While I do understand that this is an exciting feat of engineering with extensive implications, I think it's a scientist's duty to keep his or her head in its place when accessing the results of his or her own research - and these guys seem to be gushing excessively. Feynman wisely warned us to be wary of any scientific paper which doesn't offer any questioning of its own conclusions.
Someone else has already mentioned this, but he got moderated down and won't be seen, so I'll say it again: this story was on Slashdot on 26/02 ("Mating human cells with circuitry"). Way to go.
What should above-average tech folk be called? If all the older terms are either dead as a doornail, sexist, or both, what would be a great, collective way to describe such people?
Apple can't export any G3-based computers (though whether anyone in the rest of the world is upset by this is anyone's guess)
Gee whiz, in that case the iMac that has sat in my desk since October 1998 is just a figment of my imagination, right? I've been dreaming about it all along, eh?
Apple is forbidden to directly export one specific model: the G4/500MHz, which exceeds 1 GFlops and is therefore subject to "supercomputer" regulation. But iMacs, iBooks, "big" G3s and more recently "big" G4s can be found all around the world, including here in Brazil. (Okay, so they're all priced like supercomputers... but that's not the issue:)
Am I the only one who thinks DNS is past its time? I mean, there's got to be a better way. I think it's time for a new naming service to be developed. I'm thinking context- and location-sensitive, text-based (as opposed to the fixed format of URLs), distributed naming services. CORBA already has some of the features I have in mind, but they're localised to CORBA apps and built in at compile time; I say the next-generation network software will be based on a more general distributed object model, indexed and localised through the use of these naming services.
...when people only know what Lotus is if you refer to it as an IBM subsidiary.:)
Anyway, call me crazy, but this is the kind of thing that does not take the backing of seven industry leaders to be worked out. We all remember the aberrations that have resulted from design by committee (*cough*COBOL*cough*). And needless to say, much cooler things in terms of markup languages have come out of individual or small-group efforts (TeX, anyone? LaTeX? MusiXTeX?). So I think that instead of having the industry leaders battle about language features for a decade, ending up with no result to speak of (as has happened many times with this kind of thing), they should simply hand the project to, say, IEEE or IETF or whatever, and then take whatever has come of it and implement it as-is in their own devices.
Yeah, that looks about right. Feel free to flame.:)
Tsc. I tell ya, you kiddies have it easy. Back in the day, we didn't have any of those fancy schmancy shaving creams or aftershave or blades or anything like that. Nosiree bob. Try using a Gillette when you've got a sabertooth coming after ya, I'll tell you that! Hell no. We used our own two-inch fingernails to shave, and we LIKED it! Now THAT's a real man. Ah, those were the days...
(I can't find Tom's Perl->Slashdot formatter, so make whatever you can of the script below.)
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# a filter for enabling C++-looking "OO" style in Perl. # not tested; have no idea if it works; probably clashes with about a dozen other forms. As usual, provided without any warranty. Heh. # syntax: #:object.property # => $object->{property} #:object.method() # => $object->method()
while (<>) { s{:(\w+).(\w+)\s*([\([^\(\)]*\)]?)}{$3?'$'.$1.'->' .$2.$3:'$'.$1.'->{'.$2.'}'}egi; print; }
...and it's there, right at the beginning. This guy used a Sol! Does anyone even remember what that was?!? The Sol was designed by Lee Felsenstein (from Homebrew) as part of his Tom Swift Terminal, and was one of Woz's inspirations in designing the Apple II. IMNSHO, it remains one of the Top Ten coolest hardware designs of all time. However, it wasn't very successful commercially, and Felsenstein ultimately faded away. (I have no idea where he is now.) But it was really cool nonetheless. Yeah.
From the headquarters of the C++-Haters Association...
Seriously. Like many of the posters so far, I program in C++ every day. Unlike many of those, I _really_ hate it. It's probably a question of cultural differences: I was raised on Lisp, and, even though I'm not really religious about it, I still find C++ to be, all in all, an enormous kluge.
I really do wish I could move to another language, but unfortunately, the Lab standardised on C/C++/Fortran some ten years before I got hired, and I don't really have a say about it.
So the point of the matter is: what can you, Bjarne, do for me, Kaufmann? Can you at least post a memo saying something like: "To the Mgmt. and J. Clueless PHB: C++ is _not_ a god-send. Not _all_ programming should be done in C++. Alternative language research _should_ be encouraged. Sincerely, - The Bell Labs gang"
FYI, civilisation doesn't begin and end in North America. South America, Africa and Asia may be in less than ideal conditions, but aren't all just primitive jungles either; Brazil, South Africa and India are all large consumers of computing technology and are relatively well-integrated into the Internet.
