So far all i've heard is done withsupercomputers is number-crunching.
JUST number crunching? Scientific and medical research generate so much data that even this machine would never be able to process even the smallest fraction. There is always a need for number crunchers; they give us insights into the meaning of data (for example, the Human Genome project). Sure, they're sequenced it, but now they have to just "crunch numbers" in order to figure out where the genes are and find homologues in other organisms... but I guess that's not important. Neither is is analyzing protein folding and protein-ligand docking, because that's just "number crunching" and could never produce useful results...
I sincerely apologize for this rant, but I simply cannot stand the attitude of people who feel "if it can't play Quake[III/IV/XXX] at 200 fps, it's crap". (Although I will admit, if it's not Scottish, it's crap!). Computers do have uses for things other than looking at pretty pictures and splattering your buddy's insides all over a wall.
It would be pathetic to not understand that alias... Hopefully it's a higher percentage than.5%...
-------
Re:Social aspects of work
on
Disconnected
·
· Score: 1
Of course you want dedicated workers but I doubt in the real world anybody expects to be forcing you to do more and more work. Besides at least in the United States you get paid 150% of your normal salary if you in fact do work any over time. In this respect they *don't* want you to work any more time than normal.
You're assuming that the poor bastard working overtime is being paid hourly and isn't salaried...
Heh, interestingly enough, the same thing happened at my school as well. Unfortunately, I was considered one of the "top" bandwidth users, even though I basically used my net connection for web, mail and tarball downloads, as well as the occasional Q3 or UT game. 'course, I didn't notice that they'd "shut off" my net access until a power outage forced me to reboot - it turns out that their idea of denying me access was to not provide me with a DHCP lease based on my hardware address. Well, it was easy enough to pop in a different NIC that I had kicking around, but I digress.
Anyway, Napster was "banned" from my school by not allowing people to do a dnslookup of the napster servers. Turns out our bandwidth was still just as crappy as before; they were just using Napster as an excuse because they were too cheap to upgrade our outside pipe.
--------- "There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
when you get the thing home, you most likely plug it into the outlet in your garage, your just moving the pollution from the car to the power plant. This has been shown to be actually LESS efficient than just burning gas in an efficient vehicle.
Whoa there, sparky... the Insight isn't JUST an electric car; you _don't_ plug it in - it uses your braking power and some of the revolutions of the gas engine to charge itself. A car that can get up to 70 MPG without being plugged in is pretty damn good if you ask me. Less polution all around.
--------- "There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
And yes, the FBI also has the right to be able to intercept both your phone calls and your emails if you are under suspicion. No, they can not block you from sending or receiving, but they can look if they have substantial evidence. And yes, there are laws to make sure that they aren't looking unless they have substantial reason to be looking.
Yes, but Carnivore goes beyond simply tapping one person's phone line... If phones still had party lines, this would be the equivalent of the FBI picking up the phone every time someone has a conversation, listening until they figure out who is talking, and then if it isn't the person they want, they supposedly hang up. I don't know about you, but that wouldn't make me too happy....
--------- "There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
I'm glad that Earthlink has done this; with any amount of luck, it will set a precedent that other ISPs will follow. This whole Carnivore deal is a disaster looking for a place to happen, and thankfully, Earthlink said "not here". I find it difficult to believe that any rational person would think that using this thing is OK. Wouldn't it be quite a bit easier for the FBI, etc. to get the ISP to forward a suspect's mail to them? Not that I agree with this tactic either, but it's a hell of a lot less invasive than sifting through the headers of everybody's mail in order to find the mail you want. I suppose that the FBI could be insanely paranoid and worry that the ISPs are all part of an evil worldwide conglomerate that is conspiring to keep information from them.
--------- "There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
Here's a letter I just sent to my senator, who happens to be on the panel.
