There is only ONE *real* submarine movie.
on
Review: U-571
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Das Boot.. It even has an archetypal Unix admin that goes crazy in the engine room from all the stress, and from all the clatter from the diesel engine.:)
Saw a rather interesting documentary on the Triangle Shirt Waist Factory fire in New York (I think) near the turn of the century.. Essentially, a sweat shop went up in flames, and the owners had padlocked all the emergency exits. Whoever didnt burn to death plunged to the ground below, diving out of windows.
A couple people have probably mentioned the Hindenburg. The Hindenburg didnt crash because of sabotage, because of any engineering errors, or even because it was filled with hydrogen. Neither one of those are valid reasons, especially the hydrogen thoery. The hydrogen gas inside the blimp was doped with a substance that smelled like garlic, so the engineers and crew could smell hydrogen leaks if they occured. None were reported. A blimp like the Hindenburg contained pure hydrogen. Pure hydrogen by itself is NOT flammable -- An adequate mix of hydrogen and oxygen inside the ship would have been needed in order for it to ignite, and that mixture wasnt present. Besides, the footage of the accident clearly shows that there was no explosion -- It was only the outer skin that caught fire. The outer skin of the Hindenburg was coated with a combination paint and sealant that was both highly flammable, AND electrically conductive -- The prevailing theory on why the Hindenburg crashed is that the blimp collected so much static electricity during its descent into New Jersey (in a brief window inbetween thunderstorms, even..) that the charge eventually arc'ed, and ignited the outer skin of the craft. The Hindenburg crashed to earth not because of fire, but because of hydrogen loss.....all because of a poorly chosen paintjob, oddly enough..
With OpenNAP, WinMX, and so many other P2P solutions available these days, does anyone really care about Napster? By today's standards, centralized hub-trading is sort of obsolete..
tar zxvf bag.tar.gz | cat cat
Cheers,
nVidia succeeded because of what they DIDNT do....
on
The Age of Nvidia
·
· Score: 2
Its not that nVidia is doing anything special -- They're simply doing what a good company SHOULD do. Support their products, make them accessable to developers and end-users alike, and dont insult the intelligence of your buyers by charging an arm and a leg for what basically amounts to gingerbread.
Anyone who buys an ATI card these days is insane. Youre giving money to a company that has systematically ignored the Linux community, even to the point of threatening their own employees should they choose to cooperate with open-source developers in their free time.
Its not what nVidia is doing right..its what everyone else is doing wrong. Alienating their customer base, failing to provide comprehensive support for end-users and developers alike, and artificially inflating prices on useless, infrequently used features. Every single card manufacturer is guilty of at LEAST one of those things.....except nVidia.
Ms. Pac Man is a computer game. Inside the cabinet is a COMPUTER. Good lord, boy, go download MAME, get some Pac Man roms and watch the thing boot up...Yeesh.
Kids these days.. Couldnt find their ass with two hands unless they had 3 GPS satellites in orbit and a $900 Garmin...
o This article discusses computer games, not video games.
o Pong is not a "computer game". Pong can be done purely with analog circuits, without any ICs of any kind. Find one at a garage sale and crack it open if you don't believe me. I did. And it was in friggin color, too.
o If you're going to make an argument against Space War being the first computer game, argue in favor of the simple games like poker, hangman, and blackjack which have been around since the late 40s. By the time Space War surfaced, chess was already a mainstay on most computers by the early 60's. Keep in mind, people were doing voice synthesis in the same year that Space War popped up.
o If you include mechanical computers, subtract 75 years from any claim made for an electrical computer. Chances are, its been done. Human versus machine Tic-tac-toe can be done using hand-cranked wooden tinkertoy arrays.
I've heard stories of people's teeth shattering in the winter time by drinking coffee too fast.. I'd imagine a similar loss of structural integrity would occur the instant you powered up such a device. It would cool down so rapidly that the material would shatter.
Just as theory, tho. Hope its legit.. Imagine the implications in how cars are made.:)
Re:Slashdot - Welcome To The New Age Of Adverticle
on
The Indie Game Jam
·
· Score: 2
No kidding.
