1) Cost. Have you looked at how much it costs to licence an os like VxWorks or OS9? If you have any number of developers, your going to be paying a hundred grand for startup and the first years support. But that isn't the worst of it. You'll be paying $12-20 a chip for every system you ship to run that OS. And Linux is... oh, right, free.
2) Drivers. If you have any odd peripherals you want to connect up the system you're building, its handy of the drivers already exist for the OS you're using. This is much more likely to be true with Linux.
3) Customization. Especially if you're running on custom hardware, its nice to be able to get under the hood and tweak things appropriately. This is much easier if you have an open source OS.
4) Oh yeah, and in today's job market especially, its easier to find people with Linux experience than experience in FooBar commercial RTOS.
Minuses:
1) Hard realtime needs. If you can't get away with knowing that something will happen within a couple of milliseconds, not a couple of clock cycles, you're probably in trouble. This is an area where Linux for embedded applictions is currently lacking, but there are people working on it.
2)The only other minus I can think of for linux is size. But that's not even a huge deal. I mean, so what if FooBar propriatary RTOS has a 4K kernel? Who has memory needs that are that stringent these days?
The bottom line is, yes, there are a lot of systems that Linux is not yet right for. But if you can get away with it, its worth doing.
>Moreover, is it someone like our esteemed Mr >Katz who wishes to help shape the lexicon for >the new age because they realzie they lack the >ability to actually work with the technology >itself.
Ok, so I had the same difficulty stomaching this article too, but do your research before you start with the ad hominem attacks. David Gelernter is respect author and programmer (yes, well, how else to you get a CS position at yale?) with more than a little research under his belt. He was also seriously injured by the Unibomber, if you recall.
between knowing the "text" of the human genome, and understanding its contents.
Even the task of locating all of the gene is a long long way off. Note that the popular press articles say there are between "30 to 100 thousand" genes. In other words, we really have no idea how many there are, let alone where they are, not even mentioning what they do.
Sure its fun and scary to imagine a brave new world/ gattica situation where people are classified by their genes, but is it realistic? Is there a gene for "individualism"? I doubt it. Does having a raw map of the genome get us closer to breeding "perfect kids?" Not really.
These are interesting issues to think about, but I don't think we need to worry yet.
Hmmm... This is an oddly appropriate question, given that Hawaii was the birthplace of the first wireless data network, ALOHA Net, which was developed at the university of hawaii.
This is a little OT, because I don't usually use Napster, per se, but the concept is the same. In addition, let me say that I am not denying that there are people that rarely buy CDs because of napster. I'm just not one of those people, and here's why:
Convenience. Thats it.
I work at a company that, for one reason or another, doesn't have blazing net connections. Copying mp3s around our intranet, however, is quite snappy. A coworker will tell me about a band he likes, and point me to it on his machine. I'll copy it and listen for a while. If I don't like it, I delete it. If I do like it I will often go out and buy the album. Why? Well, I'm not sitting in front of a computer all day. I spend an hour each day in my car. I'm still on the empeg waiting list, so no luck there for mp3s. Sometimes I walk around. Oh yeah, there's the Rio. Except I think that shelling out for 32/64/128M of solid state memory with optical/magnetic media costing what they do is moronic. I'll wait for a portable CD/mp3 or a good solid microdrive player. I keep my computer in my room, but I spend time in the rest of my place. The CD carosel and nice speakers feel lonely when they aren't used.
Ok, so these are all technical concerns. I'm sure in a couple of years all of there things will be there. And maybe by then it'll make a difference, but for now I don't see myself stopping buying CDs.
Oh, yeah, and maybe I do feel a bit guilty violating copyright law. And not all record labels are evil. A lot of the music I buy is produced by small indy labels (e.g. Dischord,) and I have a hard time begrudging them their hard earned $$s. I guess I'm afraid that if I don't send my $9 postpaid to Beecher St. Ian McKaye will show up and kick my ass.
All of this is a lot like making tape copys. I used to do it, but if I liked the album, I'd go out and buy it. Better sound quality, etc.
I'm pretty much the only linux user at primarily NT based company (our product runs linux, oh the irony). We're behind a firewall, and we have an MS exchange mail server. We got hit hard, and our mail server went down thursday and didn't comeback up until monday afternoon. Which meant I couldn't send or recieve mail with my normal account. Which sucked.
If (or should I say when) Linux becomes a desktop force the wonderful free help that is out there is not the help Joe User will want. Hell, even I don't really like being told *RTFM* that much. They'll want to be able to call a live human being and get intelligable answers, not browse obscure FAQs.
Linux is still for the most part the domain of the DIY oriented tech savvy, but as that changes the need for real live tech support will grow also. I'm not saying that this means that LinuxCare's buisiness model is a sound one, just that there is (or at least, will be) a market for Linux tech support.