Okay. The bad news is, Microsoft software users are being spied on. But everybody fails to see the practical benefits of this. So here are the Top Five good things about Microsoft and the NSA teaming together:
* All the software will already know your personal habits and information, therefore freeing you from the hassle of having to perform configuration.
* In time, all NSA programming staff will develop chronic psychosis (sp?) from prolonged exposure to the Windows sources.
* They can investigate user habits to find out what kind of graphical user interface is best suited to desktop users. And if even without this information they were able to create such great things as MS Bob (tm) and the Office Assistant, I can't help but wonder what great stuff may come next!
* Windows Millenium will come with earmuffs, to keep the constant noise from the black helicopters from blowing up your inner ear.
And last but not least, the Best Thing about Microsoft and the NSA teaming together:
* If the Shadow Government computers that run Echelon are Windows boxes, then you have nothing to worry about - by the time they recover from the BSOD, you'll already have hung up the phone!
---
(Why only five, you ask? Well, I'm not _that_ creative. It's an open list ("open source", much like Al Gore's campaign site), so feel free to add to it.)
Amazing... it's not quite as crappy as I expected it to be. (Which is not to say that it's not crappy at all; quite the contrary.)
If you ask me (I know you didn't, but I'll say it anyways), I think it's a danmed shame that they feel the need to turn a perfectly good classic comic into a piece-of-shit movie. Tsc.
I recently joined the staff of the Fluid Dynamics laboratory at the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), a governmental institute (there exist few, if any, privately-funded research foci in Brazil). The salary is decent, but much lower than what I could be receiving at other places, doing less interesting things (even in a part-time job); most definitely, I (and most everyone else on the staff) don't do it for the money. The software we produce is heavily used such diverse areas as pipeline analysis by oil companies and cardiology; all these being very much vertical markets (and there not being that much research on fluid dynamics elsewhere), we _could_ license the software for a fortune and get rich.
But we don't - all our software is released under a Free (ais) license. Why not? First, because the aforementioned oil companies are the ones that provide for most of our funding in the first place; second, because just as I just finished integrating a GPL'd FFT package from another research institute into our codebase, other people elsewhere may as well find enough use for our software that they might modify it and improve it. In short, we all benefit from open scientific software. The same case can be made, I think, for open software in all other research fields. Maybe, in due time, these IP-friendly research corporations will understand this and adopt an open model as well, not only for software but for all other fruits of research.
(On a side note: right now the lab is still mostly a Sun/Solaris shop; we've got an old DEC box and a Big Mothahfuckah SGI, but we're progressively migrating to Linux. If the proposed law to enforce preferential use of Free Software in public institutions is passed, we'll probably end up as a Linux shop (except for the SGI, which still has at least a few years ahead of it). This shift is expected to save IMPA a six-digit figure in the next decade.)
Seriously now, just how sad is it that, while the Windoze source code debacle gets 400+ posts, all these subject-specific stories that don't get posted in the main page (God knows why) only get like three posts?
He said: ... such as his doctrine of panpsychism (belief that reality is constituted by the mind), which anticipated the teachings of Gottfried Leibniz and Baruch Spinoza... and may be echoed in today's extropian movement.
I don't know what sums up subjectivism better than "belief that reality is constituted by the mind".
I liked this piece very much, all in all. It's good to see other kinds of content on Slashdot these days.
But...
... where exactly did Brin get the idea that Extropians are modern-day subjectivists? That's just weird. Especially considering that many of them are hard-core scientists.
Very unfortunately, what you said is true. So what about this - we put up an online enrollment form, with a bunch of checkboxes, so that each geek will only have to do what he feels like doing to contribute to the cause. ("Are you willing to allow a refugee hacker from another country to sleep on your couch for an undetermined length of time? _ Yes _ No", "Are you willing to participate in a stealth mission to the tyrannical United States of America to rescue the subversive Richard Stallman from prison? _ Yes _ No", and so on.)
Slashdot Mirror
While I do understand that this is an exciting feat of engineering with extensive implications, I think it's a scientist's duty to keep his or her head in its place when accessing the results of his or her own research - and these guys seem to be gushing excessively. Feynman wisely warned us to be wary of any scientific paper which doesn't offer any questioning of its own conclusions.
The title only has four letters: G, A, T and C
... which just happen to be the initials of the four nitrogen bases which make up DNA. Is it possible that I was the only one who noticed that? Naah.
The source is there, why not just compile for your system?
Because it requires the latest release of CodeWarrior, which I don't own, plus two dozen other obscure Mac development tools.
