The theory of evolution [...] holds that man is the descendant of apes
This is one of the most common bits of misinformation about evolution; in fact, Homo sapiens does not derive from any current species of primates, sharing with them only common ancestry. The fact that a major news site like cnn.com is spreading this notion only goes to show just how well-informed about the subject most of the world is. With [sarcasm]quality information[/sarcasm] like this, no wonder people are so fiercely opposed to evolution.
Frankly, I thought someone at Slashdot would have already brought this up, as it's so blatant.
Anyway, don't you all get me wrong. I have nothing against self-interest, wanting to make money, or whatever. I am, however, against joyfully crushing anything or anyone that crosses your path.
So it looks like a lot of people are gushing about how cool IBM has become, what with Java and Linux and OSS and whatnot. Unfortunately, while they may have shed their Big Brother exterior, IBM remains what it has always been - a parasitic predator whose only goal in life is to get obscenely wealthy by feeding off the computer industry. They are only supporting Linux/OSS because 1) it pisses Microsoft off, 2) they see money in it.
So let's not get all dreamy about dominating the world and taking IBM with us. In the world that we want to build, information is free, which goes against every tenet of their corporate culture.
Let me think of a reason why the NSA doesn't want the American public to know they're just a bunch of geeks... can you say ego boost? I mean, come on. It must feel like you're James friggin' Bond all day! VERY self-validating!
You're right about one thing: the place for NCs is not on your desktop. It's in your car, in your house, in your refrigerator, in your TV set, in your alarm system, in your pocket, in your eyeglasses, and eventually in your brain.
Face it, baby: the death of box-sized $1000 computers is nearing, and before you know it, speaking about a computer as separate from the network will be an anachronism. No matter what you (or Larry) want.
(Since you've posted this twice, I'm going to just reply to the second one.)
Well, I know all that. I was just pointing out the absurdity of the argument that your files are safer in your own box (which, frankly, seems to stem more from personal reasons than from logical argument).
I've read a lot of stories about the good old days, about how they were typing away at their terminals when suddenly the server went down, and with it everything they had on storage. For this reason, they claim, their files are safer in their own workstation's HD.
Well, I don't know about you, but I feel a whole lot more secure knowing that my data is stored in a high-quality, mirrored, constantly backed-up hard drive in a computer run by a well-paid person whose job is to make sure that data is kept safe, in a locked office in a building with top-of-the-line alarm system, and transmitted to me using ridiculously hard-to-break cryptography.
Currently, it resides locally - on my iWhack's cheap-ass HD with practically no protection or damage control except for Disk First Aid, in an empty room within a building where there's usually no doorman at the door; I tell you, I'm not too happy about it.
From what I've read, IBM seems to be buying into Linux more than Oracle. Oracle seems to see Linux as simply a jab at Microsoft.
This is also the case with IBM, who have pretty good reasons to hate Microsoft themselves. In fact, I think this is the main motivation for most of these big companies - including even Corel, perhaps.
As someone else has already pointed out, Conectiva is the biggest Linux seller around here. And, whaddayaknow, they have already translated the LDP User's Guide, Netadmin's Guide, Sysadmin's Guide, etc., and sell it on bookstores. And because of the original LDP licenses, the Portuguese translations can be freely copied and redistributed. So it's a moot point; if they really wanted to know something, they would go out and buy/copy it.
In order to do that, the program would really and truly have to understand what it was writing.
I don't know about that. Some time of forced study in NL-related study has taught me the golden rule of the field: no matter what the problem is, it just takes some more and better programming techniques. Of course, no one really knows what programming techniques these are, so we're stuck...
Sure, this seems awesome at first sight. Just like the SciAm special edition on future space flight.
Of course, any attempt to put apes on the moon in a large scale will inevitably be: 1) hideously expensive; 2) rather unpleasant for the poor travelers; 3) completely pointless - if they tried to use the moon for population-control, like they did with the American West, they'd quickly find out that the moon does not have that much room... neither would have Mars, by the way. So while this may be fun and interesting, I highly doubt that it's going to be a success.
OTOH, as soon as somebody comes up with appropriate assembler technology, things are going to get much easier. Wanna colonize the moon? Send a missile-sized egg full of appropriately programmed nanobots and a bit of energy... in a year they'll have filled the lunar landscape.
OEAH, as soon as somebody comes up with appropriate assembler technology, somebody is going to come up with a way to use it to make mind uploading a possibility... and then we'll no longer need humans. There ceases to be an "apes in space" problem, because cyberpeople aren't going to be as fragile, large or space-consuming as apes. So it'll get 1) much cheaper; 2) not unpleasant at all; 3) much more reasonable - the moon is no longer the limit; immortal cyberbeings can colonize the entire galaxy even without faster-than-light technology.
