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I believe the APPLICATIONS will become smarter, bypassing the limitations of the network they're running on. In exactly the same way that games programmers overcame inherent limitations in the hardware by clever programming.
Certainly the applications become smarter, because they have to. But at the same time, the hardware must become smarter. In the game world, video cards have all become much more powerful and support a more consistent set of services than they used to, and game developers benefit from this. By the same token, right now developers have to write their way around NAT and proxies etc., but it can't and won't stay that way: the current Internet architecture is seriously limiting and doesn't even provide particularly good security.
That's where something like Mono/Passport is a good solution. Who you are is resolvable and reachable from ANYWHERE.
You're talking about a higher level of operation - directory services, essentially - that still requires an addressing and routing solution at a lower level. The point is that the current addressing and routing mechanism is already obsolete, most people just don't realize it yet because they don't understand what's under the hood.
Forth is a very cool language: I first used it running on an Apple ][ a couple of decades ago, to write programs to control lasers for laser shows at a planetarium. The combination of interactiveness and performance was great - it allowed details of a show to be reliably tweaked right before and even during a show. This was one of those situations where the tool really made a difference to the end result. Other languages available on the Apple at the time couldn't really compete.
I don't have a question for Chuck, but I'll come back when I think of one.
The Piccolo is an electric helicopter which can be flown indoors. Although the 20" rotor diameter and 19" fuselage length may not sound that small, those are the measurements of the bits that stick out - the rotors and the tail boom - and don't reflect the small size of the main fuselage, which can be seen sitting on someone's hand on the above site.
Compared to the "full size" Raptor helicopter I fly, with its 48" rotor diameter, the Piccolo is tiny. The smaller size and lighter weight of the Piccolo's rotors also means that they store less energy when spinning, so it's possible to crash a Piccolo without completely destroying the rotors every time (my Raptor's heavier rotors turn into toothpicks when it crashes...)
However, don't buy a model heli and expect to be able to fly it straight off, if you don't already know how - it's not as easy as it looks. One of the simulator software packages like RealFlight Deluxe will help you learn to fly and save lots of money in parts (ask me how I know).
Any serious Catholic - in fact, almost any serious Christian - would tell you that that film was extremely offensive. ... I mean, what makes you the arbiter of offense all of a sudden?
And what makes you the arbiter of what a serious Catholic or Christian is?
Do you think Jesus would have "taken offense" at these movies? If so, why? Was he "a serious Christian"?
Perhaps you object to these movies because they too accurately skewer your own irrational use of dogma to back up your bigoted opinions?
So, we have a big asteroid orbiting Pluto. How does prove or disprove Pluto's planetary status?
It doesn't. Another example of silly people being paid undue attention to by sillier media. If astronomy continues in this way, it is in danger of being classified as a social science.
One could make the argument that since the def'n for logic allows for the
existence of unsound logic, that this could lead to your "logical conclusion
which is contrary to reason".
Yes, that's the point. The original
statement I made was "The logic behind it doesn't have to make sense". That
would make it unsound logic. This fits the Oxford definition you quoted
perfectly, so I don't really need to defend the Merriam-Webster definitions I
gave.
Nevertheless, I'll give it a shot. The first definition I quoted is
essentially equivalent to your Oxford definition: "sound or unsound" vs. "valid
or faulty". So there's really no problem there.
The other one, "something
that forces a decision apart from or in opposition to reason", is perhaps a
little more subtle. My interpretation of this would be that the "logic" being
defined here necessarily refers to a different system of reasoning than the one
referred to by the word "reason" in the definition. As in the FSF example, the
FSF may have some logic which leads them to their conclusion; an outsider might
find their conclusion "in opposition to reason" because they're using a
different system of reasoning. We're talking about English here, not computer
science or formal logic, and multiple implicit points of view in a definition
are par for the course. English is full of examples of the word "logic" being
used to describe a faulty chain of reasoning.