Someone else has already mentioned this, but he got moderated down and won't be seen, so I'll say it again: this story was on Slashdot on 26/02 ("Mating human cells with circuitry"). Way to go.
(see topic)
Hrrrm. I guess I should expect that it would take longer to build the Mac release... but if the Win32 release is already out... hrrrrm.
What should above-average tech folk be called? If all the older terms are either dead as a doornail, sexist, or both, what would be a great, collective way to describe such people?
Um, "hackers"?
Apple can't export any G3-based computers (though whether anyone in the rest of the world is upset by this is anyone's guess)
:)
Gee whiz, in that case the iMac that has sat in my desk since October 1998 is just a figment of my imagination, right? I've been dreaming about it all along, eh?
Apple is forbidden to directly export one specific model: the G4/500MHz, which exceeds 1 GFlops and is therefore subject to "supercomputer" regulation. But iMacs, iBooks, "big" G3s and more recently "big" G4s can be found all around the world, including here in Brazil. (Okay, so they're all priced like supercomputers... but that's not the issue
Am I the only one who thinks DNS is past its time? I mean, there's got to be a better way. I think it's time for a new naming service to be developed. I'm thinking context- and location-sensitive, text-based (as opposed to the fixed format of URLs), distributed naming services. CORBA already has some of the features I have in mind, but they're localised to CORBA apps and built in at compile time; I say the next-generation network software will be based on a more general distributed object model, indexed and localised through the use of these naming services.
if you want something done quickly, do it yourself. If you want it done well, do it openly
I suppose... then again, this whole thing really reeks of COBOL to me.
Dude, it's a markup language specification. Even more, it's a XML DTD: it's text-based. There is no way they can make it "closed source"!
...when people only know what Lotus is if you refer to it as an IBM subsidiary. :)
:)
Anyway, call me crazy, but this is the kind of thing that does not take the backing of seven industry leaders to be worked out. We all remember the aberrations that have resulted from design by committee (*cough*COBOL*cough*). And needless to say, much cooler things in terms of markup languages have come out of individual or small-group efforts (TeX, anyone? LaTeX? MusiXTeX?). So I think that instead of having the industry leaders battle about language features for a decade, ending up with no result to speak of (as has happened many times with this kind of thing), they should simply hand the project to, say, IEEE or IETF or whatever, and then take whatever has come of it and implement it as-is in their own devices.
Yeah, that looks about right. Feel free to flame.
Tsc. I tell ya, you kiddies have it easy. Back in the day, we didn't have any of those fancy schmancy shaving creams or aftershave or blades or anything like that. Nosiree bob. Try using a Gillette when you've got a sabertooth coming after ya, I'll tell you that! Hell no. We used our own two-inch fingernails to shave, and we LIKED it! Now THAT's a real man. Ah, those were the days...
(I can't find Tom's Perl->Slashdot formatter, so make whatever you can of the script below.)
:object.property :object.method()
' .$2.$3:'$'.$1.'->{'.$2.'}'}egi;
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# a filter for enabling C++-looking "OO" style in Perl.
# not tested; have no idea if it works; probably clashes with about a dozen other forms. As usual, provided without any warranty. Heh.
# syntax:
#
# => $object->{property}
#
# => $object->method()
while (<>) {
s{:(\w+).(\w+)\s*([\([^\(\)]*\)]?)}{$3?'$'.$1.'->
print;
}
Happy now?
...and it's there, right at the beginning. This guy used a Sol! Does anyone even remember what that was?!? The Sol was designed by Lee Felsenstein (from Homebrew) as part of his Tom Swift Terminal, and was one of Woz's inspirations in designing the Apple II. IMNSHO, it remains one of the Top Ten coolest hardware designs of all time. However, it wasn't very successful commercially, and Felsenstein ultimately faded away. (I have no idea where he is now.) But it was really cool nonetheless. Yeah.
From the headquarters of the C++-Haters Association...
Seriously. Like many of the posters so far, I program in C++ every day. Unlike many of those, I _really_ hate it. It's probably a question of cultural differences: I was raised on Lisp, and, even though I'm not really religious about it, I still find C++ to be, all in all, an enormous kluge.
I really do wish I could move to another language, but unfortunately, the Lab standardised on C/C++/Fortran some ten years before I got hired, and I don't really have a say about it.
So the point of the matter is: what can you, Bjarne, do for me, Kaufmann? Can you at least post a memo saying something like: "To the Mgmt. and J. Clueless PHB: C++ is _not_ a god-send. Not _all_ programming should be done in C++. Alternative language research _should_ be encouraged. Sincerely, - The Bell Labs gang"
Thanks for the time,
-- Rafael Kaufmann, CPPHA member
(Note to moderators: not a flame, not a troll.)