Date: 07/11/00 From: wbriggs@zoo.uvm.edu Subject: Napster Hearings To: Senator Leahy
Senator Leahy,
I am writing to you in regards to the recent Senate hearing involving Napster, MP3.com, et al. Being a computer science student at the University of Vermont, I try to keep myself as up to date as possible on technology issues. Having met you (briefly) in Washington during a trip to Princeton Model Congress and seeing that you also are knowledgeable in technology issues, I felt comfortable in sending this message. I am deeply concerned about the results of these proceedings. My concern is not simply for Napster. This may perhaps sound selfish, but never having used the Napster software, the demise of that particular company would not be of much concern to me, although I am conversant with the type of technology that Napster employs. My worry is that, if legislation were to be written in order to address the issue of online music, the effects could be farther reaching than first thought. It is possible that services will find themselves responsible for information that belongs to their users. In my opinion, and in the opinion of most of the online community, this would be extremely unfortunate. This would be similar to claiming that a telephone company is responsible for threatening phone calls; yes, these phone calls are illegal, but legitimate uses certainly exist for the telephone. Furthermore, it should be the responsibility of the _individual_ to not perform illegal acts, not the entity that provides a service to the individual. I have read the testimony given by Lars Ulrich, a member of the band Metallica, and I was extremely disheartened at the many fallacies contained therein. Unfortunately, many things that he gives as "facts" are merely gross simplifications and/or misconceptions made by someone not familiar with technology. I would ask you to look at statements made by another artist, Courtney Love, that contain a different point of view. I look forward to hearing your views on this matter (either directly or indirectly through the news), and will be reachable by email only for the summer; snail mail will be forced to await my return from CA. Thank you for your time. Sincerely, William Briggs
I would recommend that anyone who is able do the same. A list of members of the judiciary committee is available here. --------- "There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
Well, well, well... looks like one of the Senators on the committee (Leahy) is from my home state.
Looks like there might be something I can do that might actually make a difference for once. Now all I have to do is organize a geek rally... anyone have any ideas? --------- "There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
I know you're trolling, but I just can't help it...
I can think of one thing that a MS OS can do better (at the moment) than a Linux-based OS, and that's play games. I doubt that Toyota is worried about the quality of Quake III on their proxy server, but they ARE probably thinking strongly about the stability and speed of the server, and Linux wins, hands down. --------- "There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
Whether or not the distributors are doing this is a PR move, it is a big deal for the Open Source community. This will, hopefully, finally make Linux a "legitimate" business choice in the eyes of people who previously saw Linux as only a hacker's plaything. --------- "There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
Maybe you folks haven't realized that the 1st amendment IS part of the Constitution (hence it is an Amendment - something that modifies an original document).
As soon as the Bill of Rights was ratified, the amendments took affect and become part of the Constitution. --------- "There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
I don't agree that it will hurt the industry. Yes, it may hurt MS revenues, but it opens up the playing field for more companies to compete fairly, and those companies will generate more revenue.
Your trickle-down argument sounds a bit like Reaganomics to me... --------- "There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
If 90% of all people only bought Nabisco crackers (i.e., Win9x, etc), and a store decided NOT to sell them, then another store down the street would take all of their business.
However, I'm sick of arguing over an analogy. It's a sign of weak logic. If you wish to argue the actual MS case, then fine. --------- "There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
Yes, you're 100% correct. Everything that Microsoft has done wrong was fabricated by people who envy Bill Gates...
What planet are you from? That man's hubris is astonishing, and yours is almost as bad. --------- "There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
No, not at all... But what if Nabisco were to tell all the convenience stores that they would charge them more $ (or not sell to them at all) unless the stores ONLY sold Nabisco crackers?
That's the difference... --------- "There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
Umm... did you pay any attention whatsoever to this case? They tied IE into the OS in order to ruin Netscape, then had the gall to lie repeatedly under oath to the court. This is just the tip of the iceberg, however. If you truly think that Microsoft is innovating, then I can feel only pity for you. Just look at the callous disregard they showed by "extending" the Kerberos protocol WHILE they were in trial for anti-trust allegations! Absolutely ridiculous. Get with it. --------- "There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
Scheme is a good beginner language for SIMPLE tasks. In order to really use the power of Scheme, however, you really have to understand quite a bit - procedures as first class values are extremely useful but make no sense whatsoever to the beginning programmer. Also, recursion is a must when using a functional language like Scheme, and that can be a bit hard for beginners to understand. Once you get used to the parenthesis, it's not so bad. --------- "There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
This is off topic, but you just set the value of a function to true. I may be wrong, but that doesn't seem kosher. Maybe you meant: lessig.isSmart = true; At any rate, the point was well taken.:) --------- "There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
As we move farther and farther into the Digital Age(C), it becomes apparent that current copyright laws simply will no longer be appropriate, or even relevant. Unfortunately, the large corporations that have made huge sums of money off of their IP will fight the death or metamorphosis of copyright all the way to their graves. There just isn't any solution that will appeal to all sides of the issue. Maybe it'll be a wake up call for some companies to change their business model for survival in a completely different culture. --------- "There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
Well, as if you can't guess... I dropped mine like a hot potato when MS bought out Hotmail... To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion...
