I don't see any way that we aren't screwed anyway. Unless everything we think we know about cosmology and physics is wrong, the Universe is going to eventually experience one of two things: Heat Death or collapsing into a Singularity. Neither of those scenarios seems to leave much hope for the continued existence of human life.
Well, yes. However, it would be nice for the species to be around a very long time, IMHO. When you consider all the dangers that can (and will) befall a single planet, it would be a very good risk reduction strategy to diversify and colonize somewhere, anywhere. Eventually the species is gone, yes. Whether that occurs within the order of hundreds of years or 10^14 years is largely dependent on what we decide to do with ourselves.
The main problem with SC4 is that it's horribly unbalanced. You can't keep anyone happy without spending money that you can't recoup. Occasionally, your town will just stop growing. Period. The only way to get it growing again is to tear the holy living crap out of something, get everyone pissed off at you, then put it all back. This somehow elevates you to "awesome mayor" status, since Sims apparently have no long-term memory. The problem is, it also costs money that would've otherwise bought the hospital or police station that you actually need. So then your city starts growing again, but they're mildly pissed, and you're short on cash. Worst case (and unfortunately, also the most likely case), you'll have a population boom you can't afford. That spells imminent doom and decay for your city, and probably another growth stall. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
If you micromanage all of your services (only fund to the level they're being used) you'll have a nice cash surplus once your city is a good size.
You're right that there are a lot of problems though. I suspect that the beta testing in SC4 was quite lacking. I've found that many of the problems are related to pathfinding, max commute time, and lack of industrial jobs. These problems are largely fixed with some third party hacks (www.simtropolis.com). Get the Network Addon Mod, the industry quadrupler, and some bus, train, and subway stations with respectable capacities. There's also quite a lot of other downloadable content that help keep the game fresh. In short, with the third-party content, it's a pretty good/interesting simulation. Whether or not you find that "fun" is a matter of personal taste.
Besides, with most software being single-threaded I don't know if a consumer will immediately need more than 4 cores for a while. I can still see software companies trying to come up with ways to keep all 80 cores busy
You're ignoring the server market, where the applications tend to be highly multi-threaded, and it's not difficult at all to keep your CPUs busy.
Kid: Hey, who left all this garbage on the steps of Congress? Amendment: I'm not garbage.
(starts singing)
I'm an amendment-to-be, yes an amendment-to-be, And I'm hoping that they'll ratify me.
There's a lot of flag-burners, Who have got too much freedom, I want to make it legal For policemen to beat'em.
'Cause there's limits to our liberties, At least I hope and pray that there are, 'Cause those liberal freaks go too far.
(spoken) Kid: But why can't we just make a law against flag-burning? Amendment: Because that law would be unconstitutional. But if we changed the Constitution... Kid: Then we could make all sorts of crazy laws! Amendment: Now you're catching on! Kid: What if people say you're not good enough to be in the Constitution?
(sings)
Amendment: Then I'll crush all opposition to me, And I'll make Ted Kennedy pay. If he fights back, I'll say that he's gay.
(spoken) Congressman: Good news, Amendment! They ratified ya! You're in the US Constitution! Amendment: Oh yeah!
Davidson has the right to change the content on his server any time he chooses. He could have just renamed or deleted the image files and left McCaine with a bunch of red X's on the McCaine site. As other contributors have suggested Mr. Davidson could have chosen other even less friendly images to host on Mr. Davidson's very own privately held server using services for which Mr. Davidson is paying.
While there is a certain amount of vigilante justice to that (and I'd be sorely tempted to do the same thing in his shoes) Davidson is probably going to be in legal trouble for this. You see, tort law is all about intent. It will be difficult to prove malicious intent on McCaine's part in this (his web guy was probably too dumb to realize that wasn't hosting the image himself). On the other hand, it would be easy to prove malicious intent on Davidson's part. The intent is what would probably skew the case in McCaine's favor. If I were the judge, Davidson would win, but there's a reason they don't put me on the bench:)
You're talking about an old setup, probably with a bad ballast.
Try one of the new CFL bulbs. They don't run at 60hz, so they don't buzz or flicker. You can even get bulbs that are a similar color temperature to incandescents.
Until there's some way to put these videos on your TV without offending the MPAA (Not everyone has a HTPC), DVDs will always have the advantage. Not to mention the low amount of people I know that have the necessary bandwith for this service.