I have to say that I'm surprised and delighted at the lack of anti-Apple FUD in this thread. Every time I read a "apple is the best solution for DV" post I was expecting the obligatory 10 "apple blah blah sux !@$!@ closed source bastards mrrh mrrh protected memory blah preemptive multitasking frah frah steve jobs nah nah underpants" messages. And I didn't see any of that.
I suspect they will be priced (at least for now) so that Joe User won't be able to afford to buy one just for his pirate DVDs. IBM knows whose really going to buy these things for now. Maybe when this isn't spankin' new tech, and the price comes down a bit, they'll market these towards consumers. Frankly, right now the only people who would *want* a 75gig drive for personal use are probably reading slashdot.
This 66 page work is better classified as a novella than a novel. When King (or anyone other best selling author for that matter) chooses to release a full length work online rather than in print, it will be a much bigger deal. Paying for short fiction online is nothing new. You might have been able to find something of this length in Omni online before it tanked. Before you start swooning and proclaiming "print is dead," consider that this work probably never have appeared in print. A novella is an awkward and difficult length. To short for seperate publication, but too long to be carried in a magazine, this piece probably could only have reached the public in a collection or, more improbably these days, serialized in a magazine. Is it any wonder that his publisher went along with it? This is just a cagey attempt to get a wider readership for it (as well as getting him a rep. for being "cutting edge") And more power to him. That said, I doubt we'll be seeing his next full length novel anywhere but in print. Then again, maybe he was just getting his feet wet before a full scale dive into electronic media. Who knows.
Have you checked out going prices on domain names on ebay? I just did, and it doesn't make me want to jump right into the cyber-squatting business. Lots of folks with domain names they *think* are valuable putting them up with $1000000 opening bids, but no takers. The most expensive names that are getting bids are in the hundreds range, and even those are uncommon. No problem getting $10 bids on a name that cost $70 to register, though.
You had to have gotten up pretty early in the morning to get a name that is worth that much to someone (loans.com, business.com...)
If the poster does have a name of this flavor, I doubt that ebay is the forum for it, as the players who might want it probably don't spend their time browsing ebay for this kinda thing.
All this having been said, I don't know what the appropriate channels are. Maybe approching likely buyers individually. If the name is worth that much, it'll be worth your time.
Slashdot Mirror
Pluses for Linux:
1) Cost. Have you looked at how much it costs to licence an os like VxWorks or OS9? If you have any number of developers, your going to be paying a hundred grand for startup and the first years support. But that isn't the worst of it. You'll be paying $12-20 a chip for every system you ship to run that OS. And Linux is... oh, right, free.
2) Drivers. If you have any odd peripherals you want to connect up the system you're building, its handy of the drivers already exist for the OS you're using. This is much more likely to be true with Linux.
3) Customization. Especially if you're running on custom hardware, its nice to be able to get under the hood and tweak things appropriately. This is much easier if you have an open source OS.
4) Oh yeah, and in today's job market especially, its easier to find people with Linux experience than experience in FooBar commercial RTOS.
Minuses:
1) Hard realtime needs. If you can't get away with knowing that something will happen within a couple of milliseconds, not a couple of clock cycles, you're probably in trouble. This is an area where Linux for embedded applictions is currently lacking, but there are people working on it.
2)The only other minus I can think of for linux is size. But that's not even a huge deal. I mean, so what if FooBar propriatary RTOS has a 4K kernel? Who has memory needs that are that stringent these days?
The bottom line is, yes, there are a lot of systems that Linux is not yet right for. But if you can get away with it, its worth doing.
spreer
>Moreover, is it someone like our esteemed Mr
>Katz who wishes to help shape the lexicon for
>the new age because they realzie they lack the
>ability to actually work with the technology
>itself.
Ok, so I had the same difficulty stomaching this article too, but do your research before you start with the ad hominem attacks. David Gelernter is respect author and programmer (yes, well, how else to you get a CS position at yale?) with more than a little research under his belt. He was also seriously injured by the Unibomber, if you recall.
Just so you know.
spreer
between knowing the "text" of the human genome, and understanding its contents.
Even the task of locating all of the gene is a long long way off. Note that the popular press articles say there are between "30 to 100 thousand" genes. In other words, we really have no idea how many there are, let alone where they are, not even mentioning what they do.
Sure its fun and scary to imagine a brave new world/ gattica situation where people are classified by their genes, but is it realistic? Is there a gene for "individualism"? I doubt it. Does having a raw map of the genome get us closer to breeding "perfect kids?" Not really.
These are interesting issues to think about, but I don't think we need to worry yet.
spreer
Don't forget the two extra levels
I think you missed the point here:
He's not saying that research in this field is complete, and we can all stop doing it now.
He's say that it's stagnent, and people are content with the same old crap, when they should be out there innovating.
spreer
Hmmm...
This is an oddly appropriate question, given that Hawaii was the birthplace of the first wireless data network, ALOHA Net, which was developed at the university of hawaii.
I've been thinking about that.
I've just been daunted by the prospect of having to copy all my CDs to MD. Also, do you know of any car MD players?
Maybe there's a MD player in my future...
This is a little OT, because I don't usually use Napster, per se, but the concept is the same. In addition, let me say that I am not denying that there are people that rarely buy CDs because of napster. I'm just not one of those people, and here's why:
Convenience. Thats it.
I work at a company that, for one reason or another, doesn't have blazing net connections. Copying mp3s around our intranet, however, is quite snappy. A coworker will tell me about a band he likes, and point me to it on his machine. I'll copy it and listen for a while. If I don't like it, I delete it. If I do like it I will often go out and buy the album. Why? Well, I'm not sitting in front of a computer all day. I spend an hour each day in my car. I'm still on the empeg waiting list, so no luck there for mp3s. Sometimes I walk around. Oh yeah, there's the Rio. Except I think that shelling out for 32/64/128M of solid state memory with optical/magnetic media costing what they do is moronic. I'll wait for a portable CD/mp3 or a good solid microdrive player. I keep my computer in my room, but I spend time in the rest of my place. The CD carosel and nice speakers feel lonely when they aren't used.
Ok, so these are all technical concerns. I'm sure in a couple of years all of there things will be there. And maybe by then it'll make a difference, but for now I don't see myself stopping buying CDs.
Oh, yeah, and maybe I do feel a bit guilty violating copyright law. And not all record labels are evil. A lot of the music I buy is produced by small indy labels (e.g. Dischord,) and I have a hard time begrudging them their hard earned $$s. I guess I'm afraid that if I don't send my $9 postpaid to Beecher St. Ian McKaye will show up and kick my ass.
All of this is a lot like making tape copys. I used to do it, but if I liked the album, I'd go out and buy it. Better sound quality, etc.
Just my thoughts.
spreer
I'm pretty much the only linux user at primarily NT based company (our product runs linux, oh the irony). We're behind a firewall, and we have an MS exchange mail server. We got hit hard, and our mail server went down thursday and didn't comeback up until monday afternoon. Which meant I couldn't send or recieve mail with my normal account. Which sucked.
If (or should I say when) Linux becomes a desktop force the wonderful free help that is out there is not the help Joe User will want. Hell, even I don't really like being told *RTFM* that much. They'll want to be able to call a live human being and get intelligable answers, not browse obscure FAQs.
Linux is still for the most part the domain of the DIY oriented tech savvy, but as that changes the need for real live tech support will grow also. I'm not saying that this means that LinuxCare's buisiness model is a sound one, just that there is (or at least, will be) a market for Linux tech support.
spreer
I have to say that I'm surprised and delighted at the lack of anti-Apple FUD in this thread. Every time I read a "apple is the best solution for DV" post I was expecting the obligatory 10 "apple blah blah sux !@$!@ closed source bastards mrrh mrrh protected memory blah preemptive multitasking frah frah steve jobs nah nah underpants" messages. And I didn't see any of that.
spreer
I used to keep my cookies symlinked to /dev/null.
Cookies?
Sure, I'll take you're cookies. I just put them right over here...
I suspect they will be priced (at least for now) so that Joe User won't be able to afford to buy one just for his pirate DVDs. IBM knows whose really going to buy these things for now. Maybe when this isn't spankin' new tech, and the price comes down a bit, they'll market these towards consumers. Frankly, right now the only people who would *want* a 75gig drive for personal use are probably reading slashdot.
This 66 page work is better classified as a novella than a novel. When King (or anyone other best selling author for that matter) chooses to release a full length work online rather than in print, it will be a much bigger deal. Paying for short fiction online is nothing new. You might have been able to find something of this length in Omni online before it tanked. Before you start swooning and proclaiming "print is dead," consider that this work probably never have appeared in print. A novella is an awkward and difficult length. To short for seperate publication, but too long to be carried in a magazine, this piece probably could only have reached the public in a collection or, more improbably these days, serialized in a magazine. Is it any wonder that his publisher went along with it? This is just a cagey attempt to get a wider readership for it (as well as getting him a rep. for being "cutting edge") And more power to him. That said, I doubt we'll be seeing his next full length novel anywhere but in print. Then again, maybe he was just getting his feet wet before a full scale dive into electronic media. Who knows.
spreer
Have you checked out going prices on domain names on ebay? I just did, and it doesn't make me want to jump right into the cyber-squatting business. Lots of folks with domain names they *think* are valuable putting them up with $1000000 opening bids, but no takers. The most expensive names that are getting bids are in the hundreds range, and even those are uncommon. No problem getting $10 bids on a name that cost $70 to register, though.
You had to have gotten up pretty early in the morning to get a name that is worth that much to someone (loans.com, business.com...)
If the poster does have a name of this flavor, I doubt that ebay is the forum for it, as the players who might want it probably don't spend their time browsing ebay for this kinda thing.
All this having been said, I don't know what the appropriate channels are. Maybe approching likely buyers individually. If the name is worth that much, it'll be worth your time.
spreer