At least you're not prejudiced, eh?
Sheesh.
FYI, civilisation doesn't begin and end in North America. South America, Africa and Asia may be in less than ideal conditions, but aren't all just primitive jungles either; Brazil, South Africa and India are all large consumers of computing technology and are relatively well-integrated into the Internet.
So lay off the bigotry, for a change.
Any particular reason you feel it's a "piece-of-shit" movie?
:P
Because it looks like one? Then again, maybe my sense of aesthetics isn't as highly developed as yours.
Okay. The bad news is, Microsoft software users are being spied on. But everybody fails to see the practical benefits of this. So here are the Top Five good things about Microsoft and the NSA teaming together:
* All the software will already know your personal habits and information, therefore freeing you from the hassle of having to perform configuration.
* In time, all NSA programming staff will develop chronic psychosis (sp?) from prolonged exposure to the Windows sources.
* They can investigate user habits to find out what kind of graphical user interface is best suited to desktop users. And if even without this information they were able to create such great things as MS Bob (tm) and the Office Assistant, I can't help but wonder what great stuff may come next!
* Windows Millenium will come with earmuffs, to keep the constant noise from the black helicopters from blowing up your inner ear.
And last but not least, the Best Thing about Microsoft and the NSA teaming together:
* If the Shadow Government computers that run Echelon are Windows boxes, then you have nothing to worry about - by the time they recover from the BSOD, you'll already have hung up the phone!
---
(Why only five, you ask? Well, I'm not _that_ creative. It's an open list ("open source", much like Al Gore's campaign site), so feel free to add to it.)
Amazing... it's not quite as crappy as I expected it to be. (Which is not to say that it's not crappy at all; quite the contrary.)
If you ask me (I know you didn't, but I'll say it anyways), I think it's a danmed shame that they feel the need to turn a perfectly good classic comic into a piece-of-shit movie. Tsc.
I recently joined the staff of the Fluid Dynamics laboratory at the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), a governmental institute (there exist few, if any, privately-funded research foci in Brazil). The salary is decent, but much lower than what I could be receiving at other places, doing less interesting things (even in a part-time job); most definitely, I (and most everyone else on the staff) don't do it for the money. The software we produce is heavily used such diverse areas as pipeline analysis by oil companies and cardiology; all these being very much vertical markets (and there not being that much research on fluid dynamics elsewhere), we _could_ license the software for a fortune and get rich.
But we don't - all our software is released under a Free (ais) license. Why not? First, because the aforementioned oil companies are the ones that provide for most of our funding in the first place; second, because just as I just finished integrating a GPL'd FFT package from another research institute into our codebase, other people elsewhere may as well find enough use for our software that they might modify it and improve it. In short, we all benefit from open scientific software. The same case can be made, I think, for open software in all other research fields. Maybe, in due time, these IP-friendly research corporations will understand this and adopt an open model as well, not only for software but for all other fruits of research.
(On a side note: right now the lab is still mostly a Sun/Solaris shop; we've got an old DEC box and a Big Mothahfuckah SGI, but we're progressively migrating to Linux. If the proposed law to enforce preferential use of Free Software in public institutions is passed, we'll probably end up as a Linux shop (except for the SGI, which still has at least a few years ahead of it). This shift is expected to save IMPA a six-digit figure in the next decade.)
Hmmm... immortality.
Seriously now, just how sad is it that, while the Windoze source code debacle gets 400+ posts, all these subject-specific stories that don't get posted in the main page (God knows why) only get like three posts?
He said:
... such as his doctrine of panpsychism (belief that reality is constituted by the mind), which anticipated the teachings of Gottfried Leibniz and Baruch Spinoza... and may be echoed in today's extropian movement.
I don't know what sums up subjectivism better than "belief that reality is constituted by the mind".
I liked this piece very much, all in all. It's good to see other kinds of content on Slashdot these days.
But...
... where exactly did Brin get the idea that Extropians are modern-day subjectivists? That's just weird. Especially considering that many of them are hard-core scientists.
- Rafael Kaufmann, heading for the Omega Point
Except that when Knuth started work on TAOCP, there was no such thing as C yet.
Very unfortunately, what you said is true. So what about this - we put up an online enrollment form, with a bunch of checkboxes, so that each geek will only have to do what he feels like doing to contribute to the cause. ("Are you willing to allow a refugee hacker from another country to sleep on your couch for an undetermined length of time? _ Yes _ No", "Are you willing to participate in a stealth mission to the tyrannical United States of America to rescue the subversive Richard Stallman from prison? _ Yes _ No", and so on.)