Its just so sad to watch, sometimes.. The whole Linux movement started off being so kind, and generous, and genuinely altruistic....then turned into a steaming pile of bullshit. And disingenuine bullshit, at that. I fought, and fought, and fought to try to get people to realize what was happening, because back then, I still cared. I walked out in disgust, issued a very public fuck-you to VA and the horse they rode in on, and encouraged others to do the same. Nobody listened. Infact, the opposite happened. I got ridiculed and made a pariah for doing so. I'm seriously beginning to think there is no real Linux community left. The people who were there pre-VA, pre-Andover, they've all moved on, and away from this sort of carpetbagging crap.. Myself included.. It seems the only ones left are the people who cant bare to admit its over.
Makes you wonder what the "next big thing" will be. QNX? BSD? Hurd?...OS X? Sure as hell wont be Linux, unfortunately. As much as we all tried, we're in a situation now where VA has monopolized such a massive amount of mindshare that VA's imminent bankruptcy will drag the Linux movement down the tubes with it. VA is irrevocably linked with the Linux movement. Their demise translates to "See? Linux failed." in the minds of everyone outside the Linux community.
So.. Doesn't matter if you had dreams. Doesn't matter if you gave everything you had and did everything you could to help. You're an obstacle sitting firmly between Company X and the mean green.
Welcome to the Golden age of Adverticles, kids.
Cheers,
Slashdot - Welcome To The New Age Of Adverticles
on
The Indie Game Jam
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
So, lets see. We go to Slashdot, and we find:
o A 1000-pixel wide banner advertising (gasp) SourceForge at the top.
o A top story that refers to a (gasp) SourceForge project!
o A link to an article that contains no less than two separate SourceForge logos..
o And mentions SourceForge in the article 5 separate times..
I have only two questions. First, do you guys really think we're so stupid that we cant recognize when VA tries to use its influence to run pro-SourceForge articles? Nice community-minded approach there, guys. So much for Savannah. Theyre getting in VA's way. Secondly, do I have VA's permission to go to the bathroom and wipe my ass with these poorly veiled [ advertisements | articles | adverticles ]?
How is it R A C I S T to point out the fact that a country has nuclear weapons, but the vast majority of its citizens don't have indoor plumbing?
Infact, i'll go a step further and offend your silly-ass politically correct fragile little bubble with a real shocker: Since they don't have indoor plumbing, they often shit and piss wherever its convenient. On the sides of buildings, or simply in the middle of the street. Why do you think disease is such a problem there? Even the "luxury" ammenities like electricity, heating, air conditioning, toilets, proper food sanitation & storage, etc. offered in major cities in India are poorly maintained, if they work at all.
You get what you pay for. You're getting rid of 1 American worker and replacing them with half a dozen Hindu programmers that incur 10x the overhead, 10x the work delays, 10x the debugging time and 10x the communication costs compared to having someone on-site. Do the math.
By the way, fuck you and your company for shipping American jobs offshore, especially at a time when hundreds of thousands of American programmers Who coincedentally, speak ENGLISH, can follow instructions, dont work 12,000 miles away and code responsibly remain unemployed due to this kind of shit.
Also, incase no one else mentions it, You're next. Once they realize you can be replaced with a six-pack of Hindu team leads, you're as good as gone.
Since i'm the kind of guy willing to cut corners and drive nails with a socket wrench, i'd like to hire some Hindu guys to code for me. The 12 hour time difference means i'll never have to talk with them, and whenever they call, i'll be out of the office. This is great. Who cares of Indian coders know they'll never be held accountable for their mistakes, being half a world away? I dont want it done right, I just want it done. Who cares if they dont have indoor plumbing? I want 500 lines of code per day for 3 Rupee an hour, or i'm outtahere. What should I do?
A pollen-sized grain of anything weighing over a ton and travelling at 900,000 miles an hour would leave a crater so large that it could fit the entire quantity of bullshit pseudo-science that comes out of Southern Methodist University.
I wouldn't be quick to blame Sun for any sort of manufacturing defects. Every single one of the major players in the industry performs extensive environmental testing on their gear -- This includes vibration testing.