Tivo. They already have a "TivoCast" service that lets you download video clips from the internet. All they need to do is create their own movie service, or partner with someone like Netflix, and they can offer movies on demand. Likely, the way you'll do it is "queue" your movies like you do with Netflix, but the movies would be "delivered" over a day or two via your internet connection instead of via postal service. Once you delete your "active" movie, the next movie would start downloading. It's quite simple really.
The only thing it does is mandate that all derivitve works also have to be GPLed. That makes the GPL one of the most restrictive "open source" licenses out there. MIT, Apache, BSD, and others do not have this restriction, allowing that code to be incorporated into non-GPLed works.
I would argue that we should use a method in which patents are universal, that is, a patent holder can either keep everyone from using his patent, or no one.
I'm sure I'm missing things, of course, so feel free to point them out...
Despite what most people think, the primary reason for patenting something is not to keep everyone else from doing the same thing (That's a trade secret). Patents are about licensing technology. Patents are open for anyone to read, and are written with enough detail so someone else can implement the invention. The idea is that if you like an invention and want to use it, you will pay royalties to the patent holder. A company need not buy out a given patent completely in order to use it, they only need to license it for their use.
Of course, if a patent holder is trying to obtain huge licensing fees for doing something obvious, this model falls down. That's what we hear about all the time, but it is not the reason patents exist, nor are how they are broadly used... it's a flaw in an imperfect, but well meaning, system.
However, other individuals, including civilians, who commit hostile acts and are captured do not have these protections. For example, civilians in an occupied territory are subject to the existing penal laws. (Convention IV, Art. 64)
(From Wikipedia on Convention IV)
Article 3 describes minimal protections which must be adhered to by all individuals within a signatory's territory (regardless of citizenship or lack thereof): Noncombatants, combatants who have laid down their arms, and combatants who are hors de combat (out of the fight) due to wounds, detention, or any other cause shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, including prohibition of outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment. The passing of sentences must also be pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples. Article 3's protections exist even if one is not a Protected person.
I fail to see how we could say that this article of the Geneva conventions does not apply to these people, since it applies to virtually everyone. The administration is simply wrong in stating that none of the articles of the Geneva Conventions apply at all. Regardless of what we decide to call these people, basic human protections are simply mandatory.
Exactly what would be tangible evidence, in your opinion?
We can measure the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. That's tangible. We can measure the global temperature over time. That's also tangible. We can experimentally prove that CO2 causes warming in the lab. Seems pretty tangible to me. We know the mechanism, and we've measured the inputs and outputs.
The part you're having trouble with is in thinking that CO2 levels are the ONLY cause of temperature change. That's just silly. Obviously there can be and are variations in the temperature plot due to other factors. Does that automatically discount the theory?
Yeah, there are some sucky things about Kyoto. China shouldn't be given a free pass to pollute.
To say that man's activity is warming the earth is unproven.
Here's what I don't get about the global warming naysayers: Which part of the science behind it are you disputing? Are you denying the research that's proven that CO2 levels have risen rapidly since the 1940s? Are you denying the causal correlation between CO2 levels and global temperature? Or are you (like many naysayers) flatly denying that billions of humans are capable of affecting the planet's ecosystem because the planet is "so big"?
Any of these points are easily debated, but just saying "I don't believe it" gets us nowhere.
I've wondered in the past why multi-core/multi-processor systems usually seem to have a power-of-two number of cores....
So perhaps it's a convention borne of parallel computing algorithm design? But there could be a more fundamental SMP architecture reason - anyone know?
The power of two rule seems to dominate the x86 and much of the UNIX space, but other server architectures, that have been doing SMP much longer than x86-based servers, don't really bother with it. For instance, the IBM zSeries mainframe is available 7 or 54 (and several other numbers) of physical CPUs installed. Depending on the configuration, certain cores may be switched off when you buy the machine, and a "capacity upgrade" will switch them on.
Note that the primary users of the zSeries are large businesses, not individual users, and a business manager might make the decision about how big a machine to buy, and business managers don't care about powers of two. I suspect the power of two rule for SMP is mostly to appeal to geeks that are just used to powers of two.
Design it from the ground up. Special use processors, memory, OS, communications protocols. Redesign everything from scratch. Make it completely unique.