I'm sorry, but that looks like another one of those "I don't think a computer can do that - oh no, wait, I'm sorry, I take that back" things. Having a computer break the rules of grammar is about as easy as having it follow them.
The big idea behind Oxygen hardware is the field-programmable gate array (FPGA). And everyone I've talked to so far has completely failed to explain why in the world FPGAs are non-multiprogrammable - i.e., can only do one thing at a time. The way to do it seems rather simple - out of the whole gate matrix, dedicate a number of cells to one task (say, playing MP3s), and the rest of the cells to the other task (say, networking). Just like we already do with RAM. Lo and behold - parallel multitasking!
If anyone cares to explain why this wouldn't work just as if you were using a regular SMP system, please do.
Who says they've gone anywhere?
on
High Tech Junk
·
· Score: 0
AFAIK, most old computers (and I mean really old - IBM 704's and the like) are still in the corporate closets of many Big Bloated (tm) companies and governmental entities where the IT manager has only marginally more of a say in money-spending policy than the janitorial staff. Thankfully, though, this is changing, as these companies' presidents finally see the need to substitute these old Hulking Giants with truly modern Windows NT networks--
I invite any non-American who has Web storage space to go to the Universal site, collect as many internal URLs as they feel necessary, and post them on the Web. Let's see them prosecute this!
It's at times like this that I give thanks for not being in the US. I'm telling you, if you don't like the idea of being trapped in some darker version of 1984, the American geeks should start doing something about it. And I'm not talking about signing up with the Libertarian party or anything of the sort. I'm taking about a revolution. You're one of the few countries in the world with anything like 2nd Amendment rights; use them!
This is why I think that a FPGA system would benefit the most from a model-reflective system such as TUNES (http://www.tunes.org)... where tasks would be recompiled on-the-fly to adapt to the current state of the chip.
I'm really ignorant on this issue, so I may be completely wrong... but what's the problem with the notion of optimizing one part of the chip for each task, creating two or more "virtual machines" (I know, the term already has another, better meaning, but I couldn't come up with anything better), each dedicated to a specific task?
It's like ESR says... Perl, Python, C and Lisp are each enlightening programming experiences... you have to use them for some time before you "get" them, but once you do, it feels right.
... is that information wants to be free. The best way to keep secrets is not to have any secrets at all. It's one thing to want to keep Big Brother from watching you on the shower; but while only Big Brother has an interest in knowing your shower habits, anything that is potentially dangerous or important about your persona is interesting for many other entities. Thus, the privacy that the article claims we've already lost may not even be that important in the first place if there isn't a Big Brother from which it's imperative to keep information. What I'm trying to say is that, if there's a system in which all have something to gain from other people's information, but on the other hand they all have something to lose from their own information, then there's nothing to be afraid of. The big problem is that the Government and the big corporations disrupt this equilibrium.
I don't see why schemes like this couldn't work (whether they will work in all practical applications is another story, but it probably is a valid system for data publishing (where data = text, music, etc.). IPdroids, eat your hearts out!!!
The first one who answered the original post unwittingly answered it. The Macintosh snapshot (command-shift-3), for instance, outputs to PICT. But no one puts a PICT on the Web! They put GIFs and JPGs! So the reason it passed through Photoshop might well be that - to convert from PICT (or whatever) to JPG. There you go.
While at another time my answer to this comment would probably look a lot like the first one, today I feel nice enough not to simply tell you to keep your poor imitation of sarcasm to yourself. Instead, I will tell you what is wrong with your argument, as below.
The Communist reference. Apparently, you're the only one in the Slashdot community who hasn't received the memo (maybe you're new here, which may explain your Anonymousness... or perhaps you are just a Coward): Free Software != Communism... in a big way. If anything, it's the software licenses the QNX people like so much that are communist in nature; see the GNU philosophy documents.
The "die" portion. This was intended not as a threat, but as a warning. I personally could care less whether QNX lives or dies; it's good software, but so is a lot of stuff that the Free Software community writes (and we're many more than the QNX devel community).
The "giving it away" misconception. The question here is not whether it's free as in "free beer", but whether it's Free as in "free speech" (which does bring up the point of whether QSSL has the right to severely restrict the use of their software through licenses and to sell those at arbitrarily high prices). Software that's released through a Free license is used and reused healthily, and spawns growth in the community; software that's released proprietarily stagnates, and dies off if it's not able to compete.