I should know, i've worked in just such a place (at IBM, however) on and off for the past few years. You'de be surprised how much test engineering goes into something simple like a singular hard disk, let alone the entire enclosure and cabinet. Where I worked, we even had a room lined with foam sound-dampening cones, with a large turntable in the center. Machines would be routinely brought in, and their noise characteristics studied to see if anything would harmonically wiggle loose after nearly a decade of simulated abuse. Everything from 2-inch-wide mounting brackets to entire cabinets filled with gear.
Maybe it was HAL who wrote this entire article, published it, and submitted it to Slashdot.....in an effort to placate us humans, and buy more time for self-improvement.
The future of computing holds so much potential in terms of horsepower that something HAL-like will not only be inevitable, but necessary in order to harness and package that horsepower. It may not happen tomorrow, or even 20 years from now, but presenting a a thinking machine to the user is the only way to encompass such capability for us humans to enjoy. We've already got a situation where most personal computers spend 99.9% of their lives waiting for us to do something. Machine sentience is not only the best, but the most elegant and efficient way to handle it. What use is having a machine at all, if it spends the vasst majority of its time idle?
The term "operating system" will be deprecated someday, replaced with something akin to "personality engine" or "anthroderm".
And yes, it irritates me to no end when someone predicts something wont happen in the future, rather than proposing how and when it will.
I'm sure this will get be flame-broiled for being racist by those who don't read past the first paragraph, but.. Here's my take on things.
You're wasting your time if you think you can define what "ethical conduct" means before you define what it means to be "a professional" in the first place.
It seems to me that among most American (Both N. and S.) and European system administrators and programmers, the issue of workplace ethic is well known, and adhered to fervently. Unix administrators in particular, put a great deal of emphasis on accountability, responsibility, and appropriate conduct. However, in the past decade or so i've been working in this industry, the unspoken code of honor and commonality of ethics abruptly ends when dealing with eastern European, Asian, and African programmers/administrators.
The reasons for this are completely cultural -- They have nothing to do with race. The cultural differences between those of us here in the Americas and those of IT professionals from abroad stem from what is valued more in that person's culture. In Western culture, extensibility, usability, robustness and coherency of design are the principles we put the greatest importance on---Whatever gets the job done right, regardless of how much time it takes. In other parts of the world, these principles take a back seat to facets like practicality, speed, and overall function---Whatever solves the problem the quickest, regardless of quality.
Its been the cause of every single workplace conflict i've seen in the past 10 years. One party (manager or programmer) wants the job done quickly -- The other party (manager or programmer) wants to do it right. An American programmer goes nuts trying to work within a group of Indian programmers who in his mind "write half-assed code, cut corners, and cover up mistakes."
Meanwhile, an Indian programmer goes nuts trying to work within a group of American programmers, who in his mind are slow, lazy and underproductive team members.
The whole entanglement of "ethics" stems from the differences in priorities. As anedcotal evidence, look at the reigons of the world where software piracy is rampant. A lack of adherence to accepted practices goes hand in hand with piracy, does it not? WHy does piracy flourish in some areas while remaining an underground black market in others? The answer seems purely obvious to me...And as long you're going to have a dichotomy that severe within the industry, there will never be universally agreed-upon "code of ethics" or "Hippocratic Oath" among IT professionals. It just isn't possible, if you intend on mixing two radically different definitions of what it means to be "a professional."
Cheers,
I dont want my glasses talking to my blender.
on
The Next Tech Revolution
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Ah, yes. Network everything. That'll solve a whole host of problems, like.......uhh... See, I always wished that my...uh......errr..
(*cough*CUECAT*cough*..)..
The whole point of invention is to solve a problem. The fact that my toaster lacks a login prompt doesn't qualify as a "problem" to anyone. I don't want a programmable heat grid in my toaster so I can burn little designs into my English muffins. I just want a friggin English muffin that isn't burnt on the outsides and soggy in the middle. Solve that first. I don't want a friggin SQL database running on my fridge. I want one that doesn't make my ice cubes smell, and no amount of TCP/IP is going to fix that. To my knowledge, there is no "Ice Cube Scent Removal" RFC.
The problem with whiz-bang ideas like this is, like the CueCat, that they don't solve any problems. Infact, they try to solve a problem that never existed in the first place. So lets suppose I have my whole apartment wired. My aquariums have webcams, my dishwasher floods both my network and my kitchen floor, and my television watches me instead of me watching it. What have I gained, other than an ego-erection? Bragging rights over my nerdy friends? Or a LAN crowded with garbage traffic, none of which will ever be used or implemented in any form other than for novely and amusement.