If it doesn't run code that works on ANY other platform, then no one outside the company can write code for it.
I don't think that's a good idea at all. Security through obscurity has no place in a system as vital as a voting machine. Who is to say that the CEO (or some rogue programmer) doesn't have a political agenda. IMO, in order to be "secure" for voting purposes, the system must be completely transparent and completely auditable. The hardware specs should be available to the public, the machines coming off the assembly line should be verified by third parties against the specs. The code should be open source (available to everyone), audited, and the final version burned into ROM and available for bitwise comparison on demand in the deployed system. Physical security would take the form of a transparent enclosure, sealed by simple tamper-proof physical seals. Above all, the system MUST have a paper trail to check the accuracy of the final count against the value produced by the machine.
I know at my university, professors frown on (and sometimes penalize) the use of wikipedia because of its less-than-authoritative nature
When I was in college, my professors would frown on citing any encyclopedia. Encyclopedias, in general, aren't authoritative. They provide a good summary of a topic, and perhaps a good place to get general information, but if you're using them as your main sources on a research paper, you haven't done any real research. For this purpose, Wikipedia is usually better than Brittanica. The information is generally more practical and up-to-date, and is well linked to other references.
Cites? Sources? A single shred of empirical evidence published in an accredited, peer-reviewed journal?
Can I have some of what you're smoking? This is Slashdot, not an AMA meeting. Around here, almost nothing is ever substantiated. If you want make a strong argument by citing some sources, knock yourself out... you'll probably get mod points for it, but asking someone else for sources on their conjecture is a bit ridiculous. I, for one, read the comments in Slashdot not for accurate information, but for what the community is thinking. Sometimes it's enlightening, sometimes it's crap. Welcome to the digital, collaborative age.
If I could telecommute, I would gladly keep an "always on" webcam available so anyone who wanted could peer in if they wanted. I'd even let it record so it could be reviewed.
Not me. Any company that would rate me based on the number of hours I worked and not my productivity is not a company that I would want to work for. Anyone can put in long hours doing nothing, and that doesn't help the company at all.
Besides, much of the benefit of telecommuting is being able to work unshaven and unshowered in your bathrobe. A webcam would put the brakes on that.
I get to telecommute occasionally, roughly 1 day per week. I find that's about the right amount. I get to deal with my co-workers face-to-face much of the time, but also get my day of serious concentration in. Sometimes I get bothered more when I'm at home than when in the office, but generally it is easier to set aside time to finish real work. The time I would have spent commuting goes to the company, for the most part.
Perhaps someone else can explain why it's bad enough to warrent a criminal charge, let alone a felony? Is there some sort of child sacrifice, or puppy killing that goes on with online gambling that I missed?
It's about money - basically supply and demand. The idea is that there's a certian segment of the population that will spend (lose) a certain amount of money gambling. Who stands to gain from limiting the supply? The state government (via the lottery) and existing, brick-and-mortar casinos run by tribal concerns. If you gamble online, you're depriving existing gambling concerns of money that might otherwise line their pockets.
No dude, you're wrong. I suppose you can believe that with sufficient abstraction, you're right, but you're not. All that formal systems theory and Turing business is great talking about abstract systems running abstract algorithms, but such discussions have zero to say about anything having to do with HUMAN error, which is what we're talking about here.
I agree 100%. The number of bugs in a given program has everything to do with the human skill applied to the program, and human errors that occur while writing the program. The more the human is proficient in a given task, the fewer errors there will tend to be. After you have several years experience, and you start looking at code produced by junior programmers, the bugs appear to pop off the page. The fact is that when you're dealing with a high-level problem, as the vast majority of application problems are, you're going to make fewer mistakes in a higher level language, because your're utilizing code that has already been vetted under the covers. Those that are proficient at lower levels in the stack have written their code, so your code can focus on your problems. This has nothing to do with "Turing completeness" and everything to do with human programming skill and attention span.
It could instead be a defensive measure; the DOE doesn't want a private organization to build off of its research and then file their own patent, preventing a wider field from employing the technology.
This is a bad reason to file a patent. All that prevents someone from patenting the same thing is prior art, which neeed not be in patent form. All the government would need to do is publish this research to prevent someone from patenting it. Patents are supposed to be used when you want to license the technology to another company. It's much cheaper and more efficient to do a defensive publish than a defensive patent, which calls into question the motives for filing a patent in this case.