Of course. I don't think
anybody does anything that doesn't make sense from their perspective(pretty
broad statement, I know, but valid).
Right, but my implied point is that
if they had a broader perspective, either entity might make decisions that serve
their interests better in the long run. This is often referred to as
"enlightened self-interest", and the logical relativism we're discussing is
central to this.
Java is very strong in corporate America (and other countries) for in-house systems development. This is unaffected by the dot-bomb situation.
The benefits of multi-vendor Java over single-vendor VB are too numerous to list here, starting with the fact that Java is a decently designed language (although certainly not perfect).
Nitpicking breeds nitpicking. No, logic doesn't always make sense. In fact, the dictionary definition of "logic" at http://www.m-w.com/ includes both "a particular mode of reasoning viewed as valid or faulty", and "something that forces a decision apart from or in opposition to reason". It's the English langwidge, baybeee...
In this case, the logic behind GNU/Linux may in fact make sense from a certain FSF perspective, just as Microsoft's decision to repeatedly screw its customers makes sense to Microsoft. But neither approach necessarily make sense to those on the outside, nor even for the FSF or Microsoft's own long-term interests, because their "logic" is predicated on the way they see themselves, not the way others see them.
If lumping the FSF and Microsoft together seems a bit harsh, there's actually a connection: smart programmers aren't necessarily smart at human relations.
It's just a way for the FSF to get their project acronym more widely known. The logic behind it doesn't have to make sense. Perhaps the other projects should all do the same, which would totally expose the foolishness here. "Hey, you should really call it Apache/Linux. No, BSD/Linux, no it's Perl/Linux dammit!"
The FSF doesn't help its credibility with these sort of tactics.
Thanks. What are the chances an even newer version will work reliably?? (rhetorical question)
Good luck on putting that SQL 7 out of its misery. The folks I'm thinking of have too much pure, unadulterated Transact-SQL code to even think about such a thing...
What version of SQL Server is shutting down on you? I'm curious because one of my clients is using SQL Server 6.5, which is actually pretty stable. They want to upgrade to SQL Server 2000, which makes me a little nervous...
Maybe your extra couple of inches mean your shoulder blades are above the plastic ridge at the back of the chair...
As for neck support, my old chair was an Obus Forme like the one on this page - in my opinion, the Aeron is not even remotely in the same league as this chair. My new chair (post-Aeron) is a Humanscale Freedom, and the way its headrest works (coming forward to actually support your head) provides good head and neck support.
Basically, I get the impression that the Aeron is a low-end chair masquerading as a high end chair, but I got suckered by the hype and actually bought one. My bad.
As for sitting cross-legged, it's just one of the most natural and comfortable positions for me. I'm slim and flexible, and in fact I think it's because my legs are long that it works well.
I think it's because they can't get past the idea that different doesn't necessarily mean better or worse, so, since *they* couldn't possibly be inferior, that which is different must be, that not to denounce the different is tantamount to admitting inferiority.
Aha, excellent point! A kind of offensive-defense of the ego boundary...
I have no idea why one sits cross-legged in a productive environment, buy hey, I'll admit it's difficult.
I do it because it's comfortable for me, and easy, given a chair that doesn't shred my ankles. As I said, try imagining that other people may be different from you.
I used to use an Obus Forme chair, before the Aeron, and now I use a Humanscale Freedom. Either blow the Aeron away - the Aeron was just plain unacceptable and unergonomic, for me. The Aeron I had was the large size. I gave it away.
When did you last look at the TCP/IP specs? When was the last time you thought that TCP/IP should have been encoded as XML (with the spec in the form of a DTD) to avoid the bother of using tcpdump or snoop to get a human-readable presentation?
When was the last time you saw a web page designer or web application programmer dealing with any of this stuff?
i'd guess that the poster doesn't have the chair set up correctly and therefore fidgets quite a bit
Why is it so difficult to believe that other people's experience is different than your own?
I've never in my life experienced anything remotely like "sweaty ass". Perhaps you had all your previous chairs adjusted wrong?
I doubt it. More likely, you have a very different body type and behavior from me. I'm tallish (6'3"), and the back of the Aeron bit into my shoulder blades, for example. It gives no neck support whatsoever, so is tiring over long periods, and the armrests didn't come up high enough that I could rest both elbows on them without slumping my shoulders, stressing the muscles in my upper back. You can't sit cross-legged in the damn things without a cushion - that sandpaper material shreds your ankles. Do you get the idea? I'm different from you, and no amount of fiddling with ergonomic levers will change that.
I think you simply haven't realized quite how useful it is, in real life, for information to be human-readable. When it isn't, it becomes harder to deal with. If you've programmed anything on the web, you're certainly familiar with using "View Source" to see the final source of a page. If you use XML, you've also examined XML data that's been generated by, say, a database server.
Contrast that with what I'm dealing with right now: I'm using JDBC to access an MS SQL Server. MS bought their SQL Server from Sybase many years ago, and inherited the binary TDS data stream protocol. As efficient as this might be, when you run into problems, you're in trouble. The TDS format is undocumented, so you can't easily determine what the problem might be, whereas a text format would be easy to debug. Anytime you have a binary protocol, you become totally reliant on the tools that are available to interpret that protocol. With text protocols, you're much less restricted.
Another example of this is standard Unix-based email systems vs. Microsoft Exchange. Exchange uses a proprietary database for its message base, which makes it effectively inaccessible to anything but specialized tools and a poorly-designed API. If your email is stored in some kind of text format, OTOH, there are a wealth of tools that can deal with it, right down to simple old grep.
The bottom line is that the human-readability (and writability!!) of HTML was one of the major factors in the success of the web. It's no coincidence that everything on the web, and many other successful protocols, such as SMTP, are text-based. To paraphrase your subject line, binary protocols are BAD BAD BAD.
Calling human-readable formats "irrational" is a bit like Spock on Star Trek calling things "illogical" - what that usually really meant was that the actual logic of the situation wasn't understood. What's irrational is encoding important information, which needs to be examined by humans for all sorts of reasons that go beyond what you happen to have imagined, into a format which humans can't easily read.
Human-readable formats and protocols will remain important until humans have been completely "taken out of the loop" of programming computers (which means not in the forseeable future).
How hard is it to do a search of your own website for "Curl"?
But that would require acknowledging that another whole day has gone by without some adrenalin-boosting new thing to obsess over... timothy's heart couldn't handle the pressure drop!
Linux thrived before corporations like internet.com and VALinux came along, and it will continue to thrive even if they all die. There's more happening in the Linux world than ever right now, what with embedded applications, supercomputers, etc.
But if you're just a consumer waiting around for some company to convince you that something is neat, then you may be out of luck during the current corporate contraction. If you want excitement and new stuff, get involved for real - subscribe to some mailing lists related to packages you're interested in, contribute, and help build the next exciting thing. If you can't program, try testing, documenting, or compiling faqs.
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Security here, thank you. We now have enough information to identify you and revoke your security clearance. Please surrender your belongings to the gentlemen in black suits who will strip-search you on the way out...
Certainly the applications become smarter, because they have to. But at the same time, the hardware must become smarter. In the game world, video cards have all become much more powerful and support a more consistent set of services than they used to, and game developers benefit from this. By the same token, right now developers have to write their way around NAT and proxies etc., but it can't and won't stay that way: the current Internet architecture is seriously limiting and doesn't even provide particularly good security.
That's where something like Mono/Passport is a good solution. Who you are is resolvable and reachable from ANYWHERE.
You're talking about a higher level of operation - directory services, essentially - that still requires an addressing and routing solution at a lower level. The point is that the current addressing and routing mechanism is already obsolete, most people just don't realize it yet because they don't understand what's under the hood.
Forth is a very cool language: I first used it running on an Apple ][ a couple of decades ago, to write programs to control lasers for laser shows at a planetarium. The combination of interactiveness and performance was great - it allowed details of a show to be reliably tweaked right before and even during a show. This was one of those situations where the tool really made a difference to the end result. Other languages available on the Apple at the time couldn't really compete.
I don't have a question for Chuck, but I'll come back when I think of one.
Compared to the "full size" Raptor helicopter I fly, with its 48" rotor diameter, the Piccolo is tiny. The smaller size and lighter weight of the Piccolo's rotors also means that they store less energy when spinning, so it's possible to crash a Piccolo without completely destroying the rotors every time (my Raptor's heavier rotors turn into toothpicks when it crashes...)
However, don't buy a model heli and expect to be able to fly it straight off, if you don't already know how - it's not as easy as it looks. One of the simulator software packages like RealFlight Deluxe will help you learn to fly and save lots of money in parts (ask me how I know).
Here's the URL spelled out in full to get past the $&#$(! filter: http://www.intc.com/pressroom/archive/releases/dp1 02599.htm
I mean, what makes you the arbiter of offense all of a sudden?
And what makes you the arbiter of what a serious Catholic or Christian is?
Do you think Jesus would have "taken offense" at these movies? If so, why? Was he "a serious Christian"?
Perhaps you object to these movies because they too accurately skewer your own irrational use of dogma to back up your bigoted opinions?
It doesn't. Another example of silly people being paid undue attention to by sillier media. If astronomy continues in this way, it is in danger of being classified as a social science.
Nah, RMS only developed the bits that suck. The cool stuff was developed by some Finnish guy.
Yes, that's the point. The original statement I made was "The logic behind it doesn't have to make sense". That would make it unsound logic. This fits the Oxford definition you quoted perfectly, so I don't really need to defend the Merriam-Webster definitions I gave.
Nevertheless, I'll give it a shot. The first definition I quoted is essentially equivalent to your Oxford definition: "sound or unsound" vs. "valid or faulty". So there's really no problem there.
The other one, "something that forces a decision apart from or in opposition to reason", is perhaps a little more subtle. My interpretation of this would be that the "logic" being defined here necessarily refers to a different system of reasoning than the one referred to by the word "reason" in the definition. As in the FSF example, the FSF may have some logic which leads them to their conclusion; an outsider might find their conclusion "in opposition to reason" because they're using a different system of reasoning. We're talking about English here, not computer science or formal logic, and multiple implicit points of view in a definition are par for the course. English is full of examples of the word "logic" being used to describe a faulty chain of reasoning.
Of course. I don't think anybody does anything that doesn't make sense from their perspective(pretty broad statement, I know, but valid).
Right, but my implied point is that if they had a broader perspective, either entity might make decisions that serve their interests better in the long run. This is often referred to as "enlightened self-interest", and the logical relativism we're discussing is central to this.
I don't know anything about IIS users, but seems to me anyone who cuts off bits of their children's genitals is truly savage...
The benefits of multi-vendor Java over single-vendor VB are too numerous to list here, starting with the fact that Java is a decently designed language (although certainly not perfect).
In this case, the logic behind GNU/Linux may in fact make sense from a certain FSF perspective, just as Microsoft's decision to repeatedly screw its customers makes sense to Microsoft. But neither approach necessarily make sense to those on the outside, nor even for the FSF or Microsoft's own long-term interests, because their "logic" is predicated on the way they see themselves, not the way others see them.
If lumping the FSF and Microsoft together seems a bit harsh, there's actually a connection: smart programmers aren't necessarily smart at human relations.
The FSF doesn't help its credibility with these sort of tactics.
Good luck on putting that SQL 7 out of its misery. The folks I'm thinking of have too much pure, unadulterated Transact-SQL code to even think about such a thing...
What version of SQL Server is shutting down on you? I'm curious because one of my clients is using SQL Server 6.5, which is actually pretty stable. They want to upgrade to SQL Server 2000, which makes me a little nervous...