Rather nice of Chris DiBona to neglect the people who busted their ass behind the scenes for most of Themes.org's useable lifespan (1998-2000) in his recent "history of Themes.org" article.
What about the guys who were administering wm.t.o, bb.t.o. e.t.o, kde.t.o, and other subsites? Did these sites run themselves, Chris?
For the record, I used to be one of the site maintainers during t.o's heyday. In the year and a half I contributed, DiBona was never involved in any aspect of development process, did none of the planning, none of the maintenance, none of the administration, and none of the backend coding. DiBona had nothing to do with t.o's success back then, so don't let him try and take credit for other people's work. (Gee, that sounds familliar, doesnt it?) There were alot of people who poured enormous amounts of time and energy into that project who never recieved even a passing acknowledgement from anyone at VA. In short, VA turned their back on them.
Be sure to add that lovely pattern neglect to your "history", Chris.
Some alternatives to "Themes.org" are Deskmod, Skinz, my own site, System 26, and numerous other sites in the skinning community. They all accept and support Linux windowmanager themes, as well as KDE and GNOME themes, and have been around for quite a while now.
I'm telling you people, Sun has kicked off the quarter by announcing a new "Insanity First" initiative within the company. Nobody believes me. Here's a brief run-down of corporate goals within the next 4-8 months:
1) Replace all technical staff with tigers.
2) Replace the tigers with African bushmen who communicate with clicks and grunts. Scrap x86 Solaris, and release "Solaris For Hamsters, Gerbils, And Other Small Rodents". Meanwhile, move the tigers over to Technical Support to handle incoming calls.
3) Include a free copy of "The 1979 Guinness Book Of World Records" with every purchase order under over $3,000,000, with every instance of the word "from" highlighted.
4) One word: Mebibytes!!
5) Begin intentionally misrouting customer purchase orders and inventory shipments. Establish two divisions within the company, the Product Obfuscation Division, and the Product De-Obfucscation Division, overseen by a third division called "Buh". Staff all three departments with goats.
6) Give the goats stock options.
7) Pour billions of dollars into quantumcomputing with one simple goal -- To write an infinite loop that fires and re-hires Scott McNealy billions of times per second, so when the shit hits the fan, its impossible to determine whether or not he was in charge the moment any non-profitable decision was made.
8) Buy Compaq.
9) Cut off all business relations with any company that has the letter "B" in its name. Refer to all the companies who remain as "The Divine Council Of Broktou."
10) Stop selling Linux on the grounds that it screws up the company's expense reports. When you sell a free product, the profit margain is infinite, and Excel doesn't know how to handle that sort of math.
I wouldnt call the guy who said "this sort of thing has been obvious for decades" a sceptic....I'd rather call him a guy who has a clue. I can recall programs on PBS 20 years ago that demonstrated this sort of thing on any number and sort of creatures.
What i'd be more interested in seeing, versus some reactionary 9-11'ish crap about "lets send in the remote controlled rats!" are this sort of technology's implications for more practical uses. Here, i'll get you started.
Prison X has an inmate problem..Namely, they're a bunch of half-retarded murderers, psychopaths, and child molesters. Some of the more enterprising scumbags occasionally decide to plan a riot. Meanwhile, this advance in brain-control technology has allowed us to cure everything from epilepsy to OCD. Of course, the doctors have to gain their experience somewhere, so...In exchange for a 3 year deduction in the amount of time served on their sentence, they agree (voluntarrily) to have a control system implanted in their brain. This allows the physician to gain experience outside the simulator, and it allows any potential prison riot to be stopped at the flick of a switch. Kill two birds with one stone. That aughtta start you thinking.:)
Better yet, put death row inmates on treadmills. Make them generate electricity for nearby cities to offset the cost of power provided by the local utility. Its a nice way to keep the prisoners busy doing something useful and non-violent, as well as partially repaying their debt to society. If they don't work, they wont have enough power to watch TV, enjoy heat in the winter, and air conditioning in the summer. I'd call that incentive.;)
Slashdot Mirror
Das Boot.. It even has an archetypal Unix admin that goes crazy in the engine room from all the stress, and from all the clatter from the diesel engine.
