What kind of data does the government need to be collaborating on in real time? Seems like the left hand not knowing what the right is doing.
How does Groove archive data? Is there a centralized secure repository or is all of the data on client nodes, only as secure as that particular user chooses to be?
Neat in a way, but it sounds like a mess for doing real work.
When did a protocol become "faster" than a transmission technology?
The article is/.'d so I can't figure out wht this means - what transmission media/hardware are they using? I can make plain old TCP/IP 600,000 times faster than "DSL speeds" if I have hardware that meets that specification.
How many prominent scientists do you know are also qualified as astronauts? Analysis will always best be done here with data or samples collected there. No one is proposing sending a sophisticated research lab (fully staffed) to Mars. Human or robot, they will sending raw data to Earth for analysis.
Good thing we are already there, doing research. What else do you want? Do you want to go there? Why? The costs are ridiculous, the technology unavailable, and the results dubious. In fact humans are vastly inferior to robots for data collection, which is what any scientific mission is going to amount to unless you intend to fly the entire staff and facilities of the JPL, CalTech, various NASA labs etc. Unless you think you can stand in one place unattended for a week awaiting orders, you may want to consider giving the rock collecting job to a disposable robot.
I am convinced that the ultimate result of this wrangling will be a far more realistic view of the facts regarding human exploration in space. Far too many of society's views have been shaped by media (scifi etc) that portrays space travel as healthy, fruitful, and inevitable.
Sure, a user can choose to un-install their "complimentary" copy of windows and install Linux instead
Numerous vendors sell linux-preinstalled PCs. Any trivial web search will bring up numerous sources. There is no need to pay for Windows if you really do not want to.
I have purchased three PCs in the last four years with Linux preinstalled (one a laptop). I have purchased PCs with FreeBSD preinstalled. Don't tell me you can't find these on the web, numerous vendors are in this market.
What would you rather have, a four pound notebook that can index ten times the data in a second, or four hundred pounds of thirty year-old data records bending your bookshelf?
There has never been a robot or automated probe built which replaces the role of the scientist.
Agreed, but under any scenario, most of the scientific analysis is still done on Earth. We are planning on sending astronauts to Mars, not the entire faculty of CalTech. The best researchers and analysts are likely totally unqualified for space travel. No matter what, the presence on Mars is there to collect samples and transmit raw data, which is always better done by a robot.
Second, if you can hit something with a rock the size of a winnebago, you can neutralize basically any nonmoving target, so long as you can wait for the rock to hit, and it will be a "clean" "bomb". Any structure, any city.
And what is your delivery window for this? If its less than one half hour (and thats probably generous), you and all of your assets are DOA. In that time a capable enemy can have ballistic missiles (more than you can shoot down) in the air. In fact they could likely level all of your assets before your rock hits them. And since they will likely have a significant warning about your rock, they may even be able to stop it.
Once again you will have a tough time pinpointing this rock against your most likely adversary, who is likely already in the US by time they are ready to strike. Of course since you do not treat terrorism as war, I guess we would just be "scuffling".
How nice of you to limit it to such a historically short period, but I'll still play along. Do you honestly think a new precision targeted crater in the desert of Iraq wouldn't have an impact (pun intended) on relations with that country and the Middle East?
UGH! Is everyone here illiterate? We can ALREADY level the Middle East. Anything you can do with a rock from space I can do for 1% of the cost here, and the difference is my threat is tangible, yours is scifi.
First of all, a terrorist strike is not the future of warfare. It's the future of terrorism. By definition war is declared.
Terrorism is the future of warfare. In EVERY conflict since WW1 the number of non-soldiers killed in a major conflict has been rising dramatically. War is only defined by combat with other soldiers if you go back to the civil war or the wars of German unification. After that it is open season on non-combatants in increasing numbers.
Second, if you can hit something with a rock the size of a winnebago, you can neutralize basically any nonmoving target, so long as you can wait for the rock to hit, and it will be a "clean" "bomb". Any structure, any city.
Well in the most devastating attacks on the US in the last ten years, all of the combatants have been in the US before they attacked. So I guess your plan is to level a major US city in order to protect it.
95% of the cost of any of these missions will be the cost of keeping a human alive and in good health and to return that human to Earth.
Added to which the value of human observation is vastly overstated. No human can do what the Mars probes have already done. What human can stand in one place for a week and take measurements? The analysis is still done on Earth, the remote probe, be it human or robotic, is just fetching the samples.
Name one military scenario in the last twenty five years that would be mitigated by a threat from the moon.
If the threat is "total destruction", we already have that threat with nuclear subs, and that is far far more tangible than some hocus-pocus base on the moon.
Now lets move on to the future of warfare...i.e., Timothy McVeigh. Tell me how a base on the moon keeps him from levelling a building? 9/11...once again tell me how your moon base prevents twenty guys from levelling part of NYC and tanking the US economy for the cost of some box cutters.
Perl 6 is by all accounts a new language. Yes it will detect and parse Perl 5, but we can already do that now. How many coders will follow the new syntax and features? This is no small task, I have read all of the Apocalypse/Exegesis articles end-to-end multiple times and a lot of it still hasn't sunk in. This is a major change.
Then there are the practical issues - will Parrot be fast enough and mostly bugless in time for Perl 6 to sit on top of it? I am concerned that we will need eighteen months of point releases and we haven't even had an alpha yet. Meanwhile people are looking at Ruby, Python, Mono/C# etc.
I recommend they just wrap up whatever concepts they have now and start moving toward an alpha. If we don't see one in 2004 I think most people will have moved on.
I appreciate Damian's work in clarifying Larry's writings, but the perl 6 project has three years (timed from Larry's first Apocalypse) behind it with nary an alpha in sight.
I am sure something is coming down the pike, but making a huge announcement like a major rearchitect puts a lot of developers in suspended animation - unwilling to invest more time mastering and extending the "end-of-life'd" perl 5. Many of those people are now looking at other options.
As an aside, I'm not sure where the consensus is coming from for the new language proposals - the code samples in Larry and Damian's writings are becoming more and more cryptic. I wonder if they are making perl 6 to unapproachable by new coders.
But once again, think on a practical level - what is preferrable - right tool for the job, or the tool for which the developer pool is the largest?
If you go with a minority language you are going to be mining a much smaller set of developers. Ultimately you will pay more to develop your code - experts in minority languages are so because they want to differentiate themselves, and that also means more pay. Maybe you will find a ML guru who charges less than a Java guru, but I doubt it. And if you ML expert quits or gets sick, you are in big trouble.
Tools also level the playing field. Maybe the ML guru can get a project done faster using vi and a command line build tool faster than a Java programmer using vi and a command line build tool, but in fact the Java programmer has a huge number of labor-saving tools available that the ML programmer doesn't. These tools matter too.
OO has a long history, that is true, but OO in industrial/practical applications goes back further than you might think. People were "using" it in the 80s. OO is not a post-millennial fashion in tools.
It took garbage collection nearly 40 years to become widely accepted.
That is not a function of the network effects of GC, but rather a function of the performance of the hardware to make GC appear to be invisible.
The industry will come around to functional programming eventually
No one is disputing functional langs are better - in fact I stipulate such in my original post. My point was they have no network effect. Java's ubiquity (or Java-like langs such as C#) probably isn't even done its growth curve. You are at least going to have to wait for Java to go out of fashion before you can hope to get traction for an alternative. Try in 2010. I am not trying to yank your chain, I am just saying that the adoption curve for Java (which has incredible network effects) hasn't stopped growing yet.
I was weaned in college on Haskell, and I love it still, but the bottom line is that the programming language industry is a fashion industry. Functional languages are lacking a big corporate/open source backer to glamorize and promote their goodness. Java is a perfect example of how you can hawk a programming language to saturation regardless of its relative merits.
Network effects are what rules the programming tools industry. Network effects are whim to fashion. Fashion is ruled by those with the legitimacy to glamorize.
Could you please repeat that about low-grade tech skills to all of my recently laid-off friends with Masters of CompSci degrees and patents pending?
A degree is not an assurance of wealth, you still have to get out there. Yes its tough, but guess what? Thats life. While I hate to talk like a motivational speaker (I'm usually the cynic), the whining on this topic is incredible. I would say unless you start thinking of solutions instead of grumbling, you'll be lucky to land a WalMart job.
Well if your goal is to make everyone as miserable as you, this is a great way to start. The world economy would collapse within 72 hours if you shut off the currency markets.
You're right, we're all doomed. Lets just kill ourselves now. Actually, you go ahead and I'll stay here and figure out some way to survive in this horrid world!
Pick any useful tech that pays somewhere in the US. Go DEEP on it to the guru level if you can. If you are a C++ GURU or a Java GURU you will survive. People will pay for your talent. If you just skim the surface you are deadwood. Jack of all trades, master of none.
I would say linux kernel GURU level talent is in huge demand right now.
Alright Slick. I'm on board with you. I'll stop my whining. So tell: were are these jobs that can't be outsourced?
DEPTH. Go deep, very very deep in any tech, to the guru level, and you will be alive while that tech is alive. Become a linux kernel GURU. Become a C++ WIZARD. Become a Java GURU. You will be employed and survive.
If you dabble in a little here, a little there, you may or may not make it. No one needs a generalist.
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How does Groove archive data? Is there a centralized secure repository or is all of the data on client nodes, only as secure as that particular user chooses to be?
Neat in a way, but it sounds like a mess for doing real work.
The article is /.'d so I can't figure out wht this means - what transmission media/hardware are they using? I can make plain old TCP/IP 600,000 times faster than "DSL speeds" if I have hardware that meets that specification.
This would require an incredible amount of engineering support for practically no payoff.
How many prominent scientists do you know are also qualified as astronauts? Analysis will always best be done here with data or samples collected there. No one is proposing sending a sophisticated research lab (fully staffed) to Mars. Human or robot, they will sending raw data to Earth for analysis.
Good thing we are already there, doing research. What else do you want? Do you want to go there? Why? The costs are ridiculous, the technology unavailable, and the results dubious. In fact humans are vastly inferior to robots for data collection, which is what any scientific mission is going to amount to unless you intend to fly the entire staff and facilities of the JPL, CalTech, various NASA labs etc. Unless you think you can stand in one place unattended for a week awaiting orders, you may want to consider giving the rock collecting job to a disposable robot.
I am convinced that the ultimate result of this wrangling will be a far more realistic view of the facts regarding human exploration in space. Far too many of society's views have been shaped by media (scifi etc) that portrays space travel as healthy, fruitful, and inevitable.
Numerous vendors sell linux-preinstalled PCs. Any trivial web search will bring up numerous sources. There is no need to pay for Windows if you really do not want to.
I have purchased three PCs in the last four years with Linux preinstalled (one a laptop). I have purchased PCs with FreeBSD preinstalled. Don't tell me you can't find these on the web, numerous vendors are in this market.
There are choices for consumers and if they refuse to vote with their wallets, I have little pity on them,.
What would you rather have, a four pound notebook that can index ten times the data in a second, or four hundred pounds of thirty year-old data records bending your bookshelf?
Agreed, but under any scenario, most of the scientific analysis is still done on Earth. We are planning on sending astronauts to Mars, not the entire faculty of CalTech. The best researchers and analysts are likely totally unqualified for space travel. No matter what, the presence on Mars is there to collect samples and transmit raw data, which is always better done by a robot.
And what is your delivery window for this? If its less than one half hour (and thats probably generous), you and all of your assets are DOA. In that time a capable enemy can have ballistic missiles (more than you can shoot down) in the air. In fact they could likely level all of your assets before your rock hits them. And since they will likely have a significant warning about your rock, they may even be able to stop it.
Once again you will have a tough time pinpointing this rock against your most likely adversary, who is likely already in the US by time they are ready to strike. Of course since you do not treat terrorism as war, I guess we would just be "scuffling".
UGH! Is everyone here illiterate? We can ALREADY level the Middle East. Anything you can do with a rock from space I can do for 1% of the cost here, and the difference is my threat is tangible, yours is scifi.
Terrorism is the future of warfare. In EVERY conflict since WW1 the number of non-soldiers killed in a major conflict has been rising dramatically. War is only defined by combat with other soldiers if you go back to the civil war or the wars of German unification. After that it is open season on non-combatants in increasing numbers.
Second, if you can hit something with a rock the size of a winnebago, you can neutralize basically any nonmoving target, so long as you can wait for the rock to hit, and it will be a "clean" "bomb". Any structure, any city.
Well in the most devastating attacks on the US in the last ten years, all of the combatants have been in the US before they attacked. So I guess your plan is to level a major US city in order to protect it.
Added to which the value of human observation is vastly overstated. No human can do what the Mars probes have already done. What human can stand in one place for a week and take measurements? The analysis is still done on Earth, the remote probe, be it human or robotic, is just fetching the samples.
If the threat is "total destruction", we already have that threat with nuclear subs, and that is far far more tangible than some hocus-pocus base on the moon.
Now lets move on to the future of warfare...i.e., Timothy McVeigh. Tell me how a base on the moon keeps him from levelling a building? 9/11...once again tell me how your moon base prevents twenty guys from levelling part of NYC and tanking the US economy for the cost of some box cutters.
Then there are the practical issues - will Parrot be fast enough and mostly bugless in time for Perl 6 to sit on top of it? I am concerned that we will need eighteen months of point releases and we haven't even had an alpha yet. Meanwhile people are looking at Ruby, Python, Mono/C# etc.
I recommend they just wrap up whatever concepts they have now and start moving toward an alpha. If we don't see one in 2004 I think most people will have moved on.
I am sure something is coming down the pike, but making a huge announcement like a major rearchitect puts a lot of developers in suspended animation - unwilling to invest more time mastering and extending the "end-of-life'd" perl 5. Many of those people are now looking at other options.
As an aside, I'm not sure where the consensus is coming from for the new language proposals - the code samples in Larry and Damian's writings are becoming more and more cryptic. I wonder if they are making perl 6 to unapproachable by new coders.
If you go with a minority language you are going to be mining a much smaller set of developers. Ultimately you will pay more to develop your code - experts in minority languages are so because they want to differentiate themselves, and that also means more pay. Maybe you will find a ML guru who charges less than a Java guru, but I doubt it. And if you ML expert quits or gets sick, you are in big trouble.
Tools also level the playing field. Maybe the ML guru can get a project done faster using vi and a command line build tool faster than a Java programmer using vi and a command line build tool, but in fact the Java programmer has a huge number of labor-saving tools available that the ML programmer doesn't. These tools matter too.
OO has a long history, that is true, but OO in industrial/practical applications goes back further than you might think. People were "using" it in the 80s. OO is not a post-millennial fashion in tools.
It took garbage collection nearly 40 years to become widely accepted.
That is not a function of the network effects of GC, but rather a function of the performance of the hardware to make GC appear to be invisible.
The industry will come around to functional programming eventually
No one is disputing functional langs are better - in fact I stipulate such in my original post. My point was they have no network effect. Java's ubiquity (or Java-like langs such as C#) probably isn't even done its growth curve. You are at least going to have to wait for Java to go out of fashion before you can hope to get traction for an alternative. Try in 2010. I am not trying to yank your chain, I am just saying that the adoption curve for Java (which has incredible network effects) hasn't stopped growing yet.
Network effects are what rules the programming tools industry. Network effects are whim to fashion. Fashion is ruled by those with the legitimacy to glamorize.
A degree is not an assurance of wealth, you still have to get out there. Yes its tough, but guess what? Thats life. While I hate to talk like a motivational speaker (I'm usually the cynic), the whining on this topic is incredible. I would say unless you start thinking of solutions instead of grumbling, you'll be lucky to land a WalMart job.
Well if your goal is to make everyone as miserable as you, this is a great way to start. The world economy would collapse within 72 hours if you shut off the currency markets.
The rest of your rant...sure, why not.
You're right, we're all doomed. Lets just kill ourselves now. Actually, you go ahead and I'll stay here and figure out some way to survive in this horrid world!
Pick any useful tech that pays somewhere in the US. Go DEEP on it to the guru level if you can. If you are a C++ GURU or a Java GURU you will survive. People will pay for your talent. If you just skim the surface you are deadwood. Jack of all trades, master of none.
I would say linux kernel GURU level talent is in huge demand right now.
DEPTH. Go deep, very very deep in any tech, to the guru level, and you will be alive while that tech is alive. Become a linux kernel GURU. Become a C++ WIZARD. Become a Java GURU. You will be employed and survive.
If you dabble in a little here, a little there, you may or may not make it. No one needs a generalist.