Slashdot Mirror
JUST number crunching? Scientific and medical research generate so much data that even this machine would never be able to process even the smallest fraction. There is always a need for number crunchers; they give us insights into the meaning of data (for example, the Human Genome project). Sure, they're sequenced it, but now they have to just "crunch numbers" in order to figure out where the genes are and find homologues in other organisms... but I guess that's not important. Neither is is analyzing protein folding and protein-ligand docking, because that's just "number crunching" and could never produce useful results...
I sincerely apologize for this rant, but I simply cannot stand the attitude of people who feel "if it can't play Quake[III/IV/XXX] at 200 fps, it's crap". (Although I will admit, if it's not Scottish, it's crap!). Computers do have uses for things other than looking at pretty pictures and splattering your buddy's insides all over a wall.
-------
It would be pathetic to not understand that alias... Hopefully it's a higher percentage than .5%...
-------
You're assuming that the poor bastard working overtime is being paid hourly and isn't salaried...
-------
Heh, interestingly enough, the same thing happened at my school as well. Unfortunately, I was considered one of the "top" bandwidth users, even though I basically used my net connection for web, mail and tarball downloads, as well as the occasional Q3 or UT game. 'course, I didn't notice that they'd "shut off" my net access until a power outage forced me to reboot - it turns out that their idea of denying me access was to not provide me with a DHCP lease based on my hardware address. Well, it was easy enough to pop in a different NIC that I had kicking around, but I digress.
Anyway, Napster was "banned" from my school by not allowing people to do a dnslookup of the napster servers. Turns out our bandwidth was still just as crappy as before; they were just using Napster as an excuse because they were too cheap to upgrade our outside pipe.
---------
"There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
You mangled it... the punchline is supposed to be:
"If you're hung like a stallion, you don't need a car to pick up chicks."
---------
"There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
Whoa there, sparky... the Insight isn't JUST an electric car; you _don't_ plug it in - it uses your braking power and some of the revolutions of the gas engine to charge itself. A car that can get up to 70 MPG without being plugged in is pretty damn good if you ask me. Less polution all around.
---------
"There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
Did you read the article? The windmill only goes on at night to charge the battery.
Sheesh.
---------
"There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
Yes, but Carnivore goes beyond simply tapping one person's phone line... If phones still had party lines, this would be the equivalent of the FBI picking up the phone every time someone has a conversation, listening until they figure out who is talking, and then if it isn't the person they want, they supposedly hang up. I don't know about you, but that wouldn't make me too happy....
---------
"There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
I'm glad that Earthlink has done this; with any amount of luck, it will set a precedent that other ISPs will follow. This whole Carnivore deal is a disaster looking for a place to happen, and thankfully, Earthlink said "not here". I find it difficult to believe that any rational person would think that using this thing is OK. Wouldn't it be quite a bit easier for the FBI, etc. to get the ISP to forward a suspect's mail to them? Not that I agree with this tactic either, but it's a hell of a lot less invasive than sifting through the headers of everybody's mail in order to find the mail you want. I suppose that the FBI could be insanely paranoid and worry that the ISPs are all part of an evil worldwide conglomerate that is conspiring to keep information from them.
---------
"There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
Whoops, that link should be here
---------
"There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
Here's a letter I just sent to my senator, who happens to be on the panel.
Date: 07/11/00
From: wbriggs@zoo.uvm.edu
Subject: Napster Hearings
To: Senator Leahy
Senator Leahy,
I am writing to you in regards to the recent Senate hearing involving Napster, MP3.com, et al. Being a computer science student at the University of Vermont, I try to keep myself as up to date as possible on technology issues. Having met you (briefly) in Washington during a trip to Princeton Model Congress and seeing that you also are knowledgeable in technology issues, I felt comfortable in sending this message. I am deeply concerned about the results of these proceedings. My concern is not simply for Napster. This may perhaps sound selfish, but never having used the Napster software, the demise of that particular company would not be of much concern to me, although I am conversant with the type of technology that Napster employs. My worry is that, if legislation were to be written in order to address the issue of online music, the effects could be farther reaching than first thought. It is possible that services will find themselves responsible for information that belongs to their users. In my opinion, and in the opinion of most of the online community, this would be extremely unfortunate. This would be similar to claiming that a telephone company is responsible for threatening phone calls; yes, these phone calls are illegal, but legitimate uses certainly exist for the telephone. Furthermore, it should be the responsibility of the _individual_ to not perform illegal acts, not the entity that provides a service to the individual. I have read the testimony given by Lars Ulrich, a member of the band Metallica, and I was extremely disheartened at the many fallacies contained therein. Unfortunately, many things that he gives as "facts" are merely gross simplifications and/or misconceptions made by someone not familiar with technology. I would ask you to look at statements made by another artist, Courtney Love, that contain a different point of view. I look forward to hearing your views on this matter (either directly or indirectly through the news), and will be reachable by email only for the summer; snail mail will be forced to await my return from CA. Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
William Briggs
I would recommend that anyone who is able do the same. A list of members of the judiciary committee is available here.