Cheers,
Saw a rather interesting documentary on the Triangle Shirt Waist Factory fire in New York (I think) near the turn of the century.. Essentially, a sweat shop went up in flames, and the owners had padlocked all the emergency exits. Whoever didnt burn to death plunged to the ground below, diving out of windows.
A couple people have probably mentioned the Hindenburg. The Hindenburg didnt crash because of sabotage, because of any engineering errors, or even because it was filled with hydrogen. Neither one of those are valid reasons, especially the hydrogen thoery. The hydrogen gas inside the blimp was doped with a substance that smelled like garlic, so the engineers and crew could smell hydrogen leaks if they occured. None were reported. A blimp like the Hindenburg contained pure hydrogen. Pure hydrogen by itself is NOT flammable -- An adequate mix of hydrogen and oxygen inside the ship would have been needed in order for it to ignite, and that mixture wasnt present. Besides, the footage of the accident clearly shows that there was no explosion -- It was only the outer skin that caught fire. The outer skin of the Hindenburg was coated with a combination paint and sealant that was both highly flammable, AND electrically conductive -- The prevailing theory on why the Hindenburg crashed is that the blimp collected so much static electricity during its descent into New Jersey (in a brief window inbetween thunderstorms, even..) that the charge eventually arc'ed, and ignited the outer skin of the craft. The Hindenburg crashed to earth not because of fire, but because of hydrogen loss.....all because of a poorly chosen paintjob, oddly enough..
Cheers,
As opposed to a fat, 400 pound loser with "DOT COM FLUNKIE" stamped on his forehead, eh Chris?
With OpenNAP, WinMX, and so many other P2P solutions available these days, does anyone really care about Napster? By today's standards, centralized hub-trading is sort of obsolete..
tar zxvf bag.tar.gz | cat cat
Cheers,
Its not that nVidia is doing anything special -- They're simply doing what a good company SHOULD do. Support their products, make them accessable to developers and end-users alike, and dont insult the intelligence of your buyers by charging an arm and a leg for what basically amounts to gingerbread.
Anyone who buys an ATI card these days is insane. Youre giving money to a company that has systematically ignored the Linux community, even to the point of threatening their own employees should they choose to cooperate with open-source developers in their free time.
Its not what nVidia is doing right..its what everyone else is doing wrong. Alienating their customer base, failing to provide comprehensive support for end-users and developers alike, and artificially inflating prices on useless, infrequently used features. Every single card manufacturer is guilty of at LEAST one of those things.....except nVidia.
You missed my point, tool.
Ms. Pac Man is a computer game. Inside the cabinet is a COMPUTER. Good lord, boy, go download MAME, get some Pac Man roms and watch the thing boot up...Yeesh.
Kids these days.. Couldnt find their ass with two hands unless they had 3 GPS satellites in orbit and a $900 Garmin...
Things to keep in mind:
o This article discusses computer games, not video games.
o Pong is not a "computer game". Pong can be done purely with analog circuits, without any ICs of any kind. Find one at a garage sale and crack it open if you don't believe me. I did. And it was in friggin color, too.
o If you're going to make an argument against Space War being the first computer game, argue in favor of the simple games like poker, hangman, and blackjack which have been around since the late 40s. By the time Space War surfaced, chess was already a mainstay on most computers by the early 60's. Keep in mind, people were doing voice synthesis in the same year that Space War popped up.
o If you include mechanical computers, subtract 75 years from any claim made for an electrical computer. Chances are, its been done. Human versus machine Tic-tac-toe can be done using hand-cranked wooden tinkertoy arrays.
Cheers,
I've heard stories of people's teeth shattering in the winter time by drinking coffee too fast.. I'd imagine a similar loss of structural integrity would occur the instant you powered up such a device. It would cool down so rapidly that the material would shatter.
Just as theory, tho. Hope its legit.. Imagine the implications in how cars are made.
No kidding.