Can you spell "eye-candy"? This is probably one of the best-looking GUIs I've ever seen. Honest-to-god. These people at QNX look like they have great artists and marketing people. From the whitepaper, it looks as though the system itself is pretty good too, very well-designed.
But it's not Free Software, so it's instantly confined to a niche market. If it were Free, we'd already be porting the whole shebang to PowerPC (the "demo disk" is only for x86), writing a Scheme meta-compiler for it, rebuilding Photon to replace X, and creating a myriad of spin-off projects. But it's not Free, so it just may be dead and forgotten in five years. Oh well.
Slashdot Mirror
The theory of evolution [...] holds that man is the descendant of apes
This is one of the most common bits of misinformation about evolution; in fact, Homo sapiens does not derive from any current species of primates, sharing with them only common ancestry. The fact that a major news site like cnn.com is spreading this notion only goes to show just how well-informed about the subject most of the world is. With [sarcasm]quality information[/sarcasm] like this, no wonder people are so fiercely opposed to evolution.
Frankly, I thought someone at Slashdot would have already brought this up, as it's so blatant.
Stupid moderators never cease to piss me off...
Anyway, don't you all get me wrong. I have nothing against self-interest, wanting to make money, or whatever. I am, however, against joyfully crushing anything or anyone that crosses your path.
So it looks like a lot of people are gushing about how cool IBM has become, what with Java and Linux and OSS and whatnot. Unfortunately, while they may have shed their Big Brother exterior, IBM remains what it has always been - a parasitic predator whose only goal in life is to get obscenely wealthy by feeding off the computer industry. They are only supporting Linux/OSS because 1) it pisses Microsoft off, 2) they see money in it.
So let's not get all dreamy about dominating the world and taking IBM with us. In the world that we want to build, information is free, which goes against every tenet of their corporate culture.
Let me think of a reason why the NSA doesn't want the American public to know they're just a bunch of geeks... can you say ego boost? I mean, come on. It must feel like you're James friggin' Bond all day! VERY self-validating!
You're right about one thing: the place for NCs is not on your desktop. It's in your car, in your house, in your refrigerator, in your TV set, in your alarm system, in your pocket, in your eyeglasses, and eventually in your brain.
Face it, baby: the death of box-sized $1000 computers is nearing, and before you know it, speaking about a computer as separate from the network will be an anachronism. No matter what you (or Larry) want.
(Since you've posted this twice, I'm going to just reply to the second one.)
Well, I know all that. I was just pointing out the absurdity of the argument that your files are safer in your own box (which, frankly, seems to stem more from personal reasons than from logical argument).
I've read a lot of stories about the good old days, about how they were typing away at their terminals when suddenly the server went down, and with it everything they had on storage. For this reason, they claim, their files are safer in their own workstation's HD.
Well, I don't know about you, but I feel a whole lot more secure knowing that my data is stored in a high-quality, mirrored, constantly backed-up hard drive in a computer run by a well-paid person whose job is to make sure that data is kept safe, in a locked office in a building with top-of-the-line alarm system, and transmitted to me using ridiculously hard-to-break cryptography.
Currently, it resides locally - on my iWhack's cheap-ass HD with practically no protection or damage control except for Disk First Aid, in an empty room within a building where there's usually no doorman at the door; I tell you, I'm not too happy about it.
From what I've read, IBM seems to be buying into Linux more than Oracle. Oracle seems to see Linux as simply a jab at Microsoft.
This is also the case with IBM, who have pretty good reasons to hate Microsoft themselves. In fact, I think this is the main motivation for most of these big companies - including even Corel, perhaps.
Where does the input string go?
As someone else has already pointed out, Conectiva is the biggest Linux seller around here. And, whaddayaknow, they have already translated the LDP User's Guide, Netadmin's Guide, Sysadmin's Guide, etc., and sell it on bookstores. And because of the original LDP licenses, the Portuguese translations can be freely copied and redistributed. So it's a moot point; if they really wanted to know something, they would go out and buy/copy it.
In order to do that, the program would really and truly have to understand what it was writing.
I don't know about that. Some time of forced study in NL-related study has taught me the golden rule of the field: no matter what the problem is, it just takes some more and better programming techniques. Of course, no one really knows what programming techniques these are, so we're stuck...
Sure, this seems awesome at first sight. Just like the SciAm special edition on future space flight.
Of course, any attempt to put apes on the moon in a large scale will inevitably be: 1) hideously expensive; 2) rather unpleasant for the poor travelers; 3) completely pointless - if they tried to use the moon for population-control, like they did with the American West, they'd quickly find out that the moon does not have that much room... neither would have Mars, by the way. So while this may be fun and interesting, I highly doubt that it's going to be a success.