I don't mean to say the the new Iraqi government is the equivalent if Saddam's old regime. You'd have to be blind to think that. But the advantage of local, native police and military forces cannot be ignored.
Unfortunately, however, the majority of the Iraqi people believe that complicity with the new government is the same as complicity with the US, and that makes you a bad muslim, and a social outcast. The people of Iraq just don't believe in the new government, but it's obvious that many believe in the insurgency. I don't believe that most of the insurgents are religious radicals. They're fighting against the US, not for God.
The only solution for this that I can see is for the new government to force us out with such vigor that it wins over the populace. The new government will have all the power and security it needs once the people are behind it.
The only way to "win" this war is to lose it badly against the right opponent.
Sure, it could be nice, but do you really think that a great number of amazing programmers would eagerly step up and immediately start to maintain and improve Java? And in that doing a better job than Sun & JCP is doing right now? Don't think so...
Absolutely. We're not just talking about volunteers here. There are a lot of companies out there with a lot invested in Java. I'm sure they would love to have the opportunity to improve the core platform. Sun would still be involved in the maintenance, no doubt, so you'd be giving the cream of the crop of software engineers the ability to improve the platform, instead of a select few.
My case in point; At last year's JavaOne, there was a speaker (can't remember his name) that went into an insane level of detail on problems with finalizers, and he didn't work for Sun. If you gave him a swat at fixing the problem, it would just be taken care of, instead of being something that programmers have to "watch out for".
But Open Source Java? Nah... Not really needed. I disagree 100%. Not going open source means you lose the inherent benefits of that model. Sure, Java is already "good", but there are thousands of ways to improve it (it's still catching up to SmallTalk in many ways). Why not let the interested parties do so?
Slashdot Mirror
I don't see any way that we aren't screwed anyway. Unless everything we think we know about
cosmology and physics is wrong, the Universe is going to eventually experience one of two things: Heat Death or collapsing into a Singularity. Neither of those
scenarios seems to leave much hope for the continued existence of human life.
Well, yes. However, it would be nice for the species to be around a very long time, IMHO. When you consider all the dangers that can (and will) befall a single planet, it would be a very good risk reduction strategy to diversify and colonize somewhere, anywhere. Eventually the species is gone, yes. Whether that occurs within the order of hundreds of years or 10^14 years is largely dependent on what we decide to do with ourselves.
The main problem with SC4 is that it's horribly unbalanced. You can't keep anyone happy without spending money that you can't recoup. Occasionally, your town will just stop growing. Period. The only way to get it growing again is to tear the holy living crap out of something, get everyone pissed off at you, then put it all back. This somehow elevates you to "awesome mayor" status, since Sims apparently have no long-term memory. The problem is, it also costs money that would've otherwise bought the hospital or police station that you actually need. So then your city starts growing again, but they're mildly pissed, and you're short on cash. Worst case (and unfortunately, also the most likely case), you'll have a population boom you can't afford. That spells imminent doom and decay for your city, and probably another growth stall. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
If you micromanage all of your services (only fund to the level they're being used) you'll have a nice cash surplus once your city is a good size.
You're right that there are a lot of problems though. I suspect that the beta testing in SC4 was quite lacking. I've found that many of the problems are related to pathfinding, max commute time, and lack of industrial jobs. These problems are largely fixed with some third party hacks (www.simtropolis.com). Get the Network Addon Mod, the industry quadrupler, and some bus, train, and subway stations with respectable capacities. There's also quite a lot of other downloadable content that help keep the game fresh. In short, with the third-party content, it's a pretty good/interesting simulation. Whether or not you find that "fun" is a matter of personal taste.
Besides, with most software being single-threaded I don't know if a consumer will immediately need more than 4 cores for a while. I can still see software companies trying to come up with ways to keep all 80 cores busy
You're ignoring the server market, where the applications tend to be highly multi-threaded, and it's not difficult at all to keep your CPUs busy.
Kid: Hey, who left all this garbage on the steps of Congress?
Amendment: I'm not garbage.
(starts singing)
I'm an amendment-to-be, yes an amendment-to-be,
And I'm hoping that they'll ratify me.
There's a lot of flag-burners,
Who have got too much freedom,
I want to make it legal
For policemen to beat'em.