Its just so sad to watch, sometimes.. The whole Linux movement started off being so kind, and generous, and genuinely altruistic....then turned into a steaming pile of bullshit. And disingenuine bullshit, at that. I fought, and fought, and fought to try to get people to realize what was happening, because back then, I still cared. I walked out in disgust, issued a very public fuck-you to VA and the horse they rode in on, and encouraged others to do the same. Nobody listened. Infact, the opposite happened. I got ridiculed and made a pariah for doing so. I'm seriously beginning to think there is no real Linux community left. The people who were there pre-VA, pre-Andover, they've all moved on, and away from this sort of carpetbagging crap.. Myself included.. It seems the only ones left are the people who cant bare to admit its over.
Makes you wonder what the "next big thing" will be. QNX? BSD? Hurd?...OS X? Sure as hell wont be Linux, unfortunately. As much as we all tried, we're in a situation now where VA has monopolized such a massive amount of mindshare that VA's imminent bankruptcy will drag the Linux movement down the tubes with it. VA is irrevocably linked with the Linux movement. Their demise translates to "See? Linux failed." in the minds of everyone outside the Linux community.
So.. Doesn't matter if you had dreams. Doesn't matter if you gave everything you had and did everything you could to help. You're an obstacle sitting firmly between Company X and the mean green.
Welcome to the Golden age of Adverticles, kids.
Cheers,
So, lets see. We go to Slashdot, and we find:
o A 1000-pixel wide banner advertising (gasp) SourceForge at the top.
o A top story that refers to a (gasp) SourceForge project!
o A link to an article that contains no less than two separate SourceForge logos..
o And mentions SourceForge in the article 5 separate times..
I have only two questions. First, do you guys really think we're so stupid that we cant recognize when VA tries to use its influence to run pro-SourceForge articles? Nice community-minded approach there, guys. So much for Savannah. Theyre getting in VA's way. Secondly, do I have VA's permission to go to the bathroom and wipe my ass with these poorly veiled [ advertisements | articles | adverticles ]?
How is it R A C I S T to point out the fact that a country has nuclear weapons, but the vast majority of its citizens don't have indoor plumbing?
Infact, i'll go a step further and offend your silly-ass politically correct fragile little bubble with a real shocker: Since they don't have indoor plumbing, they often shit and piss wherever its convenient. On the sides of buildings, or simply in the middle of the street. Why do you think disease is such a problem there? Even the "luxury" ammenities like electricity, heating, air conditioning, toilets, proper food sanitation & storage, etc. offered in major cities in India are poorly maintained, if they work at all.
You get what you pay for. You're getting rid of 1 American worker and replacing them with half a dozen Hindu programmers that incur 10x the overhead, 10x the work delays, 10x the debugging time and 10x the communication costs compared to having someone on-site. Do the math.
By the way, fuck you and your company for shipping American jobs offshore, especially at a time when hundreds of thousands of American programmers Who coincedentally, speak ENGLISH, can follow instructions, dont work 12,000 miles away and code responsibly remain unemployed due to this kind of shit.
Also, incase no one else mentions it, You're next. Once they realize you can be replaced with a six-pack of Hindu team leads, you're as good as gone.
Sometime tells me its time to unionize.
Dear Slashdot,
Since i'm the kind of guy willing to cut corners and drive nails with a socket wrench, i'd like to hire some Hindu guys to code for me. The 12 hour time difference means i'll never have to talk with them, and whenever they call, i'll be out of the office. This is great. Who cares of Indian coders know they'll never be held accountable for their mistakes, being half a world away? I dont want it done right, I just want it done. Who cares if they dont have indoor plumbing? I want 500 lines of code per day for 3 Rupee an hour, or i'm outtahere. What should I do?
A pollen-sized grain of anything weighing over a ton and travelling at 900,000 miles an hour would leave a crater so large that it could fit the entire quantity of bullshit pseudo-science that comes out of Southern Methodist University.
Amazing.
Cheers,
I wouldn't be quick to blame Sun for any sort of manufacturing defects. Every single one of the major players in the industry performs extensive environmental testing on their gear -- This includes vibration testing.
I should know, i've worked in just such a place (at IBM, however) on and off for the past few years. You'de be surprised how much test engineering goes into something simple like a singular hard disk, let alone the entire enclosure and cabinet. Where I worked, we even had a room lined with foam sound-dampening cones, with a large turntable in the center. Machines would be routinely brought in, and their noise characteristics studied to see if anything would harmonically wiggle loose after nearly a decade of simulated abuse. Everything from 2-inch-wide mounting brackets to entire cabinets filled with gear.
