus, it's quite light, decent battery life, (I type this on battery) stylish appearance, and I sit with it in my lap all day without getting very uncomfortable.
Figure out what you really want to do, and get the right tool for that. Sheesh!
funny thing, that security stuff.
Years ago I ran a network to transfer messages, much like Email. Then, it was typical to relay some 10,000 messages per week. I worked in a regional office. We're talking DOS 3.2 and Banyan VINES days, 286 systems and token ring networks, when 19200 bps was considered "fast", and the best modems available where 9600 bps.
Well, being curious and all, I read the manuals, starting with MS-DOS. Got a working knowledge, used batch files to tweak certain, commonly run commands, and improving performance by some 50% without any necessary hardware expenditures. (partly by creating a RAM drive in the upper 384k and loading commonly used commands there for sped) I was feeling pretty good about things.
Then, I started reading up on the NOS, Banyan VINES. I did a network scan, and found another system. It was call "Itl". I logged into it, and started poking around, just curious as to what it was I was looking at. Turns out I was logged into the International Computer of the telecommunications network!
I logged out immediately, and said nothing for a while. But then, doing some "file cleanup", on my server, I got confused and nuked some stuff I shouldn'ta. Remembering my access to the International System, (which was largely an exact duplicate of my regional network server) I logged into it, copied over the files, and then was suspended from work for an entire WEEK while they grilled me about what I saw, what I did, and then yelled at me.
They finally realized I wasn't malicious, that I made a mistake (that I wouldn't make again, EVER) and that I fixed it without loss to the organization. I was eventually allowed back to work. Sure as hell shook me up, though, and I guess I wasn't the only one..
PHP is a programming language. MySpace is a website. Good job confusing apples and bicycle spokes!
Reality has no precedent around this place, or in much of the OSS community.
That's right. No reality.
Like Apache is not a reality, with its 75% market share.
Like PHP's popularity as the #1 web scripting language?
Come on, man!
It's not the NSA's "SE Linux" - it's now included by default in the Linux kernel. It's EVERYBODY's "SE Linux". Of course, it sounds nice to say "NSA" but the reality is that while they initially developed it and do some maintenance, it's now part of the Linux kernel and is therefore pretty certain to stay.
Fedora Core Linux, for example, comes with SE Linux enabled by default.
You cannot legislate away theft.
No, but you can reduce theft by first defining what a theft is, and then enforcing the penalties thereof. In Russia, what we call copyright violation they call "legal".
If you want to curb it, you have to remove the economic incentive to steal.
Anything of value has an economic incentive to steal. There's tremendous economic incentive to steal diamonds, but the threat of jail time, combined with the difficult problem of breaking into maximum security safes, outweighs the benefits to stealing them.
Removing economic incentive is but one way to reduce crime.
Because not getting the best performance out of hardware, no matter how old or new it is, puts your application at a disadvantage compared to your competitors. No matter how much you may try and justify things, your users don't care about the language you use to develop - they care about performance.
Come again? This might be true for a rather small percentage of software, but I don't think it applies even for a majority.
What I find funny is that I remember these same arguments being made about C because it was so inefficient and "high level", and how assembler was the way to go for performance reasons.
Most software development is for fixed-function, limited, internal use by a company, organization, or small niche marketplaces. In these environments, getting feature N to work quickly is very important, getting it to work rapidly is marginally important, and the language or platform is irrelevant.
High-level languages like Ruby, Perl, and PHP (and possibly Java) allow developers to focus on getting the job done quickly, without spending as much time worrying about things like memory management. They allow you to switch types dynamically, so that adding 5 to a character '3' results in an 8.
If a total of 200 people are using the software, it's very reasonable to expect that the software would perform nicely on commodity software, even if it's not particularly efficient. In this space, all that matters is that it works, and is developed as quickly and cheaply as possible. The cost of development is typically much, much higher than the cost of the total hardware involved - so who cares if it takes a $10,000 server to make it work, if it saves $120,000 in labor expenses for development, and gets to implementation 4 months earlier?
Where's your smart money going to go?
Interestingly enough, personal beliefs aside, I think the *evolution* people are looking at ID the wrong way, insisting that "ID proponents are all religious whackos!" and "ID rules out evolution!".
This comment bespeaks an incredible lack of understanding of the issues involved. Perhaps you should read up on concepts like "irreducible complexity"... ?
Part of a good relationship is knowing when to vent your unreasonable irritation with an uninvolved third party confidant, rather than bottling it up and spitting it in her face one day.
No. Part of a good relationship is knowing that each other is human, prone to weakness, and liable to make mistakes. Having a good relationship has the occasional blow up. In fact, I'd say that sometimes, bitching, yelling, and cursing is a good way to "clear the air" and come clean with each other. You have a good relationship when things like this can happen and the thought never strikes you to leave.