'Cause there's limits to our liberties,
At least I hope and pray that there are,
'Cause those liberal freaks go too far.
(spoken)
Kid: But why can't we just make a law against flag-burning?
Amendment: Because that law would be unconstitutional.
But if we changed the Constitution...
Kid: Then we could make all sorts of crazy laws!
Amendment: Now you're catching on!
Kid: What if people say you're not good enough to be in the
Constitution?
(sings)
Amendment: Then I'll crush all opposition to me,
And I'll make Ted Kennedy pay.
If he fights back, I'll say that he's gay.
(spoken)
Congressman: Good news, Amendment! They ratified ya!
You're in the US Constitution!
Amendment: Oh yeah!
From the Simpsons.
Davidson has the right to change the content on his server any time he chooses. He could have just renamed or deleted the image files and left McCaine with a bunch of red X's on the McCaine site. As other contributors have suggested Mr. Davidson could have chosen other even less friendly images to host on Mr. Davidson's very own privately held server using services for which Mr. Davidson is paying.
:)
While there is a certain amount of vigilante justice to that (and I'd be sorely tempted to do the same thing in his shoes) Davidson is probably going to be in legal trouble for this. You see, tort law is all about intent. It will be difficult to prove malicious intent on McCaine's part in this (his web guy was probably too dumb to realize that wasn't hosting the image himself). On the other hand, it would be easy to prove malicious intent on Davidson's part. The intent is what would probably skew the case in McCaine's favor. If I were the judge, Davidson would win, but there's a reason they don't put me on the bench
How can anyone stand it?
You're talking about an old setup, probably with a bad ballast.
Try one of the new CFL bulbs. They don't run at 60hz, so they don't buzz or flicker. You can even get bulbs that are a similar color temperature to incandescents.
Until there's some way to put these videos on your TV without offending the MPAA (Not everyone has a HTPC), DVDs will always have the advantage. Not to mention the low amount of people I know that have the necessary bandwith for this service.
Tivo. They already have a "TivoCast" service that lets you download video clips from the internet. All they need to do is create their own movie service, or partner with someone like Netflix, and they can offer movies on demand. Likely, the way you'll do it is "queue" your movies like you do with Netflix, but the movies would be "delivered" over a day or two via your internet connection instead of via postal service. Once you delete your "active" movie, the next movie would start downloading. It's quite simple really.
"The Santa Cruz Operation" always sounded more like the name for a wise-guy scam than something you would name your company.
Actually the Santa Cruz Operation (now Tarantella) had nothing to do with this. These lawsuits were started by The SCO Group (formerly Caldera).
The only thing it does is mandate that all derivitve works also have to be GPLed.
That makes the GPL one of the most restrictive "open source" licenses out there. MIT, Apache, BSD, and others do not have this restriction, allowing that code to be incorporated into non-GPLed works.
I would argue that we should use a method in which patents are universal, that is, a patent holder can either keep everyone from using his patent, or no one.
I'm sure I'm missing things, of course, so feel free to point them out...
Despite what most people think, the primary reason for patenting something is not to keep everyone else from doing the same thing (That's a trade secret). Patents are about licensing technology. Patents are open for anyone to read, and are written with enough detail so someone else can implement the invention. The idea is that if you like an invention and want to use it, you will pay royalties to the patent holder. A company need not buy out a given patent completely in order to use it, they only need to license it for their use.
Of course, if a patent holder is trying to obtain huge licensing fees for doing something obvious, this model falls down. That's what we hear about all the time, but it is not the reason patents exist, nor are how they are broadly used... it's a flaw in an imperfect, but well meaning, system.
If Microsoft funded SCO for any or all of the SCO v. IBM case, they got their money's worth.
If? The Microsoft-SCO connection is well documented. It wasn't a secret then, and it isn't now.
However, other individuals, including civilians, who commit hostile acts and are captured do not have these protections. For example, civilians in an occupied territory are subject to the existing penal laws. (Convention IV, Art. 64)
(From Wikipedia on Convention IV)
Article 3 describes minimal protections which must be adhered to by all individuals within a signatory's territory (regardless of citizenship or lack thereof): Noncombatants, combatants who have laid down their arms, and combatants who are hors de combat (out of the fight) due to wounds, detention, or any other cause shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, including prohibition of outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment. The passing of sentences must also be pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples. Article 3's protections exist even if one is not a Protected person.