As for neck support, my old chair was an Obus Forme like the one on this page - in my opinion, the Aeron is not even remotely in the same league as this chair. My new chair (post-Aeron) is a Humanscale Freedom, and the way its headrest works (coming forward to actually support your head) provides good head and neck support.
Basically, I get the impression that the Aeron is a low-end chair masquerading as a high end chair, but I got suckered by the hype and actually bought one. My bad.
As for sitting cross-legged, it's just one of the most natural and comfortable positions for me. I'm slim and flexible, and in fact I think it's because my legs are long that it works well.
Aha, excellent point! A kind of offensive-defense of the ego boundary...
Well, I paid for mine. And later gave it to a friend.
I do it because it's comfortable for me, and easy, given a chair that doesn't shred my ankles. As I said, try imagining that other people may be different from you.
I used to use an Obus Forme chair, before the Aeron, and now I use a Humanscale Freedom. Either blow the Aeron away - the Aeron was just plain unacceptable and unergonomic, for me. The Aeron I had was the large size. I gave it away.
When was the last time you saw a web page designer or web application programmer dealing with any of this stuff?
I'm not the original 'i love you' poster, but I can tell you, that joke made me laugh out loud, a great way to start the morning.
BTW, when you reach karma cap (having a low id), it's pretty hard to get rid of the stuff, unless you're a compulsive troll.
Why is it so difficult to believe that other people's experience is different than your own?
I've never in my life experienced anything remotely like "sweaty ass". Perhaps you had all your previous chairs adjusted wrong?
I doubt it. More likely, you have a very different body type and behavior from me. I'm tallish (6'3"), and the back of the Aeron bit into my shoulder blades, for example. It gives no neck support whatsoever, so is tiring over long periods, and the armrests didn't come up high enough that I could rest both elbows on them without slumping my shoulders, stressing the muscles in my upper back. You can't sit cross-legged in the damn things without a cushion - that sandpaper material shreds your ankles. Do you get the idea? I'm different from you, and no amount of fiddling with ergonomic levers will change that.
Contrast that with what I'm dealing with right now: I'm using JDBC to access an MS SQL Server. MS bought their SQL Server from Sybase many years ago, and inherited the binary TDS data stream protocol. As efficient as this might be, when you run into problems, you're in trouble. The TDS format is undocumented, so you can't easily determine what the problem might be, whereas a text format would be easy to debug. Anytime you have a binary protocol, you become totally reliant on the tools that are available to interpret that protocol. With text protocols, you're much less restricted.
Another example of this is standard Unix-based email systems vs. Microsoft Exchange. Exchange uses a proprietary database for its message base, which makes it effectively inaccessible to anything but specialized tools and a poorly-designed API. If your email is stored in some kind of text format, OTOH, there are a wealth of tools that can deal with it, right down to simple old grep.
The bottom line is that the human-readability (and writability!!) of HTML was one of the major factors in the success of the web. It's no coincidence that everything on the web, and many other successful protocols, such as SMTP, are text-based. To paraphrase your subject line, binary protocols are BAD BAD BAD.
Calling human-readable formats "irrational" is a bit like Spock on Star Trek calling things "illogical" - what that usually really meant was that the actual logic of the situation wasn't understood. What's irrational is encoding important information, which needs to be examined by humans for all sorts of reasons that go beyond what you happen to have imagined, into a format which humans can't easily read.
Human-readable formats and protocols will remain important until humans have been completely "taken out of the loop" of programming computers (which means not in the forseeable future).
But that would require acknowledging that another whole day has gone by without some adrenalin-boosting new thing to obsess over... timothy's heart couldn't handle the pressure drop!
But if you're just a consumer waiting around for some company to convince you that something is neat, then you may be out of luck during the current corporate contraction. If you want excitement and new stuff, get involved for real - subscribe to some mailing lists related to packages you're interested in, contribute, and help build the next exciting thing. If you can't program, try testing, documenting, or compiling faqs.