OTOH, as soon as somebody comes up with appropriate assembler technology, things are going to get much easier. Wanna colonize the moon? Send a missile-sized egg full of appropriately programmed nanobots and a bit of energy... in a year they'll have filled the lunar landscape.
OEAH, as soon as somebody comes up with appropriate assembler technology, somebody is going to come up with a way to use it to make mind uploading a possibility... and then we'll no longer need humans. There ceases to be an "apes in space" problem, because cyberpeople aren't going to be as fragile, large or space-consuming as apes. So it'll get 1) much cheaper; 2) not unpleasant at all; 3) much more reasonable - the moon is no longer the limit; immortal cyberbeings can colonize the entire galaxy even without faster-than-light technology.
I'm sorry, but that looks like another one of those "I don't think a computer can do that - oh no, wait, I'm sorry, I take that back" things. Having a computer break the rules of grammar is about as easy as having it follow them.
The big idea behind Oxygen hardware is the field-programmable gate array (FPGA). And everyone I've talked to so far has completely failed to explain why in the world FPGAs are non-multiprogrammable - i.e., can only do one thing at a time. The way to do it seems rather simple - out of the whole gate matrix, dedicate a number of cells to one task (say, playing MP3s), and the rest of the cells to the other task (say, networking). Just like we already do with RAM. Lo and behold - parallel multitasking!
If anyone cares to explain why this wouldn't work just as if you were using a regular SMP system, please do.
AFAIK, most old computers (and I mean really old - IBM 704's and the like) are still in the corporate closets of many Big Bloated (tm) companies and governmental entities where the IT manager has only marginally more of a say in money-spending policy than the janitorial staff. Thankfully, though, this is changing, as these companies' presidents finally see the need to substitute these old Hulking Giants with truly modern Windows NT networks--
Oh wait. What was the good news again?
I invite any non-American who has Web storage space to go to the Universal site, collect as many internal URLs as they feel necessary, and post them on the Web. Let's see them prosecute this!
It's at times like this that I give thanks for not being in the US. I'm telling you, if you don't like the idea of being trapped in some darker version of 1984, the American geeks should start doing something about it. And I'm not talking about signing up with the Libertarian party or anything of the sort. I'm taking about a revolution. You're one of the few countries in the world with anything like 2nd Amendment rights; use them!
This is why I think that a FPGA system would benefit the most from a model-reflective system such as TUNES (http://www.tunes.org)... where tasks would be recompiled on-the-fly to adapt to the current state of the chip.
I'm really ignorant on this issue, so I may be completely wrong... but what's the problem with the notion of optimizing one part of the chip for each task, creating two or more "virtual machines" (I know, the term already has another, better meaning, but I couldn't come up with anything better), each dedicated to a specific task?
It's like ESR says... Perl, Python, C and Lisp are each enlightening programming experiences... you have to use them for some time before you "get" them, but once you do, it feels right.
... is that information wants to be free. The best way to keep secrets is not to have any secrets at all. It's one thing to want to keep Big Brother from watching you on the shower; but while only Big Brother has an interest in knowing your shower habits, anything that is potentially dangerous or important about your persona is interesting for many other entities. Thus, the privacy that the article claims we've already lost may not even be that important in the first place if there isn't a Big Brother from which it's imperative to keep information. What I'm trying to say is that, if there's a system in which all have something to gain from other people's information, but on the other hand they all have something to lose from their own information, then there's nothing to be afraid of. The big problem is that the Government and the big corporations disrupt this equilibrium.
I don't see why schemes like this couldn't work (whether they will work in all practical applications is another story, but it probably is a valid system for data publishing (where data = text, music, etc.). IPdroids, eat your hearts out!!!
The first one who answered the original post unwittingly answered it. The Macintosh snapshot (command-shift-3), for instance, outputs to PICT. But no one puts a PICT on the Web! They put GIFs and JPGs! So the reason it passed through Photoshop might well be that - to convert from PICT (or whatever) to JPG. There you go.
I hope I've helped enlighten you.
Can you spell "eye-candy"? This is probably one of the best-looking GUIs I've ever seen. Honest-to-god. These people at QNX look like they have great artists and marketing people. From the whitepaper, it looks as though the system itself is pretty good too, very well-designed.
But it's not Free Software, so it's instantly confined to a niche market. If it were Free, we'd already be porting the whole shebang to PowerPC (the "demo disk" is only for x86), writing a Scheme meta-compiler for it, rebuilding Photon to replace X, and creating a myriad of spin-off projects. But it's not Free, so it just may be dead and forgotten in five years. Oh well.