I fail to see how we could say that this article of the Geneva conventions does not apply to these people, since it applies to virtually everyone. The administration is simply wrong in stating that none of the articles of the Geneva Conventions apply at all. Regardless of what we decide to call these people, basic human protections are simply mandatory.
when there's tangible evidence, we'll act.
Exactly what would be tangible evidence, in your opinion?
We can measure the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. That's tangible.
We can measure the global temperature over time. That's also tangible.
We can experimentally prove that CO2 causes warming in the lab. Seems pretty tangible to me. We know the mechanism, and we've measured the inputs and outputs.
The part you're having trouble with is in thinking that CO2 levels are the ONLY cause of temperature change. That's just silly. Obviously there can be and are variations in the temperature plot due to other factors. Does that automatically discount the theory?
Yeah, there are some sucky things about Kyoto. China shouldn't be given a free pass to pollute.
To say that man's activity is warming the earth is unproven.
Here's what I don't get about the global warming naysayers: Which part of the science behind it are you disputing?
Are you denying the research that's proven that CO2 levels have risen rapidly since the 1940s?
Are you denying the causal correlation between CO2 levels and global temperature?
Or are you (like many naysayers) flatly denying that billions of humans are capable of affecting the planet's ecosystem because the planet is "so big"?
Any of these points are easily debated, but just saying "I don't believe it" gets us nowhere.
I've wondered in the past why multi-core/multi-processor systems usually seem to have a power-of-two number of cores....
So perhaps it's a convention borne of parallel computing algorithm design? But there could be a more fundamental SMP architecture reason - anyone know?
The power of two rule seems to dominate the x86 and much of the UNIX space, but other server architectures, that have been doing SMP much longer than x86-based servers, don't really bother with it. For instance, the IBM zSeries mainframe is available 7 or 54 (and several other numbers) of physical CPUs installed. Depending on the configuration, certain cores may be switched off when you buy the machine, and a "capacity upgrade" will switch them on.
Note that the primary users of the zSeries are large businesses, not individual users, and a business manager might make the decision about how big a machine to buy, and business managers don't care about powers of two. I suspect the power of two rule for SMP is mostly to appeal to geeks that are just used to powers of two.
Design it from the ground up. Special use processors, memory, OS, communications protocols. Redesign everything from scratch. Make it completely unique.
If it doesn't run code that works on ANY other platform, then no one outside the company can write code for it.
I don't think that's a good idea at all. Security through obscurity has no place in a system as vital as a voting machine. Who is to say that the CEO (or some rogue programmer) doesn't have a political agenda. IMO, in order to be "secure" for voting purposes, the system must be completely transparent and completely auditable. The hardware specs should be available to the public, the machines coming off the assembly line should be verified by third parties against the specs. The code should be open source (available to everyone), audited, and the final version burned into ROM and available for bitwise comparison on demand in the deployed system. Physical security would take the form of a transparent enclosure, sealed by simple tamper-proof physical seals. Above all, the system MUST have a paper trail to check the accuracy of the final count against the value produced by the machine.
I know at my university, professors frown on (and sometimes penalize) the use of wikipedia because of its less-than-authoritative nature
When I was in college, my professors would frown on citing any encyclopedia. Encyclopedias, in general, aren't authoritative. They provide a good summary of a topic, and perhaps a good place to get general information, but if you're using them as your main sources on a research paper, you haven't done any real research. For this purpose, Wikipedia is usually better than Brittanica. The information is generally more practical and up-to-date, and is well linked to other references.
Cites? Sources? A single shred of empirical evidence published in an accredited, peer-reviewed journal?
Can I have some of what you're smoking? This is Slashdot, not an AMA meeting. Around here, almost nothing is ever substantiated. If you want make a strong argument by citing some sources, knock yourself out... you'll probably get mod points for it, but asking someone else for sources on their conjecture is a bit ridiculous. I, for one, read the comments in Slashdot not for accurate information, but for what the community is thinking. Sometimes it's enlightening, sometimes it's crap. Welcome to the digital, collaborative age.
If I could telecommute, I would gladly keep an "always on" webcam available so anyone who wanted could peer in if they wanted. I'd even let it record so it could be reviewed.
Not me. Any company that would rate me based on the number of hours I worked and not my productivity is not a company that I would want to work for. Anyone can put in long hours doing nothing, and that doesn't help the company at all.