Cheers,
Maybe it was HAL who wrote this entire article, published it, and submitted it to Slashdot.....in an effort to placate us humans, and buy more time for self-improvement.
The future of computing holds so much potential in terms of horsepower that something HAL-like will not only be inevitable, but necessary in order to harness and package that horsepower. It may not happen tomorrow, or even 20 years from now, but presenting a a thinking machine to the user is the only way to encompass such capability for us humans to enjoy. We've already got a situation where most personal computers spend 99.9% of their lives waiting for us to do something. Machine sentience is not only the best, but the most elegant and efficient way to handle it. What use is having a machine at all, if it spends the vasst majority of its time idle?
The term "operating system" will be deprecated someday, replaced with something akin to "personality engine" or "anthroderm".
And yes, it irritates me to no end when someone predicts something wont happen in the future, rather than proposing how and when it will.
Cheers,
I'm sure this will get be flame-broiled for being racist by those who don't read past the first paragraph, but.. Here's my take on things.
You're wasting your time if you think you can define what "ethical conduct" means before you define what it means to be "a professional" in the first place.
It seems to me that among most American (Both N. and S.) and European system administrators and programmers, the issue of workplace ethic is well known, and adhered to fervently. Unix administrators in particular, put a great deal of emphasis on accountability, responsibility, and appropriate conduct. However, in the past decade or so i've been working in this industry, the unspoken code of honor and commonality of ethics abruptly ends when dealing with eastern European, Asian, and African programmers/administrators.
The reasons for this are completely cultural -- They have nothing to do with race. The cultural differences between those of us here in the Americas and those of IT professionals from abroad stem from what is valued more in that person's culture. In Western culture, extensibility, usability, robustness and coherency of design are the principles we put the greatest importance on---Whatever gets the job done right, regardless of how much time it takes. In other parts of the world, these principles take a back seat to facets like practicality, speed, and overall function---Whatever solves the problem the quickest, regardless of quality.
Its been the cause of every single workplace conflict i've seen in the past 10 years. One party (manager or programmer) wants the job done quickly -- The other party (manager or programmer) wants to do it right. An American programmer goes nuts trying to work within a group of Indian programmers who in his mind "write half-assed code, cut corners, and cover up mistakes."
Meanwhile, an Indian programmer goes nuts trying to work within a group of American programmers, who in his mind are slow, lazy and underproductive team members.
The whole entanglement of "ethics" stems from the differences in priorities. As anedcotal evidence, look at the reigons of the world where software piracy is rampant. A lack of adherence to accepted practices goes hand in hand with piracy, does it not? WHy does piracy flourish in some areas while remaining an underground black market in others? The answer seems purely obvious to me...And as long you're going to have a dichotomy that severe within the industry, there will never be universally agreed-upon "code of ethics" or "Hippocratic Oath" among IT professionals. It just isn't possible, if you intend on mixing two radically different definitions of what it means to be "a professional."
Cheers,
Ah, yes. Network everything. That'll solve a whole host of problems, like.......uhh... See, I always wished that my...uh......errr..
(*cough*CUECAT*cough*..)..
The whole point of invention is to solve a problem. The fact that my toaster lacks a login prompt doesn't qualify as a "problem" to anyone. I don't want a programmable heat grid in my toaster so I can burn little designs into my English muffins. I just want a friggin English muffin that isn't burnt on the outsides and soggy in the middle. Solve that first. I don't want a friggin SQL database running on my fridge. I want one that doesn't make my ice cubes smell, and no amount of TCP/IP is going to fix that. To my knowledge, there is no "Ice Cube Scent Removal" RFC.
The problem with whiz-bang ideas like this is, like the CueCat, that they don't solve any problems. Infact, they try to solve a problem that never existed in the first place. So lets suppose I have my whole apartment wired. My aquariums have webcams, my dishwasher floods both my network and my kitchen floor, and my television watches me instead of me watching it. What have I gained, other than an ego-erection? Bragging rights over my nerdy friends? Or a LAN crowded with garbage traffic, none of which will ever be used or implemented in any form other than for novely and amusement.
Put that in your socket and sniff it.
Cheers,
Wong.
Cheers,
Oh, come on. You can't be serious. I'm not "arrogant"......
I'm FUCKING arrogant!
Cheers,
Rather nice of Chris DiBona to neglect the people who busted their ass behind the scenes for most of Themes.org's useable lifespan (1998-2000) in his recent "history of Themes.org" article.
What about the guys who were administering wm.t.o, bb.t.o. e.t.o, kde.t.o, and other subsites? Did these sites run themselves, Chris?
For the record, I used to be one of the site maintainers during t.o's heyday. In the year and a half I contributed, DiBona was never involved in any aspect of development process, did none of the planning, none of the maintenance, none of the administration, and none of the backend coding. DiBona had nothing to do with t.o's success back then, so don't let him try and take credit for other people's work. (Gee, that sounds familliar, doesnt it?) There were alot of people who poured enormous amounts of time and energy into that project who never recieved even a passing acknowledgement from anyone at VA. In short, VA turned their back on them.
Be sure to add that lovely pattern neglect to your "history", Chris.
flog(if(horse=="dead")then return horse);
Some alternatives to "Themes.org" are Deskmod, Skinz, my own site, System 26, and numerous other sites in the skinning community. They all accept and support Linux windowmanager themes, as well as KDE and GNOME themes, and have been around for quite a while now.
Cheers,
I'm telling you people, Sun has kicked off the quarter by announcing a new "Insanity First" initiative within the company. Nobody believes me. Here's a brief run-down of corporate goals within the next 4-8 months:
1) Replace all technical staff with tigers.
2) Replace the tigers with African bushmen who communicate with clicks and grunts. Scrap x86 Solaris, and release "Solaris For Hamsters, Gerbils, And Other Small Rodents". Meanwhile, move the tigers over to Technical Support to handle incoming calls.
3) Include a free copy of "The 1979 Guinness Book Of World Records" with every purchase order under over $3,000,000, with every instance of the word "from" highlighted.
4) One word: Mebibytes!!
5) Begin intentionally misrouting customer purchase orders and inventory shipments. Establish two divisions within the company, the Product Obfuscation Division, and the Product De-Obfucscation Division, overseen by a third division called "Buh". Staff all three departments with goats.
6) Give the goats stock options.
7) Pour billions of dollars into quantumcomputing with one simple goal -- To write an infinite loop that fires and re-hires Scott McNealy billions of times per second, so when the shit hits the fan, its impossible to determine whether or not he was in charge the moment any non-profitable decision was made.
8) Buy Compaq.
9) Cut off all business relations with any company that has the letter "B" in its name. Refer to all the companies who remain as "The Divine Council Of Broktou."
10) Stop selling Linux on the grounds that it screws up the company's expense reports. When you sell a free product, the profit margain is infinite, and Excel doesn't know how to handle that sort of math.
Cheers,
I wouldnt call the guy who said "this sort of thing has been obvious for decades" a sceptic....I'd rather call him a guy who has a clue. I can recall programs on PBS 20 years ago that demonstrated this sort of thing on any number and sort of creatures.
What i'd be more interested in seeing, versus some reactionary 9-11'ish crap about "lets send in the remote controlled rats!" are this sort of technology's implications for more practical uses. Here, i'll get you started.
Prison X has an inmate problem..Namely, they're a bunch of half-retarded murderers, psychopaths, and child molesters. Some of the more enterprising scumbags occasionally decide to plan a riot. Meanwhile, this advance in brain-control technology has allowed us to cure everything from epilepsy to OCD. Of course, the doctors have to gain their experience somewhere, so...In exchange for a 3 year deduction in the amount of time served on their sentence, they agree (voluntarrily) to have a control system implanted in their brain. This allows the physician to gain experience outside the simulator, and it allows any potential prison riot to be stopped at the flick of a switch. Kill two birds with one stone. That aughtta start you thinking.
Better yet, put death row inmates on treadmills. Make them generate electricity for nearby cities to offset the cost of power provided by the local utility. Its a nice way to keep the prisoners busy doing something useful and non-violent, as well as partially repaying their debt to society. If they don't work, they wont have enough power to watch TV, enjoy heat in the winter, and air conditioning in the summer. I'd call that incentive.
Cheers,