Hey, you're human. If she can't expect you to be human with the occasional mistakes and irritations, what business does she have expecting any different from you?
Perhaps your problem is that you aren't honest enough with your g/f? If you can't be honest with her without her blowing up, ask yourself: what kind of relationship do you actually have?
JAMIE HYNEMAN -- The fact that young people are becoming interested in science as a result of the show is by far the biggest bonus for us, and one that took us by surprise as we had no intent that the show do this. However one of the reasons it has worked is that very fact that we are not really trying to be educational. We blow stuff up, we screw around. Adam puts things up his nose. Sometimes we do stuff just because we are curious. We are interesting to young people perhaps because we are a little bit out of control.
Science without experimentation is like reproduction without a fetus. It just doesn't happen. Mythbusters is an interesting, entertaining, and educational show where they use basic concepts of science (get curious about something, make a theory, cook up a test to try the theory, do the test, and make a conclusion) in order to try out people's ideas.
What's sad is that science is so often cuby-holed into knowing the specific gravity of a particular compound - but this isn't science, just fact regurgitation. Science is a method that, when followed, results in a long-term tendency towards truth.
So many people think science is stuffy and arrogant, but Mythbusters is science in action. I love it!
Everytime one of these "big brother" posts hits slashdot, I provide a link to perhaps the single most insightful article I've seen on this subject: the "Transparent Society".
Written some 10 years ago, it laid out, for the first time, the actual problem with the non-private, cameras-are-everywhere society, and what we, as people can and should demand to keep the powers in check.
If you've not read this seminal work, I strongly recommend that you do so!
You know, I noticed that between me and my friends the most painful experience when dealing with computers is losing a hard drive.
Yes, I know it's a nerd thing to say but it's almost as bad as losing a pet.
It's not the Hard Drive - it's the data. All your settings, files, bookmarks, pictures, sounds, etc. You don't really ever look at the HDD itself unless you are replacing it, or moving it into another system.
I'm leaning towards Maxtor simply because I have a lot of them and one hasn't failed me with crucial data on it.
You sir, turn in your geek card! What kind of business do you have, having crucial data on a system that's not backed up or at least mirrored with RAID!?!
A cheap-o HDD is $60 if you shop around, there's no excuse any more not to run software RAID1!
How much is your time and/or "crucial" data worth, anyway?
I'm actually looking forward to this one - I think it's a good thing that the script is being held to some standards.
Why? You KNOW it's going to suck. Ender's game was filled with lots of psycho-babble, with lots of little moments, and the primary skill Card has is that of describing something beautifully, not in coming up with OMFG! plotlines.
Ender's game has a cult following. It's like a VW - you either love it or hate it. And, sadly, Ender's game will NOT be a big blockbuster, but rather something like "Serenity" - a geekfest, and probably a poor performer at the box office. Outside of the Slashdot/Digg/Fark crowd, who's ever heard of it?
So I guess nothingness = zero for the non-technical persons, but actually 1 (one) for the /. crowd?
The problem is that "0" and "NULL"/"placeholder" have been confused with the base 10 digits.
Ever wonder why, when you count to 10, that "10" takes 2 digits, while all the others only take nine?
When looking at a number system, remember that you are really counting off the number of unique combinations. The decimal number system consists of 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 - that's 10 combinations that only require 1 digit.
But, for "people" counting, we discount the first combination: "0" and start at 1. And that's where the problem is. Furthermore, we use "0" as a placeholder, so that we end up with "10", "100" or "1,000". When you count in any other base, you start at 0.
So, what we should have is "1-10" being counted as "0-9" and an additional "null" character, so that "10" (11 in "normal" parlance) might be written as "1_" or "1*"
Just silly. But, inertia will probaby stop us from ever fixing this inanity.
My question is, will cellphones start to not turn off when the cell phone is "off". Will "off" now mean "really low power mode" - just enough to keep transmitting?
They aready do just that. Modern digital cell phones send a pulse every few seconds in order to register that it's got service, that it's online, and what cell it should register in.
The cell companies then have a helluva router system to get the text messages and calls to you when you "show up" in a particular cell.
One of the great innovations with digital cellular is dynamic signal strength - when you are close to a cell tower and have good signal, it cuts back its broadcast so that the notice pulse every few seconds conserves every last watt. That lets a phone run for days on end without any problems if you don't talk much.
Combine the "helluva" routers and a database, and you have an unparalleled geographic location system.
I'm sorry;
Did this post have anything to do at all with parent?
On a lighter note, the Star-Trek allusion at the end of the post makes me agree with the first poster. As our computers get faster and faster, we'll probably end up interfacing with them in more intimate ways - I don't mean to say that we'll all become like the Borg or anything, but even improvements like voice control (subvocalization? Or is that just a bad SF tech...?) or touchscreens, or heck, almost ANYTHING else. The Mouse + Keyboard can hardly be the most efficient way to interact with our computer, methinks.
The problem is that the current keyboard + mouse combination is pretty efficient as it is. See, in order to interact more with the computer, you have to be willing/able to impart more information to the computer. That information has to come from somewhere! Current estimates (A LA Ray Kurzweil, the total information bandwidth from brain to body is about a 1 Mb stream.
The human mind is certainly capable of lots of information in the form of memories and imagination, but precise, abstract thought is expensive. And that's the exact kind of thought that keyboard+mouse+monitor interfaces excel at carrying. The keyboard/mouse will last until neural interfaces are developed. And, when they scan my brain into the computer so that I become a sim, I only hope it's a *nix derivative system I get scanned into!
Did you read the article?
Article? They have articles here on Slashdot? That couldn't possibly be! Curse you for wasting my time!
I know people still on 98 btw.
As a vendor of software for use in the educational sector, I can state with confidence that we have users using our products on Windows 95, P-200!
The lack of funding for something as basic as a $400 computer is sometimes nothing short of astonishing. Highly qualified teachers sitting their twiddling their thumbs because it takes 15 minutes to load MS Office. I wish I were kidding.
People, our bodies are not designed to sit in a single position, doing the exact, same motions over and over. We are not robots, and even robots eventually wear out. Millions of years of evolution (or a gleam in your favorite god's eye) developed us as doing a wide variety of tasks in a large number of flexible positions!
In 1999, I switched careers from "computer techie", fixing and selling computers, to databases and software engineering.
Much more rewarding, satisfying, and I get to work at home, with Linux pretty much all the time now, doing away with the Windows frustrations.
Anyhow, at first I got a big, powerful, cheap desktop computer, a big monitor, etc. It wasn't 8 months before my hands started to really ache, often quite badly.
So, I bought a Microsoft Ergo keyboard. Within a week or two, I noticed a HUGE difference! Whereas before I had to position everything "just so" to avoid wrist pain, with the Ergo, I could just sit however I liked, whatever felt comfortable.
Some years later, I bought a Dell laptop. (it runs Fedora Core) At first, I used it as a plug-in replacement for my desktop system, but as time went on, I found that I more and more preferred to work in various positions all over the house. Sometimes I'm slacking on the couch. Sometimes, I'm hunched over the patio table.
I'm almost never at the "coding table" that I used to have in the office.
I'm pretty sure it's the variation in my posture. I just haven't had much trouble with CTS. Sometimes, I feel a low grade ache in my left hand after a few weeks of heavy coding.
I can't imagine what google is working on next, but I have been contemplating their need for a "proof-of-concept" engine that would be considered a web browser to some, but in all reality it would be an operating system. This sub-operating system would be hardware abstracted from the real OS, but give Google the ability for power users to see what Google can do with data.
And, how exactly would this be different than java?
One thing to keep in mind through all the brouhaha is that it WORKED. Peer review identified the duplicate images, peer review found the chinks in falsified work, peer review identified this man as not entirely honest, and peer review has removed this man and his work from being weighted very heavily in the court of public opinion.
Given time, peer review and demand for experimental evidence will uncover fraud and untruth. It's the scientific way.
The scientific process does not guarantee 100% accuracy at any point. No system can. But, the scientific process is a slow, iterative process that, over time, tends towards truth, building on past understandings.
It's the ONLY process found that does this consistently, and it's something that we must cling to tightly. Faith, reason, and personal insight have all shown dramatic, consistent, and spectacular failures.
But, introducing the idea that nothing is ever trusted completely (which is why Science calls bodies of knowledge "theories" even when very well proven) and demanding evidence and peer review thereof to identify truth allows us, with our feeble intellect and reasoning powers, to identify the small, provable and demonstrable bits of truth in a vast sea of lies, untruths, semi-truths, spin, pseudo-science, and other forms of intellectual horseshit.
Plus, the migration code will write the SQL for different databases. Quite handy, since the syntax is somewhat different between mysql and postgresql. (and others)
But, again, we're back to leaky abstractions. I might want a unique constraint that covers two or three fields. Sqlite is incapable of this. How would this be handled?
One of these answers is most likely:
1) There is no concept of a unique constraint in Rails, or
2) It's there, and silently ignored if you're using Sqlite, or
3) It's there, and bitches magnanimously if you're using Sqlite.
Bottom line: I don't know Ruby, or rails, and don't intend to anytime soon. But, I do try to keep abreast of competing technologies that I often include in my own development. (using Linux/Apache/PHP/Postgres)