Besides, much of the benefit of telecommuting is being able to work unshaven and unshowered in your bathrobe. A webcam would put the brakes on that.
I get to telecommute occasionally, roughly 1 day per week. I find that's about the right amount. I get to deal with my co-workers face-to-face much of the time, but also get my day of serious concentration in. Sometimes I get bothered more when I'm at home than when in the office, but generally it is easier to set aside time to finish real work. The time I would have spent commuting goes to the company, for the most part.
Now, if they'd move this to a Power Over Wireless, that'd be really neat (it's a joke, folks. no you don't have to laugh).
:)
Wireless power for very small electrical devices isn't that far fetched. Ever used a crystal radio? They were invented in 1906 or so.
Perhaps someone else can explain why it's bad enough to warrent a criminal charge, let alone a felony? Is there some sort of child sacrifice, or puppy killing that goes on with online gambling that I missed?
It's about money - basically supply and demand. The idea is that there's a certian segment of the population that will spend (lose) a certain amount of money gambling. Who stands to gain from limiting the supply? The state government (via the lottery) and existing, brick-and-mortar casinos run by tribal concerns. If you gamble online, you're depriving existing gambling concerns of money that might otherwise line their pockets.
No dude, you're wrong. I suppose you can believe that with sufficient abstraction, you're right, but you're not. All that formal systems theory and Turing business is great talking about abstract systems running abstract algorithms, but such discussions have zero to say about anything having to do with HUMAN error, which is what we're talking about here.
I agree 100%. The number of bugs in a given program has everything to do with the human skill applied to the program, and human errors that occur while writing the program. The more the human is proficient in a given task, the fewer errors there will tend to be. After you have several years experience, and you start looking at code produced by junior programmers, the bugs appear to pop off the page. The fact is that when you're dealing with a high-level problem, as the vast majority of application problems are, you're going to make fewer mistakes in a higher level language, because your're utilizing code that has already been vetted under the covers. Those that are proficient at lower levels in the stack have written their code, so your code can focus on your problems. This has nothing to do with "Turing completeness" and everything to do with human programming skill and attention span.
It could instead be a defensive measure; the DOE doesn't want a private organization to build off of its research and then file their own patent, preventing a wider field from employing the technology.
This is a bad reason to file a patent. All that prevents someone from patenting the same thing is prior art, which neeed not be in patent form. All the government would need to do is publish this research to prevent someone from patenting it. Patents are supposed to be used when you want to license the technology to another company. It's much cheaper and more efficient to do a defensive publish than a defensive patent, which calls into question the motives for filing a patent in this case.
I don't mean to say the the new Iraqi government is the equivalent if Saddam's old regime. You'd have to be blind to think that. But the advantage of local, native police and military forces cannot be ignored.
Unfortunately, however, the majority of the Iraqi people believe that complicity with the new government is the same as complicity with the US, and that makes you a bad muslim, and a social outcast. The people of Iraq just don't believe in the new government, but it's obvious that many believe in the insurgency. I don't believe that most of the insurgents are religious radicals. They're fighting against the US, not for God.
The only solution for this that I can see is for the new government to force us out with such vigor that it wins over the populace. The new government will have all the power and security it needs once the people are behind it.
The only way to "win" this war is to lose it badly against the right opponent.
Sure, it could be nice, but do you really think that a great number of amazing programmers would eagerly step up and immediately start to maintain and improve Java? And in that doing a better job than Sun & JCP is doing right now? Don't think so...
Absolutely. We're not just talking about volunteers here. There are a lot of companies out there with a lot invested in Java. I'm sure they would love to have the opportunity to improve the core platform. Sun would still be involved in the maintenance, no doubt, so you'd be giving the cream of the crop of software engineers the ability to improve the platform, instead of a select few.
My case in point; At last year's JavaOne, there was a speaker (can't remember his name) that went into an insane level of detail on problems with finalizers, and he didn't work for Sun. If you gave him a swat at fixing the problem, it would just be taken care of, instead of being something that programmers have to "watch out for".
But Open Source Java? Nah... Not really needed.
I disagree 100%. Not going open source means you lose the inherent benefits of that model. Sure, Java is already "good", but there are thousands of ways to improve it (it's still catching up to SmallTalk in many ways). Why not let the interested parties do so?