---------
"There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
Well, well, well... looks like one of the Senators on the committee (Leahy) is from my home state.
Looks like there might be something I can do that might actually make a difference for once. Now all I have to do is organize a geek rally... anyone have any ideas?
---------
"There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
I know you're trolling, but I just can't help it...
I can think of one thing that a MS OS can do better (at the moment) than a Linux-based OS, and that's play games. I doubt that Toyota is worried about the quality of Quake III on their proxy server, but they ARE probably thinking strongly about the stability and speed of the server, and Linux wins, hands down.
---------
"There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
Whether or not the distributors are doing this is a PR move, it is a big deal for the Open Source community. This will, hopefully, finally make Linux a "legitimate" business choice in the eyes of people who previously saw Linux as only a hacker's plaything.
---------
"There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
Maybe you folks haven't realized that the 1st amendment IS part of the Constitution (hence it is an Amendment - something that modifies an original document).
As soon as the Bill of Rights was ratified, the amendments took affect and become part of the Constitution.
---------
"There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
I don't agree that it will hurt the industry. Yes, it may hurt MS revenues, but it opens up the playing field for more companies to compete fairly, and those companies will generate more revenue.
Your trickle-down argument sounds a bit like Reaganomics to me...
---------
"There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
If 90% of all people only bought Nabisco crackers (i.e., Win9x, etc), and a store decided NOT to sell them, then another store down the street would take all of their business.
However, I'm sick of arguing over an analogy. It's a sign of weak logic. If you wish to argue the actual MS case, then fine.
---------
"There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
Yes, you're 100% correct. Everything that Microsoft has done wrong was fabricated by people who envy Bill Gates...
What planet are you from? That man's hubris is astonishing, and yours is almost as bad.
---------
"There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
No, not at all... But what if Nabisco were to tell all the convenience stores that they would charge them more $ (or not sell to them at all) unless the stores ONLY sold Nabisco crackers?
That's the difference...
---------
"There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
Umm... did you pay any attention whatsoever to this case? They tied IE into the OS in order to ruin Netscape, then had the gall to lie repeatedly under oath to the court. This is just the tip of the iceberg, however. If you truly think that Microsoft is innovating, then I can feel only pity for you. Just look at the callous disregard they showed by "extending" the Kerberos protocol WHILE they were in trial for anti-trust allegations! Absolutely ridiculous. Get with it.
---------
"There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
Scheme is a good beginner language for SIMPLE tasks. In order to really use the power of Scheme, however, you really have to understand quite a bit - procedures as first class values are extremely useful but make no sense whatsoever to the beginning programmer. Also, recursion is a must when using a functional language like Scheme, and that can be a bit hard for beginners to understand. Once you get used to the parenthesis, it's not so bad.
---------
"There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
This is off topic, but you just set the value of a function to true. I may be wrong, but that doesn't seem kosher. Maybe you meant: lessig.isSmart = true; At any rate, the point was well taken. :)
---------
"There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
As we move farther and farther into the Digital Age(C), it becomes apparent that current copyright laws simply will no longer be appropriate, or even relevant. Unfortunately, the large corporations that have made huge sums of money off of their IP will fight the death or metamorphosis of copyright all the way to their graves. There just isn't any solution that will appeal to all sides of the issue. Maybe it'll be a wake up call for some companies to change their business model for survival in a completely different culture.
---------
"There's no swimming in the heavy water, no playing in the acid rain.
Well, as if you can't guess... I dropped mine like a hot potato when MS bought out Hotmail... To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion...